Natural Mage (Page 59)

“Play that by ear?” Penny leaned around the seat in an effort to see Reagan’s face. “Are you kidding? That’s one of the first things we have to do if we’re going to do it. Not to mention we’ll have to make sure they didn’t beat us there and set traps of their own.”

“Yeah, I know. So when we get there, we should have a think. Then we do the spells, and eventually they’ll feel like they’re ready to make their attack, and the show will begin.”

“What—” Penny fell back against the seat. “I don’t think there is a worse planner in all the world. I really don’t. Why turn off the music for that? You’re basically saying we should get out and wander around like dopes.”

“Yes. Perfect. I’m in,” Reagan said. “Let’s get there, get out, wander around like dopes, and see what grabs us.”

“Unreal,” Penny muttered from the backseat.

Laughter bubbled up through Emery, light and joyous, which was very strange, because the three of them were about to challenge an entire host. They were basically going up against all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, and trying not to end up like Humpty Dumpty. It was madness. All of this was madness. Their probability of success had to be so low it was negligible. And yet…

He blew out a breath and looked out at the slightly overcast day. Up ahead on his side stood the warehouse, waiting for them like a great, empty beast. “Madness,” he murmured, the first traces of uncertainty worming through his gut.

“That’s how you know you’re doing the right thing. When the odds are severely stacked against you,” Reagan said, turning into the small lane leading up to the warehouse.

“I think you’ve got the wrong idea about how math works,” Penny muttered from the back.

“Did you talk to Red this morning?” Emery asked as they parked, trying to hunt out any glimmering spells around the area. Nothing jumped out, but wards without additional spell work woven in would be invisible.

“Yeah, that good-for-nothing dog turd.” Reagan parked and pushed the door open. “He’s thinking the mage count must be in the eighties.”

Emery’s joints stiffened and fear bled through him. Suddenly, he couldn’t seem to force himself to open the door. He had his hand on the handle, but it refused to move.

“Are you okay?” Penny asked softly.

“What are we doing, Penny?” he whispered, his body starting to shake. Eighty? That was madness. Madness! Last night he and Penny couldn’t defeat a comparatively tiny host.

Eighty? It was impossible. They would never make it out.

She would never make it out.

After his parents had died, he’d loved exactly three people in his life. Real, honest-to-God love. One as a brother, one as a surrogate son, and now Penny.

He’d lost his brother. He’d helped kill his surrogate father after the man betrayed them.

He could not lose Penny. He couldn’t send her in there to die. It wasn’t in him.

“We need to leave now,” he said, taking his hand away from the handle. “We need to run.”

42

I stilled in the back seat, never having seen Emery like this. Even in the dire situations, when all hope was lost, he hadn’t once panicked.

For some reason, that calmed me. Chased away my own panic.

“What’s up?” I asked, reaching forward to lay my hand on his shoulder.

“Even with Reagan, we don’t have the power to go up against eighty people. It’s impossible.”

“It could only be fifty. Red must have been guessing.”

“Or it could be a hundred.”

I squeezed his shoulder. “My mother is backing this idea. That means there is a real chance we’ll come out ahead. And your foresight didn’t go off— Wait, did your foresight go off?” He shook his head, his face pale. “Right. There you go. It does sound impossible, that’s true. But look, you have your new power stone, and it has faith in you. And a lot of power, actually. We have Reagan. She’s incredible, she really is. And we can get hundreds of casings stored up. She brought a bunch with her from her secret stash at home, remember? Some are probably even ours. She stole them from the vampires.”

“Why are you going along with this?”

“Because…well, because everyone around me is pushy, and you all seem to think this is the right way to do things. But if you think about it, all these people are in town for us, and they were going to come for us sometime. At least this is on our terms.”

He deflated and shook his head.

“Come on.” I patted his shoulder. “Buck up. We can do this. We have a future. I mean, my mother basically foretold it. It was gibberish and only made a mild amount of sense, but it was a future involving Reagan’s…secret. We should trust in that.”

