Page 29 of Triumph of the Wolf (Magnetic Magic #6)

I gave Duncan an address downtown near the Space Needle, though I had no idea where our real destination was. What the vision had given me… hadn’t been a spot that existed. I’d been positive of that even before my internet map search.

Whether that garden was symbolic or an enlarged version of a yard or park that did exist, I didn’t know.

My hope was that if we started in the area the vision had shown, Bolin would be able to take the elixir and guide us to Jasmine.

He was in the back of the van now, fretting about her and asking every five minutes if he should swallow it yet.

“No. I tried to reject it.” I didn’t even know where the envelope had come from. It had simply been in the van after I’d accepted the elixir from Rue.

“So, I should have objected when MacGregor slipped it in through my open window?” Duncan asked.

“Yes. I would have.”

“He said he owed you postage money. The envelope looked rather thick for that, but Bolin and I were busy stuffing a few items under the bed, table, and into already-full cabinets, and I didn’t think much of it.”

“Ivan’s trying to reward me for returning his bracelet.”

“Oh, well that’s acceptable, isn’t it? We did have to battle poison-vapor-exhaling robot bugs in order to get that. You’re deserving of a reward.”

“We were there anyway. For other reasons.” I pointed at him.

Seeking a way to lift his curse had been my primary motivator in infiltrating that laboratory.

“You say that like it’s a reason to decline reward money. Luna, if you want to get rich in this world, you can’t turn down money that’s granted to you in a rightful manner.”

“It seems wrong to take money from some wealthy guy, especially when his sister was kidnapped on the grounds of the apartment complex I manage.”

“That’s her fault for being furry, surly, and all over your grounds.”

I shook my head. Maybe he wouldn’t understand. I probably wasn’t articulating myself well.

“I don’t want to get rich ,” I decided on as my counter.

“That’s fine, but if you want to retire comfortably and not have to worry about having a roof over your head in your old age, then you can’t turn down money.”

That was… a legitimate argument. Maybe he was right.

“Did I mention that Ivan has seen me naked and suggested we hook up?”

“No.” Duncan frowned at me.

“That means it would be extra weird to take his money. I wouldn’t want him thinking… Well, he seems like an okay guy, but you know.” I shrugged. “Weird.”

Duncan took the exit for downtown Seattle, slowing for a red light before we’d gone far.

“You should take the money,” he said, “and then show him a photo of us together, ideally with me looking sexy and irresistible and you gazing adoringly and lustfully at me.”

“Ew,” came a faint utterance from Bolin.

And here I’d thought he’d been too busy worrying about Jasmine to pay attention to our conversation.

“I don’t have a photo like that,” I told Duncan.

“No? How have we failed to properly document our burgeoning relationship, respect, and passion for each other?”

“It’s a mystery,” I said.

Duncan withdrew his phone, leaned toward me, stuck his arm out, and tapped selfie mode.

I rolled my eyes. He took a photo.

“Perfect.” He glanced at it, tucking his phone away when the light turned. “I’ll text it to you so you can send it along.”

“I’m certain neither adoration nor lust was signaled by my expression.”

“You’re clearly unaware that you ooze those emotions in my direction all the time. Like pheromones.”

That prompted another ew and also a sigh from the back.

Duncan turned onto a tight street with so many cars parked on either side that the van struggled to make it through. He slowed, and we peered down an alley lined by dumpsters and trash cans, with weeds growing up through cracks in the pavement.

“If this is the address, it looks… underwhelming.” He looked at his phone’s GPS map.

“I just gave you a starting spot. The location the vision suggested didn’t have an address associated with it.

Like I said, it didn’t look like anyplace that actually exists in the city.

I’m hoping we’re close, though, and Bolin can lead us from here.

Or wherever you can find parking.” I waved vaguely.

“Okay.” Duncan drove down a few more packed blocks before parking in front of a fire hydrant, apparently not worried about the ticket police wandering through. “You’re up, kid.”

“Kid?” Bolin protested.

“You sighed and said ew twice as we discussed romance,” I said. “ Kid may be the right term.”

“Funny.” Bolin grabbed a pack—for this mission, he’d come with a backpack instead of his expensive leather messenger bag—and slung it over his shoulders before jumping out of the van.

I didn’t know what he and Duncan had loaded into the van, but they must not have wanted to schlep around all of downtown Seattle with it.

Duncan grabbed a pack, magnets clinking inside, and his magic detector, but that was it.

