Soul Kissed (7 page)

What had they seen? Not much from over there. Cari might have appeared ill, which was warranted considering her father had just died. Her eyes had been the most frightening during her episode, clouding with Shadow, but the humans were too far away to see, and only he could have sensed the storm inside her.

They’d witnessed nothing really.

But Mason recognized the character of their heavy stares. It was an us-and-them kind of expression. He’d felt it many times as a stray. These humans knew Cari was a mage and probably thought he was as well.

Just a few months ago only human elites were really aware of magekind—the politicians and wealthy trying to get the edge on the new age of Shadow. But these were everyday people, just like at the May Fair.

Now they knew and they believed.

 

 

This was her chance.

Leah watched her boss Ms. Dolan and the hot guy in jeans and a black tee—had to be a new bodyguard minus the suit jacket.

Ms. Dolan must have come to pay her respects to her father. That spot was where he’d died, after all. It was so sad. No one ate lunch out there anymore. Felt weird and creepy. Only the gamer guy from IT did it, but he’d been nasty to start with.

As soon as Ms. Dolan seemed finished, Leah would ask. Five more minutes wouldn’t make any difference. It’d been years already.

“Burn ’em,” Thomas from accounting muttered beside her.

Leah didn’t respond. The witches debate had gotten old quickly, but the consensus was that while some innocent people might have been hanged as witches way-back-when, obviously some real witches had been as well. Everyone had seen the footage from the Stanton May Fair. Magic was real. In fact, the word
mage
was now synonymous with anything bad, scary or unexplainable.

Hear a wraith scream? Magey.

Almost get in a car wreck? Magey.

Lose a sock in the dryer? Okay, that was magey, too.

The guard was shaking Ms. Dolan. Maybe he was a family friend instead. Not a boyfriend. Ms. Dolan had been dating that other guy for a while. Everyone in accounting called him Mr. Slick Shit. This new guy wasn’t her type at all.

Ms. Dolan turned, as if to continue on and enter the main building.

Now.

Leah walk-jogged after her, ignoring the “wha?” from Thomas behind her. Took a sec, but she finally caught up. “Excuse me?”

Ms. Dolan kept walking, but the guy in jeans looked over his shoulder. “Not now.”

Leah wasn’t about to stop. Her family needed to know. “Please?”

Ms. Dolan had slowed. Now she turned around. “It’s fine,” she said to the man. To her, “Yes?”

Look at those black, black eyes. Witch, definitely.

Leah gulped. She’d never told anyone this before. “My sister . . .”

Ms. Dolan got two little lines between her eyebrows, as if she didn’t get what this had to do with her.

Yeah, well it did. “My sister became one of those wraiths.”

And damn it, she was going to cry. Especially because Ms. Dolan and her friend seemed to immediately understand. They’d shared an uh-oh look. People like Ms. Dolan had known all along. It burned that these Shadow people had known, while everyone else was so scared.

Five years of her mom’s sad eyes. Leah had to know, even if it cost her job. “Is there a cure?”

Neither one answered. The muggy air clung. Leah could feel it oppressively holding them all together in the moment.

“Because you have to be one of those mages, right?” Leah asked Ms. Dolan. “The magic stuff. Shadow or whatever.”

The man put his shoulder in front of Ms. Dolan. He had black eyes, too. Crap.

“I’m very sorry,” he said, “but there is no cure after someone becomes a wraith.”

He sounded so straight, like a doctor giving bad news.

Leah ignored him and kept at Ms. Dolan. “But if she was infected by Shadow or bitten by something, and changed”—the possibilities raced through Leah’s mind—“then maybe . . . ?”

“Shadow has nothing to do with wraiths,” the man said.

Leah wasn’t talking to him. She was talking to Ms. Dolan. Just asking a simple question, that’s all. And they seemed to have the answer, but weren’t telling.

This was her
sister
she was talking about.

But he seemed to think Ms. Dolan, a
mage
, needed protection.

“Has to be Shadow.” Leah tried to step around him to get to her. “Couldn’t be anything else because wraiths are
monsters.
What they do . . . How nothing hurts them . . .”

“I’m sorry. The sister you knew is gone.” The man was trying to sound nice, but it felt patronizing when obviously he was lying. “She’s just not there anymore. Only her body remains.”

