“What happened to the door?” the driver asked a while later as we pulled up outside my house.
My brow lowered in confusion.
The front door, which had already been busted, now leaned against the doorframe to mostly cover the entrance. The screen, which I’d left in the yard, had been placed on my porch, tucked behind my chairs.
“The cat got to it,” I told the driver as I got out.
I’d expected the door to be in bits, or at least knocked more to the side. Maybe the high mage hadn’t been my visitor after all.
The optimistic feeling was short-lived.
My heart dropped as I moved the slab of wood and got my first peek inside.
Charred to hell was the first thought that rolled through my head.
The floor creaked as I stepped on it. I paused and listened. Shuffling sounded outside, the slide of a shoe. I glanced over my shoulder, making eye contact with the man from down the way. He gave me a stiff nod as he trudged by, his glance taking in my front yard before darting into the house. I wasn’t sure what that was about, but he made looking creepy an art.
I took another few steps, gauging the floor. Similar to the mage’s house, it was charred but mostly solid. I could walk on it to check out the crime scene, but I couldn’t live on it without some serious repairs.
There goes my deposit.
Pressure squeezed my chest as I looked around my living room, a blackened, twisted mess. My couch was a pile of char. Same for my chair. The glass from my coffee table littered the blackened ground. All the little things I’d gathered over the years were destroyed. My physical memories, gone.
Rage and sadness choked me in turns as I checked out my kitchen. Unusable. It would have to be gutted and redone. The weird porcelain cow my mother had given me before she died was nowhere to be found. The blown glass I’d bought off a street vendor lay in black shards.
I blinked away tears. I’d been on the receiving end of grudge attacks before, but this was, by far, the worst penance I’d ever received from doing my job. This was hitting me on an extremely personal level.
In a daze, I continued on, noting that the hallway entrance was in the same state of disrepair. Halfway through, though, the destruction began to fade. The deep black of the walls lightened, and then disappeared entirely as I neared my bedroom.
A shock of fear stole through me. Had the mage stopped his shock and awe campaign because he’d found one or more of my stashes?
I hurried into the spare room, equally as untouched as my bedroom, and slammed open the closet door. Magic pulsed like a heartbeat, strong and comforting. My heartbeat, to be exact.
Quickly, I pulled away a comforter and the board games piled on the floor. The small rug was next to go, revealing a square crack in the floorboards. It was completely undisturbed. No foreign magic loitered around it, and no defense spells had been set in motion. Something else must have prompted the mage to give up burning my house.
I exited through the back door to check out my shed. The lock was broken and the inside looked ransacked. I waded in and put out my hands, feeling the familiar pulse echoing in my veins.
Another feeling caught me. Something foreign. Probing, almost. Like someone had tried to delve into my unique blend of magic to see how it worked.
Why would the mage do it back here and not inside, where he was less likely to be disturbed?
Unless the person who’d hit the shed wasn’t the mage, but someone else who was curious about me, someone who’d recognize both the faint pulse of my heartbeat and the ancient magic I’d used to create this cache.
Possibilities crowded into my head, but there was only one person who came to mind. With his extra-sensory hearing, he certainly knew my heartbeat, and he had connections to mages who could study the magic I’d used.
That stalking bastard.
He definitely needed that punch in the face. He was asking for it.
I checked the other caches, found them all unmolested, and returned to the spare bedroom closet. Once there, I pricked my finger. Blood welled up, hot and red. Turning my other hand palm up, I created a ball of fire, setting it to float in a perfect sphere.
The blood wobbled on my finger before falling through the air. When it touched the fire, a sizzle sent steam twisting upward. I surged my magic in pulses, timed to my heartbeat as I muttered the incantation in Gaelic.
I’d asked my mother, “Why not Latin?” when she’d taught me this spell. Her response: “Gaelic is less used than Latin.” I’d thought she was crazy at the time. Some villages in Ireland still spoke Gaelic as their primary language, not to mention the little bit children across the whole island learned in school. Since then, I’d seen so many magical people use Latin, each of them thinking they were so smart, so individual.
The ball of fire froze into a block of ice, which fell to the ground and cracked open. Vapor rose into the form of a skull, turning slowly through the air. Green light shone from its eyes and out of the missing front tooth. After a full circle, I said, “Droim ar ais.” Reverse.
Another two circles in the opposite direction and I repeated my command. After yet one more full turn, I said, “Slainte.” It literally meant health, short for “to your health,” and acted as a toast before drinking. I thought it a fitting sentiment.
The magical lock opened, and I used a knife to take off the cover. A real safe lay inside, fireproof, with a separate spell to be hellfire-proof. My fingerprint opened this one, and finally, after all that, I had access to the book I’d taken from the mage’s house.
I glanced at it in the safe’s depths, wanting to grab it out and flick through it, but that would be a dumb move. Considering how long it would take to secure it again—and the very real limits on my time—I resisted. Instead, I dropped in the second book and closed it all up. If I lived through the next few days, I would go somewhere quiet and do some learnin’.
As I was getting up, I heard a strange scuffle.
I froze, listening.