Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (Dowser Series Book 4) Read online

  Yazi frowned, then loosened the fingers of his sword hand. His gold broadsword simply winked out of existence. The intense taste of the warrior’s magic lessened enough that I could pick out strains of the other magic swirling to surround me now. Qiuniu always somehow carried music with him wherever he went. I never knew the tune, but I could hear hints of it. The pounding at the base of my skull eased a bit.

  Yazi stepped toward me and placed his fingers underneath my chin. I’d never seen him not smile for such an extended period of time before. He applied pressure to my chin and I obligingly lifted it.

  “You attend, healer, but you don’t heal?” he asked without looking away from me.

  “The alchemist refused me, warrior.”

  A slow, wide grin spread across my father’s face, transforming him from a forbidding warrior into a good-natured buddy type. “Did you now?”

  I grinned back at him. “It was just a scratch.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. The nexus shook. Or maybe it was just that all the magic in the air bloomed at this sound. That was my dad. He could lop the heads off three demons in a single blow and make magic dance with a chortle at the same time. He would be terrifying if I didn’t love him so much.

  I glanced, still grinning, at Qiuniu. He looked less than pleased. Not that his fine features could ever really look sour, but it was the twist of his lips that betrayed his displeasure.

  I stifled my grin. “I apologize, healer. I would never wish to waste your time.”

  He nodded. “Happily, I was in the nexus when Drake came to me. Not to worry, warrior’s daughter.”

  “Speaking of hasty fledglings,” Yazi said.

  I opened my mouth to intervene, to protest Drake’s innocence. My father shook his head at me. I snapped my mouth shut.

  “You’re still working off your last escapade, Drake,” the warrior continued.

  “Luckily Suanmi doesn’t put much value on my life, so this shouldn’t add to the fledgling’s probation,” I said. I really wasn’t great at keeping my mouth shut when a friend was on the chopping block. The fire breather, Suanmi, loathed me. Actually, she loathed the happenstance of my birth. Conceived of a witch and a dragon during a fertility ceremony of the Kalkadoon — aka a tribe of Australian Aboriginals — I was unnatural. Suanmi had declared me ‘an abomination’ when she’d first laid eyes on me. It didn’t help that my presence in the nexus only encouraged Drake to disobey the restrictions and requirements of his guardian apprenticeship and training.

  My father huffed at my interruption. Drake, who was still down on one knee, squirmed uncomfortably.

  “Indeed,” Qiuniu said. He laughed softly.

  Suanmi’s hatred was amusing, I guess. If she didn’t scare the hell out of me, I might have laughed along with the healer. As it was, I’d seen her cremate a demon by merely whispering in its ear, so I endeavored to stay way off the fire breather’s radar. This was a simpler task now, because after Drake had accidentally accompanied me on a scouting trip that ended in a triple demon summoning in London last year, Suanmi had demanded a separate training schedule for him. Which was fine because it opened up the mornings I needed to be at the bakery anyway. Well, my mornings … time didn’t exist the same way in the nexus. But I missed hanging out with the fledgling. He carried a lightness with him that I had a difficult time emulating these days, though my beleaguered soul was slowly healing.

  Drake peered up at me. His dark brown eyes were almost hidden behind his bangs. I stepped forward to brush the hair off his forehead.

  “You need a haircut,” I chided with a smile.

  And that was all it took for him to spring, grinning, to his feet. “I have missed you, warrior’s daughter. I will be careful with your head from now on.”

  Qiuniu choked back a laugh. My father expelled another huff of displeasure.

  “Branson,” Yazi said.

  The sword master rose to his feet but kept his eyes downcast.

  “I entrusted my daughter to your care, my friend,” Yazi continued.

  “Yes, warrior,” Branson said. “I have failed you.”

  “No,” I cried. “It was a terrible test. There’s so much magic here, I didn’t feel Drake approach —”

  “Then that is the skill you will hone next,” Yazi said, as if being inundated and overwhelmed by the power of the dragons was nothing.

