Harper leaned back in her chair and reminded herself to be logical. This was just a video confirming what she already knew: Magic existed, and she’d been close enough to almost make contact with someone who could do it.
Still. She’d been trying for two years, and this was the closest she’d come to anyone. She hadn’t really understood what Rose meant about the Unseen World being good at secrets until she’d tried to talk to Rose’s parents after the funeral. Never mind that she’d had dinner at their house twice before, she couldn’t find the place, not without Rose there. Well, she could find the address, but she’d walked up to an Apple store in a commercial district, not an elegant home in a quiet neighborhood. She’d called the phone numbers in Rose’s contacts and had gotten nothing but white noise.
She’d slowly come to realize that the only way to find someone who could help her would be to physically find another magician, to tell them in person what she’d seen that night. This video was proof she almost had.
Harper scrubbed at her eyes and rolled the stress from her shoulders. Then she got up to put a pot of coffee on. She still had contracts to review.
? ? ?
Grey stood on worn carpet in a hallway that stank of mildew and boiled cabbage. He set his hand on his apartment door’s lock and made a clicking sound in the back of his throat. The metal went cold to the touch as the wards released. He jiggled his key and opened the door.
Inside, he reset the useless button lock, the slightly less useless chain, and the wards that were technically a violation of his lease. “There’s wards on the building, and those’ll do you just fine. I gotta be able to get into the place if there’s a leak or something,” his landlord had said.
Grey had nodded, signed the lease, and installed personal wards anyway. The amount he was paying in rent meant that the landlord’s wards could be trusted about as much as that chain lock.
Today he was adding a second layer of personal wards. He placed thumbtacks in the window frames and then stretched thin wire over the glass, anchoring it on the tacks. He stepped into the center of the apartment and clapped his hands together in an off-rhythm pattern. The scent of hot metal rose into the air.
He choked on the smell and reached his hands through the wires to open the windows. “Fuck!” The back of his left hand, scraped raw and bleeding. Too much effort to take the wires down and recast the spell—he’d just let the stench of the magic add itself to all the other smells in the place. After a minute or two, there wouldn’t be any difference.
He hated this shitty apartment, with its cracking floors, the toilet that refused to stop running, and the massive roach problem. As soon as the Turning was over and he was named a House, he was out of here. He tapped his hand on a broken piece of mirror on the wall. “Soon.”
The mirror was why he’d cast the extra wards, even though a private residence should be off-limits except in case of an active challenge, and he’d never agree to allowing anyone to see that this was where he lived. Even Laurent had never been here—he sure as hell wasn’t going to host a challenge in this rat hole.
But the mirror was proof that not everything went as planned in a Turning, was a reminder of what had been stolen from him. A piece of a spell that had gone wrong—cracked and come apart. One of its larger pieces had flown into his father, killing him instantly. The smaller section, the one he’d kept these thirteen years, had lodged itself in Grey’s shoulder. He had been twelve.
His magic had never fully recovered from the injury. Still, he’d learned how to compensate. He opened a cupboard above the oven and took out an almost empty glass jar. One small bone rattled loosely in it. He dumped the bone into a mortar, then said a rough, consonant-filled phrase. The air in the room flashed hot, and the bone crumbled to dust. Grey poured in enough honey to bind the particles of dust, some wine to cover the taste, then thinned it with water to make it drinkable.
The pulverized bones still caught in his throat and tasted more like grit than sweetness. But in the grit was stored power—magic that would aid his own.
Grey set the mortar in the sink with the rest of the dishes. He’d have to go out, refill his supply soon, but this should get him through his first challenge. And when the Turning was over—when he had his own House, maybe even all of the collected power of the Unseen World to call on—he wouldn’t have to resort to this. He’d have what should have been his all along.
CHAPTER THREE
Miles Merlin, leonine and silver-haired, nose like a crag and bright blue eyes that missed nothing, was the current leader of the Unseen World. But like all its members, he, too, was subject to the turn of Fortune’s Wheel. The Turning carried the same risks for House Merlin as it did for any other House—loss of position and power balanced with a chance for prestige. It was a great, pleasurable game, and one he relished playing.
Although officially structured as a series of individual duels pitting one House—established or candidate—against the next, the Turning wasn’t ever only that. It was strategy—which Houses to challenge early and which it might be safe to save until after an invocation of mortality was required. And once the Turning officially began, those wouldn’t be questions to contemplate in solitude. InterHouse alliances would be built, future promises made, unHoused candidates cultivated. But tonight, tonight was for quiet. Tonight was for planning on his own.
Sitting at the head of his white marble kitchen table, enjoying the steak and potatoes he’d made himself, he passed his hand over the collection of images on his tablet. Everyone participating in the Turning was required to register and officially name their champion. He was looking over the current list for pressure points. It was his favorite part of a Turning, these moments before. They felt like holding a full hand of cards, all possibility.
He had won the last time, securing House Merlin’s place at the pinnacle of the Unseen World once again, cementing his position here and his influence over events in the mundane world as well. He hadn’t won because he was the best magician—he allowed himself no illusions on that score. He won because he was able to see weak points and exploit them. Because he was smart enough to point dangerous Houses at each other and then stay out of the way until the dust settled.
But the Turning had come again soon—the shortest interval yet. Too soon. Things were unsettled, uncertain, even in his own House. He’d expected Ian to apologize by now, to come back. He’d held off naming his champion in the hope of that return. And here he was, still waiting, only a matter of hours left.