Cast into Darkness Page 6

  A week later, her mother had taken her own life and Dad had sent Kate to boarding school. For her own good, he’d said.

  “That’s great,” Kate said. “I was just worried about him—”

  “You don’t have anything to worry about,” Hayley snapped. “You don’t rely on him to—Sorry. I didn’t mean to… Anyway, he’s as sharp as ever. No delusions, no obsessions, nothing like that. He’s fine.”

  They reached the pool area where a few of the older kids still hung out, playing cannonball. A splash of cool water hit Kate as they walked by. Hayley set the tray on a nearby table.

  “Look, I didn’t want to upset you. I’m sorry.” Kate squeezed Hayley’s shoulder. “Want to go out tonight? After dinner? We could go to a club or something.” She’d have to figure out how to fit it in around her meeting with Brian, but clearly Hayley needed her.

  “Um…I’d love to, but I’m going to a party with Missy. I’d invite you along but…” Hayley had the grace to look sheepish.

  “Yeah, Missy doesn’t want to be seen with me. Especially not at a caster party. I get it.” Kate’s eyes drifted away from Hayley’s face. How many times had she seen Hayley, Brian, and their friends teleport off, laughing, all dressed up for a club or a party while she stayed behind to study or watch TV?

  Kate opened the glass doors, and they went in the house.

  “Well, I’m gonna work on my homework. See you later.” Hayley strode down the hall and pulled out her phone, typing a text message before Kate had a chance to suggest they do something else. Well, so much for spending the day with Hayley. When would she learn to keep her mouth shut and mind her own business?

  She sank into one of the big club chairs in the family room. She couldn’t corral Brian and give him back the stupid stone. She couldn’t spend time with Hayley. It wasn’t as if anybody else would put up with a Null. She sighed and stroked the worn leather of the chair. She missed Kris. Once she gave Brian the stone back and had that “talk” with Dad about school, she could register for summer session online and drive back to Cornell. She and Kris could spend the summer sitting on her porch, cool iced teas in their hands, and textbooks spread out in front of them, pretending to study. That sounded about right. But who was she kidding? Her next “talk” with Dad would likely go as well as the last.

  A yell sounded from the pool as one of the kids dove into the deep end. Maybe a swim and some time relaxing with a book would be nice.

  Heading down the hallway, she passed the picture gallery then went up the staircase to her room. Her suitcase and her purse were sitting in the corner. Victor’s guys had made good on his promise.

  Kate grabbed her purse and flung herself down on her four-poster bed, stacked high with pillows covered in a blue-and-yellow iris print. Her room looked untouched—paperbacks piled on her old wrought-iron bookcase against the wall, the scarves she’d bought last summer in Italy still draped on the hook by the closet. The picture of her and her mother from their first stay at the Montana ranch was still on her antique dresser, her mother laughing as she boosted Kate up into the saddle.

  The view from the window gleamed bright and clear, from the crisp green lawn with the Sanctum looming over it, to the tall privet hedges separating the family’s estate from their neighbors, to the long stretch of sand spotted with beach grass leading down to the slate blue of the Atlantic Ocean.

  If she could talk to Kris, hear his deep, reassuring voice, she’d know everything was all right. She dug in her purse for her cell, found it, and dialed his number.

  It went to voice mail. Oh right. Hadn’t he mentioned this morning, before she’d left Cornell, that he’d be on a fishing trip with his family this weekend?

  “Uh, just wanted to tell you I miss you. Catch a big one for me. Call me if you get a minute.” She hung up, cringing. What a stupid thing to say. What kind of message was “catch a big one”? He was probably out of cell phone range, somewhere off the coast of Florida, anyway. He wouldn’t even get her message until tomorrow. And forget about texting.

  She tossed her phone in her purse. If she wanted to swim, she’d better get changed. Scooting to the edge of the bed, she tugged off her jeans. The stone scraped along her thigh through the fabric. The next thing she knew she had pulled it out and was holding it up to the light. She stroked it with her thumb.