  Branson looked at me thoughtfully. His gaze then fell to my wedding ring charm necklace. “Perhaps the necklace the alchemist wears could be —”

  “I’m awaiting the treasure keeper,” I blurted, interrupting what I was sure was about to become a lesson plan that would occupy months, if not years, of my time. Months that I greedily wanted to myself.

  Qiuniu stifled another laugh. I was so glad I amused him. Not.

  Branson inclined his head. “As you will, warrior’s daughter.” Then he looked to Yazi, who nodded back at him. Branson, taking this as permission to leave, spun away and strode off through the far archway.

  “You hurt his feelings,” Drake said. He sounded surprised.

  “His ego,” Yazi corrected. “Not a bad lesson for you to learn today, Drake, apprentice to Chi Wen.”

  Drake nodded reverently to my father, who touched my shoulder lightly but then turned to Qiuniu. “I must return,” he said. “Do you have a moment, healer?”

  “For you, warrior, always.”

  Yazi turned back to open the portal behind him.

  Qiuniu, a step behind my father, brushed by me with a whisper. “Next time.” His breath tickled my skin, spreading the warmth of his healing power across my cheek and down my neck. Sneaky bugger.

  My father turned back to glower at the healer, but he stepped through the golden magic of the portal without another word as he did so. He wasn’t big on goodbyes. I was just coming to realize that my mortality was a thorny issue for him.

  With a wink back at me, Qiuniu was swallowed by the portal. The door snapped shut.

  “The healer wants to bed you,” Drake said. His tone suggested he was mystified by this discovery.

  “Drake!”

  “What? Did I use the expression incorrectly? The healer wants to take you to bed? To his bed?” the fourteen-year-old continued. “To have sex, you know.”

  “Stop. Talking.”

  “Guardians don’t wed. A marriage is traditional in your culture, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not going to sleep with Qiuniu.”

  Drake nodded sagely, but doubtfully.

  I narrowed my eyes at him, completely forgetting it was a useless gesture against a dragon, even if he was only fourteen. “Don’t pretend you know different,” I snapped.

  Drake, grinning madly, scrambled back a few steps and drew his sword in a flash of gold. “Pull your knife, warrior’s daughter!” he shouted. “Get back on the broken horse!”

  I sighed. “That’s not the expression —”

  Drake whipped his head toward the door to his immediate left. The white-paneled one, decorated with hundreds of ornate gold fleurs-de-lis. As in, actual gold. The crazy grin was gone from the fledgling’s face. He looked back at me with wide eyes, opened his mouth to say something, but then seemed to change his mind.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Got to go,” he said. Then he took off through the archway that Branson had exited through. He didn’t even bother to sheath his sword.

  What the hell?

  Portal magic bloomed behind the door that led to the territory of the guardian of Western Europe. I half-turned toward it, fear pooling in the pit of my stomach, but not knowing what to do. I hadn’t seen Suanmi in over ten months, not since that terrible night in London. Not since I’d begged her for help with my sister. She’d told me to “clean up my own mess,” and warned me that if I didn’t do so, she’d put me out of my misery.

  I didn’t want to run. I also really didn’t want to be eviscerated with a single breath.

  The
portal opened. A foot shod in a drool-worthy Louboutin pump stepped through. Yes, a nude patent leather Very Prive peep-toe pump with the Louboutin signature red sole, which cost more than a month of rent on my apartment and bakery combined.

  I clutched my necklace, practically praying for its shielding protection. I didn’t draw my knife, though my every instinct was screaming at me to do so.

  As Suanmi the fire breather walked through the portal, I stepped my right foot behind my left ankle and bowed my head in a formal curtsy. I utterly refused to fall to my knees, not unless she forced me there. Suanmi’s navy blue Chanel pencil skirt skimmed her gorgeous legs just below her knees. The Louboutin heels and pristine nylons, which she wore despite it being late summer, swathed slim calves that didn’t look anything like the calves of the forty-five-year-old woman Suanmi pretended to be. Or maybe ‘pretend’ was the wrong word. Maybe that was just the point at which she’d decided to stop aging naturally? She was only a hundred or so years older than the treasure keeper, Pulou. If you can refer to being six hundred years old as ‘only.’

