Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser Series Book 5) (9 page)

I wanted to stay crushed against him forever, but I couldn’t ignore the heavy pit of guilt in my stomach any longer.

“She has the map,” I said, hoping my words were completely incomprehensible when muttered against his neck.

Warner’s hand stilled. “She took it deliberately?”

“Kett asked the same thing.”

“The vampire was here?”

“After. Before you returned.”

Warner stayed silent, thinking, and I didn’t interrupt or break our embrace. In a minute, we’d have to be moving forward, and I wanted to delay that for every second possible.

“It was unfortunate that the vampire wasn’t here for the altercation, or Kandy,” Warner said. His tone was distant, as if he was thinking out loud. “I understand that vampires are almost as skilled at tracking as werewolves.”

“Not in this case,” I said. “She was swarmed by the shadow leeches, then disappeared like she did in the fortress in Hope Town.”

“She’s in league with the shadow demons, then. I thought … perhaps … that there was a chance that the shadows had simply kidnapped her from the fortress.” Warner — for all his assertion of not being romantically involved with Shailaja — sounded pained at this prospect.

I looked up at him. He offered me a fleeting smile. An affectation he’d picked up from me … and Scarlett, smiling through pain. Sometimes I wasn’t sure how well I knew Warner, or how much of his persona was constructed through the chameleon nature of his dragon abilities.

“I guess it was silly to think a six-hundred-year-old boyfriend wouldn’t come with a past, when every twenty-plus-year-old I know probably has a worse one.”

Warner’s grin widened. “I’m not six hundred years old,” he said, falling readily into the fight I always picked with him. “I’m at most fifty-five … and who are all these twenty-plus-year-olds that you know?” He capped his playful banter with a sexy growl and a possessive squeeze of my hips. “They sound far too young for the warrior’s daughter.”

I kissed him, again pressing myself against the long length of him, but now being on the edge of rough with the lip lock. God, I adored this man. I adored that he knew when to be serious and when to be playful. I adored that he was possessive, and yet believed that I was more than capable of taking care of myself.

I adored that he liked Kandy, and … well … tolerated Kett. Or at least the idea of Kett, because they hadn’t exactly spent much time together yet.

I flicked my tongue in and out of his mouth. He groaned so softly that I felt it more than heard it. The involuntary noise turned my limbs to mush. He always seemed so in control, and it was way sexy to hear him otherwise.

“We should probably go after the map,” I said, regretfully breaking contact with his lips just enough to speak … between kisses, of course. “But I can’t leave the bakery like this for Bryn to find. She’ll call the police.”

“Is it your brownie’s day off?” Warner asked, still paying more attention to kissing me than anything else.

“Jesus, sixteenth century, you can’t go around being rampantly racist anymore,” I chided, attempting to remain playful and remember that he grew up in a completely different world. “Bryn is First Nations.”

“Brownies are not connected to First Nations ancestry.” Warner nuzzled my neck.

We were like freaking chaste teenagers. “God,” I groaned. “I’m so tired of acting like I’m sixteen. We get the map back, then we’re going straight to bed.”

“I’m not sure what acting like you’re sixteen has to do with that —”

“Well, I don’t know what the hell a brownie is either,” I cried, aware that I was being utterly, frustratingly dramatic and over the top again. “Other than a girl who aspires to sell cookies or graduates to sell cookies. You know, Brownie. Like a baby Girl Scout.”

He had no idea what I was talking about. I clenched my fists, barely stopping myself from hauling off and punching him in the shoulder.

Warner eyed me. “Your mood is shifting rapidly tonight.”

“Don’t you dare.”

He tilted his head, and now eyed me like the minefield I was. When he spoke, he did so slowly and deliberately. “You’re angry, and you keep stuffing that anger away. I certainly don’t mind being a distraction, but perhaps you would feel better if we went after the map.”

“There goes any chance of being mysterious and compelling,” I grumbled. Then I covered my face with my hands, digging my fingertips into my sinus cavities around my eyes in an attempt to relieve my growing headache.

“I find you exceedingly compelling, warrior’s daughter.”

I peeked through my fingers to find Warner grinning at me. A look that demanded to be kissed off his face.

