* * *
“Shevdon?” Wraithbane asked. We were resting up over a couple of beers out in my back yard, admiring the recently-cleared perfection of a clean slate.
I'd relocated the magically-growing purple passionflower into a big pot, half in the hopes that rudely uprooting it would kill it off. The opposite proved to be true. It flourished, and its pleasant stink drifted all around. Kayla was temporarily inside, filling a vase up with its flowers. I didn't think that it should be blooming at this time of the year, but Willow thought the plant was wonderful.
Wraithbane and I rested in the sunshine, feeling lazy after a solid meal and the exciting hunt. The others—perhaps including Doc Mike, if he wasn't busy—were to arrive sometime relatively soon. A honeybee buzzed overhead, tapping against the windows. I hoped it wouldn't find its way inside and get lost. Wraithbane rocked his head to the side, a nonverbal prompt in the lift of his eyebrow.
“My former employer in my Lady Luck days. The one who had owned the casino where Kayla and I were to be sold as slaves. He has enough money to buy off a few corrupt people in the White Wizard Council, I'm sure.”
And something clicked from my first conversation with Tom. That had been ages ago. Was I even the same woman? I didn't feel like it. At any rate, Tom had complained about the neighboring house being a Bliss Den, “...ever since Shevdon bought that place.”
Thaimon was right.
My opponent would think nothing of squashing a good-girl. His resources were as liquid and changing as the ward protecting his gambling houses.
Thaimon thought my past life as Dream Weaver had made me enemies—it had, that was true, but this enemy was one that I'd made in this lifetime.
“But why him?”
“This is about the money I stole.”
He stared at me, silently telling me that short of an answer wouldn't be sufficient.
“From the beginning?” I asked. “Today when I talked to Thaimon he said he was holding onto his sanity by fixating on finding the person who was selling information about me.”
“A spy?”
“Another one, it would seem. His search took him to the Morris cousins, then from them to the jewelery store where he found our Tom. Tom said a name I couldn't hear, but I did see the lip motion. Shevdon.”
“Your former employer.”
“Yes.”
Wraithbane considered his beer, mulling over the thoughts. “You were Lady Luck. Meant to lead the players sweetly astray to crash before they could win big.”
“Yes.”
“Except once, you chose to not do your job.”
“Hey, he was a good man. Real estate and accounting. Possibly not for the best crowd, but he made my share disappear from nosey people's notice.”
“It was a heist.”
“Gambling is anyway.”
Wraithbane said, “But Shevdon is a very rich poor loser.”
“True.”
He sighed, managing to appear both defeated and very intrigued. “All you need is another complication.”
“I'm sure it is all tied together.”
Wraithbane leaned back, propping his boots up so that the heel of one balanced on the toe of the other. “What now?”
I unfolded both the notes I'd taken from Thaimon. “Now you tell me who is Isla Montague, and why I have her as a roommate. She was sworn into the Kettle as an informant, I believe?”
Kayla chose that moment to walk out of our house and join us. She saw the notes and bolted to snatch them both, gazing at them in shock. “Where did you get these?”
“A chalkman.” I paused to see if she understood what I meant. A blank stare was my response. I decided to save the explanation for later. “He was an informant. If we do have someone selling intel...”
“I'll plug the leak,” Wraithbane said.
I realized that he had not been impressed about the name Isla Montague. In fact, he seemed to have known all about it already. Fire jolted through my veins. “You knew her real name! Nobody told me. Kayla? The hell? I knew you before all this insanity.”
She shivered. “Kayla is my real name, I promise. I was enrolled at the university with it, remember?”
I crossed my arms, feeling the flex of muscles which were showing sign of the added weight lifting I'd been doing lately. “Sure, until you partied too hard and started flunking chemistry.”
“I was not flunking chemistry.”
“You missed two midterms.”
She threw up her hands. “Fine, I flunked the class, but I was tired of being a poor, overworked student, when I could make great money selling formulas for Bliss.”
My jaw dropped. “You were going to be a pharmacist! And here you were brewing Bliss instead?”
“No.” Her defensive attitude failed and her brow came down low over her eyes. Quieter, she said, “Well, small batches only, for trials. So it didn't cause as hard of a hangover and would give high peaks several times.”
