Duo (Stone Mage Saga Book 2) Read online

“You need help.” She stated flatly.

  I sighed and took a careful sip of my cocoa to avoid having to talk.

  She repeated herself, more sternly this time.

  “It's only been two days since I got out. It'll get better.”

  “In all the time we've been together, I have never seen you this way. I know what you went through was awful, but you're going crazy. Maybe talking to a shrink can help.”

  I huffed out my breath. “And what would I say? What could I say? I found a magic bracelet at a garage sale and it won't come off? That some psychotic monster wants said magic bracelet? That he had my best friend killed right before my eyes and now she's standing here talking to me? That I can throw fireballs and turn into water? That vampires and shapeshifters and wizards are real?” My voice steadily grew in pitch, ending in a note of hysteria.

  Lexie stood with her eyes cast downward as she thought. “You've got me there. But you still need something. You're going all PTSD on me and if we're going to evade the cops and God knows what else, we need to find a way to keep your head on.”

  My mind was blank.

  “I've already lost mine. We can't afford for yours to get lopped off, too.”

  Exhaustion weighed on me like a load of bricks and I was so tired that I could barely hold myself up. I could feel tears prickling at my eyes and my voice cracked as I mumbled, “I just want to go to sleep.”

  Lexie stepped forward, took the still mostly full mug from my hands and set it on the counter. “It's okay, sweetie. We can go to bed.” She wrapped an arm around me and led me to the bedroom.

  By the time we made it into the room, I was crying in earnest. There was a daybed in the office, but we both needed the comfort of having each other nearby.

  Once we set foot in the bedroom, Lexie shut and locked the door behind us.

  She stood staring at it for a moment, rubbing her arms. “Is it okay if I block the doors?”

  I nodded. That would make me feel a bit better, too. I knew barricading the doors with anything short of a mountain would do no good, but it made me feel just a smidgen safer and that was enough to make any stupid scuff marks on the floors worth it.

  With ease, Lexie pushed the heavy wooden dresser from against the wall in front of the door to the dining room. Next, she moved the nightstands into the corner and rotated the queen-sized bed so its headboard blocked the second door to the bathroom.

  “Wow,” I muttered a little numbly. “You're strong.” I stared at the vast field of dust-bunnies revealed from under the bed. Right now, I wouldn't have cared if there was a dead mouse under there. I just wanted to sleep and crawled into bed.

  She held up her hand as she nestled in on the other side as if to stop me from saying anything further. “Don't. I do not want to think about any more weird shit tonight. I just want to try to be a mindless lump until noon.”

  “Okay.” I paused as I reached for the bedside lamp to turn it off. “Is it okay to leave the lights on?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, that's cool with me.”

  “I just… don't want to be in the dark again.”

  “Neither do I.”

  That was odd. Before, she'd always found any light in her bedroom to be too distracting and had to have the room as dark as possible to sleep. “Why do you want the lights on?”

  She chewed on her bottom lip. “When I got taken, it was at night.”

  Suddenly, I felt like a terrible person for asking such a thoughtless question. It was obvious why she would want to sleep in the light, too. She had been kidnapped from her home sometime after she'd left the shop that night to draw me and my shiny bracelet to Octavius' Arctic keep. What kind of friend was I that I could so stupidly dredge up her worst memories?

  When she first reappeared, she'd had no memory of anything since before she was kidnapped. I'd prayed it would stay that way, but after a few hours, her memories had started coming back in bits and pieces. She hadn't told me anything, but I could tell by the shadows in her eyes that she knew what had happened and that she had been though just as much hell as me.

  I drew a breath to tell her that she didn't have to explain anymore, but she spoke first,

  “I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of my dogs yelping like I'd never heard before— not even that time they got sprayed by a skunk.” Her voice began to choke up. One of the first things she'd asked once we were on the plane home was what had happened to them. Hearing that Spot and Ed had been killed had made her curl up into a silent little ball for several hours.