“Stop grinning at me like that,” I growled in mock frustration. “Or we’ll never get the map back.”

Warner dropped the grin. “We’ll get the map back, Jade.”

I bobbed my head in unconvinced agreement and stepped back from him to survey the ruin of the bakery. “It’s going to take hours to clean this, and I can’t even call Gran’s handyman until morning. Or at least that would be the polite thing to do.”

“Which is why I asked after the brownie I assumed you’d acquired to clean,” Warner said, still keeping his tone measured and even for my sake, rather than his own. I got the distinct impression he liked me a little crazy.

“I don’t know what a brownie is,” I said.

“I wondered why you were washing the bowl of the standing mixer the other day … Again, I assumed it was the brownie’s day off.”

“That was two weeks ago,” I grumbled. Annoyingly, dragons didn’t wear watches or follow any particular calendar. “So brownies clean?”

“Among other things, such as the repairs the door needs.”

“And I can just hire one?”

“Well, no. They choose,” Warner said. “They set their terms. And you don’t pay them, not with money.”

“And a brownie is an … elf?”

Warner looked aghast. “Absolutely not!”

Okay. I should have expected that a cleaning elf would be criminally insane. I hadn’t even known for sure that elves existed beyond fairy tales and whatnot until he reacted like that.

“What elf do you know?” Warner narrowed his eyes at me. “They’re worse than vampires. Have you befriended one? How does it enter this dimension? Does your father know?”

I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes right back at him. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but I was learning to bluff. Dragons liked to appear all knowing — and, unlike certain vampires, they could usually deliver that — so it was better to appear all knowing right back at them.

“The brownie?” I prompted.

Warner huffed, then begrudgingly dropped the topic of elves. “We can make a request when we cross through the nexus. I assume you have a plan that involves telling the treasure keeper about she-who-claims-the-name-Shailaja?”

Right. I’d been hoping to avoid the chat with the treasure keeper, actually.

“So that’s how it’s going to be?” I asked. “She-who-claims?”

“That is for the best.”

“Whatever.” I was exhausted already, and was guessing there would be no nap time in my near future. “I need to change.”

“You look quite fetching.”

And just like that, I was grinning at my dragon like an idiot again. Even though I had only a loose understanding of what ‘fetching’ meant to Warner, I got the context through his tone.

“It’ll be warmer in San Francisco.”

“San Francisco?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a date with a vampire.”

“Great. Just … great.”

I laughed, and the last of the tension between us dissolved.

∞

I tiptoed upstairs to my apartment in the dark to find my satchel, which Gran had left on the steamer trunk coffee table in the living room. The bag tasted of her lilac-and-grass magic until I looped it over my head so it slung across my body to rest on my left hip. Then it just felt like part of me, similar to my necklace and knife. I wondered if Gran had the time to complete the containment spell she’d promised me before she fell asleep, but I didn’t want to wake her to ask. She had taken Scarlett’s bed, and my mother was curled up in mine.

After checking the weather app on my phone, I decided that it wasn’t too warm in San Francisco for an outfit that Warner obviously liked. So I just added rosy lip gloss to my ensemble, then jogged downstairs to grab some American cash out of the newly repaired safe in the tiny office off the bakery kitchen. I’d learned to always have various currencies and my passport securely zipped in a side pocket of my satchel at all times these days.

Before I locked the safe, I also — rather mournfully — tucked Kett’s vampire wedding rings onto the top shelf. I wasn’t going to have the time to attach them properly to my necklace until I dealt with my rabid koala problem, and I didn’t want to risk losing that rare gift.

I remembered to leave a note for Gran and Scarlett about ‘brownies’ not just being the chocolate delicious ones you can eat, and to let them know I was heading into the nexus to confront … err, talk to Pulou.

Warner was waiting for me in the bakery basement. He hadn’t bothered flicking on the bare light bulb that hung in the middle of the room. He actually couldn’t stand perfectly straight down here. The ceiling was low, only six feet.

He turned to watch me walk down the wooden stairs from the pantry, but his expression was more serious than admiring.

“Your new blood wards are powerful, but they don’t block the portal,” he said. “It’s still open to anyone who knows of its existence.”

