Page 5 of Relics of the Wolf (Magnetic Magic #2)

5

“It’s only a few blocks to the waterfront,” I told Duncan after looking up El Gato Mágico in my Maps app. “It might be easier to leave your van here instead of trying to find another parking spot.”

The chilly late November air, punctuated with spats of rain, should have kept people home, but weather couldn’t keep humans from wanting to eat and drink out. Further, Christmas lights already adorned store windows and the bare-branched trees lining the streets. Lots of pedestrians clutched shopping bags as they hurried between shops.

“Leave it here?” Duncan looked blankly at me. “When we’re going to the waterfront?”

“Yes…” I pointed west. “The bar is right down there.”

“But out on a pier, yes?” Duncan leaned over to consider my map, then pointed. “One of many piers thrusting out into the water. They’re huge. And with all those shops and restaurants on them, imagine the amount of foot traffic passing near those railings.”

The reason for his objection finally clicked.

“You need to park closer so that your magnetic fishing gear is at hand?” I asked dryly.

“Of course . And my SCUBA gear. I found a number of antique logging tools when I dove around the Edmonds waterfront. Did you know that started out as a timber town?”

“Yes, most of this area did. I think the term skid road comes from Seattle. They used to grease slats and slide the logs down the hill to the mills on the waterfront.” As we climbed into the van, I added, “What kind of logging tools could survive a century in saltwater? A saw would corrode away in that time, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, yes. Nothing was in good shape, with little left but barnacle-covered saw handles, but it was a fascinating find.”

“A valuable find?”

“I donated the tools to the Edmonds Museum.”

“So no value.”

“They were of historical interest.” Duncan backed his van out, a zippy electric vehicle immediately pouncing on our vacated spot, and drove toward the waterfront.

“I’m beginning to think you’re as delighted finding rusty forks as real treasures.”

“It’s possible there’s a reason I live in my van.” He smirked at me.

“You can’t be that impoverished. The gas money I tried to give you last week is still on the dash.” I pointed to six dollars pinned down by a bobblehead fisherman holding a giant salmon. It looked like it had been hand painted, or at least touched up after damage, so something told me that had come out of the water too.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again. I was keeping it as a memento.”

“Nothing evokes the nostalgia of an old acquaintance like US currency.” That reminded me that I needed to chip in again since he was driving us around tonight, so I opened my purse to find my GAS envelope and grimaced at its depleted state. At least pay day wasn’t far off.

“Well, you didn’t leave me any other keepsakes.” Duncan glanced over while circling the block to find a vacant spot. “Do you still have that locket we found together?”

“I do. It came in useful when I faced off against my family—the part of my family that believes I’m a heretic who should be dead.”

“You should avoid that part of your family.”

“Tell me about it.” I pulled out three dollars, making a guess on an appropriate amount for the evening’s drive. This wasn’t as long of a trek as when we’d gone to the mountains to hunt, and I could tell Duncan didn’t care if I gave him money or not, but I hated to feel in debt to anyone. I tucked the bills under the bobblehead with the others.

“Since you’ve deigned to speak with me again, I won’t ask you for a more personal keepsake,” Duncan said.

“You think I’m going to be a regular part of your life now?”

“At least until we find your case.” He saluted toward me, then pulled into a spot.

“It’s not really my case. I just don’t think it’s my ex-husband’s case either. Knowing him, he probably stole it. If we find it, I’d like to show it to my mom and also get Bolin’s dad to research it more and see if it holds any clues for my people— our people. We haven’t seen what’s inside yet. After they’re done researching, his family can figure out who it should go to. Maybe there’s a museum for druidic artifacts. They have to be at least as educational and interesting as rusty logging tools.”

“I should think so. What link to werewolves do you think the case has? Besides the obvious wolf on the lid?”

As we climbed out of the van, the salty air heavy with mist, I debated again whether to tell him about the writing. It wasn’t as if the words had hinted of a tremendous secret, and the information shouldn’t make Duncan more eager to snatch the case for Chad. If anything, Duncan might feel some loyalty toward our kind and not want to hand the artifact over to a mere human fanatic. My lip curled at that description for Chad. I didn’t doubt that werewolves were an obsession for him—overhearing that conversation had given me more evidence of something I’d suspected for years, that he’d only been interested in me because of my lupine heritage. But something told me there was more than a fan’s curiosity behind his desire to get the case back. He’d known it was valuable when he’d gone through all the effort to hide it in the apartment. And install those cameras. The memory of finding those made my lip curl again.

