Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser Series Book 5) (8 page)

“Thank you,” I said.

Kett tipped the rings into my waiting hand without touching me. The hint of vampire magic tingled in my palm — more of an energy than a flavor. Not enough for me to taste, but more than enough to lift my spirits.

“Everything can be fixed,” I said, rolling the rings in my hand and already planning how I would add them to my necklace.

Kett was watching the blood flow through my neck. I hadn’t caught him doing that since the first evening we met.

Stupidly, I froze. Completely freezing in front of a predator was a bad idea. It only served to reinforce their idea of you as easy prey.

“What are you doing?” I whispered, suddenly aware there were fewer people around on the sidewalks and streets than before.

Kett didn’t answer. But he did reach out to press his fingers lightly to the inside of my left wrist. I was still cupping the rings in that same hand.

“You’re not trying to seduce me, are you, Kett?” My voice wasn’t as steady as I would have liked it to be.

“What would I do with you, Jade Godfrey, after I caught you?” he murmured, his gaze still on my neck. “I already know that your blood and I don’t mix.”

“You’re basing that assumption on seeing my blood burn demons, on the beach in Tofino. You’re not pure demon, and I’m not pure dragon.”

Kett dropped his hand and lifted his ice-blue gaze to mine. He was smiling now, amused, with no hint of red in his eyes. So he hadn’t been lusting after my blood. “Do you wish for me to seduce you?”

“Okay, asshole. I misunderstood. You don’t have to rub it in.”

“Don’t I?” he asked with a millimeter of raised eyebrow.

I snorted, then glared at him. If he’d been a human male, I would have assumed he was being lewd with that comment.

His smile turned into a grin. “Your magic is intoxicating, and you’ve been liberal with it tonight.”

Ah, yes. If it couldn’t be about blood for the vampire, then it was all about magic. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure sex was even the same thing for vampires as it was for the rest of us. I was betting it was a combination of sucking and mind games. Pleasant mind games, but feeding nevertheless.

“I have no idea where to start looking for her,” I said. I was becoming skilled at thinking about more than one thing at a time. Or maybe I was just obsessed about the map. It wasn’t every day that I met my immortal demigod father, then discovered that objects existed with which he could be murdered. Objects I was tasked to collect and return to the safety of the guardians.

Though destroying them would obviously be a better idea. However, Warner was being stonewalled over that particular notion by Pulou.

“She took the map deliberately?” Kett asked.

“Yeah, I think so. Though it might have just been a bargaining chip … to get her hands on my knife.”

“Or she wants the next item.”

“Maybe she thinks it contains enough power that she can use it to facilitate her transformation further.”

“Anything that could kill a guardian would have to be that powerful.”

“But I’m not sure she can access that magic, being a dragon. Though I obviously haven’t laid hands on the next item myself. And none of this explains what she was doing in the Bahamas in the first place. The statue appeared to be of an adult woman, not a kid.”

Kett offered this conundrum his version of a shrug — a slight lift of one shoulder. The motivations of others weren’t something that particularly interested the vampire. He was all about end results. I gathered that held true for vamps in general. The ‘why’ was boring to ancient immortals. Only the final prize was worth their time.

“I just figured out how to read the map,” I said. “But I barely got a glance.”

“A glance will do,” Kett said.

“Oh, yeah?” I asked, smiling at his confidence. “What do you propose to do with a glance? It didn’t come with much detail. Just part of a landmass.”

“We only need a general location. We have a powerful dowser for the rest.”

“We’d still have to get the map out of my head. I doubt I could draw it with any accuracy. We could go to the far seer, but …”

“That might take months.”

“Yeah, and every time he touches me …” I didn’t finish my thought. Kett wasn’t the right person to talk about the future with. Time meant little to him. Or it meant everything … I wasn’t totally sure, actually. But it didn’t scare him in the least. I’d get no empathy from an immortal being whose very existence thwarted destiny … twice.

Kett brushed his fingers lightly against the inside of my left wrist again. The cool kiss of his peppermint magic filled my mouth. That was all the comfort he had to give, and I’d take every last taste of it.

