Smoke and Mirrors (12 page)

Rieva broke eye contact moments later, turning a speculative look in Cormac’s direction even though her words were directed at Kimberly.

“You’re not half bad for a spark,” Rieva said. “Try not to invest too much of yourself into this hunt. I’m afraid you won’t like the outcome.”

“No one is going to hurt her. I won’t let them,” Cormac said.

Rieva’s only response was to level the full force of her stony expression on him before shaking her head in disappointment and gliding away with the menus.

Once she disappeared behind the swinging door into the kitchen, Cormac added some cream and sugar to his own coffee before taking a deep pull, giving no sign of discomfort at Rieva’s warning. Kimberly braced for the jolt of energy as she sipped her own drink, and tried not to worry too much.

She was starting to suspect that Cormac knew more than he was telling her, and something about this “hunt” of his wasn’t ringing true. Time would tell, she was sure, but that wasn’t a commodity she had in great supply.

Studying him over the rim of her coffee cup, she reminded herself that he had promised to help her. Though in the back of her mind a part of her whispered that he hadn’t yet put a price tag on his aid or told her what was in it for him.

She set down her cup, fingertips toying with the rim as she stared at the vibrations on the surface rather than at her dinner partner. “I wish you’d warn me next time you put me in mortal danger. Am I going to have to worry about monsters following me home tonight? Is my mom in danger? Will someone be waiting to shiv me in the hallways at school tomorrow?”

Cormac reached across the table, his warm fingers pressed lightly over her own, stilling them. “Stop worrying. Like I said, I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

She nodded, though fine lines of strain remained around her eyes. “My mom doesn’t have the spark. I’ve got school and work—I can’t always be there to keep her safe—”

“Kimberly.”

She looked up, her haunted gaze meeting his.

“No Other in their right mind who plans on keeping their freedom will approach you directly. Even if one of them is foolish enough to try something, I’ll be watching out for you. And your mother, if you wish.”

He sat back as Rieva approached with their dinners. She took one look at Kimberly’s stricken face, set the plates down, then reached over to a nearby table to grab a napkin wrapped around silverware. Shaking the square of cloth out, she pressed it into Kimberly’s hands, shot an accusatory look at Cormac, then flounced off back to the kitchen.

Cormac watched the changeling go, his eyes narrowed to dangerous slivers. Then he turned back, gesturing to the steaming plates of steak and lightly grilled vegetables. The scent wafting up was divine, but he ignored his hunger, waiting for Kimberly to take the first bite.

She didn’t touch the food. He knew she had to be hungry, but she was just looking at him with the strangest expression, wringing the napkin so hard her knuckles were going white.

“What is it?” he asked.

“What are you?”

There were a couple of choked-off sounds and whispers nearby. Though it wasn’t a question one normally asked of an Other—speciesism was frowned upon—he didn’t take offense.

“A friend. Come on, eat up.”

She continued to stare, though she went through the motions of cutting up her food. It didn’t escape her notice that Cormac didn’t touch his own food until she took her first bite.

She could have sworn for a second that she had seen beyond his skin and that, like Rieva, he was a veritable wellspring of power. Not that she doubted it, but she usually had to concentrate to see elemental magic. Her Sight tended to be limited and hazy, and it was doubly odd that she had seen something without having to put effort into it first.

That coffee must have been tweaking her perceptions. The other creatures who were shifted into a human form rather than using illusions to hide their nature gave off a similar aura, but nothing near the level of power she had detected from the changeling or from Cormac.

Obviously, he wasn’t interested in giving her any straight answers. She turned her attention to her food—not very difficult, considering the steak was some of the best she’d ever tasted, and the thick slice of rum-infused chocolate cake they shared for dessert was melt-in-your-mouth delicious—but throughout the meal, the question remained in the back of her mind.

The aura of magi “sparked” with their unconscious influence on their environment as they absorbed power, often in a miasma of colors unless they were gifted in the use of a particular element. Elemental Others were more like bubbling springs or fountains, a constant flow of power shaded with the colors of the elements that formed their essence.

Though he was doing something to mask the strength of his nature, she had seen his brand of power, and it was like nothing she had ever encountered before. While she had never seen her own aura, or that of another sorcerer, somehow she didn’t think he was like her.

He was no mage. Nothing remotely human.

Seeing as he wasn’t about to come clean on his own, and she was beginning to suspect Professor Reed would remain similarly close-lipped if she asked, she had to figure out what kind of mess she had walked into. Everything about him and his motives was now suspect. After the night’s fiasco, she couldn’t afford to wait for him to get around to telling her what he was or why he was helping her on his own time. Time was running out and even with Professor Reed’s recommendation, she couldn’t be sure his offer of protection was genuine. She would need to do some research of her own into Cormac Hunter.

It might be the only way she could survive this hunt intact.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Despite Cormac’s reassurances, Kimberly couldn’t stop worrying about her mother’s safety. If she had any skill whatsoever with elements, she could have fashioned a protective spell to shield her. Instead, she would have to rely on enchanting a few runic stones and hope her mother wouldn’t forget to keep them close enough to be effective.

Kimberly’s ability to infuse an enchantment into an item was greater than that of most of the other students at her school, but she didn’t have all of the necessary ingredients or any idea what she should be protecting her mother against. The only protective runes she could make at home were basic, and she’d have to use some of her school supplies to do it, but it was better than sending her mother out entirely unprotected.

Dragons and their ilk came in as many flavors as there were elements. They didn’t have to breathe fire or use their great strength to be dangerous. Not to mention there was no way to guess what the specialty of any attacking magi might be.

