Page 30 of Triumph of the Wolf (Magnetic Magic #6)

“I’d choke and die if I tried to eat those.

” His words continued to come out raspy, and he shook his head.

“The next potion I need to find people, I’ll learn how to make myself.

There has to be a druid equivalent.” He drained the coffee cup.

“A less painful druid equivalent.” He massaged his chest through his shirt and groaned again.

“I can’t tell if it’s starting to tingle or that’s the feeling of my esophagus disintegrating.

Do you think I might die before we can find Jasmine? ” He writhed further against the wall.

“What’s the origin of the word esophagus?” I asked.

Duncan arched his eyebrows at the topic shift.

“It’s Greek.” Bolin wiped tears from his eyes. “From oiso , which means to carry , and phagos , which means to eat .”

“Phagos means that? Really? I can’t think of anywhere else I’ve heard that used.”

“Oh, please. It’s in lots of words.” Bolin bent double, gripping his knees.

Would he throw up? Our storming of a new compound wasn’t off to the solid start I’d envisioned.

“Like what?” I asked. “I bet you can’t name five.”

“You’re trying to distract me, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m entirely ignorant when it comes to phagosry, and I need your help.”

“That’s not a word.” Bolin gave me a scathing look. “Examples are phagophobia, phagocyte, necrophagous, oligophagous, and rhizophagous.”

“Maybe you can define some of those for me so I can work them into everyday conversations. I know you can at least spell them for me.”

“I don’t believe a wolf would wish to discuss necrophagy,” Duncan said, “but a vulture certainly would.”

Bolin wiped his eyes again and straightened.

“Do you know which way Jasmine and Izzy are yet?” I asked him.

“I think…” Bolin touched his chest and rotated toward the end of the alley. “That way.”

“Good boy.” Duncan offered the chocolate-covered espresso beans again.

This time, Bolin took a few. He drew a shuddering breath before chomping on them.

“Did you really take that potion more than once?” he asked me as we headed off, his face still damp from his tears and his hand on the brick wall for support.

“I had to help Duncan.” I walked at Bolin’s side, letting Duncan trail behind, waving his magic detector around. “Don’t worry,” I added to Bolin. “When we find her, I’ll let Jasmine know about the sacrifice you’re making.”

“Will you?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks. She’s not just cute. She’s smart too. And we like the same kinds of coffee and snacks, and she doesn’t care that I’m…” Bolin groped in the air with his hand.

“A big boffin?” Duncan suggested into the void.

Bolin scowled at him before looking back to me. “She doesn’t care that my family has money . I don’t think that matters at all to her. In the past, uhm.” He glanced at Duncan again, then lowered his voice, apparently oblivious to how keen werewolf ears were. “I’m not the most suave.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I said blandly.

“Or hot or athletic or, you know.” Bolin shrugged. “Sometimes, I’ve convinced girls to go out with me because of my car and because I was willing to pay for everything. Jasmine doesn’t let me pay for her half of things.”

“She’s more impressed by your ability to summon vines to grab the fenders of vans that are trying to smash into her,” I said.

Bolin led us around a corner while he considered that. “That’s okay. It’s taken me a lot of studying and practicing to learn how to do that. I wasn’t even sure I could learn. That’s some old-school druid stuff.” He lifted his chin. “My dad can’t do anything like that.”

“I guess you’re getting pretty badass.”

“Yeah.” Bolin smiled a little, looking cheered. And determined.

“His badassery is impressive considering his esophagus was so recently disintegrated,” Duncan said.

Bolin only scowled back briefly at him. With his hand on his chest again, he picked up the pace, turning down another street and heading for an alley, the brick walls half-smothered in ivy.

After walking through the alley, we came to residential streets featuring old Victorian houses with small yards.

“Maybe we should have followed Bolin in the van instead of on foot.” Duncan looked over his shoulder.

“Are you worried about being parted from your baby?”

