Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (7 page)

Kandy was always quicker on her feet than I was. She figured people out by playing them. Warner went very quiet. I unwrapped the butter and dropped it into my standing mixer.

“I don’t know where I am,” Warner finally said, his tone quiet but strong. “I must speak to the treasure keeper.”

I glanced over at Kandy. She shrugged, leaving the decision to me.

I looked at Warner. He was huge. I could barely see the doorframe of the office behind him. He was almost as wide at the shoulders as Desmond but was taller, so that his girth was proportional. Even weaponless, he was intimidating.

I brushed the fingers of my right hand across my knife, invisible at my hip. I called up his magic that now resided in it. Powerful dragon magic.

“Something tried to grab me in the alley,” I said. “A shadow.”

“You fought it off?” he asked.
His tone of surprise irked me, but I just nodded.

Kandy snorted. “Shook it off, more like it,” she said. It seemed the wolf wasn’t interested in hiding power today.

“These shadows are after the map?” I asked.

Warner hesitated, his gaze dropping to the map tucked in at the small of Kandy’s back. “It was likely a demon scout. A benign shadow form ultimately after the location of the instruments. Their detection is one of the … functions of the sentinels. The map is dangerous in the wrong hands.”

Yeah, I wasn’t a complete idiot. ‘Benign’ meant something very different to a dragon than it did to the rest of us mortals. He’d hesitated to use the word ‘function’ as well. Maybe because he was still learning English. Or maybe he was just being guarded. Actually, I was surprised he’d offered as much as he had already. Dragons weren’t all over the concept of sharing.

“Can you read it?”

“No.”

I glanced at Kandy, who shook her head. The wolf could usually figure out if someone was telling the truth, but I took her head shake to indicate she couldn’t tell with Warner.

“Will you escort me to the nexus, and present me to the treasure keeper?” he asked.

“You want me to come with you?”

Warner clenched and unclenched his hands at his sides. It bothered him to request my help. “2014,” he murmured, not looking at me or answering my question.

“That’s a long time for you?” I asked, suddenly feeling sorry for the displacement he must be feeling.

He nodded.

“I will escort you,” I said. “After I bake, and …” — I glanced down at my PJs — “… and change.”

“That would be wise,” he said snarkily.

And I didn’t feel sorry for him anymore.

“Though time is of the essence,” he continued.

“Nothing is coming through the wards,” I said.

“I countered your wards easily.”

“Did you?” I asked. My tone was deadly quiet, but challenging. I knew there was no way he’d broken into my safe without getting some backlash. In fact, I wondered now if that was why he’d been slow to engage me further.

He didn’t answer.

Kandy flashed her nonsmile at Warner and laughed huskily. “This is going to be fun.”

“Only you would think so, werewolf,” I answered.

“Nah, you love this part. You just don’t like to admit it because it clashes with your image of yourself.”

I snorted, and applied myself to baking cupcakes.

Warner took a few steps farther into the kitchen, glowering distrustfully at the overhead fluorescent lights. He touched the edge of the stainless steel workstation tentatively, as if concerned it might bite him, but then didn’t seem to know where to place himself. “I’m rather hungry,” he finally admitted.

Kandy chortled, slipped off the stool, and grabbed a liter of milk out of the fridge along with some eggs.

She passed the milk to Warner and went hunting for a frying pan.

Warner popped the cap off the glass milk container and smelled it. “I’d prefer mead,” he said. “Milk is for babies.”

We ignored him. He tilted back his head and drank the entire container of milk in one long swig. I realized I was watching the muscles move in his neck, and tore my gaze away to find Kandy smirking at me.

“I like my eggs scrambled,” I said.

“I like my cupcakes by the dozen,” she retorted.

I laughed. What the hell, hey? This wasn’t any crazier than my life usually was.

CHAPTER FOUR

Bryn, my full-timer, showed up for her shift early. After giving Warner an eyeful, she was happy to oversee the bakery setup and the last of the baking. I was fairly certain she thought Warner had spent the night, and she seemed to accept his leather getup with nothing more than a saucy grin.

