Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(14)

“Gracias for the game, gentlemen.” She gave another loud hiccup, the card’s effects far from wearing off. She took off her mask to reveal a round face with full lips and heavy brows. “And don’t bother looking for me. I can be a bit hard to find,” she warned with a loopy smile.

She ran her hands through her hair and the long, straight tresses turned into bouncy curls. She passed her hand over her face and the bridge of her nose straightened and shortened. Her eyes became wider set—her whole face changing with a quick touch.

Another hiccup sent her reeling, and she windmilled her arms before falling gracelessly backward off the balcony. Alfie could hear her swearing as she landed and took off running. Rayan stood stock-still, his mouth agape.

His fox mask secure, Alfie ran out of the double doors to the balcony and, after a moment’s hesitation, leaped over its lip. The fall was five men high.

“Amortiguar!” When he landed in a crouch, his palm against the ground, the cobblestoned road was soft as sand. He braced his hand against the ground and took off at a run, disappearing into the night.





5


The Face Thief


Alfie pursued the girl through the Bow, his mask secured.

He chased her as she darted through the rows of colorful estates, winging his shoulder on the trunk of a flourishing, well-tended mango tree between homes. He trailed her around a corner toward a square of expensive shops where the wealthy spent their pesos, but when he burst out of a narrow, hacienda-lined road into the shopping square, the girl was nowhere in sight. His chest tightened as he turned in a circle, looking every which way. She had to be here, didn’t she? He’d been just behind her. Alfie couldn’t lose her, couldn’t lose those books. Tonight had to be worth coming home to Dez’s absence and lying to his family. He would not go home empty-handed.

Alfie walked through the square, peeking into the narrow spaces between stores where she might hide. During the day, this shopping square would be full of vendors doling out wedges of flan and cones of thick-cut yucca fries. But they’d gone home hours ago. Below a full moon, the square sat dark and silent.

As he darted past a dressmaker’s shop, glass crunched beneath his feet. Its window had been broken, but the shop was empty. Strange. He kept going. He didn’t want to lose her. Ahead, a woman wearing a yellow dress and a brimmed hat stumbled out of the alley between two shops. He paused. How many people would be out in an empty shopping square in the middle of the night? Her shadow swayed at her feet like a drunken sailor. When he focused on her, he could see that shifting, red magic buzzing within her. Alfie jogged to catch up to her.

“Se?orita,” Alfie said, stepping in front of her. “The books.”

The slurring voice beneath the floppy hat was forcibly high-pitched, as if she were trying to disguise herself. “Young man, I have no idea what you are talking about!”

There were many ways she could have hidden from him, including changing her face. The drunkening card must’ve been very strong for her to act this ridiculous.

Alfie knocked the hat off her head, and there was the face he’d seen before she’d fallen from the balcony. “I know who you are. The books, if you please.”

“Rude,” she tutted before shoving him away. “And you don’t know me. No one does.”

“How drunk are you if you truly thought this absurd disguise would work?” Alfie asked.

“Drunk enough to tell you to go screw yourself,” she quipped. Her shadow whipped angrily about her, like a threatened animal. She swayed on her feet and Alfie gripped her by the shoulders to stop her from falling. “Get off me.” She pushed him away. Alfie raised his hands in surrender. He didn’t know how to go about this. She was drunk, he didn’t want to take advan—

He shook his head. She’d been the one to take advantage. He owed her nothing.

“Please don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be. I won’t report you to the guards. Just give me the books and you can be on your way—whoever you are beneath that illusion spellwork.” When her magic settled on a shade for a fleeting moment, Alfie finally got his to match hers. He reached for the magic she used to conceal herself, hoping to disrupt it just as he’d disrupted the charmed cards in the cambió game.

His brow furrowed. He didn’t feel the frame of illusion spellwork on her. Strange. It was the equivalent of finding not a single stitch on a piece of clothing. He felt nothing but the red magic that ran through her like a second current of blood, seamlessly. Every propio had a limit, a hard restriction on its power. When it came to Alfie’s, the only type of magic that was impossible for him to disrupt was someone’s propio. If he could not dismantle the magic she was using to change her appearance, then it must be her propio. Paloma had always told him that one’s propio was a reflection of who they were, their very soul. What kind of person was she if, underneath it all, she was someone else?

A liar, Alfie thought. Someone not to be trusted.

Still, he didn’t want to hurt her if he didn’t have to.

He stretched out his hand. His shadow curled tight around his feet. “The books, por favor.”

She stepped back with a drunken sway. “‘Please’ isn’t an accepted form of payment here. You want the books, you can pay for them or you can give me something of equal value. If not.” Hiccup. “Then you really can piss off.”