Real Magic Read online

  It was beautiful. Just stunning. Made of light-colored wood and glass that was lit with golden light from inside, it was the image of what a high-class mountain mansion should look like.

  It wasn’t what Valerie had expected to find, coming to look for this mysterious Samantha Angelsword, but she also didn’t know what she had expected, so it wasn’t shocking so much as just… staggeringly pretty. She’d thought that Survival School was pretty, but this building blew that away.

  “Wow,” she breathed, and Jason glanced back at her. She wished he wouldn’t do that - the sunlight was fading fast, especially under the trees, and he ought to have been watching the road - but his grin was real.

  “Sam’s got taste, when you let her at it. No patience, that woman, but she knows what she wants.”

  He came around a final ravine and pulled onto a single-width asphalt-paved driveway, driving up to park the black SUV among a collection of other cars.

  “She’s still working on what she wants to do for a garage. I’m voting Japanese-style car elevator, but Sam says I’m crazy,” Jason said, getting out. Valerie got out as well, giving Ethan a wide-eyed look, and he shook his head.

  “Game face,” he said, and she nodded.

  Jason went to the front door and opened it.

  “Hey, guys,” he said. Valerie remembered what Ethan had said about thresholds, and she paused.

  “Can we talk out here?” she asked.

  Jason narrowed his eyes at her, then shrugged.

  “It is going to get cold,” he said. “But that’s up to her.”

  Through the myriad glass, Valerie saw a woman come around a staircase, followed by a man who was taller than either Shack or Hanson, though not as solidly built as either.

  The woman was unremarkable, and for a moment Valerie watched behind the tall man to see if there would be another woman, one befitting Angelsword, but the only other person who showed up was another tall, slender man, somewhere around Jason’s height, and more boyish in his face. The woman came out through the door and turned her eyes to Valerie.

  “Do I show off or do I let there be natural introductions?” the woman asked.

  “Are you Samantha Angelsword?” Valerie asked.

  “I wish you people would stop calling me that,” the woman answered. “You can call me Sam. I won’t answer to anything else. My name is Samantha Elliott, and this is my husband, Sam.”

  Valerie looked from the woman to the tall man.

  “You’re both…?”

  “Yes, it gets confusing,” Jason said. “Though it’s really efficient if you want both their attention.”

  Valerie looked at him as the woman called Sam gave him an annoyed glance, and he grinned.

  “Right. Okay. So this is Ethan… somethingorother, and the girl with him whose name starts with a V, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Ethan Trent and Valerie Blake,” the tall man called Sam said.

  Valerie jerked to look at him, and he gave her a tight smile.

  “Hi.”

  She looked at Ethan again, but he clearly had little more idea what was going on than she did.

  “How do you know us?” she asked.

  “I’m psychic,” he said.

  “Ha,” Valerie answered. “No really.”

  He nodded.

  “No, really. And the two of you are afraid of threshold magic, which isn’t stupid, but we have a really nice place to go sit inside that isn’t about to drop near freezing. So if we can get through the rest of this as fast as we can, I kind of really like our new house a lot.”

  There was motion on the second story of the house, a young man maybe Valerie’s age with curly dark hair and deep dimples.

  He watched her through the glass for a moment, then came downstairs and came out through the door.

  “Who are you?” Valerie asked Samantha. The woman licked her lips then nodded.

  “Kelly, can you get us some blankets? If we’re going to sit outside, we may as well be comfortable.”

  She motioned to the extensive deck, going to sit on one of the benches and tipping her head back to look up at the stars.

  “I don’t care how cold Sam gets, I don’t get tired of this view.”

  Valerie looked over at Ethan, then followed slowly to go sit across from Samantha.

  As everyone else settled in, Jason sitting up on the back of one of the bench seats and resting with one knee up and one foot down on the deck, Samantha rolled her head forward again and drew a breath.

  “Let’s start with why you’re here,” she said. “I think we can go from there.”

  Valerie looked at Ethan and he nodded at her.

  “I don’t really know,” Valerie said. “A woman named Daphne Leblanc gave me your name and your address and told me that you could help us.”

  “Do you know how she anticipated I would help?” Samantha asked. “Are you in trouble?”

  “I am,” Valerie said, but it’s just a piece of a lot of stuff. Do you really not know about the war?”

  Samantha smiled.

  “There are a lot of wars going on right now. Which one are you a part of?”

  “This is Ethan Trent,” Valerie said. “His dad is Merck Trent.”

  Samantha shook her head.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Valerie looked at Ethan, who raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

  Jason was wearing a sword.

  They were definitely weird. The question was were they the right kind of weird?

  “You said you’re psychic,” Valerie said, to Sam, and he nodded.

  “That’s right.”

  “What does that mean?” Valerie asked.

  “I can accurately see the past,” he said. “Some psychics can see the future, but I try to stay away from it.”

  “And you said… thresholding magic,” she said. He nodded easily. “So you know about magic.”

  “And demons,” Jason volunteered.

  Samantha sighed.

  “Forgive me. I hate to rush you into this, but the cloak and dagger thing isn’t helping anyone. You are the daughter of Susan and Grant Blake, one-time spies to the Council and now leaders of a not-quite-organization called the Shadows. He is the son of Merck and Ava Trent, power players among the Council, though not as securely as either of you seem to believe. You were sent here by a French mage who lost her power when her home was destroyed by a splinter group of a splinter group that you once knew incredibly simplistically as the Superiors and now whom you only marginally simplistically refer to as the Pure. You came here because you have been all but orphaned, both of you, and you don’t know where else to go to figure out how to apply your not-inconsiderable skills to a war effort that you believe needs you because of a curse that was placed on you in utero.”

