Dark Magic (Harbinger P.I. Book 3) Read online

  What I felt now wasn’t as strong and it didn’t feel like it was going to escape my body unless I let it. I had the feeling that if I stood still and breathed deeply a few times, the tingling would pass and the energy I felt in my hands would dissipate.

  But what would that prove? Something had been unlocked within me when I’d touched the statue of Hapi at the British Museum and I needed to know what it was. Controlling it and making it go away wouldn’t get me any closer to understanding what it was.

  I checked that I was alone in the alley and stepped back from the blue dumpster, deciding it would be as good a target as any. I flung my arms forward, palms facing the dumpster, and willed the energy to leave my body.

  The air in front of my hands crackled with bright green energy that formed itself into an intricate circle and glyph combination before becoming a streak of blinding green light that shot forward and hit the dumpster.

  I expected the dumpster to maybe crumple a little where it was hit but the force of the blast sent it tumbling end over end down the alley. The metal slammed onto the ground each time the dumpster touched down, the sound thundering off the walls of the surrounding buildings.

  After four revolutions, the dumpster skidded to a halt, upside-down and about thirty feet from its original location.

  I needed to get back to the office because if this was anything like the last time I’d fired a bolt of energy, I would soon lose all my strength. As I passed the door to the game store, it opened and Timothy poked his head out to see what the noise was.

  “Alec?” he asked. “What happened?”

  “Your boss is going to have to find a new place to smoke,” I said as I walked out of the alley.

  CHAPTER 5

  I felt fine when I got to the office but I remembered that after blasting DuMont, I’d had time to drive Mallory home and have a conversation with her before collapsing on the lawn. As I passed Felicity’s office, I stuck my head through the doorway, told her about my encounter with Wesley Jones, and said that he would be coming over later with the Sherry Westlake material.

  “No problem,” she said.

  “I’m going to go into my office for a while,” I said.

  “You said you had something here that would let me see those windows the same way you saw them. Can I have a look at the photos now?”

  “Sure, I don’t see why not.” Actually, I could think of a lot of reasons why not, one of them being that I might collapse from exhaustion at any time, but I felt good at the moment and I wanted Felicity to see the windows in their true form. I particularly wanted her to see the magic circle in the cliff scene because she might recognize it and bring us one step closer to discovering the type of magic that had been practiced at the church.

  She followed me into my office and I put my phone on the desk before rummaging in one of the drawers for something I had put in there along with numerous other small magical items. I found it at the back of the drawer and laid it on the desk next to the phone.

  Felicity recognized the flat round stone with a hole in its center. “A faerie stone,” she said. “I’ve heard about those. People used to use them to see faeries.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Looking through the hole in the center of the stone allows you to see through magical veils and glamors.” Switching on my phone, I found a photo of the first window, the one with the ritual on the cliff and the woman walking toward the sea. “Take a look,” I said to Felicity.

  She picked up the pale gray stone and removed her glasses, setting them down on my desk. Her dark eyes looked expectant. She loved things like this, seeing beyond the normal into a world beyond. Her study of languages and magical symbols was all about looking beyond the mundane world and finding something more.

  She held the faerie stone up to her right eye.

  “Try the left eye,” I told her. “According to the folklore, the left eye is better at seeing otherworldly things.”

  She switched the stone to her left eye and looked down at my phone through the hole in the stone’s center. When she gasped and stepped back slightly, I knew she’d seen beyond the glamor spell to the image that was actually on the window.

  “That’s horrible,” she said.

  “Do you see the magic circle?”

  “Yes, but I don’t recognize it at the moment. I’ll try to find out what exactly it is.”

  I flicked to a photo of the next window, the one with the dead robed figures on the beach.

  “Creepy,” Felicity said.

  I showed her the photo of the fire and the dancers in the woods. When she saw it, a look of revulsion crossed Felicity’s face. “Oh, my God, what is that in the trees? I can only see its eyes but that’s enough to scare me.”

  She lowered the stone and looked away, her eyes moving to the window and the clear blue sky beyond. “I don’t like this, Alec.”

  “Me neither,” I admitted. “I don’t know if the windows have been enchanted with some sort of terror spell or if the creature in those pictures is so bad that it causes a fear response.”

  “It’s horrible.” She looked down at my phone again and put the faerie stone to her eyes. “All right, show me the last one.”

  I found a photo of the bloody cave littered with bones and the eyes in the darkness. Felicity looked at it for a moment and then put the stone down. “I’ve seen enough. Basically, we’re dealing with a bloody scary monster.”

  “Yeah, looks like it.” I felt a sudden weakness in my legs and leaned against the desk. But as I did so, my arms became weak too and couldn’t support my weight. “Shit,” I murmured as I felt myself sinking to the floor. I tried to grab my chair but it rolled away and I went down, ending up on my back on the carpet.

  “Alec!” Felicity rushed around the desk and knelt by me, her face worried. “Should I get an ambulance?”