  “I got out of bed and somehow, I just knew that I wasn't alone. I could feel eyes on me and froze up. A hand grabbed me by the back of the neck and I had just enough time to scream before I blacked out. I never saw a thing.” She tried to shrug like it was no big deal, but the crack in her voice and tenseness in her shoulders belied the fear she felt just remembering that night.

  It felt so cosmically wrong that someone as light-hearted and kind was so afraid of anything. I scooted over and hugged her close. Her being the taller one, she rested her head on mine as she continued.

  “The next thing I know, I'm in total darkness, in a small space that was crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with people. Nobody seemed to know what was going on— some were confused, others were panicking and shoving through the crowd, trying to find some hidden exit that nobody else had, and the rest were huddled together in the middle on the wet, sticky, stone floor. The smell was as bad as a morgue with a busted refrigerator and everybody could hear these constant, animal-like growls somewhere in the distance.

  In the pitch black, I bumped into some Russian guy who said he'd been in there for a while. The last thing he remembered before waking up in there was being out in the woods hunting. He was just as clueless as the rest of us, but told me that trying to escape was pointless.”

  Her voice went whisper-quiet. “He was really nice. He never told me his name, but offered to let me sit with him when I started crying. So we just sat there quietly in the dark, listening to the monsters for hours. Every now and then, someone would start screaming and the sound would get more distant, then stop. Whenever that would happen, the monsters got loud. Eventually, it was the Russian guy who screamed. It was like he was being grabbed and pulled, but I didn't know from where.

  I'll never forget the way he grabbed at me, like I was a lifeline or something.” She shuddered and clutched her chest as if she was trying to hold herself together. “When he was gone, I hid in the middle and realized there wasn't anything I could do but wait for it to happen to me. And then it did.

  From out of nowhere, that same hand tried to grab me by the back of the neck again. This time, though, I had enough time to react and fought him. That's when I got punched out and when I woke up, there you were.” She coughed a strange sound, somewhere between a gallows laugh and a sob.

  “I tried to tell you to leave.” The heaving in her chest got worse. In a broken voice, she murmured, “Why didn't you leave?”

  I rubbed my hand over her back while she sobbed. “I could never leave you behind.”

  2

  Images of red and darkness and terror flashed through my mind. The faces of the innocent people whose lives I'd taken stared at me from the void. Again, I relived that indescribably painful moment as the light faded from Lexie's eyes. Chattering skulls painted in crimson skittered around me, whispering to me.

  “Wake up!” Lexie whisper/yelled in my ear, shaking me from my slumber.

  I looked over to see her face was alight with fear and her eyes kept darting between me and the door. My heart leaped into my throat and I glanced to the door, now unblocked.

  “Someone just came in.”

  Over the sound of my racing heartbeat, I could hear light, slow footfalls echoing through the apartment. Lexie grabbed my feet and pulled me off the bed, making almost no sound. She looked around frantically for someplace to hide as the steps grew closer.

  I pointed behind her. “Closet.”

  She
turned around and we rushed inside.

  It was a tiny space barely big enough for the two of us and the slatted doors allowed the dim early morning light to pass through the gauzy sheers. If there was enough of an opening for light to shine in, it was big enough for whoever it was to spot us, but unless we were going to jump out the second story window into traffic, it would have to do.

  The door creaked open and the footsteps entered the bedroom, pausing just inside the threshold.

  My muscles tensed and numbed at the same time and all I could hear now were those footsteps, careful and measured as though they were stalking. As if from a ghost, I could hear Unus' taunting voice ringing through my head and I could barely keep my breathing quiet.

  “Come out now.” A familiar voice enunciated each word with an unfamiliar, icy tone.

  I sobbed aloud with overwhelming relief. It was my grandma, Gwennaby Dillon.

  The closet doors burst open and there she was, but it wasn't her— not exactly. Her big, brown eyes, wide with shock, were no longer framed with the laugh lines earned from countless smiles. The messy, short curls that framed her round, rosy face were now the same shade of auburn as my own. My grandmother couldn't be a day older than thirty.

