Champagne, Misfits, and Other Shady Magic (Dowser 7) Read online

  “Shit!” Kandy said. “Is that supposed to happen?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. Because for one breathless moment, I was the magic, the energy. I was all of the twelve witches, some of whom I hadn’t even met yet.

  I was Gran … Scarlett … Wisteria … Olive …

  And they were me.

  Our fingers were reaching for each other, our minds connected, our strength spread across the city.

  Then my feet touched the ground. The magic remained, but the feeling abated. And I was myself within the steady stream of energy once more.

  I opened my eyes.

  Kandy grinned at me, almost manically. “Wicked cool.”

  I laughed. In that moment, that single breath of time, I was utterly at peace. Utterly full and fulfilled. My pure joy was reflected back and around me, my voice shared with every other witch anchoring the grid.

  Then it was over.

  The energy we’d collected together receded into the runes as their glow faded. I could still feel the anchor point I’d held, and the web of witch magic we’d raised, but I was just me again.

  I stepped from the circle, still grinning madly in response to the mutual joy I carried with me. The bliss that always accompanied the use of my magic, but multiplied by twelve.

  The moment I cleared the rune-marked boundary, my necklace settled around my neck and my knife slipped into the invisible sheath on my right hip. Both returned to me without being consciously summoned, as if the runes I’d chalked were more effective than I’d thought. But then, Gran was particularly savvy about magic. She had to be to head the witches Convocation, never mind being the architect behind something as powerful as the magical grid that now surrounded Vancouver.

  Still riding the euphoria of the casting, I flung my arms around Kandy before she could dodge me, lifting her up and twirling her around. She gripped my shoulders harshly, first with the shock of being lifted, then in discomfort because she didn’t much like being off her feet. The werewolf was a control freak, through and through.

  “Dowser,” she snarled, but I could hear the laughter underneath her protest. “Put me down, you twit. Someone will see you flinging me around.”

  I set her on her feet, even as I continued to spin around and around myself. Luxuriating in the magic. Drunk with it.

  Kandy shook her head at my antics, fishing a water bottle out of her backpack and splashing it over the chalked runes. Even though the Adept population of Vancouver was small, it wasn’t a good idea to leave magic lying around, spent or not.

  I fell back onto the brown grass, watching the stars seemingly twirl overhead through the haze. The magic I’d inadvertently collected, but which wasn’t mine to keep, slowly seeped out into the ground. I traced it by feel more than taste, sensing it feeding back and adhering to the anchor point, and then into the invisible grid that now surrounded us.

  Kandy crouched beside me, grinning. “We need dessert.”

  I sat up swiftly at the mention of potential chocolate. Even with my head still spinning and possibly drunk on magic, I had my priorities straight. “Nothing will be open.”

  Kandy pulled two chocolate bars from her backpack. The single-origin bars — Fleur de Sel and Hispaniola — were encased in pale-yellow cardboard wrappers and sported an intricately scribed hummingbird logo. The Hispaniola was an award-winning 70 percent cacao from the Dominican Republic and a new favorite of mine from Hummingbird Chocolate Maker, small-batch chocolatiers out of Almonte, Ontario, near Ottawa.

  “You were holding this entire time?” I cried, making a grab for the chocolate.

  Kandy easily evaded my thievery attempt. Apparently, my depth perception was a little off. “Sometimes rewards should be actual rewards, dowser. Not just daily indulgences.”

  I smiled. “Fine. But I’m only agreeing so I get the chocolate.”

  Kandy tugged open the Hispaniola bar, careful to not rip the side flap, while I salivated. The werewolf snapped a generous piece from the bar and dangled it in front of me. Grinning, I opened my mouth obligingly. She placed the chocolate on my tongue. Then I lay back in the grass while it slowly melted in my mouth, savoring the deep, buttery-smooth cacao with hints of raisin and cherry.

