Chapter 5
Tully
C uriosity burns in Argos’s serious gaze. “You know what these are?”
I don’t want this asshat to know I’ve never seen anything like them so I sidestep the question. “The magic coming from them is powerful. And wavering. Terrible combination. Plus, they’re being wielded by a minotaur.”
Argos looks down at the stones and huffs a laugh. “So you don’t know what they are exactly either.”
I’m going to strangle him right here with everyone watching. It’s happening for sure.
“What do you think, Lord Mayor?” he asks Rustion.
I ball my fists and force myself not to commit murder.
“I don’t know anything about the stones,” Rustion says. “But I do know that I expect you to work together to clean up this mess and to keep it from happening again. Only Tully should use her magic for the tidying. Also, would you be willing to research these rune stones, Tully? We can make a decision on using them within town limits once we know more.”
I’m not about to argue like a youngling and complain that I don’t want to help Argos. I do have an entire library of magical texts. There is probably something in my books and scrolls that has information on Argos’s dark magical artifacts.
“Of course, Lord Mayor,” I say in a super pleasant tone that has Laini pursing her lips and Kaya pressing a fist against her mouth to keep from laughing.
“Consider it done,” Argos says to Rustion.
“Go on about your business, everyone,” Rustion announces to the gathered people.
They break into excited conversation and slowly go back to their usual purchasing.
Kaya angles herself toward her stall where the line is quickly growing. “I’ve got to run. Keep me posted. Nice to meet you, Argos.” She glances at me with a wince, her desire to be polite overriding her loyalty. I narrow my eyes at her and she shrugs.
“Me too,” Laini says. She gives me a quick hug while Spark flies overhead, and then she leaves me alone with Argos and the emptiness of zero customers.
“Since you’ve scared off every single buyer we both had, I don’t see any reason to wait on tidying your disaster.”
“My disaster.”
I raise my wand and use a replacement spell to move Kaya’s shingles back into place on the roof of Two Cats Bakery. A few fellow townsfolk fetch brooms and other implements. Argos is soon sweeping the broken shingles into a pile. He takes a shovel from a fairy who lives nearby and they load the pile into a wheelbarrow.
“Do you know where the refuse pile is?” I ask. I don’t want him dumping that into the river.
“Yep.” He grabs the wheelbarrow’s handles and walks off.
He has a strange gait like he’s somehow so important. All relaxed confidence and easy grace. Like nobility. I snort. And his trousers are far too tight. What a show-off.
“If you stare a little harder,” a low voice says, “you might manage to get his clothes off. You are a witch after all.”
My heart jumps, and I wheel around to see Grumlin smirking.
“Shut it, wizard.”
He chuckles and picks up two of my protection charms. “I’ll take these, please, love.”
“Trouble with the shrub gryphons again?” I ask.
“Aye.” He loosens the bag at his wide, leather belt and draws out a large gold coin. “They can’t resist my shepherd’s pie in the winter.”
I take his offered payment. “I can cast a more powerful one if these don’t take. Just let me know.”
“Will you be visiting me tonight or are you hung up on that minotaur?” Grumlin asks.
“I am nothing of the kind. He’s an ass.”
He wiggles his eyebrows. “It’s a nice ass.”
“Seriously, stop.”
Grumlin grins and nods. “I’m sorry, love. Well, you know my door is always unlatched for you.” He winks and heads off toward his tavern.
I give him a wave. I like Grumlin. It’s nice to have a friend with benefits. It’s not easy to be a magic worker. Sometimes, we have power we have to siphon off through connection. Sex helps us keep our bodies in a balanced state. Grumlin does have a technique he uses when I’m not in the mood. He casts a continuous type of spell that churns his extra energy out, but he says I’m a lot more fun than that method of maintenance.
There’s a lot about being magical that most folks don’t have a clue about.
And that’s another reason why this minotaur needs to be stripped of his ability to work the power. I doubt he has any idea what he’s getting into. I wonder what his background is. Has he been using those stones for very long?
Argos returns, eyebrows lifted and a smile on his ruggedly handsome face. “Hello again, pretty rival.”
“Say it again and you lose your tongue.” I’m not sure I can actually manage that, but I can try.
He grins. “I’m sorry. I should have said stunningly, frighteningly gorgeous. My fault.”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. The nerve of this fool.
He strides over to where the scones and my little brooms went flying. He retrieves one of the brooms from the fountain in the middle of the square. I walk over to join him. I don’t want his nasty magic all over my cute little bespelled brooms.
“Eh! I will handle those. Drop it.”
He shrugs and lets the broom fall to the cobblestones.
“Tully!” Rom the gargoyle shouts from his spot up in the watchtower.
“Morning,” I call up to him.
“You all right?”
“I am, thanks, Rom.”
The gargoyle nods his horned head. “Whatever happened earlier, well, it’s ripped up a bit of the garden beside Widow Warton’s place.”