I hadn’t brought anything except a few snacks and the sword.

Maybe I’d come underprepared. We would find out.

We gathered at the mouth of an alley that smelled of urine and held garbage bins and a couple of shopping carts with homeless people’s belongings in them. I didn’t see the owners. Nobody we could ask if there was an entrance to a secret garden nearby.

Duncan wrinkled his nose. “A lovely spot for the beginning of an adventure.”

Bolin gazed down at Rue’s vial in his hand. His expression was rightfully dubious, and I wondered if I should have warned him more thoroughly about how unpleasant the concoction was. But one of us had to take it, and I’d just as soon spread the delightful experience around.

“Do you think we’re within ten miles now?” Bolin looked in the direction of the Space Needle, its tip visible over a building at the end of the street.

A breeze swept through, smelling of fish and seaweed. Better than urine, I supposed.

“If my vision was correct, we should be,” I said.

“Vision,” Bolin mouthed.

“We werewolves get them all the time. They’re not weird.” I looked at Duncan.

“Not weird at all,” he agreed, though I doubted either of us had ever had many.

Until the medallion and these other magical artifacts had come into my life, I hadn’t experienced any at all.

Since Bolin still looked dubious, I added, “The whole downtown area is less than ten miles across. Your odds of being close enough for the potion to work are good.”

“Okay.” Bolin removed the cork.

“How’d you talk him into taking the elixir instead of doing it yourself?” Duncan asked. Since he’d been there when I’d taken the last one, he had a notion of how distressing it was.

“True love,” I told him.

“A feeling that he doesn’t direct toward his esophagus?”

“Toward Jasmine.”

“Ah, she is a comely girl.”

“I think she’ll be offended if she hears you use that word to describe her,” I said. “Or any other word that peaked in popularity in the fifteenth century.”

“It’s a perfectly normal word that’s still in use,” Duncan said.

“In historical books and films.” I looked at Bolin, certain he would know all about the word and its popularity over time, but he was holding his nose and tilting his head back.

With a shudder, he swallowed the elixir.

Duncan offered him one of the to-go coffee cups we’d brought. Bolin’s face contorted, and he bent forward, making gagging sounds. Maybe we should have stopped at an espresso stand for something more potent—and laced with a lot of chocolate syrup.

Hoping he wouldn’t throw up, I eyed the overcast sky as another chilly breeze swept through. The warm weather earlier in the week had broken, and I wondered if winter would make a reappearance.

“It’ll be a full moon tonight,” Duncan said quietly, noticing the direction of my gaze.

“Oh? That should favor us, right? If we find our way in and have to battle bad guys.”

“Depends if the bad guys are also werewolves.”

I started to shake my head but thought of Lykos. There’d also been a lupine assistant with the building inspector that Radomir had hired when they’d been pretending an interest in buying Sylvan Serenity. It wasn’t as if Abrams didn’t have access to werewolves.

More gagging sounds came from Bolin.

“It might not work if you throw it all up,” I told him, though I was sympathetic. I well knew how dreadful that potion was.

“You warned me,” Bolin rasped, “that drinking the Elixir of Locus would be unpleasant… but I didn’t realize it would hurt so badly.

” He clutched his chest and staggered about.

Tears leaked from his eyes, and his lips rippled with discomfort.

“I may need an ambulance. Someone to like, I don’t know, vacuum pump this out of me. ”

“Jasmine needs you to rescue her.”

“I’ll tough it out.” His contorted face suggested otherwise. “But I think I’m dying. You said there’d be some heartburn and tingling.”

“The tingling comes after the heartburn.”

Bolin put his back to the brick wall and groaned and writhed.

“Maybe Rue made this one stronger,” I said, starting to grow worried for him. Could something have gone wrong with the brewing of the elixir?

“Probably not.” Not appearing as concerned, Duncan offered Bolin a bottle of water, then fished out some chocolate-covered espresso beans.

Similar items that he’d given to me to help wash the taste out of my mouth, but Bolin looked like more than his tongue was protesting the stuff.

“Men aren’t as good at dealing with pain as women, you know. It’s a proven fact.”

“Is that so,” I murmured.

“Yup. On account of ladies having to endure childbirth.”

Bolin took the water and chugged it, threw the empty bottle at a dumpster, and then tossed back coffee from the cup.

“It makes them tough,” Duncan added. “Candy, Bolin?”