Natural Dual-Mage (Page 19)

“Patience, Turdswallop,” Emery said with a laugh.

“They can do this later.” I motioned between them, and Darius noticed. He moved his gaze to mine. Reagan looked away. Still no one spoke. “This is getting awkward.”

Reagan laughed and shook her head. She grabbed two of the drinks. “Penny, you are not one for details, I’ll say that.”

“Why?” I frowned at her. “What did I miss?”

“Their conversation,” Emery said.

I rubbed my head. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”

“Yes, about that,” Darius said. I perked up. “I do not have much time to research your condition. I can’t spare the time, if we hope to have any chance with the Guild.” His gaze settled on Emery. “The research, as it were, needs to come from another source if we hope to know what is going on.”

Emery nodded, but didn’t comment.

“Okay, look, I don’t read subtle. What is going on?” I asked, annoyed. I pushed off the stool to get that beer before glancing over my shoulder to make sure my mother wasn’t walking down the hall toward me. This was why I didn’t want her hanging around. I couldn’t be myself. Or normal.

“Darius and Reagan can communicate silently,” Emery said, “and Darius has been hounding me about something for months. We’re all on the same page.”

“Well, I mean…” I raised my hand. “Not all of us, obviously. They can communicate silently?”

“Emery, since you know this area a little better than Reagan, it might be wise if you took the lead tomorrow,” Darius said, ignoring me. As usual. “She’s been instructed to keep a low profile. All you should do is get a feel for what’s going on. Keep your magic up and your heads down. I’ll work out the particulars with Vlad and Roger. We have a map layout of the Guild. We’ll be starting there.”

Emery blew out a breath as he watched me come back to the island. He absently took the bottle and twisted the cap off before handing it back. “Reagan trying to lie low, and Penny being Penny. It’s a recipe for disaster.”

13

“Oh hey, I remember this bar,” Reagan said the next evening as we sat in a rental car in the heart of Seattle. Down the street was our destination, as determined by Emery—the bar owned by his friend Joe, a wolf shifter with a gruff attitude and kind heart. His bar had been a gathering place for Guild mages, or at least wannabe members. “I’m not sure the bartender likes me much.”

“That doesn’t really surprise me, given that you chase the shifters in New Orleans around with bread sticks.” I checked the compartments of my utility belt, feeling the pulse of a few of my power stones. Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky, a brown rock with various colors slashed through it, was desperate to get out and get into some danger.

“That was one time,” she said. “They all knew I was joking. I was pretending the bread stick was a sword, for fuck’s sake. Clearly I was joking.”

“They thought you were going to bust their heads in. They did not know you were joking.”

“Well…if I caught them…I would’ve. But all in good fun! They’re shifters. They’re used to fighting for their position. What’s a little scuffle among friends?”

“Definitely a recipe for disaster,” Emery said quietly before flicking up the flaps on his utility belt, which was exactly the same as mine.

“It’ll be fine. So far I don’t see anyone suspicious.” Reagan turned in her seat to look behind. “No one followed us.”

Emery nodded, scanning the street. “Since our new wards didn’t go off at Darius’s, I’d suspect no one wandered by last night or early today. More sentries have been posted, so that makes sense.” He looked over at me. “You have your phone?”

I patted the first compartment of my belt. “Got it. My mom is on standby.”

He glanced in the rearview at Reagan. “You’re positive the dual-mages are staying put?”

Reagan grimaced, a much nicer look now that Callie had regrown her hair. “No. But they probably are. They aren’t used to staying at home, but they seemed to see the sense in keeping the scouting group small. Hopefully that means they’ll stay put. It’s never a given, though.”

“Sorry,” I said softly, offering him a little smile. I felt bad for him. He could’ve had a quiet life in the wilds. Sleeping in the dirt had to be better than dealing with my crazy mother, a couple crazy mages, Reagan, and a bunch of meddling vampires.