When Duncan looked over, doubtless waiting for an answer to his question, I said, “The writing on the bottom that I mentioned. Bolin and his dad translated it. Straight from the source lies within protection from venom, poison, and the bite of the werewolf. ”

“So whatever clunked inside might be a powerful artifact, more than the case itself.”

“I wondered if it might give us clues about the lost magic of the werewolf bite. My mother was recently lamenting about that, about how our people are slowly dying without the ability to create werewolves through means other than procreation, and inbreeding has been on the rise as a result these past centuries. Maybe that’s why Augustus turned into such a turd.”

“You think genetic insufficiencies could account for that?” Duncan asked.

“A lot of insufficiencies. He probably licked glowing toadstools as a kid and wandered through radioactive ponds.”

Duncan chuckled as we headed out onto a pier with walkways on either side and restaurants and shops in the middle. They all looked like normal human destinations. Would we truly find a paranormal bar among them? Maybe it would also look normal but have a back room for warlocks and clairvoyants to swill beer and throw darts under the guidance of their powers.

As I searched for a sign, Duncan peered over the railing into the dark water lapping at the pilings. Fog was drifting in, so I doubted he could see much.

The hazy weather reminded me of the night we’d been attacked by wolves and stray dogs with glowing eyes. I hoped the wolf—presumably the werewolf— we’d heard howling hadn’t followed us and didn’t have similar plans. Unfortunately, my face-off with Augustus hadn’t led to anything conclusive, like a promise that he would leave me alone. My mom and her mate, Lorenzo, had threatened to kick Augustus’s ass if he tried to kill me again, but we were a long way from the pack’s hunting grounds. My cousin might think he could get away with offing me if it happened in the city. Who would know? It wasn’t as if the pack would trust or even listen to a report from the lone wolf Duncan if he survived and I died.

“I’ll only stop if I sense something magical, but I’ll wager there’s all kinds of good stuff down there.” Duncan’s voice was full of longing. He had no idea I was mulling over my death.

“Even better than the barnacle-covered wooden handles of saws from the 1800s?” I put aside my grim thoughts about murdering cousins. Ahead, a sandwich-board read El Gato Mágico in chalked cursive writing and had a round flask on it, blue liquid bubbling inside. An arrow pointed to a narrow alley between buildings.

“Most assuredly.” After another longing look at the water, Duncan followed me into the alley. “I can come back later when I’m not on an important mission.”

“I won’t stop you if you want to look.”

“And leave you to enter a den of paranormal danger on your own? I am certain you’re capable of dealing with such places, but a gentleman doesn’t abandon a lady to possible plight.”

“That means you didn’t sense anything magical under the pier, right?”

“Not in the spot we just walked over, no.” Duncan smiled, stepped forward, and held the door open for me.

Pop music with a Latino flair floated out, not what I would have expected from a bar where witches and warlocks hung out. Before I could step in, a gangly man who looked like a forty-year-old version of Harry Potter stumbled out. He had a lean face, beaky nose, wore glasses, and clutched a cape against the cold as he peered blearily around like he might be trying to remember where he’d parked.

“Is that a pencil tucked behind his ear? Or a wand?” I murmured as he shambled past us.

As far as I knew, real magic wands didn’t exist, wood being a poor conductor for power of any kind, but that didn’t keep hucksters from selling such things.

“I don’t know,” Duncan said, “but I think this is the right place.”

“Probably so.”

The scents of grilled onions, hamburgers, and beer wafted out the open door—all normal bar-and-grill odors. But I also caught a few whiffs of essential oils and dried flowers that reminded me of the alchemist’s apartment. As we walked in, I glanced toward the rafters for dangling bunches of herbs.

More caped and cloaked people sat at tables in the front, playing board games as they nursed mugs of ale, glasses of wine, and cocktails in glasses, more than a few of the beverages throwing colorful vapors into the air. I didn’t sense actual magic in the drinks, so maybe the owner employed molecular gastronomy to give his visitors what they expected from the establishment.