  “Gan yr holl dduwiau a sêr!” She lunged forward to pull us into her embrace. “I was so scared!”

  The smell of her favorite perfume surrounded me and every thought fled my mind. Of their own volition, my arms flung themselves around her and clung to her and all of the warmth she brought to my heart. Suddenly, I couldn't think of the reasons Lexie and I had come up with to avoid anyone we knew.

  She jerked back and grabbed my face with one hand and Lexie's in the other. “What in the seven hells happened? Where have you been? Do you know what you've put me through, put your mother through?” Her shock turned quickly into anger and her pale, plump cheeks flushed cherry red.

  Her eyes bore holes in mine and I wanted tell her everything, I wanted to ask her about her face, but I clammed up under the pressure. She turned her intense stare to Lexie before her face lost all of its color. Her gaze was frozen on Lexie, who stood there just as agape as me— or more specifically, the red line around her neck.

  The hands which were holding our faces dropped limply to her sides. Without another word, she turned around and walked into the living room before plopping onto the couch. She stared blankly at the wall in front of her.

  Finally, she turned to us with a carefully blank expression. “Did you do that, Constance?”

  I felt put on the spot, like a child being asked if I'd broken the vase. “Um, I— I don't know what you mean.”

  “Did you raise her?”

  Now I was getting confused. I had the distinct feeling that the question she was asking didn't mean what it sounded like it meant. “No, we grew up together. You were there, remember?” Maybe this woman wasn't actually my grandmother. As soon as the thought entered my mind, I dismissed it. Everything in me was sure this was her, no matter what she looked like.

  She let out a shaky breath and put her forehead in her palm. “That isn't what I meant and you know it. Did you raise her from the dead?”

  “Raise from the dead? Like a zombie?”

  “Yes, a zombie. Surely both of you have had that thought by now. She has no heartbeat, no need to eat, sleep, or breathe. I'd think it'd be obvious, even to the two of you who grew up in the human world.”

  “Gee, thanks for the label.” Lexie's flat voice dripped with sarcasm. “I've been trying really hard not to think about any of this crap.” She didn't seem nearly as off-kilter as me. What was she seeing? Was she seeing Grandma as old or young? Was I finally going crazy?

  “I'm sorry, dears.” Grandma motioned for the two of us to join her on the couch. We sat on either side of her. She reached for one of both of our hands. “I know all of… this must be very hard for the both of you. But I need to know one important thing: did you raise Lexie as a zombie?”

  Grandma and Lexie both looked to me for the answer.

  It took me a moment for my train of thought to switch tracks. “I don't really know what happened.” It sucked as an answer, but it was the best I could give them. “She was killed in front of me, then I grabbed her, and she vanished.”

  “When did you see her next?”

  “Two days ago.”

  “And what did you do two days ago?”

  With every question, it was getting more difficult to answer her. How much did she need to know about our unfortunate excursion? “I just… really needed to have her back and there she was.”

  She pursed her lips and placed her chin in her hand. She murmured something under her breath that I barely caught the end of, “— the first in two thousand years.”

  At that moment, the elephant I hadn't noticed was in the room decided to whack me over the head with his trunk. I jumped to my feet from the shock of the so-obvious conclusion. Unable to stop myself from committing an act of verbal diarrhea, I shouted, “You're not human?”

  She nodded, pleased, but it seemed like her head was still somewhere else. “You already know about the Paxian races, then? That spares us a long conversation.” Grandma's cool hand reached for mine to draw me back onto the couch. “But yes, girls, I am a mage.” She paused, putting a hand to her cheek. “Come to think of it, you can probably see through my glamour.”

  “Yeah, you don't look your age anymore,” Lexie said, plain as day.

  Grandma barked a laugh. “No, sweet. By human standards, I really don't look my age. I've been wearing a glamour around humans for years to make myself appear to age as humans do, but it isn't too terribly strong. A powerful non-human— Paxians, we call ourselves— can see through it.”

