Shifters And Glyphs

Chapter 2

2

Knox says he’s heading out. Even so, my mate insists on walking me to my door first. It’s cute. A few minutes later, Knox and I stroll down a long white hallway lined with silver doors. Having left Knox’s place, we’ve now migrated two floors down to the twenty-seventh level of Le Charme Towers and pause before my door, 24-G.

On reflex, I type the first of many security codes into a small black wall panel. Alec also put a ton of magical wards on our place, but I don’t need to worry about those. Alec’s spells only activate if they detect a stranger. And if there is trouble, the wards enact pretty typical guarding spells. Humans can’t see our door, anyone with magic feels the need to run in terror, that kind of thing.

As I enter in my third code—did I mention that Elle and I are a little safety conscious?—Knox leans in to whisper in my ear.

“I don’t have to run, you know.” His voice is a low growl that I like quite a lot. “I can still sleep on the couch.”

I elbow him playfully in his rock-hard stomach. “Didn’t we have this conversation already?”

“Maybe.” More growling. More liking.

“Our mate needs to run,” says my wolf inside my head. “That Ty is bad news.”

“Agreed.”

Twisting around, I give Knox a quick peck on the nose. “Get out of here.”

“You’ll get Elle’s cell and keep it handy, yeah?”

I roll my eyes. Knox already reminded me about the cell twice in the elevator. “Yes, yes, YES. Now ride safely.”

“Always.” Knox saunters off down the hallway. Since he’s riding his Harley, my mate changed into his leathers, and wow, those pants fit his backside quite well. Knox gets halfway to the elevator before he stops and turns around. “You staring at my butt?”

My face burns red. “Ummm … yeah?”

“Good.” After giving me a wink, Knox steps into the elevator. The doors close with a ding, which means that—sadly enough—what I like to think of as the Knox Show is now over. I return my attention to my front door, finish off the last security code, and pull on the handle.

The minute I step inside, I hear the familiar grunts, clicks, and overblown music that means video games are blaring in the living room. Alec and Elle are playing again. My wolf-sharp sense of smell also picks up the scent of Chinese takeout from the kitchen. Yum.

With all the deliciousness, my inner wolf is no longer ready for sleep. “Food, food, FOOOOOD!” she cries in my mind. “Let’s eat!”

My wolf brings up a good point. There’s food in the kitchen, and Elle in the living room. Which one do I approach first?

Tough call.

Shaking my head, I head off to the living room. It’s a key routine that I always check in with Elle when I first get home. This is another one of our security things. Ever notice how in horror movies, someone (let’s call her BDS because she’ll Be Dead Soon) gets home and starts talking to her roommate without actually making eye contact? You know those scenes. Little Miss BDS chats on for like ten minutes from the kitchen:

“You won’t believe my day.”

“Hey, who dumped out all our knives?”

“What’s all this red stuff on the kitchen floor?”

Meanwhile, as the BDS chatters on, her roommate is dead in the bathroom or something. Worst of all, there’s a big bad lurking just outside the kitchen, waiting to kill her dumb butt. Maybe Elle and I have watched too many scary films, but we’ve sworn that we’ll never end up a BDS. We always make eye contact and say hello right after walking through the door. It may be an overly elaborate security system, but I had an evil zombie king after me. Plus, Elle is a semi-pro con artist and jewel thief. Let’s just say we both have reasons to be paranoid.

All of which is why the moment I close the front door, I make a beeline for our living-room-s***h-gaming-area. Like the rest of our place, the living room’s modern in style with leather couches and blocky shelves. All Le Charme apartments come pre-furnished, so it’s not like we picked this stuff out. Long story short, Elle and I live inside the equivalent of an Ikea catalog. No complaints though—I like Swedish design. Plus, growing up, my aunties had our penthouse done up like a psychedelic drug den from the 1960’s. I’m surprised all the bright colors didn’t burn out my retinas by age nine. Ikea is just fine, thank you very much.

Sure enough, once I enter the living room, I find Elle and Alec camped out on our couch, pounding away on their keyboards. The backs of their heads are silhouetted against the flickering screen.

“Hey, guys,” I say.

Moving in unison, Elle and Alec hit Pause on the game, shift on the couch, and look over at me. I hate to admit it, but that move sends a little pang of jealousy through my stomach. While I’ve been spending more time with Knox, Elle has been doing the same with Alec. Unfortunately, Elle and Alec can only be friends. The reasons are a little sketchy, but it has something to do with keeping Elle safe from her evil stepfamily. Even so, Elle and Alec have become crazy-good buddies. I mean, Elle and I never moved in unison like that.

Hence, the jealousy.

And then, there follows boatloads of guilt over being jealous.

Ugh. Relationships are tough.

“Hey,” says Elle. “You have a visitor in the kitchen.” She bobs her eyebrows, meaning this is a visitor of the significant variety.

“I do?” My first thought goes to our supposedly perfect security system. “How did they get through the wards?”

