Magic in the Shadows

, 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.

That was the spell Zayvion said the man-dog thing in the alley was using.

Do you know who was using it?

I asked my dad.

Do you know why?

Nothing.

I blinked, realized my fist was stuck straight in the middle of the spell. I did not remember putting it there. I was not only tampering with evidence, I was also pretty much destroying it.

Dad?

I asked.

He did not respond. Or if he did, I did not hear him. Because the Veiled chose that moment to snap out of their slow motion and race at me faster than any living thing.

I threw my hands up to protect my face from their clawing fingers. My hand in the spell tore up through it and magic within me sparked, like steel to flint. My magic caught the spell, ashes and all, on fire, and burned hot, clean, fast.

Just as Veiled fingers should have hit me, stabbed into me, dug under my skin, a spell rose around me, pouring like cool oil from my head to the soles of my feet, covering my skin, cloaking me. I could no longer see the Veiled. Could not feel them, smell them, or sense them in any way.

And I was pretty damn sure they could not see me.

Holy shit.

Dad?

I thought again.

Did you do that?

Yes. You cast too loudly when you Hound, Allison. Learn some control and maybe the Veiled won’t be able to track you so easily.

Yeah, that, or maybe if I got the dead guy out of my head, they wouldn’t notice me so much.

“That was impressive,” Stotts said, walking up beside me. “Destructive. But impressive.”

I turned to look at the spell that only moments ago had hovered in the air. Even though I still carried Sight, the spell, ashes and all, was gone.

“You have some answers for me?” he asked.

“What was the question?”

“How about we start with what kind of spell that was.” Huh. He didn’t know. Just like I hadn’t known. So this had to be either a secret thing or a very secret thing.

I wasn’t sure what I should tell him. If I suddenly started spouting off the properties of a spell neither of us had ever seen before, I was pretty sure he would question where I’d gotten that information.

“That’s odd,” Stotts said. He walked away from me, making a wide circle around the center of the gazebo.

I looked down at what held his attention.

A perfect circle of black ash, glossy as crow feathers, lay against the floor. And yes, that’s weird, because magic doesn’t usually leave something quite so physical behind. Especially when the spell is gone.

I’d seen that kind of circle before. I knew I had. I dug around in my head, searching for the memory.

Stotts knelt on the other side of the circle and stuck his fingers out toward the ash.

“Wait!” I warned at the same time my father’s voice echoed in my mind,

Don’t touch it.

Stotts’ eyebrows lifted. He pulled his hand back and rested both elbows across his knees. “What is it?”

“I’ve seen it. I know I have. Give me a sec.” I took a deep breath and stared off into the mist and the green, clearing my mind before I pulled out my journal. It was starting to rain, just an intermittent tapping like distant drumming.

I’d been taking notes of my life for long enough I had a pretty good coding system worked out. Anything dealing with spells was marked in the upper right corner of the page and underlined in text. I flipped through the pages. Even though I’d had this notebook for almost a year, and had noted several Hounding jobs and other spells, I didn’t see anything in it about circles of burned-out magic.

So what is it?

I asked my dad. Just because I didn’t have the memory didn’t mean I couldn’t get the information out of him.

I sensed his hesitance. I could tell he was weighing something. Probably his options and whether or not telling me would work to his advantage. For just a second I wished I were dreaming because at least then I could tell exactly what he was thinking. Of course, he could tell what I was thinking too, so it wasn’t all good.

The disks

, he said, his voice stronger and clearer, just as if I were wearing an earbud and he was a tune. Yes, it worried me that I could already hear him clearer than I could just a day ago, and that he was interacting with me easier too. I tried not to think about how if he kept getting stronger, more comfortable, more active, maybe he would just keep going until he took me over completely.

Heck, why panic about that when I could panic about this illegal, possibly unknown, certainly forbidden spell that I had completely destroyed?

What about the disks?

Oh. That was it. I remembered, or, hell, maybe Dad gave that info a nudge toward my consciousness. There was no trail left behind from magic used through the disks. When the disks were used, all that was left behind of the spell was a burned black circle of ash.

Holy shit.

“I think we need to talk to Violet,” I finally said.

“Beckstrom?” Stotts asked.

I nodded. “I think that circle is the residue of a spell cast using the disks that were stolen from her lab.”

Stotts looked back down at the ashes, then shook his head. “Is that why you destroyed the spell?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, needing an easy out right now in the worst way. “Can I use your cell phone? We need Violet to confirm this.”

He exhaled and brushed his hands over his thighs before standing. He dug his cell out of his pocket. “I’ll get it,” he said. He pushed one button and waited for the person on the other line to pick up. Violet Beckstrom was on the magic cop’s speed dial. Wasn’t that an interesting thing?

While Stotts asked her to come on out to the park, I walked around the circle of ash, trying to get a scent off it. Just a slight greasy tang. I remembered that too, though the familiar smell did not bring any more of my memory back to me.

Dad was no help in that area either.

I tried to decide what I should tell Stotts. Just because the spell was gone didn’t mean I hadn’t seen exactly what it was. There was no trail to be traced back to a user. I could honestly tell him that I had no idea who cast it.