Leah flashed angry. They would tell her the truth. She’d make them. Her mom hadn’t been the same after what happened. “Well what happened to her? If she’s ‘not there,’ then where is she?”

Ms. Dolan finally reached out a hand, but Leah flinched back. “Mr. Stray is telling you the truth. The . . . person . . . who created the wraiths is gone. I’m terribly sorry, but there’s no way to undo what he did. Think of it like an accident . . .”

“But it wasn’t an accident.” Leah couldn’t help that her voice was rising, a little shrill. Okay, maybe she was losing it. So what? These people had no right to suggest it was random. “It was
Shadow
.”

The man had pulled out his wallet and extracted a business card. “If you contact the Segue Institute . . .”

Leah sneered at him. She’d heard about that Segue place; they
killed
wraiths there. She wanted to save her sister, not put her family through more hell. How dare they stand there and lie to her and then try to give her the shove off. “I want an answer now, or I’ll . . .” She didn’t know what she’d do, but something. Ms. Dolan would listen. Leah had been quiet about this too long.

“The Segue Institute is your best resource. Tell them Mason Stray referred you.” The man put his wallet away. “Cari, are we done here or do you have work?”

“I have to pick up a few things,” she answered.

The man moved in to Ms. Dolan. He had his hand around her upper arm, keeping her close to his body, while blocking Leah as they walked past. Leah watched them walk away from her, leaving the heartache and nightmare of her sister behind them.

“Witch!” Leah yelled after Ms. Dolan. Desperation overcame her. She drew an even deeper breath to shriek it so everyone would hear.
“Witch!”

Cari was relieved when the door closed behind her and shut the woman’s cries outside. Cari was breathless with shock. Less than a week ago, she’d been ready for the future. To take over the future. She’d felt strong and secure. Dolan was rising.

And now? “I’m going to need to increase security.”

“Yes, and fast.” Mason walked at her side toward the elevator. “I’ve seen some disturbing things in my work, but the implications of that woman screaming
witch
has to top the list.”

Pitchforks and torches came to Cari’s mind. The last female Dolan to inherit the House had been hanged as a witch in the seventeenth century.

“The world is changing.” Every day seemed more wild and unstable. Magic was covering the Earth and it could not be undone.

“The world is going backward,” Mason said. “Information would help.”

The elevator closed, so Cari could speak freely. “That her sister had to
choose
to become a wraith?” Because the woman was right: it wasn’t an accident. Her sister had to have wanted immortality, and wanted it desperately, and that’s exactly what she’d gotten. Wraiths couldn’t die, couldn’t be killed by any mortal means, but gradually devolved into monsters unless kept on a steady diet of human souls. But how to explain that, especially to a sister? Cari had two of her own.

“I’d rather know,” Mason said darkly.

“You grew up with magic. I don’t think humans can cope.”

Which just made Mason give her a long, dry look. Maybe he didn’t know his mage history. She’d been tutored at length since she was five. Case in point: it started with one woman screaming witch. She wished she could talk to her father about it; he would’ve understood. He would’ve known what to do.

But now
she
was in charge. And that look from Mason made her think that her tutors hadn’t quite covered everything. It occurred to her that a stray might know things she hadn’t learned or couldn’t learn from the safety of her House.

Frustration made her stand up straighter. Why had Kaye Brand wanted Mason here? All he did was make Cari feel seventeen and unsure again, when she really needed to be the Dolan now. She had work to do.

Cari went to her office first, called security to alert them to the problem outside, then began gathering her papers. She touched base with Special Projects on DolanCo’s big advancement in Shadow. The idea was simple: A container with magic held inside. A little vial of concentrated Shadow. Mages were all able to direct Shadow in some way, but none could actually hold and transport it. Shadow was chaos; it smoked through all barriers. But a little more work, and Dolan might just have the solution—a new kind of synthetic membrane.

Mason waited in the doorways of the various offices she stopped in. She could feel him looking at her, though when she glanced his way, he was always examining her father’s personal art collection, exhibited throughout DolanCo offices.

“One last stop, and I’ll be done,” she said to Mason.

She picked up the membrane prototype and put it in her purse for safe-keeping. Then she had to make it clear to staff that Erom Vauclain would no longer be working on the project.

Today of all days she didn’t miss the irony that her company’s big advancement was mentioned in the faelore of the Old Ones. Mason was right in that respect: the world
was
going, or at least reaching, backward. Or maybe time moved in circles. And if
that
were true, then magekind had no hope at all.