“I foretell futures all the time. It’s how I avoid them.”

I didn’t have an answer for that one, so I said, “Sure, yeah,” and got out of the car.

“There was a tripwire over here,” Reagan said, standing off to the side next to a few trees. “It ran over there.” She pointed across the small parking lot. “We drove through it. I took it down, but it’s too late. Someone with midrange power knows we’re here.”

“Think they’ll drive in?” I asked, walking around the car to get Emery.

“Well, they certainly aren’t going to take camels.”

“Right.” I rolled my eyes and knocked on Emery’s window. “Come on. The first step is the hardest.”

“Your turn to play strongman, huh?” Reagan wrinkled her nose and put up her hands. “There is something else out that way. Do you see it?”

“What do you mean, my turn to play strongman?” I waited by his door.

“Dual-mages.” She waggled her finger in our direction. “You switch off the different hats, right?”

“We’re not a dual-mage.”

She put up her hand to block the sun. “Not yet, but something changed after you left the bar. You’re acting like the Bankses. I can see it. Hell, I can feel constant shifting between you. It’s pleasant. I like when your rage shifts around. That’s the most fun.”

“But we didn’t do anything different.” I remembered the feeling when we’d created the concealment spell together in the gap between the houses in the French Quarter. We’d blended our weaves into and through each other to make the kind of comprehensive, tightly packed spell I’d never achieved on my own.

We’d merged, in a way. The balance I’d always felt with him had become more grounded. Our roots had dug deeply into the ground, entwining as they did so, and our energy had reached into the sky. Oneness.

I wondered if the dual-mage situation would boost that effect again, as it boosted the magic of Callie and Dizzy.

“You’ve got all the essentials lined up,” Reagan said, walking toward the warehouse with her hands out. “Becoming a dual-mage pair would be a natural next step. Of course, that means forever. Scary stuff.”

Biting my lip, I knocked on Emery’s window. “Get out.” I rapped harder.

“See? Right now you’re wearing the bullying hat. Callie wears that most of the time. After this, though, I bet Emery will wear that hat, if he can learn how to say no to you. Or…I guess guys get to be called commanding. Women always get the short end of the stick. But clearly you need to wear it right now, because he turned chicken.” She made sounds like a chicken, loud enough that I knew he heard.

I couldn’t help laughing. “We’re about to be killed. Do you take nothing seriously?”

“Oh, honey,” she said with attitude. She was probably mimicking someone, but I didn’t know who. “We’re not going to be killed. Let’s get these tattletale spells down, and I’ll tell you exactly what we’re going to do.”

It took me a few moments to get Emery out of the car, plus a whopping ten minutes to get him into the warehouse. I finally ended up punching him in the face. I’d tried everything else, and Reagan had advised me to jar him out of it, so I did.

I was pretty sure he could’ve easily dodged or blocked my punch. My heart wasn’t really in it. But he’d let it hit. Probably so I’d hurt my hand.

Which I did. He had some sharp cheekbones, and I had some (evidently) weak knuckles.

A moment later, his eyes had changed and fierce determination had taken over. In other words, the normal, confident problem-solver Emery. I got to go back to coasting. Which gave me a stronger appreciation for Dizzy’s near-constant state of happiness.

Now we stood at the back area of the warehouse beside a long table with a plethora of ingredients organized across its surface. It reminded me of Darius’s warehouse in Seattle, where we’d done a few spells to sell to him.

“When did you set this up?” I asked, looking over everything. The collection of power stones was a little lacking, but I had a pretty good collection with me.

“I called it in last night while I was waiting for Darius,” Reagan said. “I figured we could all work together on some really tight spells, like that ward, and then create an arsenal of casings to keep at the house. We’ll have to raincheck that, of course. We need quick, nitty-gritty spells. Also…” She put her hands on her hips as she examined the various baskets of casings collected at the end of the table. “We might need to special order some larger, more durable casings in the future. I have a feeling these won’t be enough for what I am thinking.”