  I kept my eyes cast downward, my fingers twined through the rings of my necklace. The magic — the utter power of the fire breather — thundered around me, and I fought the need to give in to it, to fall to the ground and rail against its crushing force. Suanmi never bothered to dampen her magic, not the way my father, Pulou, and even Qiuniu did around me.

  Suanmi didn’t even pause. She stepped by me without acknowledgment, and that was fine by me.

  I tried to focus on the clicking of her heels, counting her steps to the archway and beyond. Acting on the instinct to protect myself, I took all the magic raging around me and willed it into my necklace. I begged the necklace to hold it at bay, so I didn’t make a fool of myself in front of the guardian of Western Europe for the third time of our brief acquaintance.

  The heel clicks stopped.

  I inhaled and held my breath.

  Suanmi pivoted back to me. “Half-blood,” she snapped. Then, softening her tone until her French-accented English was almost lyrical, she continued. “The treasure keeper requires your skills.” The fire breather didn’t quite pull off the word ‘skills’ without some deep derision attached.

  I nodded but didn’t look up. “Thank you, guardian. I await him.”

  Suanmi laughed, the sound of which tinkled over me like broken crystal. I tamped down on the impulse to brush it away from me, knowing that would look utterly crazy.

  “Do you not know how to call him?” Suanmi asked, her voice deadly soft but sharp. “I suppose it is beyond you to do so.”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how to answer.

  She waited. And waited.

  I slowly lifted my head. I locked eyes with the guardian I most feared. She lifted her chin a little.

  “You’re shorter than I am,” I blurted without thinking.

  She took a step toward me and a flush of fear ran down my spine. I spread the fingers of my right hand as wide as I could, in order to force myself to not call my knife forth.

  Then Suanmi smiled. A tight, dark-edged smile. “Pulou, treasure keeper,” she called out. Her commanding voice reverberated through the round room. “The alchemist attends you.”

  A portal to my right opened in a blinding flash of light, seeming to swallow the echo of Suanmi’s words as it snapped shut again.

  The fire breather turned her back to me.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, and instantly wished I hadn’t spoken. Being polite was just too ingrained in my upbringing.

  “Just do your job, half-blood.” Suanmi spoke without looking at me.

  “I … I also regret …” I was stumbling over the words I knew I should keep to myself, but that my guilt forced me to speak. “I regret not bringing Drake immediately back when he followed me through the portal into Scotland … and then London. I would never hurt him —”

  “No. You aren’t powerful enough to do so.” Suanmi was looking at me again with a perfectly refined sneer. Her dark hair was smoothed back from her pale, unlined brow. She was poised and collected.

  I was a grubby child.

  “True,” I said. “It’s too bad I’m useful to the treasure keeper.”

  “Indeed.”

  I lifted my chin, allowing myself a tiny bit of defiance. And with that choice, that gesture, the dragon magic settled around me to a bearable level.

  Suanmi frowned as if she’d seen what I felt.

  I straightened my spine further, then settled my shoulder blades down my back. No more cringing for me.

  Then I smiled.

  Suanmi spun away without another word.

  I didn’t collapse with relief, but only because I was afraid she’d come back.

  I took two steps to the left — so I was once again in the very center of the room — and settled down into a cross-legged position. I pulled my all-time favorite Amedei 70 percent single-origin Madagascar chocolate bar out of my Matt & Nat satchel. The bar was mangled. Even I couldn’t get hit by a small mountain and not get crushed. Thankfully, I had no problem licking the shards of goodness off the inner foil wrapper.

