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“Don’t do that.” I patted Emery. “Whatever you do, don’t do that.”

“I wasn’t expecting so many mages,” Roger said conversationally, and his accusation rang loud and clear.

“Honestly, they followed us,” I said, pointing at the Bankses. I wasn’t going down with this ship.

Callie leaned toward me and, in a low tone, said, “Snitches get stitches, Penny.”

“We thought we might lend a little experience,” Dizzy said with a smile, opening his satchel. “Maybe even a little…levelheadedness. Things can be turbulent for a couple in the months after a dual-mage pairing. And as you’ve heard, Emery and Penny just paired last night. I’m sure you’d rather be safe than sorry.”

Reagan started forward, flashing the two younger shifters a fiery gaze. “Who are your…associates?”

She’d wanted to say “underlings” to rile them up. I’d heard her do it before. That she’d refrained now meant she was on her best behavior.

Roger stared at her for a moment, probably sharing my thought wave. Unlike my mother, Reagan didn’t just stare right back. She winked, grinned, and then flared her mighty magic. Only hers was a wave of beautiful complexity that I wanted to bask in before unraveling one subtle piece at a time.

Emery blinked at Reagan before shifting his haunted gaze toward me. “How do you stand this?”

“That”—I pointed at Reagan—“is new. The strength of that”—I made a circle with my finger around the shifters—“is newish, and I haven’t been coping all that well, actually. As you might’ve noticed from the meeting in Derry.”

Roger waited until our exchange was finished (he didn’t seem like a man who missed much) before half turning toward the two guys who stood behind him. “This is Devon, a sub-alpha residing in Northern California. He has great leadership abilities and is assigned to escorting—”

“Monitoring,” Reagan interjected. In response to Roger’s hard stare, she shrugged with a smile. “We’re all friends here—why mince words?”

Roger’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t react. “He’ll be escorting you around today, taking over should I be called elsewhere.”

“What’s a sub-alpha?” I asked Emery quietly.

“Roger overseas all the packs in this very large territory,” Reagan said. “The overall pack is divided into smaller packs, each with a different overall status level depending on the kickassitude of the pack members. Each of those packs has an Alpha. If there are subgroups under that, each of those packs has an Alpha—”

“Reagan, honey, unless you have a pie chart handy, let’s get moving,” Callie said. “You’re not doing anyone any favors.”

“A pie chart?” Dizzy muttered as Roger started walking, his jaw clenched again.

“Reagan likes flirting with death,” Emery said in an undertone as we followed Roger.

“This is honestly the first time you noticed? She bonded an elder vampire, for criminy’s sake.”

As a group, we headed directly for the tree line at the side of the driveway. I wondered where the mages that worked for Roger were. I’d thought we were supposed to chat with one of them while checking out their setup.

As if hearing my unspoken question, Devon, the shifter with the fetching cleft in his chin, glanced at the house. Roger hadn’t had the patience to introduce the other shifter, which showed just how quickly Reagan could make a shifter reach a boiling point. When it came to rage, she could manipulate people just as easily as vampires. “Alpha,” he said, “what about Patrick?”

“Go tell him to catch up. I’ll speak to him about tardiness later.” Roger stepped off the gravel driveway and onto a small path cutting through the trees. We could only go single file, so Emery put his hands on my shoulders and directed me in front of him.

Judging by the distance we walked, zigzagging through the trees, the ward didn’t cover the property in a dome. Instead, it clearly followed some other path. Just as we’d sensed on our way in, it was cobbled together in pieces and patches.

The path opened up gradually until we reached a small clearing. Roger stopped about ten feet from the ward and looked up, as though studying it. I hesitated beside him, wondering why he was pretending. Everyone knew only natural mages could see magic, and even then, they could only see wards when they were infused with a bunch of power and often spells.

“Don’t bother sparing his feelings, Penny,” Reagan said, tromping through the grass around the line of people in front of her with her sword out and her fanny pack open. “Get to the actual ward.”

A blast of Roger’s magic locked up Emery’s body, his muscles flaring and his fingers curling into fists. The man clearly didn’t deal with challenges well, whether directed at him or not.

Ignoring the tension, I neared the ward and studied the hodgepodge spell, which was weird and ill-fitting.

Protect. Access. Barrier. Unseen.

“The intent is conflicting.” I crinkled my nose, closing my eyes to make sure I had it right. “This isn’t solely a ward, but it isn’t totally a spell, either. It feels like both, mashed together. Which I’ve done, so I guess it isn’t crazy, but it doesn’t work in this case.”

Emery looked between me and the spell. “I can’t feel the intent.”

“Oh.” I turned my frown upside down. “I guess sharing magic wasn’t my add-on. This must be.”

“No, I think we were right, but… We don’t have time to figure this out right now.”

Emery turned to face the ward, tracing his finger through the air, pointing out a strange seam that didn’t seem to mesh with the overall construction. The freshly woven spell glittered on one side; on the other, I could only feel the spell’s intent, not see its magic.

“They patched up the ward with a spell, it looks like,” he murmured, clearly not wanting the shifters behind us to hear the assessment. I wasn’t sure why. “That spell is practiced. I bet that ward isn’t as much.”

“Meaning…” Reagan had her sword up, with one hand beside it, trying to disguise her attempts to feel out the spell. “The ward is a newer creation they put up for the first time, but they’ve been using the spell all over the place?”

“That, or the ward was the collaborative effort of people not experienced in working together, and the spell is from one person with experience in this exact spell. There is no finesse to it, but its simple economy and uniform weaving speak of years of experience.”

“The intent of this spell is to hide,” I said, picking my nail as I analyzed it. “Maybe even to fool. Why would they patch up a weak spot in a ward with something like this?”

“Here.” Callie and Dizzy stepped up together, herbs in Callie’s hands and powder in Dizzy’s. I watched in rapture as Callie crinkled the herbs just so before releasing them—or, more accurately, throwing them—in perfect timing with Dizzy’s pinches and blows of powder. As they sprinkled the spell/ward with their efforts, it lit up like a Christmas tree, allowing us to see the finer intricacies.

“Oh!” I said as Emery said, “Huh.”

“You don’t need to teach this old dog new tricks.” Callie surveyed her handiwork.

The spell spread farther along the sides and up, giving us a much larger picture of what was going on.

Suddenly, the patterns and patches all made perfect sense.

Shivers of fear coated my body. Emery grabbed my arm and stepped back before looking around warily. Without it needing to be said, I knew he was thinking about the warnings delivered through his premonitions. His anxiety when we’d first shown up. His constant wariness within the shifters’ boundaries.

We need to get them out of here.

24

With the way the original spell had been hacked into, then covered up, and the feel of the intent… There was no second-guessing. The situation was plain as day.

I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“Roger, you’ve got a traitor.”

Devon reappeared on the path, walking behind a scrawny man with large black-rimmed glasses. Scrawny Man must’ve been a mage, because he was certainly no shifter—I didn’t need my magic to tell me that.


Tags: K.F. Breene Magical Mayhem Fantasy