Swift Magic (The Swift Codex Book 2) (43 page)

I turned to face Josephina. “Look, here she is. A little girl.”

A little girl who had bugged-out eyes and bright red skin, a baby who didn't look too happy to have joined the world of the living, and looked even less happy when her lids flitted open and she saw me. Despite the lack of appreciation on behalf of the newborn, I felt my muscles slowly unknot.

Around me wasn't as much of a mess as it might have been. The medical kit lay open, scissors and strings out of their usual place, rags helter skelter where they'd fallen while I'd dug through them for a clean one. None of it mattered, because Josephina wasn't excessively bleeding—in my undereducated opinion—and both mother and babe were alive.

Josephina watched as I tried to tidy things up a little, refusing to touch the infant which I half-held out for her to take.

Holding the child as awkwardly as one can, I wasn't sure if I should put the baby in her arms or cradle the little thing close.

“Good thing neither one of you died, coming to me instead of a doctor,” I said, failing to transform it from a joke into an actual question. Josephina reached a pale, shaking hand out to the child and just skimmed over her cheek.

A faint smile touched Josephina's lips. She murmured, “Treat me well,” and slumped to the floor.

I didn't understand. Josephina wasn't bleeding out. So far as I could tell, she hadn't been physically beaten nor was she choking. Yet I knew, sure as I knew my own name, that the life was draining away from her.

What I didn't know was why.

The otherworldly, calm feeling didn't return. My mouth went dry and I felt frantic panic course through every fiber of my existence, wondering what had gone wrong and how I could have stopped it, yet knowing that nothing had gone wrong. Nothing. This shouldn't be happening. Yet it was.

Right before my eyes, she was dying.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

The baby cried stronger now, as if it knew what was happening. I knelt beside Josephina, shaking her with one hand. “Hey, you, I'm getting Mordon. Hang in there. You hear me?”

Heavens knew what he'd do.

Bloody, mucusy newborn cradled in the crook of one arm, I strode for the door disguised as wainscoting which would take me to where Mordon was cooking dinner. My hand trembled too much to seize the handle the first time, and while I was forcing my hand to work, I heard a
whoosh
like gasoline touching a match.

Spinning around, I saw a giant ball of flame engulfing the place where Josephina sat propped up against the display case. The child screamed, as loud as a newborn could. I rounded the corner with the antique cash register and my jaw slackened. Josephina's body was an outline, a slightly darker shape within a raging inferno.

Hurriedly connecting with my magic, I threw up a vacuum around the fire, trying to starve it of air, adding a frantic, “
Smorae
” and hoping that I'd used the correct verb.

It did nothing. For an instant, I doubted my Anglo-Saxon. Then I realized the reason the spell didn't work: the fire didn't take in oxygen and exhale carbon monoxide.

It wasn't a normal fire. But for the smell of smoke in my nostrils and the sight of flames, it didn't exist. Within seconds, the outline disappeared and became a white-hot core which seared my retinas and prompted the baby's wail to new pitches.

Soothing her as best I could, I tried the door again—and felt it wriggle from someone else on the other side starting to open it.

I heard the wainscoting door open and after a second, Mordon yelled something and darted around me. He ran to the inferno and put out his hand. I saw him struggle to connect with the fire, to quench it and kill it, but nothing came of his efforts.

“It's not there, Mordon, I've tried. My element does nothing, your element won't work, either.”

He jammed his hand in the flames.

I rushed forward, yelling, “what are you doing” and grabbed his arm. When it came out of the fire, his hand was white and powdered with...“Frost?”

Mordon slumped back, sitting flat on the floor, staring at the white flames which were now diminishing, getting smaller and smaller, until all that was left of the incineration was the faint scent of singed hair and a tiny handful of ashes.