  “No,” I said weakly. “I’ll be fine in a minute. Help me get into the chair.” If I was going to spend a few minutes recovering, I’d rather do it sitting in my chair than lying on the floor.

  She nodded and put her arms under mine, helping me get to my knees before rolling the chair over to me. “Ready?” she asked. “On the count of three. One. Two. Three.” She heaved with all her strength and I pushed against the floor with legs that felt like strings of overcooked spaghetti.

  When I was in the chair, I said, “Thanks,” and sat there for a moment looking at the ceiling. This wasn’t as bad as when I’d been helpless on the lawn after blasting DuMont and I was sure I’d be okay in a couple of minutes.

  When I moved my gaze from the ceiling back to my desk, Felicity was sitting across from me in one of the client chairs, her glasses back on her face and a look that was a mix of concern and anger in her eyes. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” she asked.

  I sighed. She had a right to know. “Okay, but this is between you and me. I don’t want anyone else finding out about it, especially not the Society.”

  Felicity nodded. “Of course. You know you can trust me.”

  She was right, I did. “When I was fighting DuMont in the old cemetery, something weird happened. After Mallory destroyed the heart inside the Box of Midnight and took Rekhmire’s curse into herself, I was so angry and upset that I felt my emotions rising like a ball of energy inside me. Some sort of magical power entered my hands and I directed it at DuMont. It killed him. Later that night, after Mallory left, I collapsed on to the lawn, which was where you found me.”

  “And now you’ve collapsed again,” she said. “This isn’t good, Alec. What if it’s slowly draining you? What if…”

  I held up a weak hand to stop her. “This isn’t the result of the same blast. I used the magic again earlier on a dumpster.”

  “Well that was foolish,” she chided.

  “Yes, it probably was. But I need to know what’s happening to me and the only way I can do that is to experiment.”

  “And then later collapse? No, that isn’t a good plan. You could kill yourself
.”

  “How else am I going to know what’s happening?” I asked.

  “We can study it, find out where it comes from. In controlled conditions. And why not tell the Society? They’re experts in this kind of thing. They have people who can…”

  “No,” I said. “The Society is going through a close examination by the witches who run it in an attempt to flush out traitors belonging to a rival group. I’m not going to reveal this to anyone there. Besides, my father already knows about it.”

  “You told him?”

  “No, he’s somehow involved with taking away my memories of it. When I went to the British Museum, I thought the only memories I’d lost were the ones about Paris, the ones the satori took from me. But after I performed the ritual with the statue, it turned out that those were only minor. When the door in my mind was unlocked, I recovered some deeper, older memories of my childhood.”

  All of my strength had returned now. I stretched and flexed my muscles, testing them out. Good as new.

  “When I was a kid,” I told Felicity, “I used the magical blast on a bully. That memory was locked away, along with the memory of my mother’s death.”

  She frowned. “But your mother died in a car crash while you were at your aunt’s house. You remembered that before. You told me about it.”

  “That was a false memory. I was actually in the car with my mother and we were attacked. She told me to run for the trees and not look back. I did as she asked. She was murdered.”

  Felicity looked shocked. “I’m so sorry, Alec.”

  “There’s something else I remember now too. When I was still a child, my father took me to the Coven, the nine witches that formed the Society, and had them perform some sort of ritual on me so that I’d forget the magic I’d used on the bully and also to put a false memory of my mother’s death into my head.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Do you think he knows about your mother’s murder? Do you think he’s trying to cover something up?”

  I shook my head. “My father believes the story that my mother was killed in a car accident. He has no idea what really happened. I’m probably the only person who knows that she was murdered.”

  “You and the people who murdered her,” she added.

  “Yeah. I think my father took me to the Coven to wipe my memory of the magic inside me and the witches accidentally took the memory of the night my mother died too. Or maybe they did it on purpose. I don’t know.”

  Felicity shook her head slowly, her mind obviously trying to take in what I’d just told her. “But why would your father tell them to take away your memory of the magic?”

  “I don’t know. But he probably panicked after I came back from Paris because he knew the satori had been altering my memories. She might have opened that door in my mind by mistake. That’s probably why he sent you here to spy on me, to see if my memory of using the magic during my childhood returned.

  “As it turned out, the satori didn’t touch the magical door in my mind, even though she knew it was there, and I got the childhood memories back as a side-effect of trying to get my Paris memories back.”

  Felicity nodded. “So your father doesn’t know you have your magic power again.”

  “No, he doesn’t, and that’s the way I want to keep it for now.”

  “But you’ll have to speak to him about it eventually. He probably knows what it is and where it came from.”

  “I was hoping we could find that out ourselves,” I said. “This is the kind of thing you specialize in.”

  “I have to admit, I’m intrigued,” she said.

  “So let’s keep this between us for now. Agreed?”

  “All right.”

  The phone in her office rang and she went to answer it.

  I wondered if I should go and see the Blackwell sisters. It was they who had discovered that there was a magical locked door in my mind and found out that an enchantment had been cast on me. Maybe if I went to see them now, they could tell me if the door was now open and the enchantment gone. Like going back to a doctor after having treatment.

