Magic Shifts

“An Arabian?”

“I’m sorry, I wouldn’t know.”

I bet it looked like a million-dollar horse.

“Was there something you wanted?”

He reached into his jacket. “My alpha brought this to the attention of the Beast Lord, but Jim doesn’t feel this is the right time. My alpha has a different opinion. He feels this is a threat to the Pack and to the city. He said you should know about it.”

He handed me a stack of Polaroids. The first one showed a big gray block formed from the remnants of different buildings. A person stood next to it. The block had to be at least thirty feet tall. My heart jerked in my chest. I had seen this before. That was how my father had made Mishmar.

I flipped through the rest of the Polaroids. Another block. Another. A small wooden model standing on a folding table in the middle of a field. My father standing next to a man holding a blueprint. He was still wearing his “wise father” persona, an older man with the features of Zeus or perhaps Moses toward the second half of his life, wise, beautiful, possessing otherworldly power, his dark brown eyes ageless . . . My father’s profile blurred. He turned toward me in the photograph and winked. Cute.

Julie clamped her hand over her mouth. Jardin turned pale.

Sonovabitch. He was building another tower. He would not take this land.

“Where was this taken?”

Jardin recovered enough to speak. “Near Lawrenceville.”

Just outside my territory. Oh no, you don’t. Over my dead body. Better yet, over his.

“Thank you,” I told Jardin. “Tell Robert I will handle this.”

I turned and marched toward our car. Approaching my father directly could be seen as an act of war, and trying to contact him by magic means was just asking for trouble. In the magic arena he was miles ahead of me, and opening any kind of connection through magic was unwise. I had no idea how to get hold of him, but I knew someone who did.

“Are we going home?” Julie asked, speed-walking next to me.

“No.” My voice had a lot of steel in it. “We’re going to the Casino. I’m going to have a chat with my father.”

•   •   •

“HOW DID HE do that with the photograph?” Julie asked. “How? The tech was up when the picture was taken.”

“I don’t know.” I would’ve loved to know what Sienna’s vision meant as well, but so far I had no sage insights. It bothered me.

We were walking through the parking lot of the Casino, where the People, my father’s pet cult/undead petting zoo, made its headquarters in Atlanta. The Casino, a replica of the Taj Mahal, perched in the center of a huge lot where the Georgia Dome had once offered seventy-some thousand seats to sports fans. The Dome was long gone, fallen casualty to the magic waves, and now the Casino dominated the area. During the day, the tint of its pure white marble changed depending on the color of the sky, but at night, painted by the glow of a powerful feylantern, the intricate marble lattice work appeared completely otherworldly and weightless, as if the entire massive building had been spun out of moonlight by some magic spiders. Long rectangular fountains, decorated with statues of Hindu gods caught in mid-move above the tinted water, stretched toward its doors, and as we walked between them toward the Casino, the tiny red lights of vampire minds glowed in my mind. They crawled along the textured parapets, they moved inside the Casino, and below the building, where the stables lay, the ground was completely red, like the tide of some bloody sea. I would’ve loved nothing more than to reach out and crush them one by one, until the sea of red lights vanished and only peaceful darkness remained.

“How does this not freak you out?” Julie demanded.

“I can’t afford to be freaked out. Neither can you.”

“Well, I . . .” Julie stopped, her eyes wide open.

I turned to her.

She stared at the Casino, looking down, where the stables would be. “Are those . . . ?”

This wasn’t her sensate magic at work. We were too far away and separated from the stables by tons of rock and soil.

“Vampires,” I told her.

A while ago she had almost died and I had purified her blood with mine to save her. It was my father’s blood ritual, but it was the only way. It bound her to me in the same way Hugh was bound to my father, and like Hugh she could never defy a direct order from me, something I had tried my best to keep secret. Unless my memory failed me, so far I had avoided it, simply because Julie usually did what I asked without my having to order her, and in those rare times when I had to issue a command, Julie was willing to obey. One day the time would come when she would want to do the exact opposite of what I said and would find out that I had robbed her of her free will. I dreaded that day, but I would deal with it when the time came. Right now I had to deal with a whole different side effect. It seemed that my blood was changing Julie.