“I just wondered if you were alone,” he said.
“I didn’t know most of the people at the burial,” I said, which was true. “Violet was there. I think some of the people who worked for him-for Beckstrom Enterprises-were there.”
“People who work for you, now, right?”
And that was one of the questions I’d been trying not to think about for days. I was the heir to the Beckstrom fortune, which meant I had the final say about who was going to run the business and what was going to be done with the money. I was under no illusion that my father had run a clean operation. As far as I was concerned, that money had blood all over it.
“I guess,” I said.
I’d been thinking about setting up a charity. And maybe setting up a medical fund for the Hounds. It bugged me that I wanted to use my father’s money after pushing it away all of these years.
The flutter at the back of my eyes started up again, sparking little pricks of pain.
I so did not want to know his opinion on this. If I wanted to use his dirty money for a good cause, I would. Even though I’d been telling my father to stick that money up his assets for my entire adult life.
The flutter grew stronger, and I pressed at one temple.
I took a moment to envision disbanding his company. Lobbing a financial bomb at it and watching it sink for good.
The flutter quieted. So maybe he was paying attention to what I was thinking. Good.
And bad. My thoughts quickly turned to Violet, to her being pregnant with my dad’s child, my one and only sibling. I pushed that thought away and la-la-la’d like crazy. I didn’t want to tear Violet’s world apart. And destroying Beckstrom Enterprises would do just that. I’d never make a good day-to-day sort of manager of my father’s empire, not because I couldn’t do the work, but because I hated the company.
Almost as much as I hated him.
Okay, and yeah, I hated the paperwork and boardroom bullshit too. There was a reason I chose Hounding for a career.
Stotts stopped next to the curb, a park behind hedges and trees to my right.
“Is this it?” I asked.
“This is it.”
It looked innocent enough. Winter in Oregon meant the sky was stacked in layers of gray, sunlight filtered to a dim bluish cast that wouldn’t change much until May. It also meant the park next to us was soggy, the grass still green even in the grip of winter, Douglas fir and cedar trees dark needled and heavy with rain.
I got out of the car, inhaled the clean scent of rain and growing things. And the boiled-vinegar stink of used magic.
I turned my face into the wind, inhaled again. I took a few steps across the sidewalk and into the park itself, following the scent of magic. Stotts paced me, his hands in his pockets. He didn’t tell me what he wanted me to Hound. He didn’t have to.
I set a Disbursement, deciding sore muscles for a day should do the trick, then drew a glyph for Sight, pulled magic up through my body and out into the spell. The world sharpened under the cast of Sight, colors brightened, shadows deepened, as if the sun had broken through the clouds.
Sight showed me a trail of magic like ashes in the air, gray and green, snaking toward a gazebo, where the spell hung like a bloody handprint.
I made my way along a trail to the gazebo. At the corners of my vision, ghostly people swayed. I glanced over at one of them, a woman made of pastel watercolors, eyes black, hollow, hungry, as she shuffled my way.
Great. Ever since my dad’s ghost had smacked me in the head, every time I used magic I could see the Veiled-the ghostly remainders of dead magic users who wandered the world. Worse, they could see me.
Well, except for in the alley. The Veiled hadn’t shown up then. But maybe that had something to do with the spells Zayvion was throwing around, or the fact that I had used magic for only a second or two.
I picked up my pace. I needed to get to the spell, Hound it, and release the magic I was using before the Veiled swarmed me and added to my collection of fingertip burn marks.
The flutter behind my eyes started up again, my dad pushing at me. Exactly what I didn’t need right now.
Shut up
, I thought. And to myself:
Focus.
I recited my favorite jingle under my breath:
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black. .
I was almost up to the
buttons, buttons, buttons
part when I finally reached the gazebo and spell.
Sure, I knew the watercolor people, a half dozen of them, were headed my way. Sure, I felt the flutter of my father’s awareness like a second pulse behind my eyes. Sure, I felt Stotts stop behind me, far enough to be out of my way; close enough I could smell his anger and his fear.
But it was the spell, hovering in the air inside the gazebo, that held me fixed, like a hot palm against my throat.
It wasn’t a spell I knew the name of; didn’t look quite like anything I’d Hounded before. Blood magic was involved; the sweet cherry stink of that particular magic was undeniable. But this spell seemed to be more of a sealing off or a trading off of something.
Transmutation.
My father’s voice was so clear in my mind, I jerked back as if he had been standing next to me. Along with that word came his knowledge of what the spell was.
A complex knot work that links the caster and the victim through dark magic. A bastardization of death magic, wherein the soul and spirit are bled from the living to the dying, or the dying to the living. A spell that can be molded to the will of the caster to break the rules of life and death. A dangerous way to make magic break its natural laws.
Deadly to the caster. Forbidden.
Holy crap. I didn’t want to touch it. If it had been created by magic jumping its tracks, dark magic messing with life and death, I was not about to poke it with a stick. And I was doubly freaked out because all of a sudden my father was working hard to make sure I got the information behind this spell. I didn’t know if that meant he was trying to help me or screw me up.
The Veiled were coming, still walking slowly. I knew any minute they’d rush supernaturally fast. If I didn’t do this quickly, they’d be on me, pulling magic out of me, and shoving it in their mouths like taffy. Then I wouldn’t be good for any kind of magic use.
I decided to take my father’s information as a freak accident of helpfulness. It was good to know what the spell was, but what I was really here for was to find out who had cast it and why. And why the police would want to know about it.
I leaned in, the fingertips of my right hand spread out toward the green and gray scaled center of the spell.
Magic still burned in the spell. It licked against my fingertips with a disturbing sentience, tasting me.
It’s not alive
, my father’s voice answered my unspoken question.
It is. . aware of the power you carry within you. Much like the Veiled.
“Who did this?” Oops. I said that out loud.
“What?” Stotts asked.
I shook my head and inhaled, my mouth open, trying to taste the signature on the spell. Only the faintest taste of something sweet and burnt, like berries scorched on the vine. I had smelled that before. Outside my apartment with Zayvion. Last night.
But other than that, the signature was not familiar to me. I did not know who cast this spell or what it was really for.
Transmutation
, my father said again, frustrated at me being so dense.
It changes one thing, one energy, into another, suspends the state of one thing into another.