Devon Monk - Magic on the Storm

So I went into default mode: the truth.

“I think a man named Dane Lannister might have been involved. But the spell is tangled, collapsed. It could be someone trying to make it look like Dane Lannister is involved.”

“Anything else?”

“I’d say get another Hound in here to double-check my findings, but since that isn’t going to happen, let me do a little more footwork.” I checked the spell again. Yep. Still looked like Dane’s. “Still seems to be Lannister’s signature,” I said. I checked the boxes. “None of the glyphwork has been broken.” Which meant he had taken the time to Unlock each box instead of just blowing the thing apart.

“The disks were in here. I’d say one per drawer.” What else? What was I missing? I looked around the room, and caught the angry red slash of a spell hovering about midway across the room.

That was not Unlock, or Hold, or any of the kinder spells. That was Impact and I could tell the target had been Kevin.

Dane attacked Kevin?

I looked the opposite direction to see if a spell from Kevin was there.

“Allie?”

“Just checking a few other spells. Cast in about the same time period as the Unlock,” I said. “Similar decay rate.”

Beyond the desk, where maybe Violet had been sitting, was the tattered remnants of a Shield spell.

Kevin had tried to keep Violet from getting hit with magic.

Dane had been here to kill Violet?

“Uh, one of the spells is aggressive. Not sure what kind, but in the category of Impact. Not one I recognize. That’s midroom. There’s another spell over here, a Shield. Tattered, like it withstood a blow or flux of magic.

“Is this where they found Violet?”

“Yes.”

Okay, so my theory about attackers seemed to be holding up.

I walked to the opposite side of the room and looked for anything Kevin might have cast.

Holy crap. Kevin had cast at least a half dozen spells. Hold, Freeze, Impact, something that involved blood and pain, and more. And they had all fallen-no, they had all been drawn-to this side of the room, and smashed together into one big tangled, useless spell.

Kevin had hauled on a hell of a lot of magic-recently, like after the magic had turned off-and it had all been batted aside and crushed like empty beer cans.

The smell of minerals and old vitamins was stronger here.

Okay. I didn’t know why Dane and Kevin were fighting. Sedra’s bodyguard fighting Violet’s bodyguard, but they had both accessed a hell of a lot of magic with the grids down.

Maybe they had disks to drain, but I didn’t see any discarded empty disks on the floor.

“Allie?”

“More spells over here. There was a fight. All these spells are collapsed in on themselves and tangled together.” I shook my head. “It’s a mess, but they still bear Kevin Cooper’s signature.”

The crystal in my hand was feeling heavy and cold. “Is there anything else you want me to look at, because I think my battery’s going dead.”

“This is where they found Kevin.” He pointed to a place near the door of the room. Like Kevin had been trying to get out and leave Violet behind. Strange.

I walked over to the door without losing my hold or concentration on Sight and Smell.

Death magic. I couldn’t smell it, but it cast just enough of a shadow that I knew it had been mixed with dark magic. The only people I’d ever seen wield dark magic were Frank Gordon, who tried to raise my dad’s soul from the dead, Zayvion, who used it as well as he used every other discipline of magic, and Greyson, who used it mixed with Blood magic to control Tomi. Since Frank was dead and Zayvion was comatose, that left Greyson.

I inhaled, trying to catch his scent-death and blood and burnt blackberry-but all I came up with was the slight tang from Death and dark magic, and the scent of old vitamins. Beneath that, I caught the notes of Kevin’s cologne, a mix of spices, and blood-his blood.

“There’s nothing here I can testify to,” I started. “Magic was used, but I don’t know these spells.” I didn’t want to tell Stotts it was dark magic. As far as I knew, he didn’t know about dark magic. The entire event in the warehouse with Frank and my dad’s corpse had been chalked up to some kind of mutated Blood magic. That was not what it had been, but that was what the Authority had wanted people to think it was.

And so that was what the lab tests came back with, that was the official police report, and that was what the causes of death on the four kidnapped girls’ death certificates read.

I glanced out in the hall to see if there was anything else beyond the room. Nothing, or at least no spells, that I could see.

The crystal suddenly went so cold it hurt.

“Ow!” The pain in my hand broke my concentration, and the glyphs for Sight and Smell faded.

I almost dropped the crystal, but instead tossed it to my other hand, and then back and forth like a hot potato.

“That it?” Stotts strolled over. He didn’t look at all concerned that I’d gone all Hacky Sack crazy.

“Really cold.” I tossed the crystal at him, and he caught it.

“Huh.” He held it with the fingertips of one hand, and traded off when he couldn’t stand the cold any longer, studying it and holding it up to the light. Then he placed it on a clear space on the counter.

I swear I heard the crackling of ice. I looked at the crystal.

Yep. Froze the countertop out in a foot circle.

“Is this something new Beckstrom Enterprises is developing?” Stotts asked.

“It’s something we’ve looked into. I haven’t gotten reports of its viability in terms of development, manufacturing, or marketing yet.” See, I could lie in business-speak when I had to.

Stotts gave me a funny look. “You have a crystal that acts like a battery for magic, and you’re trying to decide if it’s a good idea to market?”

“It’s the paperwork I hate.”

The ice seemed to be melting some, and I thought the crystal looked a little less white and a little more pink.

Will it recharge? I asked my father.

Yes. Again with the hesitance.

That was good enough for me.

“I’m going to take this,” I said.

Stotts raised one eyebrow. “Why?”

“It is legally my property,” I said.

“True. Property you didn’t know was here until a few minutes ago.”

“Let me put it this way-I’m not leaving it here. I don’t want anyone to break in and take it, and since it wasn’t involved in the crime, I don’t see any reason why the police would have claims to it.”

“And you’re keeping it because?”

“I want it?” He didn’t believe me, and I didn’t care. “Listen, I used all the magic in it. I don’t know how to recharge it with magic, don’t even know if it can be recharged. But I want to keep it. If it’s Violet’s, I’ll return it to her.”

Stotts sniffed and looked down at his shoe. Man had a mess of problems to deal with right now and me pitching a fit over a pretty rock did not rank up there on his list of traumas he had to plow through. Not with magic out. Not with the backups about to go down.

“Do you know why someone would want to take the disks?” he asked.

“They were filled with magic,” I said. “All of them.”

“And anyone can access that magic?”

“Yes.”

He looked at me and I looked at him. In a city suddenly empty of magic, both of us were probably coming up with a thousand horrific things someone would want to do with a hundred disks full of power.

“I still think a storm, a wild-magic storm, is going to hit,” I said. “Maybe it will kick-start magic again.”

Stotts grunted and shoved both his hands in his coat pockets, shifting his shoulders as if carrying a new ache. “Interesting theory.”