Gary Skinner, a human who’d worked for Dolan security for many years, found her just as she was ready to leave. He’d been aging into his pot belly since she’d started at DolanCo six years ago, but he was loyal and had good timing. She’d wanted to have a word with him anyway about keeping things calm now that it was public knowledge that DolanCo was a mage-owned company. He’d known for some time now.

“It’s too late to try to calm them down,” Gary said. A crowd—including a local news van—had gathered at the courtyard exit to the parking lot.

She and Mason looked out of an upper story window to assess the situation. The overcast sky put a gray ceiling above. Below at least thirty people had congregated to blame her for the darkness now shrouding the world, when she’d been born with it in her blood. If she listened closely, she could almost hear them chanting: “No more Sha-dow. No more Sha-dow.”

What did they think she could do about it? It was like protesting oxygen. Magic had always been a part of the world, to one degree or another.

“And so it begins,” Mason observed.

“Police are on the way,” Gary said.

A second news van turned into the lot. They’d only been there a half an hour. How could one woman screaming “witch” grow to this?

“Why here? Why now?” Cari wondered aloud. She left off
Why me?
But it didn’t seem fair that she should be singled out when there were so many other Houses that used humans for terrible purposes. Feeding their wraiths being one. Dolan had never used wraiths. And her father had always paid the humans that worked for them over the national average.

“They finally have a target,” Mason answered. “Someone local and accessible to blame. We need to get out of here while we can.”

Each chant struck her mind.
No more Sha-dow. No more Sha-dow.

Several years of fear growing in the world—monsters in alleys, talk of black magic, the fae closing in—and now people knew her for what she was.

The exposure felt like a hot sun blazing down upon her,
just
her, while everyone else was safe in the shadows of the gray day. Panic, her constant companion these last few days, flared in her chest and battered her ribs with the beat of her heart.

“Let me get some more men.” Gary lifted a walkie.

It had been an egregious oversight not to have hired more security following her father’s death. But then she’d been ill, and was just now getting back up to speed.

She should have insisted on her House guards accompanying her today. That would be two more men, Shadow-born, to see to her safety. But it was too late now for recriminations and I-told-you-so’s to Mason Stray. She was in charge; he was only the stray Brand had forced upon her. Why had she listened to him?

“You might not be coming back here for a little while.” Mason didn’t seem all that concerned, but then this wasn’t his business, his family’s livelihood at stake.

She’d thought she wouldn’t be back because she’d be elsewhere looking for the source of the mage plague. Now this. “I’ve got everything I need.”

Three other security staff members joined them on the ground floor main exit. They were all DolanCo had on site, and they were humans, too.

The chanting was louder down here. The plan was to exit in force and quickly get to Mason’s car before a real mob could form. When she was back at Dolan House, she could figure out what to do. At least there the wards would keep everything and anything out.

Five minutes of shock had reaffirmed what she’d been taught as a schoolgirl: humans weren’t going to accept Shadow. They hadn’t in ages past, and they wouldn’t today either. It was a bloodstained fact of mage life. When the Council spoke of war, this was what they meant.
Witch!

“We’ll be fine.” Mason concentrated on the crowd outside the glass doors. “We just need to leave. Are you ready?”

She took a breath, as if she were going to dive into deep waters, and nodded.

He pushed open the door, and Cari could hear a siren from far away, wailing over the chants.

Gary and his men got them across the courtyard, pushing people back like she’d seen on TV. It was all confusing and fast and loud, too many questioning, angry faces suddenly around her. The humans seemed to rush them, slowing forward progress. Not all of them were DolanCo employees. They must have been waiting for her to show.

“This is Dolan property!” Cari’s composure was cracking. “You will all leave now!” But her voice didn’t carry past the
Sha-dow
chants. And those nearest didn’t listen. Wouldn’t hear.

Mason’s arm went around her shoulders, his hard chest close, heartbeat steady in her ear. His back was a safe traveling wall of strength. His scent wrapped around her senses, intimate in a moment of extreme publicity. She was ashamed of herself for needing him, but couldn’t help holding on—two mages in a suddenly angry world.

She’d be ready next time, she promised herself.

A man with a large professional video camera closed in, the round, giant black eye recording and transmitting her face to the whole world.
Mage. Shadow-born. Living among us. Exposed.
A couple of policemen were attempting to hold people back; one wrestled a red-faced man to the ground, cuffing him.