In the back, past a bar along the side wall, people stood, waiting their turns at pool tables. Beyond them, a couple of big men threw axes at targets. The occasional thunks of the projectiles landing mingled with the music.

Here and there, a few men and women danced, but the board-game playing was most popular. A Dungeons and Dragons box caught my eye. Even more grown Harry Potters sat at that table.

Based on sight alone, I might have dismissed the place as catering to those into fantasy novels and games, but my nerves tingled as we took a few steps inside, a hint of magic floating in the air. The drinks might not be enchanted, but some of these people had power.

“This might be a more promising place to magnet fish,” I said to Duncan over the music, an axe thunk punctuating my sentence. “Or magic fish.”

He had that detector, after all.

“Yes, but people get upset when your magnets attach themselves to their pockets. Also when your magic detector beeps at them.” Duncan lowered his voice and added in a warning tone, “Watch the bartender.”

The bartender was watching us .

A brown-skinned man of average height and build, he had short gray hair and wouldn’t have looked intimidating, but he had a feral aspect, and my senses pricked further as our eyes met. He was a werewolf. Or something similar? My brow furrowed as I considered what my senses told me about him. After so many years dulling them with my potions, I was out of practice at reading signs.

“ Lobisomem ,” Duncan said. “Our South American kin. I met one in Brazil during my travels. They’re even scarcer than we are.”

The bartender might have had sharp ears, or maybe he didn’t like the way we looked at him, because he finished making a couple of drinks and walked around his patrons and toward us.

Duncan lowered into a crouch with his arms loose. Expecting a fight? Maybe his meeting with the Brazilian lobisomem hadn’t gone well.

But the bartender raised his arms in a conciliatory gesture as he approached, glancing between us before stopping a couple of paces away. He gave Duncan a long look, but his gaze settled on me.

“I already paid my taxes to the Savagers this month,” he said, naming my pack. “I don’t want any trouble, and I set up my bar outside of what I was told was their territory so they would leave me alone. I run a respectable business and don’t bother anyone. I’ll have the fee again next month, but I won’t be extorted for more.” He glared at Duncan.

I glanced at Duncan, to see if he’d heard about this, but it didn’t sound like something that had anything to do with him. I was surprised the guy had recognized me as one of the Snohomish Savagers. Other than the recent hunt, I hadn’t interacted with my family in decades, but I supposed he, being lupine himself, could smell or sense that I shared their blood.

“That’s not why we came,” I said. “We’re here for?—”

“Beer and camaraderie.” Maybe Duncan didn’t think it was a good idea to announce what we were really after. “And to hire people. Strong people. Do you get any regulars like that who might need work?”

He looked toward big guys at one of the pool tables and also a man caressing his axe between throws.

“Yeah, maybe. You can put a card on the community board. Job listings get posted there.” The bartender waved toward a short hallway that looked more like it led to bathrooms than employment opportunities. “I’m Francisco. You’re sure you didn’t come to extort me?” He squinted suspiciously at me.

“Nope. I don’t even think…” I paused, not knowing much about the pack dynamics and where they extended their influence these days. When I’d been a girl, it had only been Snohomish County and a few miles across the border into King County. Raoul’s pack, the Cascade Crushers, had ruled the rural and suburban parts of east King County. Everyone had mostly ignored Seattle itself, the urban density making it unappealing for werewolves. But maybe all that had changed when the Crushers had departed. Even if my pack didn’t claim two full counties as their territory, that didn’t mean they would let lone wolves linger in close proximity to what they did claim. That was probably what this guy was. “Who’s extorting you?”

“A big hombre who’s always in a black leather jacket with slicked-back black hair. Last time he came by, some of my clients tried to help me get out of paying his supposed taxes, but he had buddies with him, and it didn’t go well for me or my establishment.” Francisco glanced toward three deep claw marks in the surface of the polished wooden bar.

“Sounds like your cousin,” Duncan said, “unless that’s a style favored by lots of males in your family. Lots of males stuck in the 1960s. I wonder if they had white T-shirts with packs of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve too.”

“Werewolves set their own styles,” I said.

“True enough.”

“We’re not here looking for trouble,” I told Francisco. “Or taxes.”

I was tempted to apologize for Augustus’s behavior, but I didn’t know anything about the agreement this guy had with the pack.

