SPELL TO UNBIND, A Page 5

  At last he gave a soft pat to my hand, which was still on his arm, and said, “Keep your eyes open and me in the loop.”

  I beamed at him. “Don’t I always?”

  “No, and by that, I mean, never.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’ll call. Promise.”

  “I’ll make sure I’m sitting down when the call comes in,” he said. “The shock’s likely to keel me over.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said flatly, already heading toward the stairs.

  Jogging down them, I was so thankful for my magical pup. Sure, I was still a little sore in places, but at least every step wasn’t sheer agony. Plus, Tic wasn’t anyone you’d want to meet on an off day. I’d need to rely heavily on both my wits and agility if past encounters with him were any predictor. The hard part was going to be getting the jump on him; if I didn’t, he’d go into hiding and I’d have a helluva time finding him again.

  Grabbing a protein bar and a bottle of coffee-flavored almond milk on my way out the door, I paused only to assess the arsenal of magical trinkets I might need. After selecting just a few items, I left to hunt down my source.

  Chapter Three

  Day 1

  Like all mystics, Tic has a compulsive personality. I think it must be something that happens in the binding process because we’re all the same in that. Each and every one of us is addicted to something. Sometimes we’re addicted to several things.

  Most of the mystics I know are addicted to gambling. It’s safer than drugs, of course, but if you’re going to live longer than a few years as a mystic, then drugs and/or alcohol are not the compulsion to have. Any newbie mystic that becomes addicted to intoxicants winds up overdosing within the first few months. The compulsion to use can be even more consuming than the actual addiction.

  Somehow I’d managed to avoid the more troublesome vices, although admittedly I’m a very good gambler, I still never developed an actual compulsion for it.

  My vice is exercise. I work out religiously sometimes for hours a day. I do a mix of cross-training and martial arts, with the occasional run thrown in.

  Dex has the same compulsion, thank God. It’s nice to have a companion in the gym who doesn’t think it’s freakish to work out for two to three hours straight.

  Truth be told though, there’re a fair number of us out there who get addicted to the gym. It’s an absolute must for anyone thinking about trying out for the Mystic Games. And for the role of thief, being in top physical shape should be a job requirement because you’ve got to be fast, strong, nimble, and at times, able to endure considerable discomfort.

  But some thieves aren’t willing to do the work, and they get by on tricks and sleight of hand. Tic is one of those people, and he makes more money trading information for a cut of the take than he makes trying to pilfer anything away from a fellow mystic.

  When he steals or gambles with the unbound, he cheats by using an assortment of spells that don’t require much talent, or even finesse, which is what I figured he was doing at the park playing speed chess with a guy who looked to be in his seventies. The older gentleman didn’t appear to be the kind of person who had a lot of cash to spare on a bet against Tic, who, in turn, looked like he had money to burn.

  Tic is a pretty stylish guy—a total clotheshorse, he’s enamored with the idea of reinventing himself every few weeks by wearing a different stereotype. Today he was dressed like a posh member of the British elite, in a charcoal blazer with matching silk slacks, leather loafers, maroon dress shirt, and a silver ascot. He’d also grown a beard and mustache, which gave his long face an intriguing quality.

  I’m not really attracted to him, which is a relief because there are times when I’m forced to do some particularly mean things to Tic. But he almost always has it coming. Almost.

  He’s a nervous guy, as are most mystics, especially the less-powerful ones, and Tic is definitely in the less-powerful category.

  But he knows things, and he sees things, and he’s been a convenient source of information for me over the years. I was hoping today was going to be the day our association really paid off, but I had to be careful, because I was positive Tic had heard that I’d applied for the job at SPL, and he very likely also knew that, because I was still alive, I’d gotten the job, and as the newest agent of SPL, fencing stolen trinkets wasn’t something I was allowed to do anymore.

  So, if he saw me coming, he’d know I’d be looking to him for info about the egg, and that I wouldn’t think twice about forcing its location out of him without the promise of something for him in return.