While the major elements—fire, wind, water and earth—were easy enough, there were hundreds of sub-specialties and cross-element spells that could be used. No runic glyph existed that could stop them all. If some enemy turned her mother’s heart to stone, filled her lungs with water, froze her insides, cut off her oxygen, poisoned her food—there was no single catch-all shielding spell Kimberly could concoct to protect against all of those things. As a mage, she had some innate sense of when such spells were being cast and could counter them herself without relying on components or charmed objects. Her stonework counterspells still needed some work, but otherwise she was just as proficient as the next student in personal shielding.

Her mother had no spark. She wouldn’t even know what was happening, and had no way to sense a magical attack coming. She could be dead before she even knew something was wrong.

When she got home, Kimberly tore through her third year Semi-Permanent to Permanent Enchantment and fourth year Counterspells & You and Intermediate Redirection, Countermagic and Sheilding textbooks. She knew the counterspell and defensive spell books were all geared toward teaching personal protection cast on the fly, but she was hoping she could find some way of applying them to what she knew about wards to set a myriad of protective enchantments on the apartment.

Her mother came home just after midnight, still wearing her black slacks and stained long-sleeved shirt from her latest stint at the diner down the street.

Like Kimberly, she was skinny and a bit hollow-eyed from constant stress. They shared similar bone structure and the same skin tone, but Kimberly had gotten her reddish-brown hair and fae green eyes from her father. Her mom’s hair was much lighter, almost blonde, and chopped short in a pixie cut. Her brown eyes were heavy with exhaustion, and her lips twisted with displeasure the moment she walked in the door and saw the candles, mortar and pestle, and baggies of various herbs, shells and stones spread out around Kimberly in the middle of the hallway.

“I wish you’d do your homework in the living room, kiddo.”

Kimberly flushed and scrambled to her feet, making some room for her mom to slip by.

“Sorry, Mom. This isn’t homework.”

At the thundercloud passing over her mother’s face, she ran back to her supplies and grabbed a handful of runic stones, like small, round river stones, freshly etched with glowing symbols. Her mother shook her head and moved into the living room, tossing her purse on the couch as Kimberly held out the stones for her mom to see. She didn’t touch them.

“Don’t be mad! This is important. Please, keep these on you at work, okay? Put them in your purse or your pocket.”

Her mother didn’t object as she put the stones in the faux leather purse, watching with a weary expression. She didn’t say anything at all until Kimberly stopped bustling around and turned to face her again.

“You know how I feel about this stuff. I really need some help this month. If you’ve got this much free time, I need you to use it putting in more hours at the café, not messing around with this voodoo junk. We’re short on the rent and I can’t get any more hours at the diner.”

Kimberly tried to ignore the constriction around her heart, but she was still having a hard time speaking around the lump in her throat. “Mom, please—”

“Don’t get started. I’m going to shower and get some sleep. Finish your homework, clean up this mess, and get to bed. Let me know what Don says about your hours tomorrow.”

Kimberly stood there as her mother headed into the bedroom. A few minutes later, the shower was running.

Clenching her fists in frustration, she glared a burning hole in the floor where she’d left her spelling ingredients—then dismissed the illusion before her fury might freak out any neighbors smelling the fake smoke. Angry and frustrated beyond measure, she thought about throwing everything out, just out of spite—but then common sense kicked back in.

Even if her mother didn’t want to have anything to do with this side of her, Kimberly still had a responsibility to do everything she could to protect her.

Though she’d probably get grounded for sending their security deposit on the apartment down the drain, she used her spelling chalk and etched a series of protection glyphs around the door frame. The pale blue chalk wasn’t so visible in the dark against the cream-colored paint. Maybe she’d get lucky and her mom wouldn’t even notice the marks until the danger was past. Even if she did spot it and tried to clean the chalk, it wouldn’t come off. Kimberly set the glyphs; a fae light briefly glimmered in the shadows of the hall, then faded. Now her power, or that of a stronger magic user than herself, was the only thing that could remove them.

Her mom might not like it, but at least they would be safe from most basic elemental attacks or intrusions. Someone could still set the building on fire or destroy it with a bomb, but no one of a supernatural nature would be sneaking into the apartment or lobbing any magical grenades inside anytime soon.

She spent the rest of a mostly sleepless night tossing and turning, unsure if she’d thought of every possible type of protection rune to stick in her mom’s purse. Also trying and failing to come up with a decent plan to keep herself safe, too.

As soon as the sun rose, a little after 6AM, Kimberly was up and at her books again. This time she was searching her textbooks for any clue how to decipher what an Other was when they were hiding in a conjured body instead of using illusion to blend with their environment. There was plenty of information about tactics for seeing through the illusions an Other might use and how certain turns of phrase in their speech might give some general clues, but no specifics, and nothing about how to read their auras.

When her mother woke up, she found Kimberly sitting cross-legged on her bed surrounded by books. She was staring at the one in her lap like she could glare the answers she wanted out of it with the force of her will alone.

She grimaced, but rolled out of bed and started getting ready for work without doing anything to interrupt her daughter’s concentration.

Kimberly lost track of time and didn’t notice until she overheard her mother’s dismayed shout—looked like she found the glyphs—and voiced a curse of her own when she spotted the time on the clock on the bedside table. Flying off the bed, she threw on her clothes, ran ragged fingers through her hair to get it out of her face, and scrambled to find the books she needed for class.

“What did I tell you? This mess better not still be here when I get home tonight, young lady!”

“Yes, Mom!” Kimberly shouted in reply, hopping on one foot as she fought to tug on one of her sneakers.