Kate Daniels 02 - Magic Burns

person who handles pressure well. If you keep delaying the wedding, you’ll just drive her to suicide again.”
    â€œYou saw the scars?”
    I nodded. “People must make their own choices, no matter how wrong those choices are. Otherwise they can’t be free.”
    A careful knock echoed through the room.
    â€œEnter,” Curran called.
    A young man stuck his head into the door. “It’s awake.”
    Curran rose. “I have something to show you.”
    Thank God it wasn’t a pickup line.
    As we followed the shapeshifter down the hall, Curran asked softly. “How are those arms? Sore a bit?”
    â€œNo,” I lied. “How’s your knee?”
    A few steps later I decided to put my worry to rest. “You were joking about the whole please and thank you thing, right?”
    â€œMeant every word.” A little light danced in his eyes and he very deliberately said, “Baby.”
    No.
    He laughed. “You should see your face right now.”
    â€œDon’t call me that.”
    â€œWould you prefer ‘darling’? Or maybe ‘cupcake’?” He winked.
    I gritted my teeth.
    We went down the spiraling stairs into the inner yard of the Keep. The Pack Keep had trouble deciding if it wanted to be a medieval castle or a twenty-first-century prison. Its main tower rose, looming, forbidding, a huge square building, utilitarian to the point of being crude. Jim once told me that it was built by hand with minimal technology and took almost ten years. It probably took a lot longer. The Keep went on for many stories underground.
    A solid stone wall enclosed the main tower, carving a chunk from the clearing. I had never been inside the yard before. It was spacious and mostly empty. Some exercise equipment at the far wall. A large storage shed. A water tower. To the right a group of shapeshifers stood by a tall tank full of liquid. The last time I’d seen a tank like that, it contained dark green healing solution Doolittle had magicked, and Curran floated in it naked.
    This tank contained clear water. Within the water sat a loup cage: bars as thick as my wrist, laced with silver. Something dark moved in the cage. The shapeshifters moved back and forth. Among them were three near seven-foot monstrosities in beast-form whose shaggy heads blocked the view.
    â€œWhat is that?” I headed for the cage.
    â€œYou’ll see.” Curran looked smug, like a cat who stole the cream and thought he got away with it.
    As we crossed the yard, a dark shape blotted out the stars. A dark outline of a long colossal body armed with huge membranous wings passed in silence high above us and vanished behind the tree line.
    It couldn’t be. Even during a flare, the possibility of such a creature was too miniscule to contemplate.
    The shapeshifters parted before Curran. A familiar glowing body shifted within the cage. A reeve. “How did you…?”
    Curran shrugged. “She came sniffing your trail after you left. We had a mild disagreement and I tore her arms off. She didn’t die right away, so we stuck her into a loup cage and drove her over here.”
    The reeve floated in the water, her eyes wide-open. Tiny slits of gills fluttered on her neck. Both arms were present and perfectly functional. She had regenerated.
    The reeve’s hair clasped at the bars and drew back.
    â€œDoesn’t like silver.” Jim congealed from the crowd as if by magic.
    Curran nodded. “The loup cage was a good idea. Never would’ve thought of it myself. Good looking out.”
    The next chance I got an extra gig from the Guild, I’d put the money into getting the bars for my apartment made from the same alloy. My current bars were supposed to have a decent silver percentage but apparently not enough to have prevented the reeve from grabbing them.
    I pulled the monisto from my leather. The reeve snapped to the bars, her lavender eyes fastened on the necklace.
    â€œYou want this, yes?” I moved the monisto to the left. The reeve followed it.
    I pried one of the numerous knots open, slid the first coin off the cord and tossed it into the grass a few feet away. The reeve remained focused on the necklace. I slid the second coin and flicked it next to the first. No reaction.
    â€œIs one of those special?” Curran asked.
    â€œYep. Don’t know which one.”
    Third coin. Fourth.
    â€œHey, mates!”
    I’d know that voice