His eyes softened and he took my hand. “Worth it.”

“Ew. Get a room—”

“Really?” I shot Reagan a glare. “Did I say anything last night when you were staring into vampire dearest’s lovely brown eyes?”

“They’re hazel. With green specks—”

“No, I did not. So you can just wait.”

“Yes, you did, and I was talking to him with my brain. Why aren’t you this lippy with your mother?”

I huffed and turned to face forward, ignoring Emery’s silent chuckles. “I’m practicing on you. I’m working up to my mother.”

“Joy,” Reagan said dryly, and Emery laughed harder.

“Is this what your bounty hunter gigs are like?” he asked. “The two of you bickering the whole time?”

“Nah.” Reagan adjusted her fanny pack. She didn’t want to get a utility belt, fearing it would be easier for people to realize that she wasn’t really using the casings she carried to do magic. She was a headcase. “Half the time she is running away screaming from the mark. We only bicker the other half of the time. Come on; let’s go. We’re losing the daylight.”

“Why are we doing this during the day, again?” I asked, stepping out of the car as I ballooned a concealment spell around myself. It made me uneasy to think that Darius and his people couldn’t serve as backup.

Emery exited the other side of the car and put up the same spell, but with little embellishments and intricacies that would make it more durable.

“You always seem to show me up,” I grumbled, moving so Reagan could get out of the car and climb right into my spell. “Don’t touch anything, Reagan, remember.”

“I know, I know— Crap.” The spell started to dissolve when a flare of her magic zipped through her fingers as she stepped into it. “My bad. Can you nullify my magic as we go?”

“Doing that takes a lot of concentration and energy. I don’t think I could do that and maintain a spell at the same time.”

“Good to know.” She clasped her hands low and kept her elbows close to her body. I increased the size of the spell.

“Let’s merge these spells and get going,” Emery said, coming around to us.

“You can merge spells?” Reagan put out her hands, her elbows still held in close, so she could feel what we were doing. “I didn’t think that was possible once the spells had been realized.”

“It is,” he said with glimmering eyes, “if you have a clever little turdswallop to accidentally do it when she’s mad that your spell is taking up too much room.”

“That’s a bad word, just so you know.” I tried to hide my threatening smile. “When you call me turdswallop, you’re calling me a bad word.”

“In British,” he said, his smile growing.

I rolled my eyes, letting my smile break free. “We’re venturing out while it’s still sunny…why?”

“Because they have vampires too,” Reagan said. “But they don’t have shifters.”

“Then why didn’t we leave earlier?”

“Because they have a lot more mages than we have shifters, and we might need the vampires to save our asses. I could get us out of a bind, but that might get me into a bigger bind.”

“And me,” I said, grabbing Emery’s bicep like it was a walking stick. “The size of this freaking thing…” I moved my hand down to his forearm so I could actually grab on. “And if your father found out about you, it would get me into a bind, too. Because if I can null your magic, I can probably null his. Right? Didn’t you get your weird from him?”

“Like you can talk.”

“I think I got my weird from both parents, actually. They didn’t hand over any normal to go with it.” I tuned in to the various magical vibes of the area flowing around me like the breeze. “Well, even if I couldn’t null his magic, I could figure out something. We beat a bunch of mages and mercenaries in dumb hats; we can take on your dad.”

“We probably wouldn’t be enough,” she said in a strangely thick voice. “But I’ve noted it for the files.”

“Two naturals and a nut case?” Emery’s voice was a low hum. He was probably worried about sound leaking out of the spell. “We’d dominate.”

Reagan huffed. She didn’t comment, but her magic surged. I grinned, ready to tease her about her squishy heart, when a foreign feeling wound around my leg. Just my leg, and nothing else.

“Slow,” I said quietly. The feeling tingled as it worked up my leg, lightly tapping. “Something is…touching me.” I opened my eyes and looked down. Nothing was there. No magical strands or weaves. “Reagan, do you feel anything?”