Djinn Justice (The Collegium Book 2) (11 page)

“We’ve got a rogue mage. He’s siphoning off his victims’ energy. So far, we know of about two dozen victims, including Barbara Winnet. The assumption is that he goes after the more solitary of our kind.”

A grunt from the driver’s seat. “How?”

“We’re not sure,” Fay said. “I need to see firsthand the residue of the magic used. The method is unlike anything taught in the Collegium. It’s closer to shamanism.”

“Which makes it wild magic,” Steve said. “Closer to our were-natures.”

“I’m not arguing,” Gordon began. “You’ve proved you have the magic and I’ll trust your knowledge. The Collegium doesn’t train its guardians to chase soap bubbles. But I’ve not heard of even a shaman controlling a were via magic.”

“I wondered.” Fay tugged at her seatbelt, readjusting its fit. The road wound up into the Blue Ridge Mountains. Spring sunshine had brought out wildflowers and a hundred shades of green from the new leaves. Through windows cracked open, the clean scent of the country blew into the car. “A rogue mage is actually a relief. Their fundamental approach to magic should be similar enough to mine that I can interpret it.”

“Like defusing a bomb?” Gordon slowed as they approached a small town, a collection of shops and houses that barely stretched back from the road. “You’ll take the spell off Barbara, won’t you?”

Fay knew better than to hesitate. The wolf alpha was here with one purpose: to protect his own. “The analogy of bomb disposal is a good one, except this spell is likely attached to the rogue mage as well as to Barbara. He may have booby-trapped it to protect himself and his stolen energy.” She respected Steve’s decision not to confuse the issue by mentioning dream essences. “Or de-spelling Barbara might act as a tripwire, announcing our pursuit prematurely.”

“So you’ll leave Barbara hanging?” Definitely a growl in Gordon’s voice. The car accelerated as they left the small town behind.

“If I have to,” Fay said steadily. Life as a Collegium guardian had taught her about hard choices, and about maintaining authority. They might be in the wolf alpha’s territory, but this was her—and Steve’s—mission. “And you’ll be staying in the car until called.”

Gordon took his eyes off the road to scowl at her.

“Those were the conditions of bringing you with us.” Steve sounded unhappy, too.

“How long till we’re at Barbara’s house?” Fay changed the topic.

“Thirty minutes.”

“Near neighbors?”

“She’s a lone wolf,” Gordon snapped.

“I’ll take that as a no. Which is good.”

She thought they’d travel the rest of the drive in silence while he sulked. However, Gordon surprised her.

It took him ten minutes. Ten minutes of his displeasure sitting heavily in the car, but then, he seemed to come to terms with the fact that neither Steve nor Fay could be dominated. “We avoid magic around here. Even if I’m to remain sitting in the damn car, I’d like to know what to expect. What should I know about rogue mages?”

“Firstly, that this’ll probably be the only one you ever encounter. Rogue mages aren’t actually common. Having magic doesn’t mean you’ll use it.” Fay tried to explain. It was difficult because within the Collegium and the magic users’ community, this knowledge was taken for granted. But weres who’d determinedly dismissed magic in their lives, needed Magic 101. Fay sought for a comparison. “It’s like athletic ability at school. People start off with a natural talent. Kids use it and enjoy competing and winning. Then they grow older and natural talent isn’t enough. They need to exercise and train. Most people don’t. With magic, it’s the same. It fades.”

“It’s not innate?”

“No, it is. It’s hard to simplify without generalizing. I have a lot of magic. It was born in me. Even without training, I’d be able to use it as an adult. But it would be…messy. There’s an elegance to magic. The more you learn and practice it, the more it streamlines.”

Her magic coiled in her, humming golden in her veins. There was joy and satisfaction in using it. Without her training, though, she and her magic would fight for control. “Messy” was as good a word as any to describe that chaos. She might resent her dad’s behavior and the Collegium’s harsh training, but the result was a gift of serene assurance in the extent and ability of her magic.

“Those of us who develop our magic generally do so with family or other tuition. I had the Collegium. Part of any respectable magic instruction includes teaching the consequences of abusing it. Some mages do go on to exploit a magic talent for unethical purposes. But that doesn’t make them rogue. Lots of people use their natural talents to do stupid things. Rogue mages use their magic aggressively, to do harm. They’re violent.”