“Worried that I parked in front of a fire hydrant. The bobbies give tickets for that here, don’t they?”

“Yeah. And they pilfer any rusty treasures they find in the vehicles of offenders. Did you stash your Nabisco tin somewhere safe?”

“Of course.” Duncan pointed. “There’s parking on that side street. I’ll move the van here and catch up with you.”

“Okay.” I hurried to keep pace with Bolin, who was striding along with determination, now cutting across lawns and down driveways to take the most direct route.

He walked down a cobblestone street that must have been built in the early days of the city. Since Seattle wasn’t that old when compared to other metropolises around the world, or even in the country, such sights were rare.

“I feel…” Bolin touched his chest, then pointed toward a side yard on a lot larger than most on the street.

A flagstone path led around the house and into a garden, the raised beds fallow for the season.

It had a pond with a fountain, a stone bench, and tiny ceramic frog houses, all tucked inside a fenced rectangular space with arches on either end, the wrought-iron frames covered in dormant vines, the leaves gone for the year.

Though it looked like a pleasant garden, there was no way it was the one in my vision. That had held lush and exotic foliage sprawled over hundreds of acres.

Bolin climbed over a low fence to gain access to the garden path.

“Uhm.” I eyed the front of the house, expecting to find someone gawking out a window at this trespassing. Or maybe ready to unleash a guard dog.

“She’s this way.” Bolin stopped at one of the arches. The wrought-iron frame gleamed, as if it had been recently oiled.

“We can’t traipse through someone’s backyard.” Lingering on the sidewalk out front, I pulled out my medallion and wrapped my fingers around it, silently asking it if we were on the right trail. To save Jasmine , I emphasized, hoping it cared about protecting members of the pack.

“I don’t think we will be for long,” Bolin said. “The pull is strongest here. It’s almost as if… if we passed under this arch, we’ll be taken into another realm or something.”

Reluctantly, I climbed over the fence and joined him outside the garden.

While looking at the vines and wrought-iron support, Bolin passed under it. Nothing happened.

“Another realm, huh?” I couldn’t keep from sounding skeptical, even though I’d also been thinking that our destination had to be camouflaged or hidden somehow.

“Something.” Bolin shrugged and walked back and forth under it.

Fingers still wrapped around the medallion, I stepped closer to the arch. Did I sense the faintest hint of magic from it? Maybe from the garden in general.

A sense of curiosity wafted from my medallion, and it warmed slightly against my hand.

“Interesting?” I murmured to it.

Curious about the oily gleam on the metal, I ran a finger over an iron curlicue in the arch. A zing ran up my finger from what felt like a recently applied viscous coating of… something magical. Nothing familiar to me.

After wiping my finger on my jeans, I tried walking under the arch, thinking my blood, or maybe the medallion, might be more likely to activate a magical doorway than Bolin’s presence.

But his blood had a paranormal element too, so maybe that was an arrogant assumption. Regardless, nothing happened.

“We need Duncan,” I said.

“Because he knows how to open magical doorways to other realms?”

“You’d think a treasure hunter would have to.”

A distant howl sounded, and I lowered my hand. That had come from a rooftop back in the more industrial area, the neighborhood we’d left.

“Was that him?” Bolin asked.

‘No. I think that was Lykos, the young werewolf who wants to slay him.”

“Assuming that kid doesn’t drive or take public transportation, he’s a long way from where we saw him last.”

“He’s on a mission and full of determination,” I said grimly.

“To kill Duncan?”

“Yeah.” I looked back, hoping to spot the Roadtrek cruising down the street, but Duncan hadn’t appeared yet.

“Do you think he’s in trouble?” Bolin asked.

“I don’t know.”

Several long minutes passed before Duncan’s van drove into view. I let out a sigh of relief. I’d been on the verge of running back to look for him.

Duncan spotted us—or maybe sensed us—and parked nearby. When he got out, he looked around, and I wondered if he’d heard the kid howling.