  True, he’d come to me first with the tip about the egg two days before my interview with Elric and his underlings, and of course I hadn’t told Tic I’d applied at SPL, and that was all fairly deceitful, but deceit is a requirement for surviving in the mystic world. It’s how I’ve made my living all these years, after all.

  For sure, Tic could easily consult another mystic about a deal for the egg, and I had no doubt he would—it’s worth a king’s fortune if it were retrieved in good condition and had at least one life left in it. I, on the other hand, being cash poor at the moment, wouldn’t be able to pay Tic anything up front—something he hated—and even after retrieving the prize, I’d be able to offer him only a tiny fraction of what he might be able to earn otherwise. Which was all the more reason for him to take off at a sprint the second he saw me.

  Lucky me I had a trinket in my pocket in the form of a rare gold coin that allowed me to approach him head-on without him being any wiser. I simply had to activate the coin using a bit of my essence and approach Tic head-on.

  All trinkets require a bit of a mystic’s essence—our energy—to become activated. Some require a little something extra, such as a twist or a turn or a click, but many can simply be activated by willing some of our energy into the core of the trinket.

  The way it works is that, basically, when we’re bound, our physiology changes. The electromagnetic current that all living beings generate—some people call this an aura—gets energized like a thousand percent. Once we’re bound, we’re able to activate that current in ways that help us live longer, recover from injury faster, and turn everyday objects into magical devices—or trinkets.

  Most trinkets are small and can fit in your pocket. Most are also made of metal, but quite a few are made of glass or other natural materials such as crystals, gems, and even wood.

  Plastic doesn’t hold a current, like, at all, so it’s the one material almost nobody uses.

  Now, most mystics are able to create trinkets, but it takes a lot out of us—especially if we want a prized trinket that can allow us to do fairly impossible things. So, being the lazy schmucks that we are, we like to steal the good ones and pump only a little bit of our essence into them anytime we need to use them.

  The most prized trinkets—those that’re already infused with a significant amount of power—are in turn collected by the most powerful among us. These are the trinkets that can actually enhance and amplify our individual essences. Elric and Petra have both spent millennia collecting a treasure trove of the world’s most powerful trinkets.

  And even though their coffers are filled with all sorts of magical goodies, Elric and Petra still don’t have the power to pump out a trinket worth risking your life to steal.

  Those trinkets are crafted by a special and exceptionally rare group of mystics. So special and so rare that there’ve been only a few dozen in all the history of our magical world.

  These mystics are named after the most legendary of their kind: Merlin the Enchanter.

  Upon their binding, merlins don’t simply have an electromagnetic current that’s a thousand times normal. They have a current that is a hundred thousand times normal.

  In other words, what these merlins are able to do that no other mystics can is harness the electromagnetic current that hums among every living being on the planet, and direct a portion of that current into an object that gives it magical properties.

  It was
one such merlin who created Grigori’s egg. Peter Carl Fabergé was a merlin of amazing talent and ability. He enchanted thousands of trinkets with a wide range of magical powers, but he was unique even among merlins because he was also able to bind a couple of mortals and turn them into merlins too.

  That’d never been done before, but both Mikhail Perkhin and Henrik Wigström—two once-mortal craftsmen that Peter bound and who worked in the Russian Fabergé’s trinket shop—could definitely kick out some incredibly powerful toys and were made rich, rich, rich for it.

  But the story doesn’t have a happy ending. Fabergé was killed by Petra’s brother in a dispute over Fabergé’s refusal to create a merlin just for him—his own personal slave.

  After Fabergé’s death, Mikhail and Henrik went into hiding, and no new trinkets bearing their signature have come to market in the hundred years since.

  Still, the three of them left behind an absolute treasure trove of trinkets that were highly sought out on the black market, and I’d made a killing as a thief over the decades stealing and fencing their creations.

