SPELL TO UNBIND, A Read online

  Sure, Kincaid wouldn’t live out the day either, but that was little compensation given that I was probably going to die first. “Son of a bitch!” I hissed. I was totally backed into a corner. My only play was to agree. I hate being forced into anything, but this … this was bullshit.

  And then I had another thought. One that perhaps my own irritation hadn’t initially allowed me to consider. If I assisted Kincaid on his investigation into the murders of Grigori and his dinner guests, I might be able to use him to help me locate the egg. If the egg still existed, then I was certain the mystic who’d killed the members of Grigori’s dinner party had been after it, and he or she had stolen it upon exiting the premises. My only shot at locating it now was to perhaps stick close to Kincaid as we worked through the case and figured out who now had the egg and how I could steal it from them.

  The other plus was that I’d also have my freedom back, which would allow me the opportunity to keep up the pretense that I was still being a model employee for SPL. If word got back to Elric that I’d been picked up by the police, he might not think I was worth the extra time to locate the egg and dispense with me sooner rather than later.

  Turning back to Kincaid I said, “I’ll agree to mentor you and help with your investigation on three conditions.”

  A triumphant look sparked a gleam in Kincaid’s eyes. “And they are?”

  “One, you give me back my monocle and my scrap of metal and you never, ever mention them to anyone else. Two, you also don’t mention that I’m mentoring you. That’ll be done in total secrecy. You don’t tell your wife, your family, friends, or anyone else about it.”

  “Done,” he said. “What’s the third condition?”

  “You look the other way when I continue on with my career.”

  “You mean, as a thief.”

  “Yes.”

  “You ever steal from mortals?”

  “I do,” I said bluntly. It was rare, but on occasion I’d needed to poach some necessity from an unbound.

  “Then no deal.”

  I sighed. I was really beginning to dislike this man. “What if I promise not to steal from the unbound?”

  “You’d agree to rob only mystics?”

  “Yes. Unless it’s an absolute emergency, then yes.” As far as I knew, Elric didn’t poach from mortals, and I knew he looked down on those in his rank and file who did. He’d tolerate it, but only as long as it never brought his organization under the notice of law enforcement.

  “Whatever you take from them you’d have to pay back, Esmé,” Kincaid insisted.

  Sweet Jesus, this idiot was a stickler for details. “Agreed,” I said with an exasperated sigh.

  “Agreed,” he said.

  My fist warmed against his palm, and a sensation like liquid silk being wrapped around our hands snaked its way over my skin. The binding spell uniting our energies was already taking place.

  “Okay then,” I said when my fist began to cool. “Hand over my trinkets, and let’s hash out some details.”

  Chapter Six

  Day 1

  I got back to the warehouse just before 11 pm. Dex met me at the door, his face a mask of concern. “Ezzy,” he said in his most I’m-about-to-lecture-you voice. “Luv, they make these very handy instruments these days called cellular phones. Perhaps you’ve heard of them?”

  I kept my expression neutral. Experience had taught me that it was easier if I simply allowed Dex to vent, then apologized to him and got on with my life.

  My partner held up his smartphone and wiggled it at me. “They look a bit like this. Seem familiar?”

  I sighed. This was going to be a long one, and I had too much on my mind and my plate to deal with Dex’s irritation right now.

  “I was in jail,” I said simply, hoping he’d drop it.

  Dex opened his mouth, but no words came out. He seemed thoroughly confused. “How’d you get arrested?” he finally said.

  “The cop was bound.”

  Dex appeared even more taken aback. “You were arrested by a mystic?”

  “I was,” I said, breezing past him to the kitchen. I was famished.

  “Why on earth would a mystic join the police force?” Dex asked, trailing after me.

  After dropping my keys on the counter, I went to the fridge, pulled open the door, and peered inside.

  “Dunno, Dex. Maybe he was attracted to the low pay, long hours, and criminal element.”

  Behind me I heard the scrape of a barstool at the counter. Meanwhile, I reached for a plate of grilled chicken and felt Ember press against the backs of my legs.