  A light breeze reminded me that I was lying on the ground in only a T-shirt and bare feet, with less than a week to go before the autumn equinox. We had suffered through an unusually hot summer that had left Vancouver and most of the West Coast begging for rain — while literally drying up hot chocolate sales at the bakery. But the weather had mellowed over the past few weeks into typical late-summer temperatures, simply requiring a light sweater for evening strolls. Though I rarely felt chilly anymore.

  Lying there with the chocolate chasing my residual magical buzz, I could simply turn my head to take in the brilliant lights of downtown and the dark swath of Stanley Park across English Bay. The topmost points of the towers of Lions Gate Bridge peeked out just above the hundred-year-old evergreens of the park, leading toward the North Shore Mountains looming over West and North Vancouver.

  I was happy in Vancouver. Happy with my bustling bakery, and pleased that I’d been able to help Gran anchor the magical grid that would eventually help her oversee all the new Adepts who’d been filtering into the city and neighboring suburbs. Kandy seemed more than content to enforce rules and regulations over that growing magical population, and I hoped that Kett would return to the city soon as well.

  I was about to be married to a man I adored, who was more than my match. My engagement party was less than eighteen hours away. I was healthy … strong, focused.

  And yet … and yet …

  I stroked my necklace, feeling the power of the instruments of assassination thrumming contentedly underneath my fingers.

  Kandy snapped off another piece of chocolate, offering it to me. And I forced my scattered thoughts into the present.

  Warner had been gone for three days. And I was likely just feeling off because I needed a workout with someone who matched me blow for blow instead of always needing to hold back. And by ‘workout,’ I most certainly meant in bed as well as out of it.

  Kandy’s phone pinged. While she checked her text messages, I stole the second half of the Fleur de Sel bar she’d been hoarding. Rolling to my feet in order to better defend my bounty, I took a second to check the magic of the anchor point and collect my socks and shoes.

  I brushed my fingers across the damage I’d done to the path, making a mental note to ask one of the other witches to fix the radiating crack. If I concentrated, I could distinguish the slightly different tenor of each of the other twelve anchor points feeding back and forth in a loop all around Vancouver — from Stanley Park and the West End, through Kitsilano and Shaughnessy to Marpole, South Vancouver, and the East Side. But there was no hint of my blood. That magic had been consumed by the spell.

  Which was good, because I occasionally regretted fueling spells with my blood. That included the knife that Warner wielded, which I’d inadvertently made powerful enough to kill an ancient vampire. Though I had no regrets whatsoever over the blood wards that covered the building housing my bakery and apartment. No Adept could feel the power residing in those wards and believe that they had any chance of hurting the people protected within. Except maybe the guardians. But other than my father, Yazi, Vancouver was generally beneath the dragons’ collective notice.

  “It’s coming online at Pearl’s,” Kandy said, referencing her cellphone. “She can currently see residual from all thirteen points on her map.”

  After much trial and error, it became apparent that the power creating and supporting Gran’s magical grid interacted best with a hand-drawn map etched across all four walls of her otherwise empty recreation room. Thankfully, the Godfrey coven included an oracle who could also draw. But still, getting Rochelle to agree to key her own magic into the grid had taken both my grandmother’s and my mother’s considerable powers of persuasion.

  To be fair, it wasn’t that the or
acle hadn’t wanted to be involved. She usually drew only visions and tattoos — the things her magic specifically moved her to sketch. But apparently, Rochelle’s magic had become more receptive to direction after she’d spent some time with the witches. Moreover, Gran and Scarlett had set up extensive wards around the property that Rochelle and her husband, Beau, had bought in Southlands six months before, after Gran had purchased the downtown apartment that the oracle inherited from her birth mother. The map was the result.

  According to Rochelle and Chi Wen the far seer — who acted as the young oracle’s mentor — oracle magic tended to key in on the most powerful Adepts within its sphere. And I was blissfully overjoyed that Rochelle hadn’t had any visions involving me since I’d collected the final instrument of assassination. Keeping it that way was completely out of my control, of course, but the time since had been seriously heavenly. Slightly boring but fairly peaceful. And I had managed to add a bunch of new cupcakes to the bakery menu.

