Wild Knight (Midnight Empire: The Tower #1)(32)

“Would it surprise you to learn she agreed to sell the stone?” I asked.

He recoiled. Lucy appeared equally shocked and dismayed.

“You must be mistaken. Maria would never do such a thing. She was highly respected in the field.”

Lucy chewed her lip. “There was that issue with the budget. Perhaps she was trying to solve the problem?”

Dashiell puffed his disapproval. “Not by selling an artifact like it was a common household object.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I interjected, “but I don’t think the sale of a common household object would solve your budget problems.” The stone was valuable and Maria recognized its worth. Unfortunately so did her killer.

“No, it certainly would not,” Dashiell said in a quiet voice.

I knew he was still processing my revelation, poor guy. It’s always hard to learn the truth about people you think you know. Your mind doesn’t want to accept it.

“Can you walk me through the last time you saw her?” I asked. “Were you here?”

He nodded absently. “She left early, which I did think was odd at the time, but I was too preoccupied to fully register it.”

“Did she say why?”

“She told me she had an appointment with a healer,” Lucy said.

Dashiell whipped around to face her. “A healer? Why not ask me?”

I hadn’t realized Dashiell was a druid. That made sense. Druids got the short end of the stick in the modern world, which was why he was covered in dirt in the middle of a pile of rubble. Once the mediators between the gods and everyone else, druids were historically flush with magic. As a connection to the gods became less important, the druids lost their place in the hierarchy and shifted their expertise to healing spells and potions. Then vampires outlawed magic except in certain circumstances and the practice was lost to many of them. Most druids moved into academia or medicine rather than seek employment in a magic-based field like defense or agriculture. Even healers were limited in the type of magic they could use. Like humans, most resorted to scientific means because they didn’t want to risk a violation of the law. Vampires weren’t kind to lawbreakers.

Two pink spots formed on Lucy’s cheeks and she lowered her voice. “She said she was having lady problems.”

Clever Maria. Tell them you need to seek medical attention for lady problems and no one will ask follow-up questions.

Dashiell tugged the goggles from his head and dropped his arm to his side. “I see.”

“Are you a licensed healer?” I asked.

Dashiell offered a halfhearted sniff. “No. I stopped my training to move into archaeology at Kings, specializing in the excavation of religious sites, of which there are many in the region. I’ve retained a few useful skills, of course. Someone’s always getting cut or scraped on an excavation site and we’re not always within range of a decent healer.”

A gust of wind blew past us, stirring dirt in the air. Instinctively I closed my eyes.

“Give us what we want and no one dies,” a deep voice threatened.

I spun around to see six cloaked figures on the edge of the site. Wizards. My fingers itched for the axe strapped to my back, but I didn’t want to make any sudden moves unless I absolutely had to. Not with two innocent bystanders directly next to me.

“Get behind me,” I barked.

“There’s no need to fight,” the head honcho said. Even in the gloaming, I could see the bright green of his cloak. Mr. Tall and Threatening wanted to shine.

I stepped forward. “That depends on how reasonable you are. What exactly do you want?”

“The stone,” he said.

“Bad news, friends,” I said. “The stone isn’t here and we don’t know where it is.” If the wizards didn’t have the stone, that likely meant they didn’t kill Maria.

The Green Wizard gave me an appraising look. “You’re a knight.”

“Congratulations. Your prize will be death if you threaten me again.”

He lowered his hood to reveal a shaved head with a yellow sun tattooed on the top. Interesting placement.

“Are you authorized to use magic?” I asked, brandishing my axe, affectionately known as Babe. “Because I am.”

“We do not follow the rules of vampires,” he said. He snapped his fingers, prompting his five friends to lower their hoods.

“Now it’s a party instead of a date,” I said. I craned my neck to look at the two archeologists. “Go!”

A golden lasso lashed out and grabbed the duo before they could make a move, holding them firmly in place. My head jerked back to my opponents. These wizards weren’t thugs looking for an easy score. They were skilled fighters.

Welp. My job just got a little bit harder.

A blast of air slammed into me and knocked me flat on my back. Elemental magic.

I jumped straight back to my feet and faced the wizards. “Is that the best you can do?”

“You’re only one girl,” the Green Wizard said. “How do you expect to oppose the six of us?”

“Stand still and I’ll show you.”

I tried to identify which wizard hit me with the gust of air so I could stay out of his direct line of sight. Air magic tended to require a direct path to the target. My mother had spent countless hours teaching me the finer points of every aspect of magic she knew. The magic she could do, she taught me. The magic she wasn’t capable of herself, she found another source to show me.