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  “You end her, Valdez,” he hissed. “You want to pay me back? End the little bitch who started this mess.”

  My chest felt hot and though he hadn’t made any moves toward me, I felt like he’d backed me into a wall. I didn’t like him hurling it in my face like it was an obligation. I was leaning ever more toward taking the job. But I didn’t owe my service to anyone.

  “Fallen Oaks, Declan,” I reminded him quietly. “I’ve still got business to attend to.”

  Declan grunted his acknowledgment. Another rune lit up on his arm, this one about three inches down from the previous sigil.

  The portal was smaller this time and rippled unsteadily at the edges. I suspected that Declan was still trying to rein in his anger and it was making his control a little shaky. The portal in the brick opened up on the front doors of Fallen Oaks hospital. I was halfway through it before I realized that Declan wasn’t moving.

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  He shook his head. “No. I’m going back. I’m going to shake that arse Johnson and ask why he didn’t tell me any of this shite. I deserve to be on this case.”

  There was a part of me that burned to know exactly what he meant by that, but it was overshadowed by the practical part. I needed to get my business over and done with before nightfall.

  “Don’t fall asleep, Declan. I’ll need a transport back.”

  He shrugged and continued to glare at the wall. I sighed. Men. Get them onto something and they were like a dog with a bone. Dominic had been the same way.

  My stomach pitched. Damn it, this was the second time I’d thought of him in the same hour. It must be this business with the girl. It was making me emotional, which led my mind in places it was best not to wander.

  “I’ll call you,” I told him. He didn’t respond.

  With a sigh of resignation, I turned my back on Declan and stepped through the portal into the parking lot of Fallen Oaks Magical Hospital.

  chapter

  6

  CATALINA’S BODY WAS STILL AND pale on the sterile white hospital bed. The natural golden cast of her skin was fading, leeched out by the fluorescent lighting and a lack of good nutrition. I longed to throw the window open and let the sun in on her. But it was against hospital regulations and I wasn’t going to get her booted out of this place for a petty reason like that.

  I folded myself into a chair beside her bed and stroked my hand down her cheek. She was so clammy. Tears pricked in the corner of my eyes and bile scalded my throat.

  “Oh Cat, baby. I’m so sorry.”

  The monitors hung next to her registered her heartbeat and another screen showed minimal brain activity. Silver bands etched with runes were fixed on her wrists and ankles, monitoring her magic as well. All the trappings of the hospital room told me that she was alive, but it still felt like I looking at her corpse.

  No, it was worse than that. If her heart had been unbeating when I’d found her two years ago, it might have been better. Yes, it would have been hell to get through. But there would have been a definite end to the suffering – both hers and mine. Right now she hung in a sort of limbo. Not dead, but not really alive either. The monthly reports Fallen Oak gave me reported no change, except for a slight dip in her kidney function that might signal renal failure somewhere down the line.

  That fateful confrontation with Findlay had been the final nail in my coffin, so to speak. I’d already pissed off a lot of people in the Trust by joining up with Landon and carrying out non-sanctioned kills. As corny as it sounds, blood really is the fount of all life. It contains a part of a person’s soul or essence. That’s what vampires craved when they fed. It’s what wizards and witches drew upon to cast spells. And the Trust was very specific on how and when blood should be drawn.

  My mentor, Roland Preston, had been the only thing that kept me from being executed for the crime I hadn’t committed. It didn’t matter that I’d served them faithfully for many years, even after I’d been ordered to commit atrocities of such magnitude that they still gave me nightmares. It didn’t matter that I’d crafted half of the weaponry that was still in circulation within the Trust’s guard circuit. It had been Findlay’s word against mine, and he was better connected.

  I was so distracted that I barely registered the increase in her breathing. A quick glance at her had my heart clawing its way up into my mouth. She was moving.