  It was one thing to stand up to Suanmi — the fire breather, and one of the nine guardians of the world. But it was completely another thing to waste chocolate out of some silly sense of perceived dignity.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I wasn’t sure how much longer I waited for Pulou. Time moved oddly in the dragon nexus — if it actually moved at all, which some days it didn’t. It could have been minutes but I really hoped it wasn’t days. I’d arrived — via the portal in the bakery basement — a little after 8 o’clock, knowing I might have to camp out all day to have a chance of seeing the treasure keeper.

  Kandy, Kett, and I had been going on collection runs for Pulou for the last six months or so. These missions couldn’t really be classified as treasure hunting. They were barely even training exercises. I hadn’t pulled my knife during any of these so-called assignments, not once.

  Kandy, my werewolf BFF — who managed to maintain her bright green hair no matter where in the world we were — was disappointed that there had been no call for breaking and entering, spelunking, or skydiving on any of the missions yet.

  Kett had faded away about three months ago. And who could blame the vampire? He was the executioner for the Conclave. He had way better things to be doing. Not that I was at all sure what those ‘things’ were exactly.

  So, yeah. I was bored out of my mind. Which was why I was completely determined that I was about to hand over my last benign artifact.

  A pen.

  Yes, a sorcerer-charmed pen that wrote by voice command. It had stopped responding to its owner’s requests a few months ago, and now wrote whatever and wherever it wanted to. The sorcerer from whom I’d collected it practically threw it at me in relief when Kandy and I went to pick it up. The only amusing part of the so-called mission was his harried look and the cursive ink markings all over his face and neck. Hebrew script, I imagined, since we were in Tel Aviv. Not that I’d taken the time to explore the ancient city.

  Today, Pulou would authorize a real mission — something with some importance — or I was taking matters into my own hands. No one could accuse me of being rash. I’d taken the time to heal. I’d trained. I’d explored my magic until I bored myself utterly. Hell, I was so bloody boring that I couldn’t manage to be in the same room with myself for more than a few minutes without wishing someone else was around. Someone interesting. Someone with a life beyond the bakery, and plucking trinkets out of the hands of witches and sorcerers without a single protest from them.

  Was a lick of resistance too much to ask for? A simple offensive spell? Or even a protection ward that I had to exert actual effort to thwart?

  I’d jumped through all of Pulou’s hoops since Tofino. Since Sienna’s death. And because the treasure keeper had me running around with training wheels for the last six months, it meant that Blackwell
could have been running all around Europe with that damn circlet of his. I’d wanted to rip it from his bony hands the first moment I laid eyes on it. No sorcerer, least of all one as evil as Blackwell, should have access to a magical object that dampened or impeded the powers of any Adept who wore it. No one would wear such a thing voluntarily. And the circlet wasn’t made to be used benevolently. That, I was sure of.

  I’d had the opportunity to face off against Blackwell last January when Desmond, the Lord and Alpha of the West Coast North American Pack, had asked me to come to Portland to identify the magic of a teen that was supposedly being stalked by Blackwell. Instead of blindly joining the pack hunt, I chose to do the right thing by the teen — namely, distract Desmond and the pack, then get Chi Wen involved. Last I heard, the far seer had taken Rochelle, who turned out to be a fledgling oracle, under his wing, and Blackwell was in the wind.

  Now it was time to figure out my own guidelines and make my own choices. I knew good from evil. Hell, I could taste it.

  Today, I would finally get Pulou’s permission to go after Blackwell. I knew exactly how to word the request, to present the evidence, and outline my plan. I’d been working on the wording for over three months, once I’d figured out that there was a proper way to ask. Dragons had a lot of rules and regulations. Extreme power came with extreme guidelines, it seemed.

  I would have gone without permission months ago, because Blackwell pissed me off so much, except I was kind of banned from Europe. London, specifically. And just taking the circlet from Blackwell might get me into a whole lot of trouble from the Convocation, who strictly governed the behavior of witches and considered me subject to their will, though I was only half-witch. The sorcerer’s League wouldn’t be too happy about the theft either, despite how I got the sense there was no love lost between them and Blackwell.