Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 113319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
“You aren’t scared because shifters are much scarier than dogs,” Nessa said, watching her feet as she made it onto the concrete pathway toward the side entrance they planned to break into. “You aren’t flustered because you’ve had experience scrambling. Dogs are predictable and mostly straightforward. Gnomes are not.”
“All good points,” he said as the familiar pang hit his heart. It had been a little over a month since they’d had any direct contact with Jessie or her crew. Sebastian missed them terribly. He missed working in the bowels of Ivy House and laughing at the crew’s antics. He even missed the tremors of fear he’d feel around Austin or Broken Sue or Tristan, that sort of primal terror that affected a person at their basic level.
He probably should’ve been afraid in his current situation, too, but he wasn’t. Not even slightly. He was back in his element as Elliot Graves, the feared and fearsome mage. This was a game he knew how to rig. He knew what he was up against and felt nothing but expectation and confidence. He had a score to settle, especially now, and he had the tools to do it.
He’d played nice for Jessie. He’d been Sebastian for her, hiding his worst self, but he wouldn’t play nice as Elliot Graves. Never had, not since the Mages’ Guild had taken him in for questioning and ended up extorting and torturing him.
“Here we go.” Nessa stopped beside a closed door. A sensor light clicked on overhead, showering them with a harsh blue-white glow.
Sebastian checked out the magical shield glimmering over the door with a gossamer sheen. He worked his spells, digging a little here, poking a little there.
“Decent magic,” he said, finding the current of the spell and the release that would pry it from the door.
“Stronger than yours?”
“No. He was working alone to create this. The weave of it is complex, though. Not as simple-minded as I’d expect from him. He must have learned from better spell casters.”
“Stands to reason, since he’s in the Guild, doesn’t it?”
“No. They don’t like to share. He must have gotten it from Momar’s people. They don’t keep such a tight leash on their creations anymore. They don’t have to, right? No one in the Guild can compete with them. I’ll just pop this off and…” His words died away as he encountered something along the edges of the spell, lining the doorframe. “Well now, hold on…”
Nessa stepped closer to the wall and turned, probably so she could better see his face.
“Looks like our mage has a spy.” Sebastian delicately sussed out this secondary spell, feeling out both its connection to the other and how it would work. “Very clever. It fits within his alarm spell seamlessly. I’ll bet Momar’s lot shared—or let him snoop—for a reason. This spy has a lot more power. A lot more. This spell is deliciously complex.” He sucked his bottom lip as he studied it.
“The goal?”
“To let the spy know when he is coming and going. Malachi has a sort of magical base along the edges of the doorframe. It makes it easy to erect spells. It’s like a starter—”
“I know, I know. You won’t use them because it is lazy spell work, which makes it dangerous.”
“Case in point. They wove their spell into his base spell. It’s always here, monitoring when he erects his protection spell and when he takes it down. They know when he comes and when he leaves. I’m sure there is one on every door.”
Nessa checked her watch.
He nodded, reading the silent cue. They didn’t have time for him to geek out over this little slice of spell work. The mage would come home soon, and they needed to be lying in wait when he did.
“Can you break it?” Nessa asked as Sebastian stepped away.
“Can I break it? Yes. Just. Can I do it in a way that the spy won’t detect? No. It has too much power. Even if I had time to figure out a dainty way through, without Jessie’s power to aid me, I’d have to bust parts and it would shatter. Shattering—”
“It’ll set off alarms, I get it.” She looked up at the second floor. “Think they have it on the second-story windows?”
“No. This mage doesn’t fly. It wouldn’t make sense for them to bother.” He scanned the house. Time was ticking. “We have to do this backwards. We’ll go in through the second floor and leave out this door.”
Nessa hiked her backpack farther up her shoulders. “So the proverbial bells will go off after we leave. Think the spy will swing by to check it out?”
“I don’t know. It won’t matter if they do or don’t. Not with how we’re going to leave the inside of the house. They’ll come to the same conclusion regardless of whether they witness a fresh murder or a stale one.”