  Her hand twitched softly, dragging across her sheets like she was writing something in cursive. Her pale mouth moved and sound burbled out. But it wasn’t in any language that I could make out. I seized her by the shoulders and leaned in closer, trying to make out what she was saying. It sounded like Spanish, but so distorted and off that I couldn’t catch any of the meaning.

  I jabbed my finger on her call button before I could even think.

  “Cat. Cat, come back to me, please.”

  The burbling grew in pitch, though her eyes didn’t open. Her spine arched suddenly and she bent at an impossible angle, letting out an almost frantic sound. My tears finally overflowed.

  “I can’t understand you, Cat. Please just open your eyes and talk to me.”

  Then, all at once, it stopped. Cat collapsed back onto the bed, going as still and lifeless as she’d been the last eighteen times I’d visited.

  A nurse wearing standard issue black scrubs sidled into the room. “What are you doing, Miss Valdez? I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to stop manhandling the patient.”

  I jabbed a finger at my sister’s prone body. “Aren’t any of you checking the monitors? She just moved. She spoke! I heard it.”

  The nurse’s nose scrunched up in thought and she crossed over to the machine, reading the squiggles on the chart. The machine spat out a report on my sister’s vitals every hour. The nurse shook her head as she examined the most recent.

  “I’ll have to ask the doctor, but I don’t think so.”

  “I saw it. She moved. She talked. She went all Linda Blair, for God’s sake!”

  “Yes, but that happens, Miss Valdez. It could be any number of things. Most likely it’s just a spike in her magic.”

  “A what?”

  The woman sighed and removed my hands from Cat’s shoulders. She set down a plastic tray down and drew out a needle and small port. I didn’t watch when she stuck my sister. I wasn’t really squeamish, but it still felt like theft, watching her take my sister’s blood. She stuffed at least three tubes into the pocket of her scrubs before answering me.

  “Think of the body as a house and magic as the electricity that runs everything in it. Your sister’s magic was all but removed. The house is dark. But sometimes the bulbs flicker. It’s a systems check, nothing more.”

  “But she was in there. I saw it.”

  The nurse shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid you must be mistaken, Miss Valdez. Our sensors would have reported that.”

  The hope that had risen in me like a tide receded, leaving me feeling more tired than ever. Maybe she was wrong. Or maybe I was going crazy. After the last few years I’d had, it wouldn’t really be a surprise. Everyone had their breaking point, and I was near mine.

  I was the closest to being broke that I’d been since college. Catalina’s hospital bills totaled about five thousand every month and now that I’d burned through our savings, I could only afford another month of treatment. There were only three hospitals in America who could deal with the level of magical monitoring Cat needed, and they were all owned by the same family. If I didn’t do something soon, Cat could die. For good, this time.

  The nurse put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Miss Valdez. I’ll be sure to inform you if anything changes. Don’t hesitate to call us if you need us.”

  She took Cat’s vitals and checked her magical levels—which were practically nil at this point—and then bustled out of the room to tend to whatever poor soul was waiting next door. I took Cat’s hand and squeezed it.

  Cat was not going
to wake up on her own and I was pissing away a chance at getting her back by waffling about this contract. It wasn’t as if Eleanor Dawson was an innocent. She was a terrorist. I’d taken out terrorists before. If I could ignore the fact that I was doing it on the vampire’s dime, I might even be able to sleep at night when the deed was done.

  It wasn’t really a coincidence that she was being protected by one of the five people the Trust had once employed as assassins. Together, when we were known as the Big Five, we were practically unstoppable. There was me, of course. Then there was Cayman Bello, a shaman from West Africa. I didn’t fancy facing him in battle. His strengths were perfectly matched to my weaknesses. I was a MacGyver meets Batman kind of girl, and his talent for illusions meant I could waste time pumping bullets into a construct that didn’t actually exist. Last I heard, he’d stolen the informal number three spot from Ewan.