  “A mystic cop,” Dex repeated, as if he could hardly believe it. “That’s unheard of. Unless of course he’s new. Is he new?”

  Bringing the chicken to the counter, I stroked Ember’s head and said, “I got the distinct impression he’s not new, but he is unmentored.”

  Dex blinked. “He’s not new and he’s unmentored? How the bloomin’ hell does that happen?”

  “Would you mentor a cop?”

  “Never,” Dex said. “Wouldn’t be able to trust him. He’s either using the post to line his pockets, or he’d use his badge to make trouble for us.”

  I nodded, withholding the worst news for a moment longer. “Still, he’s managed to figure out a few things,” I said casually. “There’re small things he’s learned about that only someone bound for a while would have heard. I get the feeling he’s been bound for at least a couple of decades, maybe longer. For whatever reason, though, he never aggressively sought out a mentor until now.”

  Dex cocked his head and eyed me critically. “Until now?”

  I offered Ember a piece of chicken. She took it gently from my fingertips and moved away to devour it. “Yeah. He wants me to mentor him.”

  “Ezzy,” Dex said softly. “Why don’t you look like you told him to buggar off?”

  I sighed again. “Because I agreed to do it.”

  Dex’s jaw dropped, and for several moments he simply stared at me. “What the bloomin’ hell did you do that for?”

  “Trust me, I had very little choice in the matter.”

  “How’s that?” he demanded.

  I took the next twenty minutes to tell Dex everything that’d happened from the time I’d entered Rasputin’s house to the conversation with Kincaid in his car.

  “Tic,” Dex spat when I was finished. “That crooked bastard set you up. And he’s been texting me all day wondering where you are.”

  At the mention of Tic’s name, I took a step back and covered my mouth with my hand. “Oh, my God! I forgot to stop the tick-tocks for Tic!”

  “Oh, let him twitch,” Dex said when I reached for my keys. “The little shit deserves it.”

  I shook my head. There was no way I was going to let Tic suffer any longer than he already had. By now he’d be a mass of involuntary shudders and twitches. He had to be in agony, and he’d likely been miserable for several hours. I then thought of something else and asked, “Did you retrieve the coin?”

  “It didn’t come back,” he said with a frown.

  “Son of a bitch,” I growled.

  “I bet Tic found it and he’s keeping it,” Dex said.

  I nodded. Of course he had. It’d been right next to hm when I left for Grigori’s.

  Hurrying to our trinket room off the kitchen, I said, “I’m just gonna grab another trinket or two and run over to Tic’s. Once I free him, I can force him to give up the coin.”

  Dex pointed a finger gun at me. “Good plan.”

  Grabbing two of my favorite trinkets, I said, “Did he text you where he is, Dex?”

  “His last text was a bit knackered. I think he’s at his girlfriend’s place.”

  I rolled my eyes. I hated Tic’s on again/off again girlfriend. “Thanks for holding down the fort,” I said to Dex, leaning in to give him a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Tic was a little hard to hunt down, his girlfriend lived in a section of town where all the apartm
ent buildings looked the same. Still, I finally managed to locate the right apartment and knocked urgently on her front door.

  “Holy shit!” she yelled when she opened it and saw me on her welcome mat. “Where the fuck have you been?!”

  “Bree,” I said calmly. “I take it he’s here?”

  She looked mad enough to kill me, and if she thought she could’ve taken me on, we both knew she would’ve. “In the bedroom,” she said through clenched teeth.

  I waited for her to back up into the apartment before I crossed her threshold. It was a risky maneuver because I wasn’t positive that Tic was actually there, and entering another mystic’s domain—even a lower-level one like Bree—was a dangerous endeavor on the best of days.

  Any mystic with a place of residence has the advantage of time to erect whatever traps they can think up, and while Bree was considerably less clever and less powerful than most, and definitely less skilled than me, she still wasn’t a person to underestimate. Her petty jealousies made her someone to handle warily.