  It lit up from within, iridescent green stripes rising up from the core and washing over its body like a soothing wave of cool energy. She turned it over and over in her hand, letting its calming feel seep into her. Something in the core of it spoke to the core of her, whispering secrets she couldn’t quite hear. She let herself fall down into its depths, content in its promise that, soon, something would change.

  Everything would change.

  “Kate,” the housekeeper called from down the stairs. “Are you up there?”

  She blinked. Her eyes were all blurry as she stared up at the white ceiling. She didn’t remember lying down.

  The stone still lay in her hand, her jeans on the floor. The stone’s green glow seemed a little brighter.

  Kate’s stomach rumbled. Weird. She’d had lunch only a half hour ago.

  “Yeah, I’m up here.”

  “It’s dinnertime, honey. Don’t be late or you know what that means. Good luck getting any roast.”

  Dinnertime? Kate bolted upright. Was she joking? It couldn’t possibly be that late.

  Kate glanced out the window. The sun hung low over the ocean, its rays gilding along the crests of the waves. Her furniture threw long shadows against her striped wallpaper. She looked at the stone in her hand, then at the clock on her nightstand.

  6:24 p.m.

  Shit. It had happened again.

  Chapter Six

  The late-day sun shone through the white pines bordering the Hamilton estate. Enough time was left in the day that a gardener going about his job wouldn’t be conspicuous. Kristof slipped from the driver’s seat of the battered, white gardener’s truck. The illusion spell he’d cast on himself duplicated the twentysomething guy who usually ran the route by the estate. He matched from the blond soul patch on his sweating chin down to the burrito stains on his gray Paumanok Grounds Department uniform. He reached into the tool rack in the back to pick up a hoe. Never know when the sharp end of a stick might come in handy.

  The truck was parked off the road that ran by the western edge of the Hamiltons’ place. Close enough to sense the security grid surrounding the many acres owned by Kate’s family, and the stone, sitting somewhere in the main house. But far enough away to avoid the trap spells that circled the grid’s perimeter and the cameras they had as backup. If he wanted to complete the mission, he’d have no choice but to wind his way through the trap spells, circumvent the Hamiltons’ security measures to get inside, get the stone, and get out.

  Only one problem: no one, not Delacroix’s top casters, de la Vega’s ace combat mages, or even his own family’s best, had ever broken through the Hamilton security grid. But that doesn’t mean I can’t.

  Muttering the two-line incantation for a cloak spell, he let the shimmering purple energy settle around his body before stepping through the dense undergrowth of the old forest, his feet crushing the summer pine needles beneath him. He ignored their evergreen scent, focusing instead on the trap spells laid out around him in the forest, the amethyst tendrils of each one sparkling in his magesight like a minefield as they wove in and out of the trees. The spells wouldn’t trigger from someone raking leaves, but they would screech like the Furies if he had screwed up his cloak spell.

  Kristof set the hoe against a wiry maple and contemplated the tall brick wall topped with a wrought-iron fence lining the estate. The fence was more than iron—inset with silver talismans, each holding a spell designed to keep intruders out and let only the select few inside.

  A faint shimmer rose from the wrought iron—red, like a crimson wave. The security grid.

  He leaned back against the tree. A raven cawed as it flew through
the crimson shimmer, its wings dipping as it sailed across the barrier. The grid kept out enemy casters and other magical threats, not animals.

  He couldn’t shape-shift—magic that powerful had been lost after the First Era. But maybe he could fool the grid another way.

  Kristof waited until he heard a rustling in the undergrowth. A quick stun spell netted him a squirrel. He held it up to his magesight and probed it with gentle fingers. No point in duplicating how it looked, how it moved. The grid didn’t care much about that. The grid cared about its aura.

  The squirrel’s aura shone with a bright-yellow light that surrounded the animal, beating with the rapid pulse of its life force. After a long look, he understood what he needed to do.