“The map,” I said, forcing myself to refocus.

“San Francisco.”

“Sorry?”

“There is an amplifier in San Francisco who will help me catch a glimpse of the map in your mind.”

“Why not just take me to a reader?”

“Someone powerful enough to get through your innate ability to shield your thoughts is not someone to trust.”

“That’s some big condemnation coming from a vampire.”

Kett inclined his head. “An elder of the Conclave,” he said with a twist of a smile.

“Oh? A seat at the table, hey?” I wasn’t sure if Kett was actually happy about this appointment or not. I know that Scarlett had refused a seat on the witches’ Convocation for many years, though that might be more about her turbulent relationship with Gran rather than a concern over being mired in bureaucracy. Maybe Kett had similar concerns about his grandsire and paperwork.

“So I introduce you as ‘elder’ now? Not executioner?”

“I’m still the latter, but you should never have need to introduce me.”

Right, there was that.

“You’re going to need to pass through my wards to get to the portal,” I said.

Kett showed his utter disgust at the idea of traveling by portal. Again, this was barely a twitch of his upper lip, but to me it screamed in ALL CAPS. Knowing a vampire this well was probably way, way bad for my health, but I was done with worrying about it.

“I’ll meet you in San Francisco,” he said. “I have the jet.” Then he melted off into the shadows between the streetlights.

“Private jet, eh? Nice,” I said. The vampire didn’t respond.

No other plan or schedule … just ‘meet you in San Francisco.’ At least it was a step forward when I didn’t even know where else to start. If Shailaja had taken the map because she knew how to read it, then our only chance of stopping her might be beating her to the location of the second instrument of assassination.

“I’ll need to change, at least.” Though the taste of his magic was dim, I spoke into the air as if he could still hear me.

“I’ll text you,” he said, his breath cool on the back of my neck. “Bring the dragon.”

I wanted to spin around and grab him just to prove that I could, but I didn’t want to ruin his game. He liked to play, and I missed that part of my life.

“San Francisco,” I muttered as I turned to look back at the bakery windows. “That’s new.”

Again, the bakery was more trashed than my brain was ready to acknowledge. And here I was, ready to run off and hunt a possibly insane teenage dragon with Kett.

As I watched through the splintered front door, Warner stepped from the kitchen to survey the ruin of the storefront. His face was a storm of emotion. He looked up to see me watching him.

I tried to smile, but I couldn’t force the expression to actually manifest.

I was suddenly so cold.

I wrapped my arms around my chest and stepped back into the bakery. The adrenaline was wearing off, but the anger was still simmering in my soul.

CHAPTER FOUR

I stepped through my newly constructed wards, never breaking my gaze from Warner as he crossed around the still intact bakery display case. The blood magic clung to me like a comforting cobweb. Yeah, it was probably a bad sign that I found the byproduct of blood magic comforting.

Warner was dressed in dragon training leathers, and his dark blond, newly chopped short hair highlighted his wide brow. Actually, everything about the sentinel was wide — jaw, shoulders, hands — and too big, too manly to be considered beautiful, which was fine by me. Preferred, even. He wore the sacrificial knife I’d created in London openly displayed in a sheath built into his leather pants on the left thigh, though he drew with his right hand.

Normally I’d take a moment to ogle his leather-enhanced, hard-muscled physique, but I shivered instead. The chill that had grabbed me outside still had a hold on me.

Warner ran his dark-green gaze down and across every inch of me as I moved to stand before him, crushing the broken glass still covering the floor of the entrance underneath my boots as I went.

This look — so full of concern, then rage — was not the one I’d anticipated when I’d smoothed on black tights and a cashmere sweater dress this morning.

“You are unharmed,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Who has done this?” The heat of his question sent a shivered thrill through the cold settling into my bones.

He was angry. Absolutely livid. Smoldering with it. My dragon … ready to inflict his brutal justice on the culprit.

I smiled, an involuntary and inappropriate response. “The kid.”