“You sure it was the event?” I ask, ignoring the way Argos smells. It’s like woodsmoke and sandalwood almost. Annoyingly pleasant. “Grumlin said the shrub gryphons have been bad lately for him.”
“I watched the, the whatever it was tear up the ground,” Rom says.
I exhaled fiercely. “Fine. Thanks for letting us know. I’ll head over there.”
Argos has freed his tunic from his belt and pulled up the bottom to hold all the scones. “Who is Widow Warton?”
“You don’t need to know. You’ll be gone before you get a chance to meet anyone else here.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
“Who will be kicking me out? The mayor? Or am I lucky enough to be mistreated by you? I can only imagine the very bad, bad things you could do to me, a mere minotaur. But you might find that my kind isn’t exactly what you think.”
I roll my eyes. “I’d rather keep you in suspense on who is going to lob your arse out of town. Now if you return those scones to Kaya, she can use them to feed the birds or give them to Rustion for his pigs.”
Still smirking the smirk that is going to get him killed, Argos nods and heads off. I blink at his back. He is so incredibly strange. He taunts me and then compliments me. What a jerk, attempting to toy with my mind. I’m not snowed by his good looks and games. Not one little bit.
Swallowing and pushing him out of my mind for the moment, I bend to ruffle a dark brown maplecat’s leafy pelt, then I walk across the snowy ground toward the widow’s place at the edge of the town’s center.
The widow lived here before most of these buildings existed. Part pixie and part vampire, she’s a longliver . Grumlin, with his wizard blood, is the only one who will see as much time as she has. I knock on her plain wooden door and wait for an eternity for her to open the door.
“Oh hello, Scarlet.” Her voice is old parchment and the creak of branches deep in the snowy woods.
She’s always called me Scarlet because of my hair, and she’s the only individual who can give me a nickname and not suffer a punch to the nose.
“Morning. I heard that our newcomer’s dark magic tore up your kitchen garden. I’m here to fix it up if I can.”
“Come on in.”
She takes my hand and leads me inside her warm home. The walls are covered in paintings she did when she was young. She’s told me all her stories over our weekly tea times. The widow was once an artist for the king and her work is lovely. Bright stars, maplecats, rivers, and complicated patterns of color make her house incredibly pretty.
The thought reminds me that Argos called me pretty. Ugh. What a creep.
The widow leads me out back to her normally tidy kitchen garden. She bought a complicated casting from me to keep one side warm enough to keep growing the cucumbers, tomatoes, and dill she adores. But the view from the back door shows that there won’t be another winter magical harvest for her anytime soon. Argos’s stupid actions have uprooted all her plants and shredded them.
“I hate to tell you this,” I say, “but I’ll need a good week to get this right again. I’ll do some work today and return tomorrow.”
“Ah, that’s how life goes sometimes. What happened anyway? I’ve never known your magic to go awry. Was this Grumlin’s or Rom’s doing perhaps? I don’t really know what all they’re capable of, magically speaking. Wait. You mentioned a newcomer…”
She trails off, her slightly glassy eyes telling me she is trying to recall what exactly I said.
I pick up a glove she must have dropped at some point and tuck it into her hand. “Argos. A minotaur. He has some dangerous way of accessing power and uses it to make stupid illusions that make my spells explode.”
Patting my hand, she frowns. “I didn’t know minotaurs had magic.”
“Yeah, they don’t,” I say. “That’s the issue.”
“Hmm.”
“ Hmm is right. It’s a puzzle I’m going to crack.”
I pull out my wand and begin casting over the area, easing the earth back into its proper beds and encouraging it to bring the shredded plants with it underground.
“So how does he do it, Scarlet?”
“He has these two rune stones. Have you ever heard of black rocks carved like that? With runes?”
“I haven’t. Do you want some tea?”
Focusing on warmth and my desire to see the widow’s garden grow, I hold my wand steady and let magic tingle down from my forehead, into my palms, and out the wand. I urge the warmth to cover half the garden in a protected pocket. It’s tough magic, and I’m sweating again already. Magic takes a toll on the body.
“I have to get back to the marketplace. Thanks, though.”
“All right then, deary. Oh, this is looking wonderful already! You are a wonder.”
I smile down at her wrinkled face. “Thanks, Widow. I’ll see you in a few days, aye?”
“That’s right. I’ll have a new white tea by then. With cranberries! I ordered it from the king’s market.”
“Ooo, fancy. I can’t wait.” I give her a quick kiss on the cheek.
“I’ll have those heart cookies you like too.”
Those cookies have a drop of her blood in them and she thinks I don’t know that. She likes to believe she’s secretly giving me a bit of her vampire health. I don’t mind the sweet trickery though. It’s good for a witch to have a little blood now and then. I usually just get a rare steak at the Goat and Dragon, but vampire blood is superb and helps me look younger than I am.
I’m on my way back to the market and the whole stupid Argos situation when I notice another hole in the ground from this morning’s ruckus.
But this one feels wrong somehow…