Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (2 page)

Just at the thought of chocolate, I began jonesing. I was seriously deprived. I really wouldn’t recommend going cold turkey. Hell, I wouldn’t recommend going one day without some sort of chocolate-imbibing, let alone three and a half months.

“He’s thirteen,” I snapped at the red-haired witch. If she got any more awestruck, she’d melt into a pile of goo. That would be annoyingly sticky.

“Hello!” Drake cried. Unhelpfully, he was grinning at Amber like she was his new favorite toy. His voice was far too loud for the quiet of the countryside.

I put on my stern face. I’d had a lot of practice with it now, specifically with Drake. “I mean it.”

“Nope.”

“Drake.”

“If I go back, I tell everyone you’ve left. You’ve got maybe twenty-four hours before Branson comes looking for you. Want to shorten it?”

Double damn. Branson, the sword master, was our trainer. He was a dragon, but not a guardian. Yep, not all dragons were guardians. As far as I’d figured out, there were less than fifty nonguardian dragons worldwide. Branson had been in line for Yazi’s guardianship … or seat … or whatever, but was severely injured before he could take on the mantel of the warrior. Technically we had tomorrow off — one day of rest every nine days — so I’d known I’d be able to get away fairly cleanly. Until Drake followed me.

“So we’re hunting the sorcerer?” he asked hopefully.

I sighed. Rock? Hard place? Meet my head.

“Sorcerer?” Amber asked. “You seek Blackwell?”

“It doesn’t concern you, witch,” I said, still attempting to be firmly polite. I was quickly losing control of this situation, and I wasn’t even ten steps into it.

“Well, you’ll be heading to Blackness Castle then,” she responded archly. “And I can direct you better than that iPad you had me put in the glove box.”

“Fine,” I said. “There just better be treats in there as well.” Yeah, I’d put that in the request. So? I knew myself that much at least.

“Fudge,” the witch said. “Chocolate. A family recipe.”

I rewarded her with a blinding smile. She managed to not stumble back from the wattage of it, but I sensed it was a struggle as I made a beeline for the truck and went hunting for the offered fudge. It would be insanely sweet. Probably enough to give me a headache. But I found all fudge too sweet, and still I was desperate to get it in my mouth. Um, yeah, I was aware that said a whole lot about me beyond the fact that I was craving chocolate.

“You’re a witch?” Drake asked the redhead.

“Amber Cameron, granddaughter of Mauve, Convocation secretary.”

Drake bowed to her formally, as if he’d just remembered his manners. “Drake, ward of Suanmi, the fire breather. Apprentice to Chi Wen, the far seer.”

Amber’s jaw dropped. She had no idea what he was talking about, but it still impressed her. People were so like that. Not that Drake didn’t have an impressive pedigree. But why was it that the things we didn’t have or didn’t understand impressed us, even as the wonders we knew seemed ordinary and even trite? If only Sienna had been happy, content with her life and magic —
 

I yanked open the passenger door of the pickup as I shoved the ‘if only’ out of my thoughts. We were so far beyond ‘if only’s’ that it wasn’t funny or sad anymore. It was just time. Time to stop.

“Show me a spell?” Drake asked.

The witch managed to raise her chin a little at this request. I guessed Drake wasn’t so awe-inspiring when he wanted to see magic so badly he asked for it. Amber had no way to understand that the fledgling didn’t play Adept power games. At the peak of the power pyramid, dragons had no need for such posturing.

She shrugged and stepped sideways into her witches’ circle. She disappeared. I could still pick up traces of her brown sugar toffee magic, though, now that I had the taste of it.

Drake whistled as he paced around the circle. Now that I looked closer, I could see that it was a ring of smallish stones. Ancestral stones, Amber had said. That would be a bitch to lug around, but it was obviously super effective.

However, even shiny new magic couldn’t distract me from chocolate. If I was quick enough, I might be able to get my hands on the fudge without Drake noticing. I really didn’t feel like wrestling him for it. His boundaries and strength weren’t well defined. As in, he had endless strength and absolutely no boundaries. He was a fledgling guardian raised by fully actualized guardians. At twenty-three, I was the only person Drake knew who wasn’t a hundred years older and stronger than him. Dragons weren’t big breeders. Presumably, saving the world from utter destruction every other day got in the way of that … a lot.
 