“A rogue mage is like a were brought to judgement,” Steve said. “They’re not unnatural. They’re an evil, unbalanced example of the potential in each of us. The Collegium polices them as the Suzerainty judges weres.”

Fay relaxed. Explanations were difficult.

Steve was great at explaining, but also at indicating by tone of voice, that his explanation closed the subject; in this case, the subject of rogue mages.

“Will I have Collegium guardians tramping through my territory, harassing Barbara?”  Gordon asked.

“No.” Fay took a leaf from Steve’s book and didn’t elaborate.

Gordon slanted her a glance, then let it go. The chain of command was decided, and he wasn’t leader. He’d accepted it.

She swiveled in her seat, craning her neck to see Steve. “I have a question. Do all weres change into their animal form?”

He lounged, lean and deadly, pretending to be casual, in the back seat. “No. In some, their were-nature is weak. They transform a few times after puberty, but find it difficult. They get scared of being lost in their animal. Others don’t like the experience, the way the sensory world changes in animal form.”

Fay turned back to watch the scenery through the windscreen. The curving, narrow road had slowed Gordon’s speed. She considered the point about a were’s sensory experience.

Uncle had said that dream essences were the sum of the important things a person encountered in their day. What if weres’ dream essences were stronger because their sensory experience of the world was more vivid and varied?

“Barbara’s place in two minutes,” Gordon said.

“Don’t pull into her driveway. Stop down the road a bit. Steve and I will walk up.”

“This is the place.” Ahead and to the left was an older house, a timber cottage, painted white and green with a white picket fence separating its deep front garden from the road. The garden rioted with color. Flowers abounded in an old-fashioned cottage garden. The gate was closed, but behind it the driveway continued past the cottage to the just visible edge of a vegetable garden and orchard where fruit tree blossom littered the grass. Chickens pecked through the scene.

“This is Red Riding Hood’s cottage, not a wolf’s,” Fay said. The homestead appeared idyllic.

“Barbara likes an older style of living. She’s aiming for self-sufficiency.”

A wind turbine and solar panels showed that she hadn’t abandoned modern life.

“Is that her?” Steve asked.

Fay stared again at the house. She hadn’t seen anyone.

“By the roses,” Gordon said, heavily. He sighed and switched off the car’s engine. The silence was profound. “I hoped you were wrong, but you weren’t. Any vehicle’s an intrusion, here, but she knows this one. It’s not mine. It’s Saul’s, my son’s. She ought to have come to meet us.”

“The wolf’s need to defend its territory is even stronger in the packless ones,” Steve said. “Barbara hasn’t looked up from her weeding. Although that’s not something we can rely on. Gordon, no matter what happens, stay in the car.”

“Okay.” Impatient, gruff, but agreement.

Fay opened her door. Steve fell in step with her as they crossed the road. Standing on the grass outside the white picket fence, Fay tested for magic and a sense of boundaries. She lacked a were’s senses, but her magic could detect another mage’s wards. She trusted Steve to protect her from a physical attack by the bespelled were.

“Nothing,” she murmured.

“Territorially, the boundary is strong,” Steve responded.

Barbara continued to ignore them, but her shoulders were stiff as she pulled weeds, crawling between rose bushes just beginning to flower and almost vanishing into her garden. She wasn’t initiating a confrontation, but if her territorial boundary was strong, crossing it could trigger an incalculable response.

Fay stayed on the far side of the gate and scanned for magic, on the principle of dealing with one threat at a time. Her scan pulsed out like sonar, but faded without encountering magic—except around the rosebushes. Around Barbara. She, or rather the magic clouding her, was a discordant smudge. Otherwise, the homestead was devoid of magic. Not even a country charm against mice or insect pests.

“Any traps?” Steve asked, his attention on Barbara who’d crawled around so that she now faced them, peering through the thorns and new leaves of her plants.

Disheveled but clean hair hung either side of her face which was one of character rather than classic beauty. Feverish blue eyes regarded them with wary uncertainty. The knees of her jeans were dirty and her feet bare. The red nail polish on her toenails matched her t-shirt color, but was chipped.

Fay winced at the discordant magic writhing around the woman, and forced her attention away for a second, visual scan of the environment, alert for the faint shimmer of magic that intense concentration could discern. The last thing they needed was to discover the rogue mage had left an enchantment that would scoop up the dream essences of others weres. Weres like Steve.