Kandy grabbed a tray of her birthday cupcakes —
Sass in a Cup,
 chocolate blackberry cake with dark-chocolate blackberry buttercream icing — and hustled Warner out into the bakery storefront to wrestle coffee out of the espresso machine while I hightailed it upstairs to change. I seriously hoped the werewolf didn’t break my La Pavoni Bar-Star, because the purchase of it had badly dented my business credit card last spring. The swanky new machine featured a copper boiler with an auto shut-off and two group heads — yep, I had no idea what that meant, except it was a classy red and crazy expensive. My espresso wizard, Todd, insisted it was the best, and totally kiboshed the idea of trying to buy a refurbished unit.

I dashed into my bedroom, where I pulled a royal-blue ‘Zombie Survival Plan’ T-shirt over my tank top, swapped out my PJs for an older pair of Seven jeans, and laced on my 7th Heaven 8 Eye Fluevog boots. I opted for flats, not knowing if I should expect to be attacked every time I went into the nexus now or not. Branson had been pretty huffy yesterday, so he might be giving me the silent treatment … again.

I grabbed my satchel and headed downstairs to get the map from Kandy. The green-haired werewolf distracted Bryn while I pretended to slip out the back door into the alley, but actually tugged Warner into the pantry instead. He covered his confusion at this maneuver pretty quickly. But then, all the chocolate the pantry held usually distracted me as well.

“That’s not for you,” I snapped as he reached for a two-pound box of 75 percent single-origin from Tanzania that I used in my gluten-free chewy chocolate cookies. He snatched his hand back as I opened the door to the basement, then looked pissed at his own reaction.

Yeah, that tone — completely ripped off from Gran — totally worked with Drake as well. But then, the fledgling was fourteen years old, not over five hundred years old like Warner. Though I was a little fuzzy on whether he should count the years in ‘stasis,’ so maybe he was actually much younger. Now really wasn’t the time to ask.

I’d be prickly about waking up a few hundred years in the future as well. What if all my favorite things no longer existed? I shuddered at the thought. My needs might be basic — family, chocolate, and fabulous, functional shoes — but they were necessities.
 

We descended the stairs and hit the dirt floor of the basement storage room. Not that I actually used it for storage. I didn’t bother turning on the single bare bulb that hung from a wire in the middle of room. We weren’t staying.

“Why are we here, alchemist?” Warner asked.

“You wanted a portal,” I said.

He glanced around the concrete-patched brick walls, as if he couldn’t see the portal sleepily thrumming away on the east wall. He was slightly hunched, his head just clearing the concrete ceiling. I could see him by the light of the pantry. He hadn’t closed the door behind him. I sighed and climbed the six stairs to pull it shut.

Turning back and descending again into the dark, I reached out to the magic of the portal and willed it to open for me as I brushed by Warner. Golden light flooded the tiny room.

He grunted in surprise. “Well hidden,” he murmured, intrigued.

I wondered if Pulou would be pissed at me for bringing Warner through this way. I got that the portal was some sort of secret, but when a mysterious dragon shows up, mystically transported — according to him — from another time, and his magic doesn’t feel malicious … well, I couldn’t think of what else to do but take him to the nexus. I wasn’t driving eight hours to the Sea Lion Caves outside Florence, Oregon, just to use the next nearest portal.

That was pack territory, and I didn’t want to ask Desmond — aka my-alpha-status-makes-killing-your-sister-okay — permission for anything. Plus, I was never, ever setting foot in that cave again. Ignoring the fact that I’d used it last January when Desmond had dangled Blackwell in front of me. I had thwarted destiny once — the vision that Chi Wen had shown me of Sienna’s death by my hand hadn’t come to pass — but I wasn’t going to play with fate … well, not willingly.

Assuming that Warner didn’t need his hand held, I stepped into the golden, pure magic of the portal. I felt that moment of suspension, a brief but blissful hesitation of step, before my forward foot hit the white marble floor of the nexus on the other side. The crossing was effortless for me now.

It took Warner longer.

The dizzily gilded circular room was empty, and the other eight doors firmly closed. I couldn’t taste Drake’s or Branson’s magic anywhere near, though that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be attacked at any moment. Drake moved particularly fast, especially for a fledgling dragon. I got the feeling that even the other guardians saw something special in him, though I hadn’t met many other fledglings. None of the other guardians had selected successors, as far as I knew.