  “Hey!” Kandy cried, belatedly noticing that I’d absconded with the second bar. “Where do you think you’re going with that?”

  I tossed the final piece of delectable chocolate back to the werewolf, double-checking that all the chalked runes had disappeared as the water dried. Then I turned, slowly wandering west along the seawall.

  “Home?” Kandy asked, a little mournfully. She fell into step beside me, though.

  “I’ve got to bake in less than six hours.” I smiled. “You did well tonight. Gran will be delighted.”

  Kandy huffed, though she seemed secretly pleased. “It was mostly witch work.”

  “Please. You brought the idea to Gran. You scouted the grid points, and you’re the one who’s going to be on call to investigate any incidents.”

  “We’re taking shifts.”

  “With you leading it all.”

  Kandy shrugged, but her lips were curled in the slightest of smiles. The green-haired werewolf liked to be useful. More than once over the uneventful course of the previous year and a half, I’d grown concerned that she was going to become bored and return to the heart of the pack in Portland. But the magical grid and the fairly rapid influx of Adepts to Vancouver had kept her in town. Happily, I thought.

  Vancouver, once a magical backwater, had seen a steady stream of relocating Adepts. Starting with Beau and Rochelle over a year before, followed by more shapeshifters putting some distance between themselves and various packs. We had also seen a number of witches arriving, some half-blood or less, drawn to the city to study under Gran and Scarlett.

  Then there was Kett, who had tried to buy Rochelle’s apartment — a five-thousand-square-foot penthouse suite overlooking False Creek — after Gran acquired it. Gran had only allowed the vampire to lease it, though. The chair of the witches Convocation and head of the Godfrey coven was rather controlling when it came to real estate, Adepts, and Vancouver. And though she tolerated his presence, it was a safe bet that the executioner of the Conclave was going to remain barred from officially establishing any sort of residence in witch territory.

  Kandy and Warner were of the opinion that my claiming the instruments of assassination — and pretty much telling the guardian dragons to screw off in the process — had created unintended consequences. In the aftermath, Adepts who were uncomfortable with or ill-suited to fitting into the structure imposed by the pack or other covens were being drawn to Vancouver. Magical misfits, as Kandy called them. Those who might not magically conform, or who might have been seeking haven with others — namely me — who bucked the traditional and often prejudiced restrictions of Adept society.

  And the fact that no one but a select few should have known what had transpired with the instruments, the guardians, and me didn’t seem to shake Warner or Kandy of their belief that I’d somehow effectively claimed Vancouver as an independent city.

  Whatever the true reason for the influx, Gran had actually implemented an application process for the newcomers, though I didn’t think she’d turned anyone down as of yet. Housing in Vancouver and the surrounding areas was pricey, and most of the Adepts seeking a new home base didn’t come from families who’d spent generations accumulating assets — like the Godfreys or the Fairchilds. So occasionally, Gran would organize temporary housing as well.

  Walking the seawall, rather than cutting through the streets of Kits Point, we rounded a wide corner as the sandy stretch of Kits Beach came into view. The ocean was to our right, with a stretch of sparsely spaced evergreen trees interspersed with picnic tables to our left.

  The taste of peppermint tickled my senses. My step hitched.

  “What?” Kandy whispered, immediately alert.

  I glanced around. The moon was still a tiny sliver overhead. The buildings ahead of us were dark. I could see a pair of joggers in the distance, lights clipped to their wrists.

  But no magic.

  No vampires.

  Specifically, no Kett.

  “Kett,” I murmured. “I thought I tasted Kett’s magic.”

  Kandy grumbled under her breath. The werewolf was seriously peeved at the executioner and elder of the Conclave, who hadn’t been in Vancouver for longer than a day or two since the previous October. And who had barely communicated with either of us since late April.

  “He’s coming for the engagement party, isn’t he?” I asked, slightly annoyed at the needy note that twisted its way into my question.

  “He RSVPed,” Kandy said with a shrug. Her attention was glued to her phone. Still texting with Gran about the grid, presumably.