  Ewan Saunders was a middle-American man with a special talent for element manipulation. The Trust had once hired him to create seeming natural disasters to cover up their misdeeds in other countries. I was fairly sure that I could beat him, if I timed it right. If I hit him in a building where he had fewer elements to draw from, I’d be golden.

  Sienna Vogel ranked last and the least dangerous in my estimation. She was only dangerous if she could draw you onto the astral plane, and I knew how to keep my feet firmly planted in the real world. Besides, she’d been too active in politics recently to take on something as dull as a protection gig.

  Which left Dominic Finch as the only other possible foe. He’d been the leader of our little band for many years. He’d meant the world to me once. Until he’d testified against me to the Trust and had my membership invalidated. At my trial, he’d been a character witness for the prosecution, and said I couldn’t be trusted.

  The pain of that betrayal still made my blood curdle. I couldn’t believe he’d taken Findlay’s word over mine. Sure, I’d been lying to my team and taking money for off-the-books hits, but they all had it coming. My throat closed off and I fought to draw in enough oxygen. We’d faced countless enemies together. I’d shed my blood for him. I’d have died for him, if it came right down to it. I tried not to think about him. Dominic drove me to drink and I was going to have cirrhosis before I turned thirty at this rate.

  After another ten minutes went by without so much as a stir, I forced myself to my feet. I wasn’t doing Catalina any good here, ruminating on my past. I was already itching for a drink, which was the last thing I needed before a client meeting.

  ***

  “It what?” I echoed, staring at the short, stocky man behind the information desk. He stared back and there was no pity in his dull, brown eyes when he handed me my credit card.

  “I’m afraid that your payment could not be made due to lack of sufficient funds,” he repeated. “Would you like to make out a check or should we bill you?”

  It felt like I’d swallowed an ice sculpture. I couldn’t breathe, and the terror made my stomach feel like it had frozen solid. No. No. This couldn’t be happening. I thought I’d allocated enough to that account to pay for this month’s expenses.

  Even if they billed me, it only left me about two weeks to come up with the cash I’d need to settle her account. After that, they’d discharge my sister. I knew that the staff at Fallen Oaks would disconnect her from the life-sustaining machines the moment that I couldn’t produce the money to pay them.

  I couldn’t conceive of a way that I could produce ten thousand dollars in only fourteen days without using magic. A soft insidious voice reminded me that I still had an option. I could still call on Algerone Lamonia. It wouldn’t take me fourteen days to kill that girl he wanted dead. There were so many reasons to give the vampire a call and only one reason not to: the childish belief that all my former kills, sanctioned by the Trust or otherwise, had been justified. I wouldn’t be killing with a badge or to make the world a better place this time. I’d be murdering someone in cold blood. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to live with myself if I did it, but then what did it matter? Without Cat, I was barely living anyway.

  “Bill me,” I said finally, turning away from the desk. I shoved the leather wallet into my back pocket, feeling strangely numb as I turned toward the double doors that led out into the parking lot. Only one thing could save Cat now; the unique skillset she’d never supported. For Cat to live, someone had to die. Luckily, I was great at killing people.

  chapter

  7

  I WAS CROSSING THE PARKING lot and halfway to my car when I caught sight of a group of boys just beyond the gate. Fallen Oaks was situated across from a Catholic school, which I’d always found a little ironic, since the church had done its best to purge magic from the world during the middle ages. I sometimes wondered if the founder of Fallen Oaks had set up his institution here just to be contrary. If so, I had to take my hat off to him. It was just the sort of spiteful gesture I could appreciate.

  Normally, the blazer-clad youth wouldn’t have caught my attention. They were full of the lazy arrogance that came with being at their physical peak, and scuffles between teenage boys with raging hormones weren’t uncommon. No, what caught my attention was the loping, predatory stride they’d adopted. The more men you added to a group, the stupider they became.