“Yeah, Gran mentioned that. But I don’t think I can ward against the treasure keeper’s magic.”

Warner touched the concrete and brick wall before him thoughtfully. I waited for him to question my use of blood magic, but he didn’t. Dragons might be a judgmental bunch, but magic didn’t scare them. Or maybe they just didn’t see it in terms of good and evil, as witches did.

“Nor can I,” he said, dropping his hand to his side. “But it’s a concern.”

“You think Shailaja could use it?”

Warner shrugged. “If she is the daughter of the former treasure keeper.”

His ‘if’ hung between us, but I didn’t bother to stoke the fight that could potentially lie behind it. If Warner wanted proof of Shailaja’s identity, that was his prerogative.

“Only Pulou, you, and I know of this doorway,” I said. “I understood it was constructed by the current treasure keeper, not the former.”

“Your father doesn’t know of it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“The warrior hasn’t visited the bakery?”

“Not while I’ve been awake. Possibly never.” I reached for the magic of the portal and bid it to open. Warner contemplated me, and perhaps the actions of my not-particularly-fatherly father. I didn’t expect — or pine for — much parenting from Yazi, who’d only known of my existence for less than two years now. I’d been peachy keen for twenty-three years without a male role model.

“Your hair glows with golden fire in the magic of the portal,” Warner murmured. So I wasn’t the only one capable of being serious and flirty at the same time.

“The magic of the portal is golden, sixteenth century,” I snarked as I stepped by him. “You might want to dig deeper with the wooing.”

“Is it?” he murmured behind me.

I walked into the welcoming magic of the portal, reaching my hand back for Warner without turning. He linked his fingers loosely through mine. We didn’t need to touch to cross together into the nexus — I barely needed to think about my destination anymore — but I liked reaching out to him. I liked that he always responded in kind.

CHAPTER FIVE

The magic of the portal buoyed me as I passed through it. However, I was pretty sure that what was really giving me the energy to walk away from my beloved bakery and pursue the crazy teenage dragon Shailaja was the handful of Inaya chocolate discs from Cacao Barry — a 65 percent blend of intense but balanced cocoa — that I crammed in my mouth as I’d crossed through the pantry.

“Speaking of teenage dragons,” I said as Warner and I stepped through the door that connected the nexus to all the North American portals, not just to the bakery. “Watch out for Drake. He’s already snuck up on me once today.”

“The fledgling takes his training very seriously. But he has yet to sneak up on me.” Warner grinned at me teasingly.

I stuck my tongue out at him and his grin widened. I laughed, glancing around the gilded, columned rotunda that was the core of the guardian nexus, aka the transportation station. But with portals, not trains or buses or airplanes. The other eight intricately decorated doors were currently closed. No dragon in sight … or within reach of my dowser senses.

Though Drake could still sneak up on me, the more time I spent in the nexus, the more I adapted to the overwhelming magic that dwelled here. I’d been wondering for a while now if the nexus was situated on the grid point portal of all grid point portals — the wellspring, perhaps — or whether it was simply that the residual magic from nine demigods left a brain-melting impression.

“You know … speaking of teenagers —”

“No,” Warner said, cutting off my foolhardy thought before I fully articulated it. “No to Drake. He doesn’t need any more encouragement. And I don’t wish to raise the ire of the fire breather.”

“She might be thawing. See what I did there? Fire … thawing …”

“No,” Warner repeated. “She’s beginning to think you’re useful. That’s not the same.”

“I miss Kandy. You’re not as fun, Mr. Sentinel.”

Warner grinned. “I’m not the same kind of fun.”

I laughed but didn’t follow his flirty lead. I felt like a good portion of my attention and a hunk of my heart was still pulled back through the closed portal straight into the trashed bakery. “So this … brownie?”

Warner thrust his hand into my satchel and pulled out the half-eaten Ritual Chocolate bar that I’d partially shared with Drake in the library.

“Hey!” I yelled, instantly ready to wrestle him for it. Obviously, Gran’s containment spell didn’t protect against thieving dragons. Though she hadn’t promised that —
 

Warner tossed the bar over his shoulder like it was a piece of trash. I barely managed to stop myself from gouging his eyes out, and just ended up staring at him as if he’d gone completely bonkers instead.