Final Magic (Harbinger P.I. Book 11)
Final Magic
Harbinger PI Book 11
Adam J Wright
Contents
The Harbinger PI Series
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Skeleton Key - Harbinger Academy Book 1
The Harbinger PI Series
LOST SOUL
BURIED MEMORY
DARK MAGIC
DEAD GROUND
SHADOW LAND
MIDNIGHT BLOOD
TWILIGHT HEART
FAERIE STORM
NIGHT HUNT
GRAVE NIGHT
FINAL MAGIC
Chapter 1
I parked my Land Rover in the usual spot in the little parking lot behind the Main Street stores. As I got out of the vehicle, I put my shades on.
It was a hot summer’s day in Dearmont, and even though my flannel shirts had been relegated to the back of the closet and I was wearing nothing more than a thin, blue cotton T-shirt and jeans, as soon as I stepped out of the air-conditioned Land Rover, the balmy morning air hit me and I started to sweat.
Instead of heading for the Harbinger PI office, I strolled in the opposite direction down Main Street. The PI business was all but dead now that there was no magic in the world.
Sure, we got the odd would-be client wandering into the building. A man who was sure his cheating wife was possessed. A woman who thought her dog might be barking Satanic messages at night. A newlywed couple who believed their marriage had been cursed by the bride’s ex-partner, who was “into witchcraft.”
But we knew without a doubt that their problems weren’t caused by anything preternatural. There were no demons, or witchy curses, or dogs who had become Lucifer’s canine messaging service.
There was nothing like that anymore.
Carlton gently turned these people away and told them we couldn’t help with their particular cases. In some cases, he directed them to a professional that might be able to offer assistance, like mental health professionals and marriage guidance counselors.
Other than keeping the office barely ticking over, Carlton spent most of his time working with me at Blackwell Books, the bookshop I’d become caretaker of while the Blackwell sisters were away.
Five months had passed since the Earthly realm had been sealed off from all the others, and although there were less threats in the world now, many of my friends were on the academy realm, beyond an impenetrable barrier. I missed them terribly.
In a weird way, I also missed the fact that creatures could sneak into this realm from Shadow Land, or people from here could be captured by the fae and taken to Faerie.
My job had been to protect humans from such occurrences so, in theory, I should be glad that we were now sealed off from the other realms—especially those two. But without people to save, my purpose in life was gone.
Running a bookshop kept my days busy but it wasn’t really me, as least not in the long term. I missed the excitement, the action, the danger.
I got to the shop and used my key to unlock the door. Inside, the smell of old books and decades of incense hung in the air. I switched on the lights and they flickered to life, illuminating the maze of shelves and stacks.
Taking off my shades, I flipped the sign on the door so that the Come in, We’re Open side pointed out at the street, and did a quick walkthrough of the store.
As I walked among the shelves, I straightened the books, arranged the curios, like the skull candles and incense burners, and rearranged the reading chairs which sat in various places throughout the store.
Sometimes, customers pulled the furniture around to sit next to their friends, or move to a better lit spot beneath a window. I put everything back in its proper place, knowing it would probably be moved later in the day.
As I passed the backroom, I opened the door and stuck my head inside. This was the place where the Blackwell sisters had cast their teleportation spell, sending me and my friends to far flung corners of the globe. The air still held the familiar smell of the incense the sisters had used to activate the spell.
The days of being sent on an adventure from this room were gone. I sighed wistfully and closed the door.
The bell above the door jingled and Carlton came into the shop, a look of excitement on his face. His eyes darted around the counter area in search of me. “Alec? You here?”
“I’m here,” I said, walking back through the stacks to the front of the shop. “What’s up?”
“I have a great idea. I know how we can drum up more business for the store.”
I sometimes wondered if Carlton was happier working in the bookstore than he had been in his role as a PI’s assistant. He was averse to danger—although I’d seen him swallow that down at times and face danger head on—and seemed happier now that we were sealed from those other realms where danger lurked.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“We re-open the coffee shop.”
The coffee shop upstairs—where Devon had been selling enchanted coffee—was no longer open. I’d closed the area off for now, until I could figure out a use for it.
Running a coffee shop in the store might have been easy for Devon and Victoria, but the day-to-day running of the bookstore took all our time, and we didn’t have enough latitude to operate a coffee shop as well.
Carlton and I had already discussed the matter, so I wasn’t sure why he was revisiting it now.
“We talked about this, Carlton.”
“I know, but think about it; we’d have more customers, this place could become a social hub for the townsfolk, and the air in here would smell of coffee instead of old incense and dust.”
“I don’t know. We’d have to hire someone—“
“And I know just the person.”