  There were four of them. The biggest was taller than me by about six inches. He was probably six foot even, with tousled brown hair and a thin mouth. He wore a varsity jacket and seemed to be spearheading the group. The next boy was short, with red hair and an overabundance of freckles. The last two appeared to be twins, with blonde hair and matching Cheshire grins. My eyes skimmed a little further along, and I finally spotted what they’d zeroed in on.

  The figure walking ahead of them was as thin as a rail. My gut instinct was the figure wearing a blue hoodie and too-large jeans was a girl. The sway of the hips was too distinctive to be male, even though she was doing her best to remain unobtrusive.

  “Hey!” the boy wearing the jacket shouted at her.

  The figure’s spine stiffened and she began to walk faster. The boys’ strides lengthened and they began to close the distance. I’d seen this song and dance too many times not to understand what was going on.

  My lip curled in disgust and I started walking toward the boys before reason could stop me.

  It was as easy as breathing, slipping back into that cold, clear headspace where morality and self-doubt disappeared. That place where only the objective mattered and all other concerns were secondary.

  I leaped the low fence surrounding Fallen Oaks and, after a quick glance to make sure there were no oncoming cars, I crossed the road, walking in the soft, stealthy way that Dominic had taught me all those years ago.

  I did a quick mental inventory of the weaponry I had on me, though I doubted I’d need it to deal with these punks. I had at least two knives stowed on my person, the makeshift wand, and a vial of vaporous darkness that I kept on hand, just in case of emergency. The mix was of my own invention and, despite countless years of trying, no one in the Trust had been able to replicate it. It was an effective smokescreen, but it could be quite toxic. It was a last resort, only to be used if I was absolutely certain I couldn’t fight my way out and even then, only if I had a gas mask handy.

  In all of my years, I’d only had to use it against one person.

  The boy in the jacket wrapped one long-fingered hand around the girl’s arm and yanked her to a stop. His entourage fanned out into a loose semi-circle behind him, leaving just enough space between them that they could catch the girl if she somehow managed to escape their leader.

  “I thought we told you to stay in that slum where you belong, bitch,” he drawled.

  The girl twisted in his grip and I finally got a good look at her face. She was pretty, in that girl-next-door kind of way. Her dark, sleek hair was pulled into two long braids. She had a full mouth, a long nose, and cheekbones most girls would kill for. The terror in her dark eyes spoiled
the look somewhat.

  “I wasn’t stopping I swear. I just want to get home. Please, let me go.” She tried to squirm out of his grasp, to no avail. His grip tightened on her upper arm and my pulse kicked into a higher gear when he withdrew a pocket knife from his red varsity jacket and flicked it open.

  “No, I don’t think I will,” he drawled, bringing the knife up so that the girl could get a good look at it. “I think I’m gonna teach you a lesson. Then you’ll learn to stay on your own side.”

  “Do it, John,” the redhead said, with a twisted hunger in his eyes.

  “Lay one finger on that girl,” I said, coming up behind them, “and I’ll break your wrist.”

  All four of the boys jumped. The tall one named John spun around, dragging the girl with him. She let out a whimper of pain.

  “Mind your own damn business,” he growled. “This doesn’t concern you.”

  “Does it make you feel like a big man, terrorizing a girl half your size?”

  John’s grip slackened around the girl’s arm and she cringed away from him. “Do you know what she is?”

  I shrugged. “No. And I don’t really care. Lay another finger on her and you’ll regret it.”

  It hadn’t escaped my notice that two of the boys had repositioned themselves to surround me. The leader shoved his way past them and brandished his knife at me. Big mistake.

  His slash was clumsy and slow. I had a feeling he was doing it to scare me and hadn’t actually planned to make contact. It didn’t matter. No one took a swing at me and got away with it. It was child’s play to seize his wrist and apply pressure, forcing his hand open. He let out a groan and the knife clattered from his grip.

  I probably should have taken the knife and left it at that. But I’d had a bad day and I wasn’t about to let go of this unexpected catharsis. When life hands you homicidal racist pieces of trash, you say thank you and beat them like a birthday piñata.