  I was also at a disadvantage because I’d have to keep my monocle safely tucked away in my pocket. No one else could know that I had the little trinket. Not even someone as inconsequential to me as Bree. Motioning to her after crossing the threshold, I said, “After you, please.”

  She rolled her eyes and shut the door, then led the way through the kitchen, past the living room, and into the hallway leading to the bedroom.

  I could hear the rattle of something as we approached, and I braced myself for the hard truth of what I was about to see.

  Tic was lying on the king-size bed, his body splayed, his clothes soaked with sweat, and his face a contorted mask of agony.

  Every inch of him was in motion—shuddering, twitching, trembling, convulsing. His eyes roved the ceiling as if his mind were desperate to find a way out of his tortured body. The sight gave me a nanosecond’s pause before I moved past Bree to Tic’s ear and bent low.

  I was about to whisper the counterspell when I noticed that Bree had come up behind me, and she too was bent low. I stood up quickly and backed away from Tic, taking up a defensive stance as I did so. “Step away, Bree,” I said firmly.

  She glared hard at me. “Help him!”

  I pointed to the door. “Leave.” No damned way was I revealing any part of Tic’s spell to her. Even knowing the counterspell was a dangerous prospect for someone like Bree. Certainly, she could release Tic from the tremors if a day came when I set the spell in motion again, but she could also kidnap and imprison him in order to gain other information from him while he was twitching and vulnerable. And low-level Bree was someone fully capable of double-crossing her lover. She’d done it several times before, in fact.

  Bree stood her ground and crossed her arms. She wasn’t leaving, and I couldn’t help Tic with her in the room. It occurred to me that the couple might’ve currently been in the midst of a more “off again” arrangement than “on.”

  This put me in a dilemma, because Bree was clearly calling my bluff. I had a lot to lose by walking away. It wouldn’t be long before Tic’s mind succumbed to the pressures of the torture currently wracking his body.

  He seemed to understand this too, because his eyes shifted from me to Bree, and in between convulsions, his lip snarled. With significant effort he managed to gurgle out the word, “G-g-g-g-go!”

  Bree puffed out an annoyed bit of air before turning on her heel and stomping out of the bedroom. Reaching into my pocket, I took out a single die. It was yellow with age, and much of the black in the divots had long been rubbed clean. I’d often wondered what had happened to its twin, curious to know if it had also been infused with a magical energy, but the mystic I lifted it from was hardly going to tell me, especially since I was the thief who had seduced him and stolen his riches.

  Careful to hide the die in my palm and out of sight from Tic, I gave it a rub and pushed a bit of essence into it. There was a tiny charge of heat that sprouted from the die, which made its way up from my fingertips to the nape of my neck, then looped around to cover my lips. I bent my head to Tic’s ear, brushing my lips against his skin, confident that anything I said now would be for his ears only. As I opened my mouth to speak the counterspell, however, I felt a dramatic shift in the energy of the room.

  It was as if the hum of a thousand volts of electricity had just come alive all around us. Every hair on my body stood up on end, and goosebumps lined my arms. I lifted my face away from Tic’s ear to stare down at him. His eyes were impossibly wide. He’d felt it too.

  And he seemed terrified.

  I opened my mouth to ask him, “What the f—?”

  BOOM!

  The sound and force of the explosion was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I was launched forward with such frightening speed, I barely got my arms up in time to cushion the violent collision with Bree’s headboard. What followed was a pummeling of debris that rained at me sideways and down. I crumpled to the bed, my whole body vibrating with pain, and my back felt the sting of several dozen cuts from splintered material and broken glass.

  There was also a terrible ringing in my ears, which was so loud that it drowned out every other sound. My head throbbed in beat to the ringing, and my eyes were pinched shut from the shock and pain of the blast.

  And then something jerked beside me, and I opened one eye. Tic was leaning against me, his body in a ball, but sticking out of his chest, just under his right collarbone, was a splinter of wood that was frightfully thick. His face was more than a mask of pain; it was chaotically contorted—the epitome of agony. He twitched and seized, and the splinter in his chest shivered with each tremble.

