Page 66 of Magic of the Damned

No part of this was okay. And nothing in my voice made it seem that way. She had seen the violent underbelly of the supernatural world. She was an unwilling pawn in an attempt to assassinate me. This was so many shades of wrong, and I didn’t have the skill to make it out to be anything other than the massive clusterfuck that it was.

Her scream became a soft whimper against my hand as tears gathered in her eyes and spilled, wetting my hand. I knew the feeling.

Dominic was on the phone; I assumed requesting a cleanup. Who knows, maybe he was feeling a little peckish and was ordering a pizza.

“What’s going on?” Emoni breathed out in a weak voice once I removed my hand.

“It’s going to take a while to explain.”

“You can’t do it here,” whispered Peter, who had managed to sidle up next to Emoni, a protective hand on her back. I wasn’t happy to see him because he’d be another person pulled into the damage control process. I wasn’t sure what they’d do to him to clean up the situation. Whatever he witnessed hadn’t rattled him to the extent it had Emoni. Perhaps he missed the violence and display of magic and only saw Emoni’s response.

“Let’s get away from here,” he urged, still in a whisper, but it was enough to carry to Dominic, who was removing identifying information from the fallen assassins and looking at their faces as if committing them to memory. His head snapped up and he stood quickly, racing toward us at full speed.

Emoni and I looked back and forth, trying to make sense of it. Dominic’s face. It was twisted into a cruel and wrathful sneer. Emoni focused on the sphere of fire forming in Dominic’s hands. She missed the yellow illumination of magic and the innocuous mask fall from Peter, the Books and Brew book nerd. His eyes darkened several shades and the otherworldly feeling I had felt when ensorcelled by magic wafted from him. Feeling it again made me recognize there had been hints of it when I spoke to Jackson outside the store.

I whipped in his direction. “It’s you!” I moved back.

“I really didn’t want you to find out this way,” he admitted. His hand reached out to the air, smoothing the fire that Dominic had launched at him. When he returned an offensive-looking sphere of gray and white that looked like oxygen-siphoning magic, Dominic darted out of the way. Clearly, he wasn’t immune to Peter’s magic.

I grabbed Emoni’s hand, pulling her closer to me. And once she was next to me, I moved to put my body in front of hers. Peter wouldn’t kill me, but I wasn’t sure what he’d do to her.

The footsteps were barely audible. It was the whip of the sword through the air that announced Anand’s arrival. Peter grimaced, turned, and hurled a string of white illuminated magic at Anand. It smashed into him, sending him careening back several feet. Peter concentrated. The magic wove around Anand. His body relaxed to the ground, his breathing noticeably shallower. He was killing him.

Dominic’s claws were exposed on one hand, so he used the other to toss fire at Peter, ending with a rapid fire of magic pelts. Peter responded with disinterest, his hand reaching up and snuffing out the magic as if it were merely a nuisance.

Something pulled his focus. He grumbled his disdain, turned in my direction, smiled, and vanished. Reappearing behind Emoni, he whispered something, pressing his hand to her throat. She choked out a gasp before collapsing to the ground.

Flashing Dominic a taunting smile, he said, “You can’t save her and come after me.” Then he disappeared again.

Anand rolled to his side, lethargic but alive. He’d lost his grace of movement as he lumbered to his feet. “The repellent has been broken. It needs to be restored,” he told Dominic.

“It’s up again,” Madeline said from a few feet away, showing her dissatisfaction at the sight of me and Dominic.

Dominic didn’t care about her displeasure; he was debating whether to go after Peter and he wore the indecision on his face.

Cradling Emoni in my arms, I called out to him. “Help her,” I demanded, my words sharpened by my anger and his clinical assessment. He’d found the Dark Caster; he could go after him. She was one life lost to catch the big bad. “Now,” I snapped.

Reluctantly, he kneeled next to her. He examined her and frowned. Shaking his head, rage flooded from him.

“A necri,” he explained to Madeline.

Her face contorted to the same look of disgust and contempt. “It is used to simulate death. A difficult spell to perform and one of the few that are illegal with no exception.”

Peter wasn’t abiding by any of their rules, the very thing the Awakeners wanted the freedom to do.

Watching the unhurried and measured way in which Dominic undid the spell, I knew it was dangerous. Like defusing a bomb. I wasn’t sure how long it took. It felt like hours although it might have been minutes. My heart was beating so fast it had to be distracting.

When the veil of death lifted from Emoni, a silver light unwinding around her, she sat up. Apprehension filled her eyes. She attempted to scoot back away from us when Dominic called her name. It was an unearthly, captivating sound. Melodic. It wasn’t just Emoni being urged to hear its lure and respond.

Madeline stepped back, preoccupying herself with removing all signs of the assassination attempt. Her efficiency was a reminder that they did this all the time. Too many times.

Tears formed in my eyes, watching Emoni be bespelled, as Dominic manipulated her memories to make her believe she saw me today and we had coffee in Books and Brew. She then followed him to Café Intermezzo, where I was sure he’d manipulate more thoughts to explain her standing in front of the café.

The only solace I could find was that at least we knew the identity of the Dark Caster.

CHAPTER 20

Dominic watched me pace back and forth in the ridiculously sterile apartment that felt like a luxurious hospital. It lacked the warmth of a home. The gray wood floors, lifeless neutral walls, and light streaming in from the window all seemed so much harsher now. I knew the room hadn’t changed; I had. The world looked irreparably different.

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