How the hell was I going to get him back through the portal?

∞

I insisted that Drake sit in the bed of the pickup truck, which was open rather than canopied. I was worried his magic would fry the iPad, then the truck’s engine. Driving on the left side of the road was discombobulating enough, I didn’t need the distraction of the truck breaking down.

I didn’t manage to shake the witch either. I needed to work on my solo intimidation factor. No one wanted to hang around when I was flanked by a vampire and a werewolf. Well, no one aware of their own mortality … so that would have excluded Drake. Yeah, I missed Kandy and — as odd as it was to admit — Kett. Last time I’d managed to check in, Kandy was in Portland leading the pack hunt for Sienna, who’d escaped the Sea Lion Caves with Mory in tow. Mory was still missing, presumed dead by anyone who’d known Sienna for more than half a minute. We didn’t talk about it though, and I — as always and forever — held out hope for the necromancer’s safety. I had no idea where Kett was and no way to contact him. The portal magic fried cellular phones. And Desmond? Well, I hadn’t tried to contact the alpha of the West Coast North American pack, and I thought it was best left that way.

Drake didn’t mind being in the open air, though I had to pull over and berate him for jumping in and out of the truck while we were moving. This maneuver had startled Amber so badly that she actually shrieked, then wept a little when the adrenaline surge wore off.

I felt sorry for the witch, even though she’d forced herself on me. She claimed she’d have to walk over an hour to get home if I didn’t drive her, and that she would therefore freeze to death.

The urge to scream, then cry when around crazily high-powered Adepts doing crazily high-powered feats didn’t ease over time. I’d just always had cupcakes, chocolate — and now — dogged focus with which to smother my terror.

Amber twisted her fingers through the ties of the drawstring bag in which she’d collected her ancestral stones. Earthy, sweet magic thrummed underneath her hands.

“The stones are unique,” I said. “Are they passed down through generations of your family?”

“No,” Amber replied. “When it is time, we walk the land. If the stones speak to us, then we collect them.”

“When it’s time? Like a rite of passage?”

“If you like.” Amber shrugged, not looking up from her entwined fingers. She was embarrassed, perhaps by her reaction to Drake’s maneuver.

“So the stones are natural to the land? Specifically around the grid point?”

“Yes.”

“But they taste of your base magic. The magic you must share with your family.”

Amber looked up at me. Yeah, even in the old country — as Gran called anywhere overseas — tasting magic was a rare ability. “They do? Like what?”

“Brown sugar toffee, with a hint of something floral, maybe.”

“Thistle?” Amber asked.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever smelled thistle before. Why that?”

“It’s the family emblem. For austerity.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Can you cast without the stones?”

“Of course,” Amber replied. Her nose went out of joint at the suggestion, which informed me that her magic was at its strongest when tied to the stones.
 

It was fascinating. I’d spent dozens of hours in the dragon library soaking in as much magical theory as I could in between training sessions. Yet, still there was something new to learn from a witch family that was generationally tied to the magic of Scotland and the Loch More grid point. Six months ago, I had no real idea about the magical world I’d been sheltered from — or rather, denied, according to Sienna.

“How much farther?” I asked.

“The Cameron lands stretch from and through Loch More,” the red-haired witch replied proudly. She gestured to either side of the still empty but now paved single-lane road. Green hills and more green hills — some spotted with seemingly spray-painted sheep — stretched as far as my eyes could see. I didn’t ask about the sheep. I was having a hard enough time maintaining control of the situation without admitting ignorance as it was.

“Would you prefer to walk?” I asked sweetly, not even remotely interested in managing a junior witch who was breaking the rules of etiquette all over the place. Things like cell phones and cars couldn’t pass through a portal — the intense concentration of magic fried electronics — so dragons had contacts who facilitated their movement through the human world when necessary. Though I understood it was rare that actual guardians ever needed such things.

“Ten more minutes,” Amber answered.

Silence fell between us. I’d been away from humanity for over three and a half months, but I had no real interest in chatting. I just wanted to get to Blackwell, and … well … move forward from there.

