Shadow Hunt (9 page)

Read on for a glimpse of Erin Kellison’s
next full-length novel,
Soul Kissed
,
available in September 2013.

Mason waited for his son to climb out of the car, then slammed the back passenger door shut. “One more time, please.”

“Ugh,
Dad.
” Fletcher’s gaze was off across the tire-matted stretch of grass that acted as parking for the fairgrounds. Families with strollers and groups of summer-ready teens slowly streamed toward the entrance and ticket booth.

“
Fletcher
.” Mason put a little warning in his voice.

Fletcher dragged his attention over. Sighing with exaggerated eight-year-old suffering. Repeated by rote, “I’ll do whatever you say.”

Mason didn’t like this, didn’t like it at all. It was one thing to go out into the open himself. Entirely another to take Fletcher. “One mistake—”

The eye roll, which was new this year. “Jeez, Dad. I know.”

Mason let the point go, though anxiety still riddled his nerves. He fished out a tube of sunscreen from a plastic grocery bag. “Hand.”

Fletcher held out a palm for a squirt. He smeared the lotion all over his face. When he was done, Mason had a Red Sox baseball cap waiting. And when that was settled on his son’s head, Mason held out a twenty-dollar bill. “So you don’t have to bug me for every little thing.”

Fletcher grinned, showing front teeth too big for his mouth, empty gaps on either side. The sight did something to Mason’s heart. It took so little to make his son happy. And so very much more to keep him safe. And yet, this was the time he’d been born into; better that Fletch start learning to handle himself now, before the world grew even darker.

They started across the grass, host to lots of small, biting flies. The grass grew sparse nearer the ticket booth, where the buzz turned to bees dancing around the still-sweet trash bins.

Mason had his head down to look at his wallet when he felt the telltale sing in his blood of a mage passing by behind him. He glanced at Fletcher, who kept his attention on the booth as well, though Mason knew his son had to have sensed the passage of Shadow too. The magic would have pulled at his son’s own senses. Having an awareness of Shadow nearby was a family trait.

Keep a cool head, and Fletcher will do the same.
Mason had read about modeling behavior in his parenting books. He just hoped his son didn’t know what he did to make a living, or the teen years were going to be a nightmare.

“All right.” Mason turned. “Should we stuff our faces first, or do you want to hit the rides?”

Fletcher went for long-suffering again. “Rides.” The kid wisely left off the implied
duh.

The sideways pie of the Ferris wheel loomed thataway. Other side of the fair. Mason put his wallet in his back pocket. “Come on.”

The Stanton public recreation department had gone all out for the city’s annual May Fair and Market. More interesting was the full-page invitation in the city’s newspaper, inviting the “Shadow people” to the event—a friendly, if desperate, measure, in an increasingly frightening world. The fair’s committee had elected to go medieval with the theme, probably thinking magekind would like it. As if mages hadn’t been around in every era.

The main path was festooned with ropes of fragrant flowers, all leading to the centralized park, where a many-ribboned maypole had been erected. Vendors lined the walkways with art, dragon jewelry, face painting, and sugar-crusted deep-fried donuts, the last of which made Mason’s mouth water against his will. Might have to get one of those. The bass and drums of live music bounced down the paths, though the band was playing at the far end, on a stage erected at the closed-to-cars traffic circle. Droves of people congested the walkways, some because the May Fair was tradition, but all hoping to spot a real live mage.

The public open invitation to magekind was a smart attempt on the part of the mayor to draw out his mage constituency and to show that he was friendly to their interests. Very clever. Risky, but clever.

In most places in the world, the idea that there were people with magic in their blood was still met with derision. And yet, it had been years now that soul-sucking wraiths skulking the alleys had been caught on mobile phone cameras and uploaded online. And though mage law forbade the use of Shadow in public, it was happening more and more often. Plus, the earthquakes last year had never been fully explained.

The awful truth? Shadow now saturated the world. Mages could feel the return of power in their blood. And they were organizing various interests to suit themselves.