I frowned at him. “Who do you have in mind?”
“My niece.”
“What?” I didn’t even know Carlton had a niece.
“My sister’s kid. Jocelyn. She’s coming to stay with us for the summer and I thought that if she worked here, she wouldn’t get bored—being in a small town and all—and she’d earn some money. Julia will be so pleased.”
“Julia?”
“My sister. She and her husband Derek are going through a rough patch at the moment, so she asked if Jocelyn could come and stay with Muriel and me while they work things out.”
“I don’t know, Carlton. Has she ever worked in a coffee chop before?”
“She worked at Starbucks last year as a barista. She’s perfect for the job.”
I looked over at the stairs that led up to the locked door that had once been Devon’s coffee shop. A sign that read Coffee This Way still hung on the wall at the foot of the stairs and customers had sometimes asked me if we served coffee.
It wouldn’t do the business any harm to have a coffee shop again. And Carlton was right; if his niece was going to spend the summer here without something to occupy her time she was going to get bored fast. With a lack of magical creatures, Dearmont had become everything I’d thought it was when I’d first moved here: a sleepy town where nothing happened.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll try it out. Jocelyn can work in the coffee shop. She’s a conscientious wo
rker, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then we’ll see how it goes.”
“Great! She arrives tomorrow. I’ll bring her to the store when she gets here.”
“You might want to give her a chance to get her bearings, first. If there’s trouble at home, and she’s coming to a place she’s never been before, she might not want to be thrown behind a coffee machine the moment she arrives.”
He nodded. “Yeah, of course. Good thinking, Alec. Besides, Muriel and I haven’t seen Jocelyn in a while, so it might be good for her to get to know us.” He paused and said half to himself, “Maybe I should take a couple of days off work to show her around.”
“Sounds like a great idea,” I said. “We’re not exactly snowed under here, and the PI office is all but dead.”
After this realm had been sealed from the others, there had been a line of people outside the office who were sighting “strange creatures” on their property and around town.
Those creatures had been denizens of Shadow Land, left behind after the sealing. As suddenly as they’d appeared, they’d vanished. I had no idea where they’d gone, but as long as they didn’t bother the residents of Dearmont, they weren’t my problem.
The Society of Shadows was still paying me a salary, even though I—like all the other PIs—had no work to do. I wasn’t sure how long that situation was going to last.
If one of those Shadow Land creatures ever crossed my path, I’d hunt it down and kill it—using mundane weapons, of course, since my enchanted swords were no longer enchanted—but other than that, my PI work was a thing of the past.
For now, this bookstore was my domain.
“Take a couple of days,” I told Carlton. More if you need to.”
“I think two days will be more than enough. There isn’t exactly a lot that Muriel and I can show her.”
“Darla’s Diner is a must-see.”
“Of course. And the lake, I guess. But other than that, what else is there around here?”
“Where is Jocelyn from?”
“Seattle. Julia and Derek moved there years ago.”
“So she’ll probably find Dearmont rural and quaint. This place has a certain charm.”
“Yeah, I guess so. It’s just that after all those things we did, all the creatures we encountered, don’t you think this place has become…boring?”
“I can’t argue with that,” I said, truthfully.
The bell jangled and two men entered the store. Despite the heat, they were wearing dark suits. One had thinning fair hair and looked like he was in his fifties. The other had a mop of black hair and looked much younger.
“Mr Harbinger,” the older one said, nodding to me. He looked at Carlton and nodded again, “Mr Carmichael.”
“Who are you?” I asked. My magical warning tattoos were now defunct, but I didn’t need them to tell me that these two guys weren’t here to buy books.
“We’re from the Society,” the older guy said, showing a laminated ID card. Next to his photo were the words Mysterium Import & Export, the name the Society used in public.
“The Society has ID cards now?” Carlton asked.
“Since the magical ID system is now non-operational, we have to resort to more traditional methods, Mr Carmichael,” the older guy said.
He turned his attention back to me. “I’m Agent Feldman and this is my associate Agent Hope. Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”
“There’s no one else in the shop,” I told him.
“Someone could come in,” Hope said. “To buy a book.”
“Carlton, could you lock the door, please?” I said.
Carlton went to the door and flipped the sign to Closed. He locked the door.
“So, gentlemen,” I said, “how can I help you?”
“We’ve been reading the report of your mission to Egypt,” Feldman said. “The Rekhmire incident.”
The report he was referring to was the result of a debriefing interview the Society had carried out before flying me, Leon, Michael, and Sheriff Cantrell back home from Egypt. Unlike the debriefing I’d been forced to endure after visiting Paris some time ago, there was no Truth Collar involved, since Truth Collars didn’t work anymore.