Sadly enough, Alec’s wards have been on the fritz lately. Instead of repelling humans, they’ve been attracting them right into the apartment. Once inside, those hapless mortals often get compelled to do weird stuff. For instance, Elle and I came home the other day to find our doorman cleaning our toilet. Not that I don’t appreciate the effort but … Whoa.

Alec shoots me a winning grin. “Believe it or not, my wards actually worked today.” He really does look like a surfer-dude version of Prince Charming, what with his yellow T-shirt, tanned face, and bright blue eyes. “Your guest knocked on the door, we opened it, end of story.”

I scrunch up my face in confusion. “Who do I know that knocks?” Alec uses magic to transport in and out. Knox likes to lean onto the intercom and growl until I open up. Elle knows all the codes. That’s pretty much my entire list of friends and family there.

Elle bobs her brows some more. “Your mysterious visitor is none other than Colonel Mallory the Magnificent.”

“What?” I take a half step backward. “He’s here?” They both nod. “You should have texted me.”

Elle shrugs. “The Colonel said not to bother you.” She lowers her voice. “Plus, we ordered the good Chinese and he’s been chowing down in the kitchen. The guy was so happy, I didn’t want to disturb him.”

I’d forgotten about the food smell. The good Chinese means we ordered from City Lights of Beijing. They have the best food in Manhattan, but unlike every other Chinese restaurant nearby, they take forever to deliver. So we save them for special occasions. I guess the night before school starting counts.

My stomach growls. “I’ll go say hi and get some dinner.”

“Sounds like a plan,” says Alec.

“I want details later,” adds Elle.

I roll my eyes, which is my way of saying, of course, you’re getting details later.

Moving in unison once more, Elle and Alec return their attention to their game. Time was, all of us were all terrified of Colonel Mallory. And why wouldn’t we be? The Colonel had placed a sleeping curse on me. But a few months back, the Colonel was a huge help in the battle against Jules and the Denarii. And since then, he’s been stopping by to visit every month or so. Mostly he uses fairy magic to transport in, but if the guy wants to use the door, there are no complaints here.

As I step toward the kitchen, my inner wolf howls with rage. “No, no, no, no, no, NOOOOOOOOOO! No kitchen! That evil fairy cursed us both. I was trapped in a lockbox for years.”

“Come on,” I reply in my mind. “You’ve met Colonel Mallory before.”

My wolf lets out a series of yippy-whining noises in my head. She can be a little bit of a drama queen sometimes. “He cursed us.”

“What are you, Gollum? The Colonel saved our lives.” My stomach growls again. “Let’s take a little breather here.”

My wolf sniffs. “Fine. Talk to the evil fairy, but if you end up dead, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Sometimes, having a wolf in your brain is no fun. Time for a little magic. Closing my eyes, I tap into the magic that makes me a shifter. This is one of the many new skills I learned from Az over the summer. That guy knows every shifter trick in the book. As I take control of the magic, a flush of gold mist moves across my skin. Shifter power. Within seconds, my wolf quiets and goes into stasis. It doesn’t hurt her, and it gives us both a break. With my wolf under control, I march off toward the kitchen.

Our kitchen is a white space with a small number of appliances crammed into one corner and a high-top table by the entrance archway. Colonel Mallory sits before at the table, an array of white takeout boxes laid out before him. As always, he reminds me of the actor Clark Gable from the movie Gone With The Wind. The Colonel even wears white suits with matching wide-brimmed hats. He looks up as I step into view.

“Hey now, if it isn’t Bryar Rose.”

“Hello, Colonel.”

His silver eyes narrow. “Something about you keeps staying the same.”

“It’s my outfit.” I gesture across my cropped top and dark pants. “Got these from the fairies. They don’t shred when I shift.” I raise my pointer finger. “And they’re enchanted to clean themselves, too. Super handy.”

“Enchanted clothing for shifters,” says the Colonel. “Wish I’d thought of that.” Using his chopsticks, he points to the array of white boxes. “Grab yourself some egg rolls. I know how your wolf likes them.”

I slide onto the stool across from his. “She’s in stasis right now, but I like egg rolls, too.”

The Colonel pauses with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth and dripping with lo mein noodles. “Is your wolf still frightened of me, sugar?”

“She’s not really scared. It’s more the principle of the thing.”

The Colonel sighs. This conversation always upsets him. “Your animal needs to understand. I simply had to hide your powers. Very few Magicorum can wield all three kinds of magic. You’re of the Trilorum, and that’s very rare. But even with your magic locked up, Jules still found you. He was waiting until your powers got to their full extent on your seventeenth birthday, so he could, you know …”

“Try to kill me and eat my brains?”

“That. Even so, if he’d known how powerful you really were, Jules would never have waited. You’d have been too tempting a meal for him.” The Colonel pokes at his white box of lo mein noodles. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was acting guilty about something.

The Colonel stops poking at his food, but he doesn’t look up when he speaks. “Did Jules ever … well … say anything about me?”