  “Powerful Paxian,” I repeated. How many times could my world be kicked in the teeth by mind-numbing revelations before it fell apart? What was I going to be told next? That Queen Victoria really was a werewolf?

  “Yes, dearie, you've become a mage and it seems a very strong one.” She glowed. “Necromancy is the genus magic you inherited from my side of the family and it seems it's exceptionally strong in you.” Her smile was one of pride.

  I stared, dumbfounded. “Wait a second, can you… raise zombies?”

  She laughed a little and shook her head, as though my question was childishly naïve. “No, sweetheart. Raising a bird from the dead, much less a human being is far beyond my capabilities. The most I can do with my genus is to stave off death by administering my signature potion. I've been slipping it to your mother for years through the herbal teas I've been sending.” She waved her hand. “There are only two— now three, I suppose— necromancers in the whole world capable of raising humanoid zombies and neither of them can raise someone from the dead and have that person retain their mind as Lexie has.”

  She paused like she expected me or Lexie to say something. Lexie was silent. I was wordless, only capable of blubbering incoherent gibberish.

  Seeming to sense that she would get no response, she continued. “It's well known that, while Octavius' necromancy is powerful enough to raise a human zombie, they are not nearly of Alexandra's quality.” Suddenly sheepish, she turned to Lexie. “Sorry, sweetheart, to talk about you like an object, but she did an extraordinary job on you. You could walk down the street if it weren't for that mark around your neck. I'm guessing it was your deathblow?”

  Lexie, looking as blankly confounded as me, just nodded her head.

  This was utterly surreal. My grandma— who taught me how to make the perfect cup of coffee and run a business and do taxes and braid hair— was a mage. A mage who was blithely talking about how my apparently zombie best friend died. I pinched my arm to make sure I wasn't still dreaming.

  Ouch. Nope, definitely awake. Come to think of it, it would explain the whole “communing with the spirits” thing she did. If ghosts were real, anyway.

  “Wait, wait, wait.” I backed away. “What the hell is going on? How are you a mage? How— is Mom a mage, too?”


  As soon as those words left my lips, a wave of sorrow washed over her face and her shoulders dropped. “No.” She shook her head. “Your mother inherited her humanity from your grandfather.”

  Just as I was about to say something, she wiped her eyes like she was crying. For as long as I could remember, the only time that I had ever seen her cry was at Grandpa's funeral. Even when mom was diagnosed with cancer, Grandma's eyes hadn't shed a single tear that I'd seen— they had only burned with a fiery determination. If she was crying now, she had to be hurting a lot. I couldn't push her any farther into that pain.

  With her eyes downcast as they were, she noticed my left arm and the bracelet that encircled my left wrist. Her jaw dropped and she seized my arm, bringing it up to inspect the colorful stones set in the links of the silver bracelet.

  Grandma's voice was breathy. “It truly was you. I had the thought when I saw what you did with Lexie, but I didn't think it was possible. I didn't think you would have been able to kill him.”

  I felt the blood drain out of my face.

  Grandma put her hand on my shoulder in firm support and said, “I know your first kill is the one that haunts you the most, but know that you are still a good person and that the world is a better, safer place without the likes of Unus in it.”

  Lexie finally spoke up. “How do you know what happened?”

  Grandma shrugged. “Gossip travels fast and a necromancer stealing zombies from Octavius and killing Unus? That's very big news. Everybody has heard about it and many are speculating as to whom it could be. My and many other bets were on a Pax hit, others are guessing that the Circle's enforcers finally caught up to him, but nobody really knows and that's a damn good thing.”

  “Why?” I couldn't help but ask.

  “Octavius wants this bracelet. He's been after a stone mage's set for ages. He won't stop until he kills you and takes this, the magics, and the near immortality it grants its wearer. If he does, then gods help us all, because he'll be virtually unstoppable. You want as few people to know who you are as possible. And I'm so sorry, girls, but you'll have to go into hiding— maybe forever.”