“The child dragon?” The sentinel was the sharpest tool in the bakery, which was completely fine by me. Especially because he didn’t seem to find me slow at all.

“She calls herself Shailaja now,” I said.

Warner stilled. “Shailaja?” he echoed, though he pronounced it differently. Harsher. More German, his accent breaking through his adopted speech patterns for some reason.

“She’s a teenager now,” I said, filling the awkward space that had suddenly wedged between us. “She pulled all the magic from my necklace. She was holding the leeches over Scarlett and Gran, and she pretty much forced me to somehow help her absorb it. Or use it to counter whatever was containing her magic.”

“A teenager,” Warner muttered. I was getting the idea I wasn’t the only one in shock now. And something about Warner’s shock was putting me on edge … well, further out along the edge I was already perched on.

“She said something about needing more magic, but then Gran kicked her ass.”

Warner hadn’t taken his gaze from me, but he’d been looking more through me than at me since I’d mentioned the crazed koala’s name. Though he did look momentarily impressed by Gran’s magical prowess, so he was listening.

“Shailaja was the former treasure keeper’s daughter,” he finally said.

“I know.”

He nodded, not bothering to question where I’d come by this knowledge.

“You knew her, then?” I asked.

“I did,” Warner answered. “Guardians do not often have children after they have ascended. The former treasure keeper and my mother had been guardians for at least five or six hundred years before they chose to procreate. In contrast, you are the only child of a guardian in your generation. It was unusual that there were two of us when I was … younger.”

“So you ‘knew her’ knew her?”

Warner’s reaction was awkward and stilted enough that I had to get the big question out of the way, and out of my mind.

“I don’t understand the significance of the repetition. We met when I began training at fourteen. She was a few years older.”

“You were together?”

“We were no more than … children of guardians.”

“Sounds to me like something to bond over.” I narrowed my eyes to let him know I was serious.

“Indeed,” he answered. Then he curled his lip in a smirk. “I gather your jealousy indicates that things are not as dire here as they appear.”

“I’m not jealous of that crazy … b … witch.” Warner raised an eyebrow at me, then crossed his arms and settled his hip back against the counter as if he was waiting for some confession.

“You haven’t kissed me yet!” I cried. Hell, if I was going to be irrational, I was going to go all the way.

Warner had his arms around me before I’d even spoken the last word. The taste of his black-forest-cake magic — all creamy dark chocolate and sweet cherry — enveloped me as he ran his hands up my arms to grasp my shoulders, then captured my lips with his.

I sighed, opening my mouth to him and pressing my body fully against his. Everything about Warner was broad, and all that broadness made me feel deliciously petite. I loved feeling petite.

“Don’t be angry with me,” he murmured against my lips. “Shailaja broke with the guardians. That was … unprecedented. And when she disappeared altogether …”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and lightly rubbed my cheek against his rough jaw. “When she disappeared?” I prompted.

“I thought … that the warrior —”

“Yazi? My dad?”

“The former warrior,” Warner clarified. “It is the warrior’s task to execute any sentence.”

I pulled slightly away from Warner so I could see his face. He looked grim. The sentinel never withheld information from me, but some days I wouldn’t mind that information coming with a bit of candy coating.

“My father is the executioner of the dragons?”

“If necessary. The sword delivers a clean death. But any sentence that doesn’t fall to the warrior becomes the treasure keeper’s responsibility.”

“Because Pulou keeps more than just treasure.” Yep, that was a new tidbit. There was a dragon prison somewhere. I shuddered to think what it contained.

“Yes.”

“So the instruments of assassination aren’t the only weapons capable of killing a guardian.”

“The warrior’s sword has never been raised against another guardian. I doubt it’s been raised against any dragon more than once in a millennia.”

“But you’re saying my father is powerful enough to kill guardians.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t like it when you don’t know something.”

“I know.”

I sighed and pressed my face into the curve of Warner’s neck, welcoming his warmth and momentarily blocking my sight of the destruction of my bakery.

He ran his fingers through the curls at the top of my head. Then down my neck and between my shoulder blades to the small of my back. Then up again.