  Tapping out the points of an illusion spell, he focused all his attention on the squirrel’s aura. He chanted the short words that would duplicate it and quickly followed with a cloaking spell. Then he brushed his fingers across the shining yellow duplicate essence and dragged it into his own rainbow-hued aura.

  The yellow in his aura brightened as the other colors faded. He continued to pull the duplicate aura into his own. When his essence pulsed with the same frantic air as the squirrel’s, and shone with the same sunlight-yellow hue, he stopped.

  A violet gleam from a nearby trap spell caught his eye. Shit. Had he cloaked his illusion spell fast enough? He hadn’t heard any of the trap spells go off, but that didn’t mean a silent alarm hadn’t been tripped and Hamilton security wasn’t on its way. He should leave—now.

  He dropped the squirrel and turned, jogging back to the truck. Then he stopped and took a deep breath, then another.

  No. It’s the backlash from casting. The fear isn’t real. Hamilton security isn’t on its way.

  He turned back toward the estate. Took a step closer, then another, each time fighting back the terror that threatened to overwhelm him. By the time the brick and wrought-iron fence loomed before him again, the paranoia had become nothing more than background chatter.

  Hoisting himself up to the top of the brick wall, he scrambled to find a handhold on the narrow ledge where the brick met the wrought iron. After getting one foot planted on the ledge, he reached up and grabbed the railing. His hand touched the metal, his yellow aura flickering then steadying. The shimmering curtain of the security grid held steady.

  So far, so good. He pulled himself partway up the fence, his feet following where his hands led. This idea hadn’t been half bad. Now all he had to do was stay cloaked, slip inside the house, get the stone, and—

  A talisman buried in the fence flickered. The yellow in his aura wavered then bled out. His caster aura flared back, the colors as bright as the sails of a fishing boat in his father’s harbor. The grid darkened from red to black. At the edge of his hearing, barely within human range, a hundred trap spells screeched their warnings, their tendrils vibrating as they let go of their perches and rocketed toward him with all the speed of a school of piranhas.

  Kristof dropped back to the ground, heart hammering in his chest. He rolled forward, taking too much of the impact on his hand and feeling the snap of the delicate bones inside his wrist. He stumbled to his feet and ran.

  Need to clear the teleport block to get out. There, that purple glow around the fence’s perimeter. Probably triggered by the trap spells activating.

  A twig snapped off to his side. Then another. A glimmer darted from tree to tree at the edge of his vision. Several more glimmers beyond. Hamilton casters, cloaked like him.

  A purple mist swam along the ground between the fallen branches and leaves, searching. The trap spells—now active. They would rip his cloak spell away before smothering him in their vapors, choking the life from him.

  He dodged around their perimeter, evading a tendril that reached for his ankle. He tapped out a quick animate spell and aimed it at the hoe, still leaning against the tree trunk where he’d left it. It danced toward the fence, scraping against the ground and catching a tendril of the trap spell in its metal blade. The spell’s energy rushed for it, surrounding it and pulling it into a pile of maple leaves.

  He ran, the tendrils streaming past him toward the hoe.

  But the trap spells weren’t his biggest threat. A faint rustling in the undergrowth, then his skin stung all over with burning pain, as if a bandage had been ripped from his entire body.

  His cloaking spell vanished.

  He tapped out a shield spell as he ran, almost stumbling over the short incantation.

  There must be three, maybe four casters here. They’re everywhere. They’ve found the truck already, tracked the guy I took out. They know who I am.

  He shook off the backlash as the shield’s bright blue glow sprang up around him.

  A lightning bolt hit his shield, a sharp buzzing sound and the smell of ozone filling the evening air. Two more followed, then a sonic spell screamed past his ear. His shield’s glow faded to the color of the afternoon sky.

  The truck waited ahead, its white body glowing with the last rays of the setting sun. If he could make it past the truck and to the road, he should be able the clear the teleport block.