  I realized as I watched him pant for air that I wasn’t. Breathing, that is. There was a convulsion as my lungs tried to collect oxygen, but nothing moved past my open mouth. The wind had been knocked right out of me, and my diaphragm was seizing—that much I knew from experience, but it did little to ease the ripple of panic that was starting to overtake my brain.

  Tic jerked again, and my other eye opened to see him lock onto my gaze, the plea reflected in the irises. He needed me to free him from the clutches of the curse, but without air, I could do little to help him.

  Closing both lids again, I fought back against the panic and did my best to ignore the insanely loud ringing in my ears. I called up the image of my father holding a small, fragile puppy. “I want to call her Ember,” I’d told him. And he’d smiled with such love and wonder in his eyes.

  It was the sweetest, clearest, most treasured memory I had. One of the very last one’s I’d had with him before he was murdered. The memory calmed me like nothing else, and after pulling it forward into my mind, only a moment or two passed before I felt my diaphragm release the seizure, and I was able to suck in a ragged breath. I took two more before I was able to stutter, “T-t-tick-tock, tick-t-t-tock,… stop … the … c-c-clock at … all Tic’s tocks!”

  When I opened my eyes again his body had stopped jerking and his face was less contorted, but he was quite obviously still in agony. I saw him try to speak, but if he made any sound, I couldn’t hear past the ringing, which had actually intensified since I’d started sucking oxygen again. The pain in my head was nauseating, and the world began to spin underneath my helpless form.

  I tried to lock my gaze on Tic again, hoping that would stop the spins, but it did little to help. And then I saw Tic lift up his head slightly to look toward the doorway as if he had seen a movement or heard a noise.

  I tried to lift my own head, but the world took another dizzying turn and I had to shut my eyes against it. Feebly I reached both hands forward and placed them flat against the mattress, swallowing back the bile threatening to escape my throat.

  A cold sweat broke out across my brow, and I knew I was starting to lose consciousness. No, no, no! my mind yelled. I had to stay alert; Tic appeared to be gravely wounded, and if he didn’t get help soon, I thought he might die.

  But the dizziness was overwhelming, and t
hat ringing sound in my ears was rattling my brain against the inside of my skull. I couldn’t think beyond it, the dizziness overpowering every one of my senses. Try as I might, I also couldn’t stop it, make it lessen, or battle against it. I began to sink into an abyss. It washed over me like an inky pond. I was drowning in it, and I couldn’t get out.

  And then, everything faded to black.

  I have no idea how much time had passed before I regained consciousness. I remember that the ringing in my ears had lessened by several degrees, and the world felt stable underneath me again. For a few seconds, I forgot where I was and what’d happened, and then it all came back to me in a rush and I jolted fully awake, pushing myself up from the mattress, my thoughts only of poor Tic.

  But when I opened my eyes, what I saw utterly confused me. Tic had been right next to me, pinned by a splinter of wood and bleeding profusely, but what I saw next to me wasn’t him. And I knew that by the fact that the torso was naked, but that’s all there was to it, just a woman’s naked torso. No head. No legs. And much of her left arm was gone.

  But the right arm held a tattoo of a two-headed serpent.

  “Holy shit!” I swore, scrambling away from what was left of Bree. I scrambled a little too hard though, and fell off the bed onto a pile of pillows. And thank God for that, because the last thing I needed was another hard surface to crash onto.

  Especially given how dizzy I still was. Placing a hand to my head, I sat there for the count of five before struggling to my feet and taking in my surroundings.

  The room looked like it’d been hit by a wrecking ball.

  Twice.

  There was debris and clothing and broken furniture everywhere. Somehow the bed had stayed in place and intact, but literally everything else in the room had been toppled over, broken, or strewn about the room.

  The other thing I noticed? Blood. Lots of blood. It was pooled on the bed, splattered on the walls, and had left a trail on the carpet. I leaned against the doorframe to the closet as I took it all in. And then I realized that much of my left side was covered in red as well.

  But other than the blood on the bed, which could at least partly be attributed to Tic, there was no sign of him.