Another man—older, taller, straight-backed—rang a bell and hollered about Dolan being a blight on the face of the world. The prophet’s eyes had a fervent glow. “Soulless offspring of the dark!” All of which was true.

A rock hit her cheek. Hurt.

“Chin up, princess,” Mason growled in her ear.

She raised it like the Dolan she was, gritting her teeth to stop their chattering.

Mason reached, fast, and grabbed the video camera off the guy’s shoulder. The humans around them recoiled in fear that one of the mages was becoming violent. Cari’s heart rate tripled and she tried not to cringe. The panic within was almost unbearable; it darkened her sight.

Mason murmured something to the camera under his breath—
You are a hammer
—but it didn’t make any sense to her. The veins in his muscle-corded forearm suddenly ran gray-black with Shadow. The bulk of the camera hissed and smoked with magic.

Cari stopped breathing.
Sweet Shadow forever.

He was going to do something. In public. Against mage law.

He brought up his arm, fist still clenching the camera, and drove the thing into the pavement. Shadow rose from the point of impact like a sea of dust. A crack like black lightning parted the way before them, like Moses and the Red Sea, waves of Shadow harrying the humans back so that they fell on each other.

He’d always been a show-off. Nine years later, and he was no different.

Cari opened her mouth to say something to him, but nothing came out.

He shrugged, and gave her half of a cowboy smile. “I’m good with my hands.”

The feeling in her chest cartwheeled. She was no longer afraid. Almost laughing. Borderline hysterical.

He didn’t even seem concerned.

His arm went around her, tighter this time, and they rushed down the walkway. Before they reached his car, he said, “Kitt?” and the engine rumbled to life. She remembered he’d said that the car ran on Shadow. He shut her in the passenger’s side, then darted around to the driver’s.

People, recovering, were moving for the car.

“This is horrible,” she said, as Mason climbed in.

“I’ve seen worse.” He accelerated forward, up onto the grass, sending the humans screaming back again. It was a clear shot from there across the field to the main road. They were out.

She had no idea what to say, so between pants, she opted for, “Why Kitt?”

Was it a magical word? Some kind of incantation? Shadow didn’t work that way.

“Fletcher’s name for the car.”

They took the curb with a thump that had her bouncing in the seat. She held on for her life and attempted a lame joke. “My car has a remote start, too.”

Mason grinned over at her. “Mine will come when called.”

Cari couldn’t help but laugh, and when she got started, found she couldn’t easily stop. Too much had happened. She’d kept a lid on herself long enough. Too long. And she didn’t care anymore. Tears ran down her face—but she couldn’t have named which of the many recent horrors in her life had caused them.

“You do this for a living?” she finally managed as Mason outstripped pursuit. She understood now why Kaye Brand had wanted him on the job. Cari was officially in full agreement. He’d been impressive before, in so many ways, and nothing had changed. Not really.

“A man’s got to put food on the table somehow.”

 

 

Mason expected Dolan House would be like its name, a dark place. But the house was high and bright, full of women talking over each other, and more people looking on from the back of the house. Or at least that’s how it seemed since he and Cari couldn’t even get in the door.

“Really, I was fine,” Cari assured them.

“It’s all over the news.” It would be.

“You’ve been crying.” More tears to come.

“The phone won’t stop ringing.” Every House thinking the same thing: danger now everywhere. Keep quiet. Keep secret. Watch and wait. Retreat. No, too late.

Mason’s phone had been buzzing in his pocket for the past twenty minutes. But he’d ignored it. He wanted to get his own mind straight on what had happened before discussing it with anyone else, especially Brand.

What would Cari’s life be like now? His, of course, was less impacted; he had no roots, no business to protect, no dependents anymore.

When they finally got to the entrance foyer—the
third
House into which he’d ever been invited—Cari made the introductions. He’d have preferred she didn’t. He just wanted a back room with a bed until they got a call that someone else had fallen to the mage plague. Hopefully only one victim, with no danger of contagion. No families. If there was any mercy in this world, no children.

“Mason, this is my stepmother Scarlet.” Cari had left off the Stray.

The woman had silver hair wrapped up on her head and a long, thin nose to look down; she did not extend her hand, so he figured she didn’t need the “Stray” to know what he was. He got a pinched mouth and a sharp look from her black eyeballs.