“Are we taking up gardening?” he asked when he joined us.

“We’ve found an arch with a magical vibe and thought you might have ideas about how to activate… whatever is here.” I spread my arms.

“ Something worthwhile must be in the area. My van was hijacked by a highway… wolf.”

I blinked. “You saw Lykos?”

“He jumped on my roof. It quite surprised me since I didn’t sense him until he was right above me. I admit my first thought was that it was one of your parking enforcers.”

“They don’t jump on your vehicle; they just put a ticket under your windshield wiper.”

“Lykos wasn’t interested in my wipers.” Duncan stepped past us to consider the arch, then wrapped his fingers around the iron bars.

“What was he interested in?” I eyed him, looking for signs that he’d been injured.

“Scaring me away, perhaps? He didn’t say anything when I rolled down the window and asked. Instead, he leaped onto a fire-escape ladder, climbed up to a rooftop, and disappeared.” Duncan touched his medallion. “This senses something here.”

“Mine does too.”

We looked at Bolin.

“I don’t have a medallion,” he said.

“Is your esophagus still tingling?” I asked.

“Oh, yes.” Bolin pointed at the archway. “It’s pointing me right at that.”

Duncan returned to his van, pulled out his magic detector, and brought it to the backyard garden.

While he waved it about, I looked at the windows on the back of the house, again expecting someone to notice our trespassing. It was late enough in the day that a homeowner might be returning from work.

Faint beeping came from the detector, verifying that there was something magical about the archway.

Duncan continued to point the device around the garden, and its pair of long antennae quivered, picking up something else.

He padded past the bench and fountain and pointed the device toward the frog houses.

“You hear something?” a man asked from the street.

“Some beeping,” another guy replied. “The kid said they went this way.”

The kid? Lykos?

I waved for Bolin and Duncan to hide. The house and trees in the yard blocked us somewhat from the street but not enough.

Duncan turned off the magic detector to stop the beeping and crouched next to us.

Visible between the houses, two big men who emanated magical power walked up the center of the street.

I couldn’t tell if they were paranormal by birth or had chugged potions to enhance their abilities, but they looked like the sorts of people Radomir had employed.

My senses told me a werewolf was trailing them. Lykos. In his lupine form, he loped up the street to catch up with the men. Planning to guide them toward us?

I gripped the hilt of the sword. Duncan and I ought to be able to handle two men, even two men amped up on potions, but I’d hoped to find Jasmine and Izzy before alerting Abrams that we were in the area.

“They go this way, kid?” one of the men asked, unperturbed by the appearance of the wolf.

Of course not. They were all on the same team. Lykos had been spying on Duncan all week.

I looked at Duncan, wondering if that stung, if it bothered him that his attempts to befriend Lykos hadn’t worked.

He was rubbing the green-painted top on one of the ceramic frog houses.

Nothing happened. He delved into one of his pockets and pulled out a cylindrical magnet on a rope.

I shook my head, certain that wouldn’t do anything, but a faint clunk sounded within the frog house. Like… a switch being flipped?

Abruptly, great power emanated from the nearest side of the garden, and a silver-blue glow brightened the center of the arch. Startled, Bolin and I scrambled backward. My heel caught on an uneven paver, and I had to flail to maintain my balance.

“Over there!” one of the men barked.

“Jasmine is that way,” Bolin blurted and surged toward the arch.

Light flashed, and sparks outlined him as he leaped through. He yelped in pain before disappearing.

I faltered, hesitating to follow him through. But an eager howl came from the street. Even knowing I had the power to defeat Lykos, his lupine cry raised the hair on the back of my neck.

“I’ll go first, Luna,” Duncan whispered, rushing toward the arch—the portal?—from the other side.

He sprang through. The two men who’d passed the house surged back into view, leaping the fence and running toward the garden. They carried rifles. Loaded with silver bullets?

I didn’t stay to find out. As Lykos ran into view, jumping over the fence, I rushed through the archway.