  Thieving is an art that takes great skill, because not only can most mystics turn deadly when faced with losing one of their most prized possessions, but trinkets themselves can also be infused with other protective powers on top of the ones that are at their core’s purpose. These are usually protective spells which, in theory, would prevent a thief like me from either taking them or using them after I’d stolen them. And that’s where Dex comes in.

  My second is a master in deactivating protective spells—especially the ones that pack a punch. He simply absorbs the blow and figures out how to strip down the trinket to its core purpose. We then put our own layer of protection on the trinket so that it can’t be easily stolen back.

  The coin in my pocket is a good example of this. It’d been a hard-won prize for me because the mystic I’d taken it from had been clever and quick.

  Once I’d managed to steal it, however, I’d nearly lost it three times on the way back to the Paris apartment I shared back then with Dex. The coin had been layered with more than one comeback spell—a spell that would return it to its rightful owner—and I’d had a hell of a time holding onto the damn thing in the two miles it’d taken to hike it back home.

  The moment I came through the door I’d handed it over to Dex, and he’d gotten to work, managing to use his own essence to strip the coin of the three comeback spells, but the second he’d stripped those off, the damn thing had surprised us both by having a fourth layer of protection that’d punched Dex clear across the room. Poor guy. Luckily he’d shaken it off and managed to strip the coin down bare, and it’d become an immensely useful tool for us for almost twenty years.

  I’d only put it in storage when I’d gotten my mitts on the ballpoint pen that I’d had to cough up to Sequoya. So, after discovering Tic playing chess in the park, I was relieved to feel the warmth of the coin beginning to work its magic in my palm.

  Once the heat had spread through me, I made my way across the park, moving steadily toward Tic until I was about fifteen feet away from him, and that’s when I heard the sound of running feet charging toward me from behind. Without thinking, I dropped low to the ground and spun in a tight circle while extending one foot, sweeping it under my attacker and tripping him. He went down with a loud, rather unmanly shout, just as something else flickered into my peripheral vision.

  Launching upward, I leaned back and raised my extended foot high, knocking a brown, oblong object right out of the air that would’ve otherwise hit me hard in the head.

  Standing tall again, I realized that the man I’d tripped had been running to catch a football, thrown by another man a good twenty meters away who was looking in my direction with no small measure of confusion.

  “Dammit!” I muttered, whipping my head around to see if Tic had noticed the commotion.

  Of course he had, and I growled low in my throat when I saw him get to his feet and stare right at me. I knew he couldn’t see me, but he could see the man I’d tripped now trying to pick himself up. Tic moved his gaze between the guy getting to his feet and that man’s buddy who was squinting oddly in our direction, as if he couldn’t understand what had tripped his friend up.

  Focusing back on Tic, I saw that he was wise to me, because he was now turning his head to the side. He’d spot me for sure in his peripheral vision, so I did the only thing I could: I began to sprint toward him as fast as I could.

  He saw me coming when I was just five feet away, and he took off like a rocket. He got probably ten paces before I tackled him to the ground, throwing him hard onto his side before rolling him over to his back. I had to scramble to pin down his arms before he could shove the special earplugs he’d created into his ears. Once those were in, he’d be deaf for at least a week.

  “Stop it!” he shouted. “Get off me, Esmé!”

  “Hiya, Tic,” I replied. “Or should I say, tick-tock, tick-tock, big hand on the clock starts the tics and lets them toc, tick-tock, tic-toc, one tick-tock.”

  The second I finished the little rhyme, Tic went completely limp except for the tiny tic of his now glaring right eye. “You stupid bitch.”

  “Hey!” I heard behind me. Chancing a look over my shoulder, I saw the young guy who’d thrown the ball my way approaching us cautiously. “Are you guys just playin’? Or do I need to call the cops?”

  “Call the cops!” Tic yelled.

