Another deep breath. I let the past flow away from me and focused on the fingerprint, its ridges and whorls etched in black ink. There wasn’t really a DnD spell precedent for what I wanted to do, but that was okay. Role Playing Games are just that, games. They aren’t any more real than Godzilla or He-man. I’d used the spells as a sort of channel when I was growing up, a way of learning how to focus and impose my will on the power that flowed naturally within me.
I focused on the fingerprint, then on the idea of the hand that had formed the signature. My power flared into my amulet and poured down into the compass. The needle twitched, then spun, then stopped, pointing not north but now to the north-west. Toward Juniper College.
I sealed the spell with another focusing of my will, visualizing a thread of power like a monofilament line from the d-twenty around my neck to the compass. It would hold until I let it go or it got too far away, keeping the compass connected to my power.
“Wish that kid luck,” I muttered to Wolf as I rose and took the compass back out into the living room.
“Here.” I handed the compass to Alek. “This will point you right the owner of that fingerprint. And, uh, be careful. Whoever did that to Rose isn’t a nice person.”
“I am not a nice person,” Alek said with another killer-inside-me smile. “And I have certain defenses from magic that most do not have.”
I almost asked but managed to close my mouth before it got him even more suspicious of me.
“Find him and make him undo the spell. Promise me, Justice.” Harper’s hands were curled into white fists in her lap as she spit the words out. I couldn’t actually tell if she’d asked him to promise her justice or if she was using his title. Maybe both.
Alek started to shake his head as he said “I will…” but I pinched the back of his thigh and twisted, hard, giving him my best don’t-you-dare-crush-my-friend look.
“I will do my best,” he amended with only a slight twitch in reaction.
He had really firm thighs. I shoved that thought away into the overflowing paper bag in my head labeled “inappropriate thoughts about Alek.”
After he left another awkward silence descended. Harper finally broke it by standing up. “Where’s mom?”
“With Dr. Lake,” I said. “She wanted to keep her under observation, monitor her vitals. She’ll call me if there is any change.” I tapped my jean’s pocket where my phone was jammed. Under observation and monitoring vitals sounded good, clinical and nice, like Rose was just in the hospital after an accident instead of locked magically into her fox body, paralyzed and helpless.
Okay. My thoughts really weren’t on the helpful train today.
“I want to go home,” Harper said. “But I don’t know if I can face Max. Oh god.” At the thought of her brother, her eyes started leaking again.
“We’ll go with you,” Levi said.
“Yeah, of course,” Ezee and I agreed.
“Okay. But maybe we don’t say anything. I don’t know. I need to think.” Harper took a deep breath and stood up.
“I’ll be at my place, if you need me,” Ciaran said, excusing himself.
“Thank you, Ciaran,” I said, squeezing his arm as we all moved toward the door. “And Harper, we’ll say or not say whatever you want. It’s going to be okay.”
I could have stabbed myself for saying that last part, but the look of hope she gave me made the lie worth it. Hell, for all I knew, maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe the Justice was as badass as he thought and he’d kick in a door or drag the guy who did this back to Dr. Lake’s, and we’d be having tea and cookies with Rose in her country-chic kitchen by moon-rise.
After all, in a world full of shape shifters, witches, gods, and sorcerers, maybe miracles can happen.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
Chapter 5
Dusk fell over us like a shroud as we drove out of the town proper and down the narrow two-lane road toward The Henhouse Bed and Breakfast which Harper and her family called home. I rode in the back of Levi’s Honda Civic with Harper but we all drove in silence, each lost in our own thoughts, I guess.
The locals, like my friends in the car, call the River of No Return Wilderness “The Frank,” after the prefix, since it’s technically the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. I resisted calling it that and in bleak moments like this its name fit. No return. Whatever happened after tonight, after finding Rose and whatever dark magic was trapping her like that, nothing would be exactly the same here. We were friends, sure, but we’d never faced any real adversity together. We sat around a table a couple times a week and pretended we were mages and bards and barbarians fighting dragons and evil liche kings.