  We continued along the seawall, our naturally swift strides quickly taking us past the empty volleyball courts along the beach and then the Boathouse Restaurant. Disappointingly, I didn’t pick up any other traces of peppermint magic.

  I missed my vampire BFF. Before he’d seemingly gone to ground in the spring, we were still texting fairly often. But even then, he’d had duties that kept him elsewhere. Secrets, maybe, based on his infrequent texts over the last few months. They felt veiled, even for him. Though I knew that when Kett wanted to share, when it became important, he would tell me.

  As we neared the fork in the path at Kits Pool, Kandy glanced up. “I’m just going to jog ahead to Pearl’s. I’ll meet you back at the apartment.”

  “Hopefully I’ll be asleep by then.”

  Kandy flashed a grin my way. “Unless your dragon is waiting for you. He’ll like all the extra-tasty magic you’re carrying from the grid casting.”

  I shook my head, grinning.

  Kandy slipped the second strap of the backpack over her other shoulder. Then, continuing along the seawall, she took off in a loping jog without another word.

  I veered left with a sigh. Truthfully, I wouldn’t have minded getting a look at the magic running through Rochelle’s map in Gran’s rec room. But I’d be cranky without at least a few hours of sleep before baking. And no one liked a crabby baker, least of all me.

  I paused at the crosswalk at Cornwall, waiting for the light traffic to clear without bothering to press the walk button. And as I did, the shadows in the weeping birch tree to my right shifted, transforming into a nebulous figure that only I could sense or see.

  The taste of burnt cinnamon toast teased my senses.

  A shadow leech.

  A being created through the melding of some sort of demon and multiple human sorcerers — or, more specifically, the souls of those sorcerers. The leeches were all but immortal, which was vaguely appropriate, since they were fueled by the life essence of immortality seekers. All of them led and sacrificed willingly by Shailaja.

  There was only one shadow leech left now. Specifically, the dark cloud of malcontent roosting in the fork of the lowest tree limb. Its clawed wings were folded tightly against its body as it watched me warily with slitted blood-red eyes. Soon it would flash its needle-like teeth and chitter at me demandingly.

  And I couldn’t bring myself to kill it.

  I was already pretty certain that the stark restriction
s I had placed on the leech’s diet had forced it to somehow absorb the only other two that had survived our siege of the tomb of the phoenix. I hadn’t seen the other leeches in months, and the magic of the sole survivor had intensified enough to manifest a unique taste — as well as the blood-red eyes and the ability to hold a physical, though still shady, form.

  The creature was drawn to me. Bound to my will — or, more specifically, to the power I’d stolen from Shailaja after taking her head. Taking her life.

  A year and a half had passed since then, and I was still pending trial for the blood alchemy that I’d performed at the far seer’s behest. Chi Wen had made it impossible for me to refuse the collection of the power that had flowed in Shailaja’s veins — counting on the fact that I had wanted to keep on living myself.

  But the murder? I had to take responsibility for that on my own, along with the repercussions.

  I reached down, lightly stroking my jade knife in its invisible sheath to draw the leech’s attention.

  The shadow demon froze. It knew what I could do with that knife — and it wasn’t simply about vanquishing the creature. After consulting with a witch versed in summoning and a necromancer, I had ascertained that the leech couldn’t actually be vanquished or banished back into whatever dimension the demon-sourced part of it had originally been pulled from. Its demonic makeup was too intertwined with the life essence of the sorcerer who’d been willingly sacrificed in order to allow the demon entry into this world. Or multiple sorcerers, as might have been the case with the leech currently perched in the branches of the birch tree.

  Though the shadow leeches were practically indestructible and capable of replenishing their magic almost instantly, that wasn’t the same as true immortality.

  Because I could kill them. Shred them, separate and absorb their magic into my knife, necklace, or katana. Or, if I was feeling especially insane, I could take their power for myself, as I had done with Shailaja. As I wanted to swear I would never do again. Except I’d learned the hard way exactly what I was capable of doing when those I loved, those who were under my protection, were threatened.