I realized who would find the appeal in a drug like this. “You did the Club's formula.”
Wraithbane pushed his beer into my hand. While I took a long swig, he said, “We needed her to treat the new strains. Perhaps not needed, but she does make it easier. She worked with Doc Mike for your treatment.”
Kayla said, “I didn't know a thing about brewing Bliss until I saw your cook book. The handwritten one.”
The one that the great-grannas had given me ages ago. Thaimon had called it a spell book but also said that it wasn't mine. A spell book made its way to its master soon after their magic woke up. If Kayla's introduction to magic had been through Bliss, and it had happened while Kayla was under my roof, then she would have found the book about the same time as her magic.
“That was why you kept on borrowing it. Oh. Was this before or after your first Bliss?”
“Shortly before. My experiments drew the attention of a classmate, who suggested I come by a party with him.”
I nodded. “And so it started.”
“Yes. I took up a fake name once I started making formulas. People like to buy from a fancy person. Kayla is so girl-next-door.” She paused. “And Isla Montague also shields my real identity a little.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
I took another swig of the beer, stared out over my wasteland of a back yard, and wondered about everything I'd learned today. Informants, chalkmen, jewelers, antiquities, spies, now a bonafide Bliss chemist sleeping in the room next to mine.
A knock rattled the front door. We had the doors and windows open so we could hear through the house. Kayla shot off to answer like a hare bolting from hiding. Distantly, I heard Willow, Jay, and Doc Mike's voices as they said hello.
I recalled what I'd wanted to ask Wraithbane.
“Bane,” I asked, working the gold ring off my forefinger, “do you know what this is?”
He held out his hand. No sooner had he caught sight of the engraving on the top and sides than a deep furrow formed between his eyebrows. It was as if he were seeing in real life what he had only seen in pictures.
“Hariuha.”
“That's what the runes inside say.”
“The runes inside?” He turned the ring so he could see them. From the purse of his lips and the lifted brows, he was surprised to see them.
“Can you read them?”
“No.” He turned the ring over and over in his palm. “But I do have some books on Norse that I can use.”
“It's Old Scandinavian, according to Thaimon. Says the ring knows danger, gives luck, and is named Hariuha.”
It fit perfectly on his left ring finger. What was more, it belonged to him. A match to his skin tone, the roughened fingers, right down to a scratch on the ring's face which was in line with a scar across his knuckles.
I added, “It's old, I guess.”
“How did you find this?”
“Thaimon wanted to buy me a ring. This was the only antiquity that settled for me.”
Wraithbane's fist clos
ed. I could tell he would have a hard time giving it up.
“You can keep it if you like it. I'd rather not owe anything else to Thaimon if I can avoid it.”
He nodded.
“So,” I asked, hearing the others coming closer. “What now?”
“Now,” he repeated. “We do as we do. Protect those in the Kettle. And enjoy a moment of peace while we can.”
“Shouldn't we be planning what to do about Thaimon?”
“What's the point of being alive unless you live it up a little bit?”
I pursed my lips. “True.”
A piercing shriek came from the house and Kayla sprung into my arms. Willow emerged from the house, armed with a heavy-duty water gun dripping from being filled at the sink. Kayla babbled in a rush, “Brandy's a safe base!” To me, she said, “She put food coloring in them! That stains clothes.”
“What's the point of a water war if you can't tell who hit who?” Willow asked. She chucked a plastic shotgun at Wraithbane, who caught it and cocked it, spraying a stream of green water across the patio. To my amusement, I realized that Willow had coordinated the water guns to match the color I said their magic was. Jay had yellow. Wraithbane had green. Willow had purple. Doc Mike had blue. Kayla's was red, which might have been a generic assignment because I hadn't seen her use magic yet.
I tried not to feel left out. Though I could do some things, like brewing and modifying the spells of others, I had yet to truly cast a standard spell. The color of my own magic was therefore unknown.
Willow tossed me a gun with a giant water tank. Curious, I pulled the trigger. Clear water mottled with silver glitter sprayed at my feet.
I grinned.
Willow said, “Now, we'll start at the count of ten. Once you're out of water, there's no