  A force like a battering ram slammed into his chest. He flew backward and onto the ground, the wind knocked out of him, shield ripped away, blood pounding in his ears. The kinetic punch came from the direction of the truck. He couldn’t see anything or anyone there, not even the glimmer of a hasty cloak spell.

  Kristof rolled into the underbrush, taking cover beneath a blackberry bush. Leaves crackled nearby—the Hamilton goons closing in. He tried to quiet his ragged breathing.

  Have to renew the cloak spell—my best chance with this many enemies.

  He cast the spell, waiting until its purple haze covered his form. Then he scrambled up and darted through the trees, putting as much distance between him and his pursuers as possible, shoving away the feeling of eyes on his back.

  He found an old fox’s den in a hollowed-out oak a hundred yards away. Crawling inside, he slipped on the pine needles covering the ground, their scent rising in the air. Waiting, he could feel the adrenaline coursing through his system, the bitter, coppery taste of tension in his mouth. Shit. The aura trick should have worked. They must have known he would try something. Did his sister betray him? Someone else?

  He breathed in, held it for a four-count, then breathed out. Did it again. And again. While his heartbeat steadied, he observed his mind’s agitated thoughts float by until they were nothing more than leaves in a stream.

  A spider hopped onto his arm, then moved across it and down his shoulder. His wrist throbbed as the pain of the fracture finally broke through his adrenaline rush. He lay still, listening. Leaves rustled. A branch snapped. A purple tendril crept by, probed the edge of the den, then moved on.

  A few minutes later, voices rumbled in the distance.

  “Anything?” Victor Cole. Probably the one who’d fired off the kinetic punch.

  “Nothing. He must have slipped by us.”

  A grunt. “Maybe.”

  Nothing else. He waited longer. He waited until the sun had set and the night air cooled off. How much time had passed? Had they given up the hunt?

  He used his magesight to probe for a teleport block. There. Set in the fence—and active—a few yards away, it still prevented him from leaving the fastest and easiest way.

  Damn. He’d have to extract himself the hard way.

  While he whispered the incantation, he tapped out the three points to the spell. A ball of emerald mist formed in his palm.

  He peered into the mist. The forest around him glimmered like a tiny model in his hand. Trees, the fence, his truck… Anything else? Yes. Between him and the truck—two guards. One stationed near the truck, dressed in a blue Hamilton T-shirt, and one cloaked, nothing but a flicker near the fence.

  Victor hadn’t bought the theory of his escape. But Kristof hadn’t expected him to.

  The surveillance spell showed only the trap spells. Nothing else. That he could see. What el
se couldn’t he see?

  Kristof dismissed the green mist with a snap of his fingers. He’d have to trust the spell. Two guards shouldn’t pose a threat.

  A quick animate spell and the hoe took care of the one near the fence, the guard’s cloak spell disappearing as he slumped to the ground, his head bleeding. Kristof rolled from the fox’s den and crept along the forest floor until he reached striking distance of the other guard, who was leaning against the truck. He couldn’t afford a showy spell, a kinetic punch or a lightning bolt. Nothing that would bring more guards or make him even twitchier.

  Kristof wove his spell and shot it toward the guard. At first, nothing. Then the guard clutched his throat, gasping for breath, his fingers beating with frantic energy against the truck in an attempt to execute a counterspell. Face turning blue, eyes bulging, he fell against the truck. He reached into his pocket for a phone, then dropped it from his shaking fingers onto the forest floor.

  A minute or two should do it. Deprive the man’s brain of oxygen for longer than that and Kristof risked damaging it, or even killing him. No point risking discovery by leaving bodies around, especially on an off-book operation.

  A few seconds after the man went limp, Kristof shut off the spell. He glanced over at the truck with his magesight. There, under the hood, was a faint purple glimmer. Victor had almost certainly tampered with it. He’d have to walk instead. Setting off down the road, he kept to the narrow side where the trees provided him with natural camouflage. The more distance he put between himself and Hamilton land, the harder it would be for them to trace his teleport spell.