The newspaper invitation had done its job, and the “Shadow people” had come, mostly for the fun of it. People with magic-black eyes were everywhere, standing in line for the twist-and-spin, winning at the ring toss, and wolfing down mustard-dipped hot dogs on a stick.

Yes, a very friendly venue.

The rides made both Mason and Fletcher nauseous, so of course they had to eat. Mason scanned the crowds as they headed toward the food alley, and spotted Bran and his father, Dalton Webb, head of Webb House, an instant before Fletcher grabbed his arm. Dalton was thinly built with long limbs, like a human daddy longlegs. He was aged closer to grandfather than father, but then he’d had to go through three wives to get the desired male heir.

The boy, Bran, took after his mother—stocky, towheaded, always chattering.

“Can I?” Fletcher’s face had pinked with the late spring heat. He had a cloud of boy sweat around him.

Mason steeled himself inside—
here we go
—but nodded. Webb was someone he’d hoped they’d bump into. “Okay.”

Connections like these were why they’d come in the first place. That, and curiosity. Would this be what the coming Dark Age would be like?

“Dalton,” Mason drawled when Webb joined him to watch the boys whoop and wrestle in the dust.

“Mason,” Webb returned, holding out his long, thin hand. “Was wondering if I’d see you here.”

“Couldn’t resist after I saw the invitation.”

“First open invite to Shadow in our lifetime. No one could resist.”

Mason’s point exactly.

“I’ve been hearing things about you,” Webb mused.

“Oh?” Mason had been doing work for a lot of terrible causes lately. Maybe Webb had a job for him too.

“How did a lousy stray like you catch the Council’s ear?”

Stray meaning no family, no House to claim him or Fletcher. He and his son were at the mercy of all the hellish things this world and the other worlds beyond could throw at them. The more friends Mason could make, the better Fletcher’s chances at surviving.

Mason laughed and shook Webb’s hand. Dalton had deigned to speak to a stray, which was a good beginning. That the master of Webb House gripped his hand was even better. It meant respect.

“I have my uses,” Mason answered.

“So I’ve noticed.”

Which was the point of all Mason’s work. Not that he remotely cared what the mage Houses thought of him. In fact, he’d been prepared to walk away from magekind some nine years ago.

Then came Fletcher, and his life had radically upended, like a sudden magnetic reversal of poles. The mage Houses became everything: safety and strength. Mason just had to find, connive, coerce, or thieve his way into one. Right now Fletcher might as well be exposed in the open, a hurricane bearing down on him. These people all around—debating handmade jewelry and licking the sides of their ice cream cones for drips—they had no idea what was coming.

Fletcher came running back, babbling about a sword and begging, “Please, Dad, five more bucks,” and repeatedly saying, “Epic!”—a word he must have picked up from Bran.

Mason hoped the verbal tic was temporary.

One minute later, the boys were thrusting and parrying and making asses of themselves in the middle of the path. The cost of the sword was robbery, plain and simple; the fact that Fletcher was playing with the heir to Webb House, invaluable. Webb House would be ideal.

“We should talk.” Webb’s eyes had gone flinty.

Mason knew the tone, knew the look. Webb had work. And if he was thinking of employing a stray, then the work had to be to some degree illegal.

Well, they had to start somewhere.

“I’m in the area for a few more days.” Mason retrieved a card from his wallet.

Webb took the card. “Meeting with another House?”

Mason pulled a half smile. He wasn’t going to answer that, and Webb knew it. “As far as I know, I’m not working on anything that could conflict with the interests of Webb House.”

The admission was generous, a show of good faith. It was up to Webb now to follow through.

Gasps brought his attention back to the boys. A group of three or four humans, cringing in their skin, had stopped to watch them.

“Mages,” whispered one.

A mom just passing by yanked her children back, as if Bran and Fletcher were dangerous.

Mason frowned, and put himself in human shoes to see what had captured the bystanders’ attention. Fletcher and Bran merely looked like two almost-troublemakers, just this side of a warning. Then Fletcher thrust with his sword and Mason saw it: Bran had bullied up the shadow he cast into the shape of a man-sized, fire-breathing, scaly-tailed dragon. Fletcher’s shadow had taken on the proportions of a broad-shouldered knight. This was part of Webb House’s magic—shadow play.