Interestingly, after my last face-to-face with Suanmi, I found the normally brain-warping magic of the nexus easier to handle. Perhaps I’d inadvertently absorbed some of the fire breather’s magic into my necklace. I had felt her intense power settle around me to a bearable level, and the necklace naturally functioned as a portable personal ward, so that did make some sense.

Warner stepped out of the portal behind me just as Chi Wen the far seer wandered into the room.

Ah, damn. I’d been trying to avoid destiny today.

Chi Wen, the eldest of the guardians, appeared to be an ancient Chinese gentleman. He loved to smile. As in, constantly. I wasn’t sure he was capable of any other expression. All gray hair and wrinkles, he came up to my collarbone, though he wasn’t particularly wizened.
 

As best as I’d guessed, he wielded oracle and telepathic powers. The oracle magic was like calling 911, except he was the only operator sifting through visions of disasters and pending worldwide destruction. He then tasked these imminent catastrophes to various guardians depending on their particular power sets. I wasn’t completely sure about the telepathic part, but I was fairly certain he could at least communicate with the other guardians without vocalizing his thoughts. Which was probably a good thing, because I rarely understood a word that came out of his mouth. And that had nothing to do with his heavy accent.

Chi Wen grinned at me like I was his own child safely home from the demonic wars … and in his mind, maybe I was. I curtsied with much more reverence and grace than I had for Suanmi.

I always tried to clear my mind in the far seer’s presence, but today I found myself repeating
Please don’t touch me, please don’t read me 
in my head. The far seer scared me way more than any of the other guardians. Sure, they could all end my very existence with a single glance. But Chi Wen could show me my future, and that was utterly terrifying. Completely soul shaking.

Warner stepped up beside me. He wasn’t a stand-just-behind-my-shoulder-person like Kett, or even Kandy. With him being a mighty dragon — with obvious prejudices against my heritage — I was surprised he didn’t stride completely past me.

“Hello, dragon slayer,” Chi Wen called cheerfully as he shuffled toward us.

Warner cranked his head to look at me, actually taking a step away as he did so.

“Don’t look at me,” I said. “The far seer was obviously addressing you.”

“Yes,” Chi Wen said agreeably. “Every blade needs a solid hilt.”

Err … yeah, I had no idea what that meant. But I kept my mouth shut and tried to not flinch when Chi Wen patted my shoulder as he passed.

As he touched me, I suddenly realized I was drowning — and had been drowning for some time — surrounded by crushing water. I started to panic, to thrash, to die — but then I broke the surface, my mouth full of salty water and the warm sun on my face.

I gasped for air, realizing I was in the nexus — that I’d never left — as I filled my lungs with as much oxygen as they could hold.

Chi Wen was gone.
 

Warner was looking at me like I was a ticking time bomb.

“What?” I asked, as snarky as I could be to cover my near drowning in the middle of a waterless chamber.

“What did the far seer show you?” Warner asked.

Well, that was a rude question.

A jet-black cat sauntered through the far archway. Its casual gait was insufficient cover for the cunning betrayed by its yellow eyes. Its sleek fur shone among all the gold of the decor, not a hair out of place.
 

Warner, still frowning at me, followed my gaze. Then he went utterly still and pale.

“A black cat in the heart of the guardian temple,” he murmured. He reached for a weapon that he didn’t actually have, then held his hands before himself, wary. “Doom crosses our footsteps.”

I snorted out a laugh. “What century are you living in?”

Spicy dragon magic — all apricots and smoky syrup — gathered around the cat along with a haze of golden light. The creature transformed amid a wash of intense magic, as the shapeshifters did. Then Bixi — doing her best Cleopatra impersonation — stood before us. White dress, gold armbands, heavily kohled eyes and all. She obviously didn’t have to stash extra clothing everywhere like Kandy did when she changed back from her wolf form.

Logically, I knew Bixi wasn’t actually Cleopatra, since she was supposedly only around seven hundred years old. But still, I wondered if there wasn’t some deep ancestral connection going on with the guardian of North Africa. And again, when did ‘seven hundred’ become an ‘only’? It was also interesting that the guardians seemed to decide what physical age suited them best. Suanmi was technically younger than Bixi but appeared to be a youthful forty-five. Bixi looked to be about my age at the most. My father Yazi, the third-youngest of the guardians, appeared to be thirty-five.