  Felicity called me from her office. I went in there and she handed the phone to me. “Sheriff Cantrell,” she whispered.

  “Sheriff, how can I help you?” I said into the phone.

  “Have you had time to look at that case file yet?” he asked gruffly.

  “I have,” I said. “There isn’t a lot of information in there.”

  “What about the drawings pinned to her wall? Don’t tell me you missed those.”

  “No, I saw them,” I assured him.

  “So what do you think? Was Deirdre crazy or was there a real monster?”

  “It’s difficult to say from a bunch of drawings, Sheriff. I need to investigate further.”

  “We need to investigate further,” he reminded me.

  “Yeah, that,” I said. “How about you take me to the place where her clothes were found?”

  “Okay, I can do that. I’ll pick you up…”

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “I have to prepare some stuff first. And can you bring the original drawings with you?”

  He huffed. “I suppose so. Do you really need them? It’s going to be a pain in the ass getting hold of them. They’re locked up in…”

  “I really need them,” I said. I didn’t feel guilty about putting Cantrell to the trouble of getting Deirdre’s drawings from whatever evidence room they were locked up in. I knew he was going to be riding my ass throughout this entire investigation so I might as well put difficulties in his way whenever I could.

  “Tomorrow at ten,” he said. “Be at the station and ready to go.”

  “Will do, Sheriff,” I said and hung up.

  “You’re working with the sheriff tomorrow?” Felicity asked.

  “Looks like it. If he can show me where Deirdre was standing by the lake, I might be able to get a fix on her with some enchanted items, but it was three years ago so I’m not really hopeful.”

  “What if you can’t pick anything up?”

  I shrugged. “Then I guess I’ll talk to Deirdre Summers’ daughter and try to find out if her mom showed any signs of magical possession before she disappeared. Or if she was connected with the church in Clara in any way.”

  “Send me those photos and I’ll work on trying to decipher that magic circle,” she said. “I’ll look at that circle made out of broken furniture too.”

  I sent her the photos. “Keep the faerie stone,” I said. “I have a few of them.”

  Her face brightened. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah, well, consider it a ‘welcome home’ gift. It’s good to have you back, Felicity.”

  “It’s good to be back,” she said. Then a flicker of sadness entered her eyes and she added, “Despite the way things ended up with Jason.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about that now,” I said, trying to cheer her up. “You know what? Why don’t we leave here early today and go over the case at my house, with pizza and beers?”

  She smiled. “Sounds good.”

  “As soon as Wesley Jones brings that box over, we’re done here. In the meantime, I’m going to pay our witchy neighbors a visit.”

  “The Blackwell sisters?”

  “Yeah, maybe they can tell me if the locked door in my mind is really gone. Give me a magical all-clear.”

  “All right. I’ll start on the magic circle research.” She went around the desk to her chair and sat down before tapping away on her computer keyboard.

  “See you later,” I said, leaving her office and heading down the stairs.

  When I got outside, I squinted against the sunlight reflecting from parked cars and store windows. It was a beautiful day, there was no doubt about that.

  I walked along Main Street toward Blackwell Books at an easy pace, taking in my surroundings, saying hello to people on the street who recognized me, and just enjoying the warm afternoon.

  The thought of kicking back with Felicity later over pizzas and beer lightened my mood. Ev
en the thought of working with Sheriff Cantrell tomorrow didn’t faze me.

  But when I got to the bookshop and was about to push through the door, something made me stop in my tracks. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled and I spun around, expecting to find someone standing right behind me. There was no one there.

  I looked up and down the street but, apart from the townsfolk walking along the sidewalk and enjoying the day, there was nobody else around. Nothing to be concerned about.

  Scanning the cars that drove along the street, I didn’t see anything that would set my senses on edge.

  Still watching the street, I opened the door of Blackwell Books and stepped inside, my good mood shattered.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Alec Harbinger,” Victoria Blackwell said from behind the counter as I entered the bookshop, “what a surprise!”

  “Is it really?” I asked.

  “Well, no, Devon did say something about you coming to visit us today. Still, it’s nice to see you. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  I looked around the shop to see if we were alone, but the stacks of books and the arrangement of the shelves made it impossible to know if there were any customers here or not, so I kept my voice low. “The last time I came, your sister discovered a magical door in my head and your rune amulet detected an enchantment on me.”

  She nodded, her long raven hair tumbling over her shoulders. The wildness of her hair contrasted against the Victorian black lace dress that she wore buttoned up to her chin. She could have worn that dress to any gathering in the nineteenth century and seemed like she was a part of polite society but that wild, unruly hair, untethered by pins or ribbons, would never do.

  “Of course I remember. We had tea in the back room and you brought your lovely friend with you. Mallory, I believe her name was?”

  I nodded, the memory of the foul herbal tea they had served making me grimace. “I’d like you and your sister to check me over again. I think I’ve opened the door and retrieved all of my memories but I want a second opinion.”