I also wanted to get my hands on the iPad to check what time it was in Vancouver. It had been at least two weeks since I’d spoken to Gran or my mom, Scarlett. And I thought … well, I hoped there was some tiny chance that Mory was home safe and sound, exactly where she would have been if I’d turned her away from my apartment. She’d come to me seeking information about her brother’s murder. Her brother, Rusty, had been magically drained and killed by my sister. Yeah, it was a sordid tale. I desperately wanted the fledgling necromancer safe and sound, and not in the clutches of my evil foster sister — cue dramatic music — and not possibly dead. Possibly? Hell, most likely dead.

“Is he going to do that again?” Amber asked, meaning Drake jumping in and out of a moving vehicle. She’d seen the stunt in the side-view mirror the first time, and she kept nervously glancing there now.

“Probably,” I answered. “He’s still distracted by the fudge. He’s never had it before.” I’d had to give up the fudge in order to placate the fledgling. Life was all about compromises these days.

“Is he … is he a dragon, then?” Amber asked.

“Yes.” No point in lying about it. Her family had a history — most likely an actual chronicle — that must have passed down the guardianship of the Loch More portal and detailed who they were guarding it for.

“You called him Drake.”

“That’s his name.”

“Then he is not a guardian? Not one of the nine?”

“Not yet.” Even a witch in the middle of nowhere Scotland knew more about the Adept world than I had six months ago. Or she was just way quicker at putting things together.

“But you … you are a … witch?”

“Sure.”

“But not really?”

“It’s fine then, in Scotland, to ask an Adept about her magic? Not a breach of etiquette?”

Amber lifted her chin defiantly, but looked away from me. “You asked about the stones.”

“You offered the information freely.”

Amber nodded, letting the topic of my magic drop.

The rolling green hills to either side of the road really did seem to go on forever. But then, I wasn’t too sure of the speed limit so I wasn’t driving terribly quickly. Sheep and cows were abundant now, but there was a lack of cars and homes. Or rather farms, I guessed.

“Blackwell …” Amber began to say.

“Also not an acceptable topic of conversation.” I cut the witch off.

“It’s just that the Camerons have an understanding with the sorcerer.”

“Hear no evil? See no evil?”

“Sorry?”

“Nothing,” I answered. “A lot of the Adept seem to have agreements with this particular sorcerer.”

Amber nodded. “He is powerful, and he keeps to himself.”

“I’m not asking you to come with us to Blackness Castle.”

“I’m … I’m offering.” The witch set her hands and eyes on the pouch containing her ancestral stones.

“That would be rather foolhardy of you.”

“But it is my duty. You called upon me as your guide —”

“So guide us. Do you know how to work the map app in the iPad?”

“Of course.”

“Your help is greatly appreciated.”

Amber set her jaw but nodded her head in acceptance of my terms. I got that the junior witch wanted to see what was going to happen at Blackness Castle. But I wasn’t going to be responsible for anyone getting hurt ever again. I still had errors and omissions to clear up and correct. I wasn’t adding Amber to the list.

Drake, though. Well, as far as I’d seen, Drake was indestructible.

∞

We dropped the witch at the end of a long driveway leading to a house that looked like a manor. Given the area, I’d been expecting a farmhouse.

I pulled away, leaving the pouting redhead at the front gate as Drake decided to climb into the passenger seat. Yes, while the truck was moving.

Amber’s jaw — seen in my rearview mirror — dropped as Drake opened the door and swung himself into the seat.

I immediately tucked the iPad into the pouch on the driver’s-side door in an attempt to save it from Drake’s magic. “Show-off,” I muttered.

Drake laughed and started digging through the glove box … looking for more food, I imagined.

“Don’t touch that,” I said, as Drake pulled out the cellphone I’d requested from Amber.

“Ah,” Drake said, doing his best Chi Wen impression without actually realizing he was doing an impression. “A cellular phone.”

Suanmi was the fledgling’s actual guardian. His parents had died in some terrible fire, though what fire was capable of killing a dragon, I didn’t want to know. Chi Wen was Drake’s mentor. The fledgling was destined to wear the mantel of the far seer once Chi Wen was ready to shed it, sometime in the next hundred years or so. Yeah, I’d been living it for three and a half months, and it was all still mind-boggling for me.