Chapter 8
As soon as the shock of the thief crashing out the window wore off, Blaze spoke the magic words that silenced the magical alarms. Her cell phone was already ringing—it was the private security company for the regular alarm system, wanting to know if everything was all right.
Everything was not all right.
She answered the phone and assured them that everything was fine. The alarm had been set off accidentally. No, they didn’t need to send an agent. She was just going back to bed.
Yeah, right. She hung up and ran down the hallway towards the gallery, heart in her throat.
She entered the code on the gallery door, ducking under the barred security gate as soon as it raised high enough. She could already see the lights on in the office, and the red lights flashing on the vault door.
She entered the override code, hands shaking, already knowing what she’d find.
The wooden box that had held the idol lay on the vault floor, open, the eyes carved on the lid staring up at her accusingly.
They’d come for the idol. After all these years, after all her precautions, they’d just walked in and taken it. Her coven had come.
She slid down to the floor, back against the wall.
Slowly, through her despair, logic began to seep through.
Whoever had broken into her house was a powerful sorcerer. He had to be—he’d jumped out a freaking window four stories in the air, for heaven’s sake, and flown away. That took an enormous amount of power. She didn’t know if even Silas could have done it.
But it hadn’t been Silas. Even with the mask, she would have known if it were Silas—she knew the feel of his magic as well as she knew her own. She couldn’t imagine it being anyone from the coven. That kiss. The things the thief made her feel, the images he’d made her see. Almost as if… as if they were memories.
His energy had felt strange. Alien. But she hadn’t felt the taint of evil.
It just didn’t make sense, unless it wasn’t the Silver Raven Coven at all.
Which meant someone else had come after the idol. But who? Who would even know she had it, except the coven? Had Silas hired someone to come after it? She couldn’t imagine him trusting anyone that much who wasn’t in his power.
Either way, it was out in the world now, its evil unprotected and unbound. Did whoever had taken it know what they were unleashing onto the world? Or were they just an opportunist, stealing magical artifacts for money?
For one moment, she was tempted to let it go. The idea of the burden she’d carried so long being lifted from her shoulders was almost intoxicating. If fate had taken the idol from her hands, then her responsibility was over.
Sadly, the moment didn’t last. That thing had taken her parents, her friends, everyone she’d loved. It had taken the life she should have had, and any chance at happiness.
She owed it to her family, her coven, the lost souls of the people she’d loved, not to let that happen to anyone else.
She had to get it back, whoever had it and whyever they’d taken it. And she had the means to do it.
Taking the box to her workroom, she laid it gently in the center of the table. She rubbed her fingers over it, coating them in the magical tracking dust that still clung to it.
The thief had triggered her trap. He had to be covered with the dust. He’d breathed it in, getting it into his lungs and into his bloodstream.
For one full cycle of the moon, she could find him anywhere. And she would.
She went over to one of the bookshelves and got a map of Portland and the surrounding area, spreading it out on the table. Then she took a pendulum from the tall wooden jewelry box on the shelf.
She sat down at the table, letting the pendulum dangle over the map. It was solid brass, formed into an upside-down teardrop shape with the point at the bottom. She held the thin brass chain loosely between her thumb and forefinger.
Blaze whispered the words of the spell, cleared her mind, and waited.
Gradually, the pendulum began to move. It pulled in a certain direction, dragging her hand over the map. Towards the river, and upwards to North Portland. It stopped over St. Johns, the small, friendly community between downtown and the commercial ports at the very northern tip of the city, where the Willamette and Columbia rivers met.
The pendulum swung in small, tight circles, until it came to rest over a single point on the map. Gradually, a holographic image bloomed in the air. An overhead street view, as though from a satellite photo.
Blaze put down the pendulum, grabbed her tablet off the table by the door, and pulled up the map function. She zoomed in until the computer image matched the magical one. An address came up. 11435 Maple Street. A small house, barely visible beneath the trees in the yard.
Blaze touched the screen, dropping an electronic pin in the map and sending it to her phone. There.
That was where her thief was now.
And tomorrow, she would go and find him.
Right now, she had a difficult, finicky, time-consuming window-repair spell to do.