Natural Mage (Magical Mayhem #2)(82)

“What? And miss the fireworks?” He laughed and turned in his chair. I got the impression he was preparing to surge up and out. The people around him pushed their chairs back a little, too, also in anticipation.

“You don’t know what you’re messing with,” I said through clenched teeth.

“They don’t scare us, love,” Steve insisted. “Just lead the charge. We’re right behind you.”

“I meant, you don’t know what is going to come at you, probably accidentally. I have no idea what I’m doing!”

Steve looked at me in confusion, but it was too late to explain.

A man with wire-rimmed glasses and a comb-over popped out of the corner booth. Glasses. A gush of magic ballooned up in front of him, intending to melt the face off someone. The weave was loose but orderly, and he’d called it up quickly. And it was directed at Reagan.

Magic twisted through my fingers without my prompting it. As I rocketed off a spell, I saw streams of magic rushing at Emery. We’d all joined the fight.

Reagan stood gracefully from her stool and reached for her sword, but something held her back. She probably felt my spell. “Wearing glasses doesn’t make you smart, four eyes,” Reagan said with a laugh, leaning back against the bar to watch.

My spell slammed into his, eating it away while ingesting its power and forcing it to change direction. Changing it so it grew larger but less heinous. Forcing it back on him, and whoever was with him.

Emery shot his spell off next, hitting one of the middle-aged guys at the bar who’d looked at me for just a moment when I walked in. He cried out and fell off his stool, landing on his back and shaking.

The guys at the back table grabbed at their pockets, trying to get more ingredients for their spells. Those in the middle booth all shifted, probably arming themselves with ingredients.





35





“Steve!” I pointed at the table.

Steve and his friends were up in a flash as Reagan launched forward, grabbing the woman from the corner booth, who’d (smartly) jumped off her stool and run for the back exit. Screaming from the corner booth drowned out the squawking of frightened tourists.

Steve grabbed the guy across the table with one hand before dragging him over the bar. The mage got off his spell, which threatened to blast Steve’s face with something frozen.

I ran at them while creating a weave, but Emery dodged in front of me, faster and more efficient. He got his spell off, hitting the mage in the dead center of his forehead. A crack said the force had snapped his neck.

“Cleanup on aisle five,” Trixie yelled, jumping over the bar. “Get them out of here, Jimmy.”

Jimmy rushed in and started grabbing non-magical tourists. “For your own safety,” he said as he wrestled them out. “Come back tomorrow for free drinks on us. So sorry. These things happen.”

Trixie followed him out, marshaling other non-magical tourists with no such explanation or offer.

A surge of intent rose from the corner where Emery had been stationed. I stepped out with my spell still building between my fingers, then stopped dead.

Mary Bell. Callie and Dizzy’s acquaintance.

A glimmer came to her eyes when she saw me. “You found your knight, I see.” The spell she’d been weaving dissipated between her hands, and she slid off her stool. “Don’t mind that.” She nodded at the magic fading into the world around her and dropped her hands, walking toward me. “I just wanted your attention.”

She stopped in front of the door, five feet from me, no hostile magical intent sullying the air. “I have a message for you.”

“Does Callie know you hang out here?” I asked, confused. Emery hadn’t done anything to her, so he clearly hadn’t thought she was a threat. But the spell she’d been creating was horribly vicious and gruesome. It would mangle bodies and render the victims almost unrecognizable.

I didn’t even know if she had enough power to finish the weave. But maybe back in the day, before she’d lost her dual-mage partner, it had been her go-to. She certainly seemed familiar with the somewhat complex weave.

“The line between good and evil is horribly blurred,” she said. “Good people sometimes do horrible things. Bad people occasionally do good. So trust in the person who shows their good intentions. Do not listen to their words. Watch their intentions.” She held up her finger as the commotion around the bar began to slow. “But be slow to trust, if you have to at all.”

“Uh-oh, you shouldn’t be in here,” Jimmy said, rushing in and putting his arms out to direct Mary Bell out of the bar. He didn’t recognize her as a mage.

But she’d been in the bar. Alone. With a lot of (almost certainly) Guild members.

“Most importantly, young Penny. Stay true to yourself. Magic works best when we are who we were meant to be.” She gave me a knowing smile before letting the large doorman usher her out.

Could I hope she was just spying for Callie and Dizzy? She’d be the right person to do that. She was familiar with the morally corrupt side of magic. I couldn’t believe she would turn now, after all these years, and after having already tread the wrong path—and lost everything for it.

“Penny,” Emery said, walking over with sure steps, not even winded. Reagan stalked over from the back hallway, dragging an unconscious woman. She glanced at the back booth. I could see limbs hanging off the seat and table, but the mages weren’t dead. Not unless my spell had gone wrong.