She shook her fingers loose, feeling magic tingle, ready to act. “It’s safe to enter.”

Fay expected Steve to push open the gate.

Instead, he paused with a hand on the latch. “Barbara Winnet, may we enter?”

The wolf-were stood slowly amid her neatly tended roses. Average height, unthreatening.

Fay glanced at Steve and saw him frowning, too.

Weres usually had an edge to them, a physical arrogance that proclaimed their toughness and their readiness to defend their own. Weres were seldom victims. Barbara stood with the defeated caution of someone who’d been badly beaten, whose body was healing the physical wounds, but whose mind and spirit remained violated.

Looking at the sustaining beauty of her homestead, her creation, just made the violent wrongness of what had been done to her more vivid.

“Stay away.” Barbara’s voice was low, rough with what sounded like disuse, and unemotional, holding neither threat nor warning.

“Gordon Forde brought us here,” Steve said.

Barbara’s gaze didn’t even flicker to the vehicle, reportedly that of her lover.

“You’re not well, Barbara.” Steve sank conviction, along with reassurance, into his voice. It rang with authority. “When did you start feeling sick?”

Fay squinted. The smudge of magic around Barbara was actually a tangle of threads, like a kitten had been in a yarn basket. Fay murmured a spell, one that could pierce a cloaking spell. The threads clarified to her mage sight. Shades of purple and brown, but still recklessly tangled.

Any trainee mage knew better than to tangle spells like this. It choked their effectiveness, compromising it. In draining the wolf-were’s dream essence this way, the rogue mage had to be losing nearly half of it to sheer inefficiency.

Which wasn’t to say that the tangle of spell threads couldn’t create a nasty burn for any other mage who meddled with them—like Fay.

The rogue mage was either poorly trained or the Ancient Egyptian spell he’d used—or based his own spell on—had exceeded his abilities; hence, the fracturing into multiple, tangled threads. Yet, Barbara was obviously still ensorcelled, so something had to be maintaining the spell. Grounding it.

“Not sick. Tired.” Barbara managed to answer Steve. She looked around her garden, at the cottage, and back to her hands. Palms down, her hands swept in from waist level and up towards her face, before falling away. She stood a fraction sturdier.

Fay noted it, but maintained her focus. The Ancient Egyptian spell had been primitive magic, nature-based and ruthless. Could the rogue mage have tied his spell to Barbara by leaving something of himself? Hair, saliva or blood were all possibilities.

“I think we’re dealing with an amateur,” Fay said quietly to Steve. “The magic worked is clumsy. I assumed that the knowledge and power required to find the original Egyptian spell that Uncle showed us meant that the rogue mage was highly skilled and experienced, but I can’t see any reason for leaving the mess that surrounds Barbara unless the he couldn’t do any better. He’s only syphoning perhaps half her dream essence. The remainder is being burned up in the shambles of magic.”

Barbara walked closer. “I’m safe in my home.” Her voice was clearer, but the lack of inflection persisted.

“Not indefinitely,” Fay said.

The wolf-were halted. “Safe.”

Fay placed her hand over Steve’s on the gate latch. The familiar contact both strengthened her and reminded her how much she had to lose if this went wrong; if Steve was enslaved.

Just how much personality was lost when a were’s dream essence was stolen? Who was Barbara when she was fully herself?

Fay looked at the homestead that showed the result of years of passionate tending. From the white and green house, its paint just weathered enough not to look new, to the tidy outbuildings and productive garden and orchard behind it, the homestead was part of Barbara. And now, all that she had given it, fed and sustained her. Fay was sure of it. As the rogue mage stole Barbara’s dream essence, the homestead supplied her with its energy. In a sense, Barbara’s own loving work now sustained her.

No wonder they’d found her in the garden, weeding. By instinct, she’d sought to strengthen the bond that held her identity.

“May we enter the safety of your home?” Fay asked.

The wolf-were locked eyes with her.

As Fay waited for permission, she saw the magic ensnaring Barbara heave. The threads wove and re-wove, loosened and jerked tight. “Let me help you,” she said impulsively, suddenly certain that Barbara fought to reject the spell; fought to be completely herself.

“Come in,” Barbara said.

Steve pushed open the gate. “Are you sure?” he asked Fay under her breath.

“Yes. This is a vile thing.”

“What’s the risk of touching the spell for you?”

She gave him a tight grin. “Should be nothing. But we’ll find out.”