The baby cried afresh. I looked down at the blotchy-faced thing and tried jiggling my arms in a soft bounce, not having a clue what to do with it now that Josephina was gone. Feeling a little shameful, as if I had somehow brought this about. Or that I could have stopped it in some way. Should I have just walked out on her and left her on her own? But I didn't see how that would have in any way been the responsible, good-person thing to do.

Despite this, I couldn't think of a way that this night could have gone worse than it had.

With the white-hot burst of energy gone, a draft tickled my skin and I began to shiver. Slowly I began to catch up with what had happened and accept the reality that my life would never, ever be the same again. Avoiding looking at Mordon, I straightened out the baby's blanket. Red tinted my cheeks and my fingers wouldn't stop shaking. Then I let out a breath.

I wished I could go back in time and have nothing to worry about, to not wonder if I'd somehow caused all of this to happen. But of course I hadn't. She'd come for help, and I'd done my best. She hadn't fought the fire, hadn't been surprised that it had struck, even.

Which begged the question, what now?

Mordon ran a hand through his hair, the jewels of his rings catching on the flashes of lightning, staring at the spot the woman had been. Mordon climbed to his feet in one graceful movement and touched the ragged marks where Josephina's nails had torn into my skin.

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Swift Magic
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Feraline Swift finds herself outside of her home, battered and bruised, wearing shredded clothes and having no memory of how it happened. In fact, she has no memory of the last three days at all.

When bounty hunters come looking for her in the name of the Magic Constabulary, Fera runs for the man heading the case in the hopes of getting help. Instead, she finds her magic has returned and she has no control over it …

Fera killed a man and the fey community has called her to stand before them or lose her family and the magic derived of that heritage. But first, she has to survive the Verdant Wildwoods to reach them.

Can she pass the tests of the Wildwoods and face the fey assembly alike? Tricks and illusions abound and nothing will be as it appears, putting her new relationship with Mordon to the test.

In the quiet hours of closing up a shop in Merlyn’s Market, Feraline Swift, a novice agent for Death currently floundering with the rediscovery of her magic, finds something unusual: A woman running from Death’s enemy who entrusts Fera with her child—right before bursting into flames.

Swarmed with questions, Fera seeks answers no one wants to give. Who was the woman, where did she come from? Why did she self-incinerate, was it a curse, or was she a Creature? And why do the dark sorcerers want the child so badly?

A morning show host must unearth the truth behind the murder of a special forces operative and relay coded messages to the troops before the nukes fly on a very secret military base.

Betty Cratchet sat upon her favorite willow bench in Sunny Glenn market to watch the gremlins scurry up the tower with their wrenches to change the hands for tea time. Betty had boring blue eyes and somewhat dark hair and her father’s military jaw. She was not whiskey in a teacup, nor was she bubbly sweet soda, she was more akin to a cup of hot milk or perhaps spiced eggnog on the days she really had her wits about her. In short, she was best had alone, right before bed, in place of any dessert. Long had she accepted her solitary station in life, but that made it no easier to swallow, and it could not make her home any warmer.

Nor would the murder she is about to witness.

Cornelius, a prince of Sacria, has died, leaving his country to make peace with his enemy. His love, the stubborn slave girl Belle, is now charged with killing the man who took Cornelius’ life—until she discovers that the clues to ending Sacria’s curse are entrusted with her intended victim. As she struggles to appease her vengeful monarch the Queen Isabella and maintain her usual duties, Belle is embroiled in a doomed romance with the foreign prince’s assassin and first in command, Shadow. Will she be able to find the true heir to the throne before the old-world magic destroys the kingdom?

A university student, Brandy, goes to pick up her room mate from a party house. Despite warnings from a neighbor Brandy is determined to take her friend home, but gets forcibly injected with Bliss, a drug used by the Bliss dens to steal magic from victims. She is rescued from Thaimon by Nicholas Wraithbane who works for the thaumaturgical witness protection agency which operates under the guise of the Black Kettle Cafe. Brandy becomes involved in the Kettle’s affairs and intrigued by both the magic Bliss has awoken in her and Bliss itself.