“What?” Darius asked.
“Scuffs like this could come from a garage.” I shook my head. “I didn’t see anything in this one, but I was in a hurry. Maybe…” I cut across the house and let myself into the garage, followed by Darius.
“We’ve found the manufacturer of the casings,” Darius said, looking into one of the stacked boxes. “He bought in bulk. Or someone else did and he is storing them.”
“Ha! Guilty!”
“They could just be—”
“No way. That’s super guilt, right there. He’s a criminal, which means I don’t have to feel bad about ransacking his house. I am definitely taking all his crap, yo. Happy days to me.”
“Your moral compass is ambiguous.”
“Like you can talk.” I scoffed and looked at the ground, trying to find any outlines in the cleared-away space. In the dark, contrast was low, even for my vision. Still scanning, I flicked on the light and backtracked, trying to find a hint of an outline.
“Nothing,” I said with my hands on my hips. “He’s not practicing here.”
“Hmmm,” Darius said, as if I’d said something of great interest. “He—they—may have been practicing in New Orleans, did you think of that?” He moved toward the shelves on the side. “Maybe they wanted a space away from the guild’s influence until they knew what they were doing. Or maybe the guild approves, and it sent them to another city with high magical traffic in case they couldn’t contain the demon. NOLA has the best bounty hunter in the nation. If a demon got loose, there would be no better place for it to happen.”
“I do love flattery, but I am far from the best in the nation. Still, you do have some valid points.”
“That statement was not bent toward flattery. You are known for your prowess.”
“Uh-huh.” I could name five bounty hunters across the world who were legends in the business, and none of them were named Reagan. “Anyway, back to it. I want to have the place catalogued before he gets home.”
“You don’t have enough evidence to convict him yet,” Darius said, pulling a knife out of a box.
“I’m not looking for evidence; I’m looking for additions to my magic collection. And Callie’s. The evidence I’ll beat out of him. That part is easy.”
Darius held up the knife. “The blade has blood on it.”
“There you go. You spoke too soon.”
“It is a hunting knife. It could be animal blood.”
“I haven’t found any hunting rifles, or even a crossbow. He’s some hunter if he’s bagging deer without any way to shoot them.”
“There are other things to hunt.”
“I assume those other things just die on cue? Because otherwise, he’d need a weapon for whatever he was killing.” I shifted from side to side, impatient with his slow, methodical approach to evidence collection. “I’ll see you in there. You take too long.”
“The treasure is in the details.”
I pushed through the door and rounded the corner while brainstorming the other spots people tended to hide things. I should search a closet downstairs. Maybe look harder in the living room.
A shape caught my eye next to the front door. The open front door.
Shock ran through me, and I staggered to a stop, facing a man who had keys dangling uselessly from his fingers. He stared at me as I stared at him, both of us surprised someone else was in the house. That lasted a blink of an eye. Then we were action.
I dove to the side as the keys shot toward me. He hadn’t thrown them. They had zipped from his hand.
What the hell magic was that?
I ripped out my sword again, having put it away after the episode with the cat, and ducked behind the couch. A swell of power engulfed the room, popping my ears and churning the air.
That was way too much power for the man who had created those spells upstairs.
I may have made a grievous error in coming here.
Chapter Nineteen
“My, my. That was quick,” the man said. His voice was too raspy for a human, and power swirled around his words. “She has found me.”
“I don’t know what that means.” I dug through my pouch, feeling the vibrations of the few casings I had, since I stupidly hadn’t pocketed any from upstairs yet, until my fingers glanced off a spell that would work. I yanked it out and pinched, then popped up and threw it.
A sheet of air slammed into me. It threw me back, ass over end, until I knocked against the wall. The fire inside me, which usually swelled in times like these, diminished. Instead, that block of cold I’d felt while levitating grew, pulsing up through my body. A new power bled into my bloodstream, one that spread tingles across my scalp and down to the base of my spine.
A high-pitched scream sounded as the figure by the door wriggled in pain. Sparkling pink foam was burning the skin on his arms. I surged forward, sword out, ready for his counter-spell or another weird air attack.
It came when I’d cut the distance between us in half.
A block of magic sailed through the air. I cut through it with my sword. It sparked before sizzling away. Another came right after, the same intensity, but half as powerful as the ability this man had displayed with the solid air. He was using casings now.
Before I could surge forward again, the furniture bumped forward, moved into my path by unseen hands.
“Do you have the demon in you?” I asked, out of breath and not sure why. The cold thing in my stomach pounded. I knew how to work my fire. I didn’t know how to work this new feeling. It wasn’t responding the way my power usually did.
“I do not.” The man grinned and tilted his head in an inhuman way, studying me. His laugh sounded like skeletons dancing on graves. “But I do have the power of the underworld coursing through me. It feels marvelous.”
“It does now, sure. Wait until it starts to erode you. That won’t feel as great.”
His renewed laughter froze my blood. “Ah, but I will be allowed to go free if I deliver the goods to my master. You are Reagan Somerset, are you not? Here from New Orleans?”
“Who’s your master?”
“Are you the girl he seeks? The heir?”
The cold hand of dread wrapped around me. “Nope. The only thrones I know of are made of porcelain. Who’s your master?”
“I will take that as a…maybe.” His smile could curdle milk. “Come with me. We will see if I get a big prize.”
He grabbed something invisible in front of him. Air condensed around my body before lifting me partway off the ground. Huh. The demon had given him the power to move things with his mind.
“This is bad,” I mumbled, reaching for my fire to break out of the air grip. It was hampered, though, overcome by that block of ice swelling within my middle and pumping out through my limbs.
“Say, listen,” I said as he pulled me through the air toward him. My toes scraped the rug. “That power you feel right now, did the demon show you how to use it?”
“It is my life’s blood. It is my soul. Using it is my given right.”
“That didn’t answer my question. What does it feel like? Is it cold? I’m just trying to compare notes, you understand.”
“It feels like worlds colliding. Almighty. All-powerful. Eternal.”
“Wow. No, there is no way you are getting out of this alive. I hate to break it to you, but that demon hung a gullible sign around your neck.” I stopped directly in front of the guy, a forty-something with slightly mussed brown hair, a decent complexion, and crazed eyes. He’d probably been normal once. That ship had sailed.
The man stared at me as if waiting for me to do something.
“What?” I asked, relaxing. Nothing good came of panicking, especially in horrible situations that you had no idea how to escape.
“You are coming without a fight?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t really get a reading on you. Your former magic was nothing special, if what I’m sensing was yours, which I’m inclined to believe it was, but now you have this enormous power seeping out of you. How’d that happen? I mean, hell’s bells, man, this kinetic magic has really thrown me for a loop. This is a first for me, and that doesn’t happen very often. I’m just soaking it in for the moment. I’ll tell you one thing, though. There is no way that demon is a four. No way. Fours can’t impart, or even harness, this type of magic. Not any fours I’ve ever heard about, anyway.”