  I frowned at Tic first, then at the guy approaching. Why could he see me? And then I noticed the gold coin had come out of my jacket pocket when I’d tackled Tic, and it was lying on the ground about five feet away. Getting to my feet, I reached down to haul up Tic and moved both of us strategically over to the coin, hiding it with my boot. Its magical effect was no longer functioning, of course. Once it’d broken contact with my energy, the coin had gone back to neutral, but I sure as hell didn’t want the stranger approaching us to see it and think about playing a game of finders keepers with me.

  Facing the stranger while holding firmly to Tic, I said, “We’re just playing. Right, Tic?”

  Tic became stubbornly silent. Perhaps he needed a little encouragement. “I’m waiting,” I whispered into his ear. “Much like you’ll be doing for an extra hour or two if you don’t go along with me on this.”

  “We’re cool,” he said stiffly.

  For a moment, the stranger simply stared at us, unsure what to do, but then a sort of dopey smile came over his face, and he began to give me the up-down. When his eyes met mine again, I knew he liked what he saw. “Whoa,” he said. “You’re freaking gorgeous!”

  Poor guy didn’t yet understand that he had no chance with me because I wasn’t even remotely attracted to him. And that told me he was probably a decent enough man.

  “Go,” I said, pointing back to his friend and making sure my tone left no room for either flirtation or argument.

  He seemed confused by the cold shoulder and went with ignoring the hint. “Feel like hanging out later?”

  Mentally I rolled my eyes. Why was it always when I had no time for this kind of crap that it always came up? Taking a calming breath, I pushed a smile to my lips. “Okay, sure. Name the place and I’ll meet you.”

  “Yeah?” he asked. I nodded. “Cool. How about Bulldog’s in Georgetown?”

  “I know it well. Meet you there around seven.”

  “Awesome!” he said with a little too much enthusiasm. Catching himself, he cleared his throat and added, “I mean… yeah. That’d be good.”

  A slightly awkward silence followed until I made an impatient waving motion and he finally seemed to get the hint. “Uh, okay, see you later then.”

  I waited until he moved off before focusing back on Tic. “Are you going to come along peacefully? Or do I have to resort to more physical motivation?”

  Tic didn’t answer. Instead he stood there glowering at me, and I had no doubt he was mentally weighing his options.

  “Tick-tock, tick-tock, big hand ti
cks one more tock,” I sang.

  Immediately Tic’s right pinkie began to twitch, and the ticking of his right eye continued to pulse. I looked pointedly at Tic’s little finger and shrugged.

  Tic’s brow furrowed furiously. But still, he refused to speak.

  I’d have to call his bluff. “Okay,” I said, turning away. “Have fun finding me when you can barely manage to walk tonight.”

  I got about ten feet before the stubborn fool gave in. “Wait,” he growled. “Esmé, wait.”

  Just to show him who was in charge, I kept walking.

  “Esmé!” he yelled. “Dammit, woman. Don’t be like that.”

  Pausing briefly, I glanced over my shoulder and took in that the tic under his eye had grown slightly more exaggerated. It was subtle, and I could tell he was working hard to fight it, but within a few hours, his face and entire right hand would become a storm of misfiring synapses that would both continue to spread, rendering him a convulsing mess before midnight. The saddest thing of all was that Tic’s painful affliction was purposely cast on him by his own mother, Petra. It was one of the many reasons why I’d never applied to work for her; she was petty and cruel. Elric might be ruthless but at least he wasn’t petty.

  Tic was the product of what was rumored to have been a passionate love affair, but it hadn’t been between Petra and her husband, Elric. By mystic royalty tradition, Petra should’ve killed Tic the second he was born; instead, she bound him from birth with the compulsive muscle twitch which would spread throughout his body until he either died or was given the counterspell. Petra herself employed the curse whenever Tic disobeyed her. It was said that she had actually given him the nickname, and although no one was willing to call him “Tic” within her presence, it was well known that she encouraged its use.

  Thus, Petra raised and mentored her son, often cruelly, right under Elric’s nose, which was only part of the reason the pair loathed each other.