Correction. The Colonel is totally acting guilty about something. And since that something seems to be Jules, I suddenly lose my appetite.

“No, Jules never mentioned you. Mostly, he pretended to be this loser Philpot who talked about money all the time.” I set down my egg roll. “What’s this about, Colonel?”

“Oh, Bryar Rose.” The Colonel keeps right on staring into his lo mein box. It’s like he’s a million miles away, even though we’re at the same table. “There’s no way to begin.”

I slip off the stool and step closer. “Try.”

All of a sudden, the cabinet under the sink starts to shimmy. The small white doors look ready to snap off their hinges. Since all we keep under there are Clorox and cockroach traps, I can’t imagine what’s up.

I point to the rattling doors. “Did you cast a spell there?”

My words snap the Colonel back to attention. Turning around, he spies the rattling doors and frowns. “Damned pixies. Crazy as March hares.”

Pixies are literally pains in the neck, considering how they love to bite. I’ve only seen a few of them, and that was at the parties my aunties threw. Pixies are all small, angry creatures with speedy wings, green skin, and sharp teeth. Not sure why they’d want to hang out with my Clorox and cockroach traps.

“Let me get this straight.” I say. “There are pixies under my sink?”

“No, sugar. There are pixies trying to use the doors under your sink in order to transport here from Faerie Lands.”

“No way. We had this place warded again last week. I can’t believe they’re failing this fast.”

“Sugar, right now your wards are as useful as wings on a toad. No offense to that Alec boy. But everyone’s magic is off these days. Did you know I couldn’t transport here before? I had to knock on the door like a regular so-and-so.” He raises his arms. Silver fairy dust appears around his hands. “Let’s just take care of this pixie problem.”

I blink hard, trying to process this news. “Because a portal from the Faerie Lands is opening up under my sink.”

“Why not? If they have enough power, the fae can turn any regular door into a portal to Faerie Land.”

“I didn’t know that.” I frown. “My aunties never went to Faerie Land.”

“Ah, your aunties never had much in the way of power. Takes some strength to open a door.” He shoots me a big smile. “I do it all the time, of course.” More silver dust gathers around his arms, forming clouds of gray magic.

The door under the kitchen sink shimmies so violently, I’m surprised it doesn’t burst. “Should I get Elle?”

“That would be a bad idea.” In Colonel Mallory-speak, a bad idea is another way of saying major catastrophe. “We can handle this.”

Anxiety tightens my limbs. I’ve fought the fae before. Most recently, I went against Queen Nyxa in a lingerie store. Long story. But they’re never an easy battle. Fae are both powerful and unpredictable. The pair of little white doors under the sink rattle more violently than ever before.

Then they burst open.

Pixies fly into the room. At first, the cloud of green bodies makes me think, this must be what a plague of locusts looks like. Only locusts don’t have tiny humanoid forms, forest green skin, or round heads that are filled with needle-sharp teeth. Also, locusts aren’t known for having tiny feathered wings that flutter at hummingbird-style speeds. And they certainly don’t talk. As the pixies flood into the kitchen, the horde chants “Elle, Elle! We want Elle!”

At this point, I have two choices. First, I could keep my wolf in stasis. That would mean she’d be definitely be asleep and therefore, unable to attack pixies. But that would also mean she’d be asleep and unable to attack pixies. My shifter power is the only one I have any real kind of control over.

No question about it. I’m going with door number two: waking up my wolf. I stir the shifter magic inside my soul. My inner wolf perks right up.

“Pixies!” she cries. “They want to play! Let’s go furry and tackle them all.”

I tilt my head, considering this idea. It might work. “Let’s wait and see,” I reply.

The cloud of pixies circles the kitchen a few times before rushing toward the exit archway. My heart sinks. No doubt about it; they’re heading straight for Elle and the living room.

Colonel Mallory raises his arms and addresses the pixie horde. “Oh, no you don’t.” There’s a growl to the Colonel’s voice that’s distinctly dragon-like. Interesting. The Colonel feels as protective about Elle as I do.

Instantly, silver dust flies from the Colonel’s hands to coat the room in a thin metallic sheen. Hundreds of small green bodies slam into an invisible barrier, stopping any chance of leaving the kitchen. The pixies grumble and pound on the clear wall, all while making lewd hand gestures. After a few seconds, they pick themselves up and take to the air once more. The horde hovers by the kitchen ceiling while glaring at me and the Colonel. Their chanting starts up again.

“Elle! Elle! We want Elle!”

Now, I knew Elle had some fairy magic. But she never got unwanted attention from random pixies before. Magic really is going haywire.

The Colonel crooks his finger at me. “Come over here, sugar.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t warn Elle?”

“Positive. My magic blocks all sound. We need to keep Elle well and truly out of this. You just saunter yourself over and stand by me. I’ll leverage an eentsy beentsy piece of your fae power, and this will all be over in a heartbeat.”

One look at the enraged faces of the sharp-toothed pixies and I don’t saunter over.

I run.