And almost every word I’d told them had been a lie.
The Society didn’t know that I—or rather the Melandra Codex, which had been etched into my bones—had caused a blast of anti-magic to encompass the globe. The blast had only lasted a split second, but that had been long enough to turn off magic forever.
“The Rekhmire incident,” I said, repeating his words. “What about it?”
“Some things don’t add up,” Hope said.
“Like why you were in Egypt in the first place.” Feldman raised a questioning eyebrow.
“I saw what was happening on the News, and I went over there to see if I could help in any way.”
The questioning eyebrow arched even further up Feldman’s forehead. “Yeah, that’s what the report says. But why you, Harbinger? You’re just a small town PI. Why would you go all the way to Egypt to fight Rekhmire?”
“I guess I had nothing better to do. Fighting Rekhmire seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“And then this explosion of anti-magic—an explosion so powerful that it sends shock waves all around the world—just comes out of nowhere?” Feldman looked incredulous, an expression aided by the fact that his other eyebrow had also arched higher up onto his forehead.
“Like I said, we were in the pyramid and it came out of nowhere, a big blast of power that destroyed Rekhmire and his crew.”
“Okay,” Feldman said, nodding slowly and scrutinizing me. “Let’s say that’s what happened. Where do you think that anti-magic came from?”
I shrugged. “Rekhmire was drawing a lot of power to make his pyramid rise out of the sand like that. Maybe his spell glitched and the whole thing backfired.”
“And took away all the magic in the world?” Hope said. It was his turn to look incredulous. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, if you find the answer, let me know.”
Feldman jabbed a finger at the air between us. “I think you know the answer, Harbinger. You know more than what you put in that report.”
“And if you know how magic got switched off,” Hope added, “you need to tell us so we can switch it on again.”
“If I knew that, don’t you think I’d tell you? You think I want to work in a bookshop instead of my PI office? If you think I know how to get magic back but I’m not telling, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“Okay, okay.” Feldman raised his hands in mock surrender. “We get it; you’re sticking to your story. If you change your mind, this is my number.” He dug a business card out of his suit jacket pocket and handed it to me.
“We’re staying at the Lake Motel for a few days,” Hope said. “So we’re easy to reach. You might even see us around town.”
“You’re staying in Dearmont?” Carlton said. “Why?”
“We just thought we’d stick around for a while. We’d like to know why a small town like Dearmont—barely a pinprick on the state map—had such a high occurrence of preternatural activity.”
“And how the PI from this town,” Feldman said, looking at me, “ends up slugging it out with an ancient Egyptian priest in a pyramid halfway across the world.”
“Surely none of that means anything anymore,” I said. “Magic is gone. Those days are over.”
“It’s gone for now.” Feldman jabbed at the air again. “The Society believes it will be back. This is all temporary.”
“There’s a prophecy,” Hope added. “It says magic disappears for a while, but then it comes back. And when it does, the portals between this realm and the others are ripped open even wider than they were before.”
“So we need to be ready for that,” Feldman said.
“Then maybe you should be preparing for that eventuality instead of snooping around Dearmont,” I suggested.
“You’re not going to get rid of us that easily. I have a hunch about this small town of yours. There’s more here than meets the eye. If we kick enough rocks over, we’ll uncover some secrets.”
“Well, good luck with that.”
They both scrutinized Carlton and me for a second longer, then turned on their heels and went to the door. Hope unlocked it and went out into the street.
Feldman flipped the sign on the door. “In case you want to sell a few books,” he said. He looked around the interior of the store, guffawed, and left.
“What the hell are they up to?” Carlton said.
“I don’t know.” I watched through the window as the two Society agents walked down Main Street toward the police station. “But it isn’t anything good.”
Chapter 2
It was late afternoon when Sheriff Cantrell came lumbering through the door and into the bookshop. He spied me halfway down one of the aisles, putting a selection of new Wicca books on the shelf, and lumbered toward me like an angry bear. “Harbinger!”
“Sheriff, how can I help you?”
“You can tell me why two men from that Society of yours have been in the police station asking questions.”
“Feldman and Hope?”
“Yes, Feldman and Hope. What the hell are they doing in Dearmont and why are they asking questions?”
From the way Cantrell spoke to me, you’d never believe I’d saved him from an ice prison on another dimension, but the sheriff couldn’t remember any of that.
As far as he was concerned, it was my fault that Merlin had been here in the first place, and, therefore, my fault that the ancient wizard had done a body swap number on him.
“I don’t know why they’re here,” I told him. “What did you tell them?”