Page 109 of Shield of Fire

“Maybe, but they are Myrkálfar, and it’s possible you’d not sense their magic anyway.”

Scott frowned. “Where’s the entrance?”

“Between the chimney breast and the wine bar’s entrance.”

“Checked it,” came a reply. “Didn’t find anything.”

“I’m sensitive to magic, and I’ve never been able to spot it, either.”

I’d once asked Halak why, and he’d explained that the magic was based more on a Myrkálfar’s natural ability to manipulate stone, with simple redirection and concealment spells woven in between. The presence of the former made the latter undetectable.

I strapped on my knives, then tugged the Eye from my neck and tucked it safely at the bottom of a knife sheath. Neither Halak nor Mkalkee might know what it was, but they’d always liked shiny things, and I wasn’t about to risk them taking it. Of course, they’d undoubtedly take my knives if they did somehow overwhelm me, but it was unlikely they’d be looking for anything else hidden in the sheaths. Externally, at least, there didn’t appear to be enough room in the sheaths for anything else.

I slipped their charm over my neck and let it sit against my chest. It felt familiar. Felt foul.

The foulness was new.

It meant their magic had changed. Darkened. Perhaps it was due to their use of the rubies, or perhaps it was always destined to darken simply because they were, in essence, beings of violence and darker needs. It also meant this charm might no longer work, even if its magic remained active.

My knives didn’t react to the presence of the charm, but maybe that was because it was designed as a key rather than a threat. If that changed—if, on entering their bunker, they somehow restructured the magic already inhabiting the charm—all bets would be off where the knives were concerned. Their energy echoed through the distant reaches of my mind, an intangible but dangerous force ready and waiting to be unleashed.

That was a new development, though it was possibly due to the knife tip pressing against the Eye. Direct contact between the individual items of the triune did seem to enhance the strength of all of them in general.

“Final signal check?” Sgott asked, glancing around at the blonde.

“Still strong and clear.”

Sgott nodded and touched my shoulder lightly. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Be careful. And yes, I know, you always are.”

A smile ghosted my lips. That had been Mom’s standard reply on the few rare occasions he’d said something to her.

“If I say his last name—which is Montraie, by the way—come a-running, all guns blazing.”

He nodded. I flexed my fingers in a vague effort to ease the gathering tension, then turned and headed back out.

The day felt colder than it had only a few minutes ago. Fear, rather than an actual drop in temperature, I knew. I gathered the air around my fingers and felt oddly safer for its presence. There wasn’t a storm on the horizon—the one I’d hidden the shield in had already moved out to sea—but even still air could be used as a weapon if I gathered enough of it.

And I seriously hoped that wasn’t a forewarning.

I walked under Northgate’s arch. The lane on the left wasn’t particularly long, and it was dominated by the stone steps that ran up the side of the old wall to the top walkway. Down the far end was a small wine bar, its window frames and door painted a bright yellow, no doubt to draw attention to its existence. Six wooden tables with bench seating lined the steps on the right and, on the left was a blue-painted double-glass door and a chimney breast. The hidden door lay to the left of this, in the three-foot gap between it and the wine bar’s bright entrance.

The end building had been empty over the three years I’d used the secret entrance, but I doubted it becoming a wine bar would have worried them. In fact, they undoubtedly enjoyed the extra layer of risk it offered.

I flexed my fingers again, resisted the urge to draw a knife, and then strolled down to the end of the lane. I didn’t immediately approach the entrance, instead leaning back against a table and pretending to study my phone while I surreptitiously looked for any hint of magic. New magic, not old.

Nothing.

No surprise, given Sgott’s people hadn’t found anything, either.

I shoved my phone into my jeans’ pocket and, after a quick glance around to ensure no passersby were paying me any attention, stepped toward the wall. The token came to life, its touch burning my chest with its foulness. I resisted the urge to rip it off and took comfort in the fact that the knives remained inactive, though not inert. Their pulse in the back of my mind had sharpened.

I was a foot away from the wall and contemplating stopping before I smacked into it when there was a subtle shimmer across the bricks. Then they faded away, revealing a narrow set of stone stairs that plunged into deeper darkness.

A darkness that smelled faintly of patchouli.

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