“No? Then please enjoy the offerings here. The cook is happy to make all-meat meals, and we have some potent drinks. I can make a delicious margarita that allows you to see into the spiritual realm. It’s popular with my ghost-hunter clientele.” Francisco pointed toward a table of young men and women who hunched around a machine and a backpack instead of a board game. Maybe they were heading out to a graveyard later.

“I have equipment for that, no alcohol needed,” Duncan said.

“ Equipment won’t fortify you with bravery while enhancing your senses,” Francisco said, “but maybe your kind don’t need enhancements. You seem especially…” He squinted thoughtfully at Duncan.

“Well fortified naturally, yes.” Duncan winked, then pointed toward the hallway. “We’ll check the job board. Thanks.”

“What about you, senorita ? A margarita?”

“No, thanks.”

Francisco rested a hand on my arm and raised a finger. I bristled at the presumptuous touch, but a wariness in his eyes as he glanced again at Duncan, who was walking toward the hallway, made me pause without complaint to see what he wanted.

“Your senor … He does not work for the Savagers?”

“No. They want him dead. Or at least for him to leave their territory.”

“He is a lone wolf.” It was a statement, not a question.

“As far as I know, yes.”

“From… the Old World?”

“I think so.” I lowered my arm, hoping to walk away without answering more questions about Duncan. If the bartender wanted information, he could talk to Duncan directly.

“He is very strong, yes?”

I thought of the motorcycles that Duncan had torn apart. “Yeah.”

“I am relieved he does not work for the lobo who comes to extort me. This one is…” Francisco drew his hand back from me and groped in the air. “Like us but greater. The same but different. More dangerous. You sense this, yes?”

If I hadn’t seen Duncan fight, it would have been hard for me to think of him as dangerous , but even when he was simply standing in his human form, his affable smile didn’t entirely hide his feral power.

“You wouldn’t want to pick a fight with him, no.” I didn’t mention how many times I’d threatened to have his van towed. It wasn’t as if I was great about following my own advice.

“No,” Francisco whispered, the word barely audible over the music and nearby conversations. “He reminds me of the very old lobisomem . Those who came from the mountains and into the villages along the river, to my village in my youth. Those who could take the bipedfuris form and whose bite spread the magic of the wolf.” He turned his head and pointed to his neck, to faint scars near his carotid artery, an old pair of puncture wounds. Fang marks.

An uneasy chill of knowing went through me. Even though I was a werewolf, it was because I’d been born one to my mother, not because someone had bitten me. As I’d been discussing with Duncan, that magic had supposedly faded from the world long ago. I hadn’t realized it had existed as recently as in this guy’s lifetime. Fifty years ago? Sixty? Nor had I realized our kind had been able to take the in-between form and walk furred and deadly on two legs that recently.

“I don’t think he has that power.” I looked in the direction Duncan had gone. He’d disappeared into that hallway.

I admitted I didn’t know the extent of Duncan’s powers. Just because I hadn’t seen him change into that form didn’t mean he couldn’t, did it?

As if my thought had summoned him, he leaned around the corner and into view, eyebrows raised as he looked at Francisco and me standing side by side. He tilted his head toward the hallway—had he found that job board and something promising on it?—and crooked a finger at me in invitation.

Nodding, I stepped in that direction, but Francisco touched my arm, his grip tighter this time, as if in warning.

“Please, senorita , encourage him not to work for your pack. They have power enough. Those like me, those who wish only to do business for the paranormal… we do not bother anyone. It is not right that we should have to pay so much to werewolves who believe they are like the mafia. Some of us fled from countries with systems like that to work in a fairer place.”

“He’s not going to work for them,” I said, disturbed that Augustus and who knew how many other family members were acting like thugs. “I doubt he’ll even be in the area long. He’s a traveler.”

Saying those words aloud sent a twinge of sadness through me. I was still conflicted about Duncan, because of his association with Chad, but he was here with me once again, being helpful and pleasant company. Something I’d been without for a long time.

“Good.” Francisco released me, relief on his face and in his voice. “Good.”

As I headed toward the hall, I wondered if I would one day learn there was more that was disturbing about Duncan than that he’d taken a gig from my ex-husband. Maybe I shouldn’t think of him as pleasant company.