Shadow Rites

I head a faint shushing sound, maybe a sheet rustling. “Jane?” he whispered from the darkness.

“Magical problems. Silent mode. Weapons,” I said, not much more than a breath, hoping he would understand my intent.

He came out of the room barefoot, his dark skin a shadow in the night, his new weapon harness slung around his head and one shoulder. He was wearing dark pants, his dark skin making him a shadow. He put his head near mine and said, “Deets.”

“Something scanning the house. Magic. Unknown source. I can see it, currently in my bedroom, interested in Molly’s toys and hedge. It scanned me and my room on the way in. Now it smells like something overheating and it might go boom on purpose or accident. Ultimate purpose unknown. Person or persons involved unknown.” Which meant one of two things: it came for the toys it had found, or it was temporarily occupied with the toys it hadn’t expected to find, and would eventually return to whatever it had come to do. If curtain number two was the right one, then the toys sidetracked it. But either way, there could still be an explosion.

Eli gave a single nod and glanced into his brother’s room. “Alex isn’t in his bed,” he murmured.

That meant the Kid, Eli’s teenaged brother, and the brains of our business, was still at his online gaming downstairs or was asleep on the couch, also downstairs. I nodded. “No glow from his screens.”

“Copy.”

We moved down the stairs, silent. Two shadows. Automatically avoiding the steps that might creak or shift or groan under our weight. Old houses have alarm systems built into the floors.

The energies were still at work in the closet when we reached the foyer. The stink of burning hair and ozone had been joined by a stench vaguely reminiscent of iron and salt and the stink of stagnant water. Eli’s nose wrinkled. Even if I had been human, it would have been horrible; as it was, I pressed against my nose to keep from sneezing at the stench.

He leaned into my room and said, “Nothing visible,” which meant humans couldn’t see the working. Alex was sleeping on the living room couch, arms thrown out, legs spread, with one hanging over the back of the couch. He was shirtless, wearing a loose pair of Captain America pants, the kind that kids wear, hanging on their hips, baggy at their knees. I grinned, glad of the dark, so he wouldn’t see my amusement when Eli woke him. Alex was a boy on the brink of manhood, and laughter had begun to sting.

Eli touched Alex’s shoulder. When that didn’t wake him, Eli set two weapons on the floor, covered his brother’s mouth with one hand, and shook him with the other. Alex came awake fighting and Eli avoided the flying fists with ease. It looked like long practice. Despite the magical energies in my bedroom, my smile grew wider. Eli bent over his brother and whispered into his ear. When he let go, Alex slid his feet to the floor, stood, shook himself like a dog to wake up, and made his way to his tablets.

Eli gave me a hand signal that meant, in essence, “Where’s the big bad wolf?” not that I’d say that to him. Hand signals were a military thing and he took that stuff seriously. I looked back over my shoulder and saw that the working was still occupied in my closet. I just hoped that the hedge was enough to keep the magical attack out and that none of Molly’s toys was accidentally activated. I’d hate to have to rebuild my closet. I pointed to my bedroom and made a chipping motion to suggest it was still working there. Eli nodded before moving off to survey the windows and doors and, through them, out into the night.

Yellowrock Securities was a well-oiled team, everyone with a job. This was what it meant to be family. Living together. Working together. Fighting together. If we hadn’t been in danger, I might have gotten all teary. But this wasn’t the first time our home had been attacked by magical means in the last months. It almost felt as if someone had painted a target on us. Or on me. Yeah. That.

I went back to the bedroom to study the magical working, standing well outside the paused line of magical energies that marked my floor. The energies were a line of pale light through the bedroom, faintly flickering. The floor and walls beyond, the ones that the magic had already passed through, were unmarked, and the floor and walls on this side were also unmarked, which, with the exception of the pain in my palm, led me to believe that my first impression had been right—a scanning spell. The energies were much brighter in my closet, in my mixed puma/human eyesight, reddish and greenish with sparks of silver flashing through it, the gray of storm clouds.

I caught a whiff of smoke. The scan was setting something on fire. I raced back to the kitchen and grabbed the fire extinguisher, pulling the pin, and stopping again at the closet. A gray cloud, totally physical and fiery in nature, came off the hedge. The pale green energies of the attacking scan spluttered and sizzled and I felt the heat signature from where I stood. The sound stopped. The scan withdrew slightly. The stench began to lessen as it filtered into the air and diminished. The smoke dispersed, a long, indistinct tracery across the ceiling. Nothing happened for what felt like two or three minutes. Then the attacking magics tapped on the hedge and stopped when it sparked and spat.

I had a better way to see the unfamiliar working, but I wasn’t in the mood to make myself deathly ill unless it was life or death for my partners. The working in the closet flashed again and the line of pale light guttered like a candle going out before strengthening into a pale green hue, brighter than a Disney night-light. It slipped from the closet and started moving again, taking in the ceiling and sliding toward my doorway.