“Been good seeing you,” Dalton said over his shoulder, as he grabbed Bran by the elbow and pulled him up short. The shadows disintegrated.

It took only a look from Mason to shrink Fletcher from hero to boy.

Fletcher pointed at Bran. “
He
did it!”

Mason cocked his head. “Do I really have to tell you why that excuse won’t fly?”

Webb and Bran had already moved away to blend back into the throng of fairgoers, preferring to leave suspicions behind them. Typical of mages, stirring up fear and uncertainty. To the frightened mother still gripping her children, Mason shot a look, parent to parent, that said, “Boys this age.”

The band’s song ended, but instead of drumming into another, there was a short pause, and then a man cleared his throat into the mic.

Mason looked down the way toward the stage, while simultaneously bringing Fletcher close by his side. Poor kid had been outed as a mage in public. Maybe bearing the long looks and unease of the humans around them would teach him a lesson.

From the speaker on the stage: “Thank you to the Larry Trumpet Blues Band for starting us all off rocking this morning.”

A smattering of applause. People were too closely packed, too hot to muster more enthusiasm than that.

Mason could make out a few figures standing on the stage. If one was the mayor who’d invited the “Shadow people,” this could get interesting. He kept a hand on Fletcher’s shoulder and milled forward with the crowd to be able to see better. Webb and Bran were up ahead, even closer. And Mason spotted several other mages among the throng as well, black eyes fastened on the action at the stage.

“And a thank you to the organizers of our May Fair, led by our intrepid Judy Hart Langley.”

More polite applause while some woman in a pink pantsuit waved to the crowd.

“And now to welcome you all here today, Mayor Bingham!”

Bigger applause. People wanted to hear
this
.

The mayor was wearing a suit too, and probably sweating through it. Though his hairline was receding, he seemed surprisingly young. But then that made sense. It would be the younger generation who more readily accepted the existence of Shadow. They’d spent hours online poring over those wraith videos and watching the
Fact-or-Fiction?
shows on TV, modern witch hunts and the like.

“Our May Fair has been a tradition for the 173 years since Stanton’s founding. I’m personally thrilled to have discovered that one of our very first businesses was run by a family with ties to the Shadow people—my own.”

The mayor held up his hands to quiet murmurs; he was loving being associated with this new, exclusive group. Dumb. Possibly dead.

“I don’t have any magic—or
Shadow
as they call it. Wish I did. But when reports began circulating about these people who could do wonderful things, I tended to believe them. Fear does no one any good.”

Anyone with common sense would know that fear is a valid reaction to a perceived threat, and with reference to magekind, a necessary reaction—
be afraid
—but it was nice that this guy was preaching tolerance. Very optimistic of him.

“Which is why, on this very sunny morning, I am more than happy to welcome Shadow people here today—or
mages,
as I’ve just now learned, is the correct term. In fact, for the past twenty minutes I’ve been having an interesting conversation with a mage, and he has graciously agreed to say a few words to you himself.”

Mason didn’t breathe until he saw the mage in question—Ranulf Smythe, as antihuman, antitolerance as mages could come. He still kept wraiths in his employ, even after the Council had banned their use last year, which begged the very obvious question: Since wraiths fed only on human souls, how was he feeding them?

Fletcher didn’t need to learn
this
lesson today.

The crowd tightened with interest.

Mason picked Fletcher up around his middle, ignoring the horrified, “Daaad!” at being treated like a baby.

Too bad. It had been risky to come. They’d made a little headway with Webb; that was more than enough for a day’s work. A stray mage knew when to run. That, or he died young.

Mason was shouldering his way roughly through the crowd when Ranulf Smythe began to speak, feedback squealing through the mic. “Thank you, Mayor Bingham, for inviting me to say a few words.”

Mason lifted Fletcher over a park bench, then vaulted over the back of it himself. But it didn’t get them far. People had closed in all around them. The car was on the other side of the fairgrounds.