  “So you do know,” Valerie said, almost sullen, and Samantha shook her head.

  “No. Sam gave me a very quick debriefing when you guys stopped up on the main road trying to find the driveway.”

  “Then…” She looked at Sam. “What side are you on?”

  He shook his head.

  “If anyone, I’m team Shadows, but I’m just a psychic. I’m not on a side.”

  “Now,” Samantha said. “If I wanted to keep you here, I could. I have no interest in it at all, nor do you have information that I would be interested in trying to extort from you. Sam knows exactly where your parents are - and they’re safe, by the way - and I know where your school is and I could break into it if I were willing to muster the energy and attention, though Sam tells me that the warding is quite advanced. I’m not going to trap you here. I can’t guarantee that I will help you, but I’m going to ask you to trust me that any interest I have in using you is null. Can we go inside? There’s food.”

  Valerie looked at Ethan.

  “How, exactly, would you keep us here?” Ethan asked. She stood and drew a sword from behind her back.

  “For one, I have her,” she said indicating the sword.

  Va
lerie stood reflexively, backing up onto the bench seat and pointing at Jason.

  “He said he would defend us,” she said, and Samantha grinned.

  “Yes, very inconvenient of him. I’d have to fight him first, I’m sure.”

  “She’d win,” Jason said easily. It’d be a show you wouldn’t forget, anymore, but she would win.”

  Samantha put the sword away again, and Valerie looked at Sam.

  “Do you have one?” she asked, and he pulled his shirt up a fraction to pull a dagger out of a sheath on his hip.

  “Just that,” he said. “Nothing epic.”

  She looked over at the other man, the tall one with the boyish face.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Carson,” he said, waving his fingers at her, then looked at Samantha. “Do you think this is the same thing as Jalice’s thing?”

  Samantha nodded.

  “Sam says they’re the same players.”

  “But we can leave whenever we want to?” Valerie asked. Samantha nodded.

  “I’m already partially involved in what you’re here about,” she said. “And I genuinely have no interest in you beyond the fact that you are here and as far as Sam can see, you deserve my protection. If you wanted to just stay here and ride everything out, that would be well within what I’d be willing to do for you.”

  “No,” Valerie said. “My family and my friends are in danger. I’m here to help them.”

  Samantha nodded.

  “Then come inside and let’s talk.”

  She nodded toward the door and Valerie nodded agreement. She would follow.

  The whole group started toward the house, and the kid with the dimples - Kelly? - came back out with an armload of blankets.

  “I looked everywhere, but Jalice had all of them,” he said. “Oh. You’re coming inside.”

  “Sorry,” Samantha said. “Come sit with us. Jason, you have such a knack for it. Would you mind raiding the kitchen?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jason said with an easy smile, breezing past them into the house and disappearing somewhere beyond the staircase. Valerie looked back at Ethan and he came to take her hand, walking across the threshold together.

  “You’re really tall,” Valerie said to Sam. He nodded.

  “I get that a lot,” he answered.

  Samantha led the way around the base of the staircase and past a large brass-and-wood kitchen, into a sunken den with tall-backed plush brown couches. She threw herself onto one with no small measure of contentment, then shifted to sit up. Valerie went to pick a couch some distance away that faced her, and Ethan sat down next to her. The man called Carson, the kid called Kelly, and the tall man called Sam took seats in between them, all of them watching Samantha.

  “You said my parents are safe?” Valerie asked. Samantha nodded.

  “Yes. Sam can find them easily.”

  “And… Is my aunt still alive?”

  Samantha looked at Sam, whose brow creased and he shook his head. Valerie’s heart fell. Gemma hadn’t been kind to her, but clearly the woman had loved Grant.

  “I can’t see,” he said. “I can go all the way back as far as I want, following the Blakes, and she’s all over the place back then, but here in the last couple of years, the Pure learned how to ward themselves up, and I can’t see what’s going on in the buildings. All I can tell you is that she hasn’t left their facilities since the last time she was out with Grant, when she dropped you off.”

  Valerie looked over at Ethan, and he shook his head.

  “You can see that?” Ethan asked, and Sam nodded.

  “What does it mean that they warded the buildings?” the man called Carson asked. Sam looked over at Samantha, and Samantha nodded.

  “It means that some higher-level demons have entered the picture,” she said. “And that they have interests.”

  Jason came into the room with a platter of food, and Samantha stood.

  “Jalice,” she called. “Jalice, we need you here.”

  “I decline,” a voice answered, and Valerie frowned. Samantha shook her head, looking back at Sam.

  “Can you make sure that they’re comfortable?” she asked. She looked at Valerie and raised her eyebrows. “You’ll stay here tonight unless you have very secure plans elsewhere. As I said before, you are free to leave whenever you choose, but you are safe here and I’m afraid you’ve stumbled into the middle of a conflict of considerable scope. Carson?”

  Valerie was stunned, watching after Samantha as she left with the quieter man.

  She knew everything.

  And she cared about it like it was just one more thing on a to-do list. Either it was a huge deal or it wasn’t a big deal; nothing about the way the woman moved made sense.

  “What does that mean?” Valerie asked. “Is she going to help us?”

  Sam looked at her for a moment, then turned his head, as if listening to something she couldn’t hear. He shook his head and turned his attention to her again.

  “Did you just have a vision?” Valerie asked. Jason laughed.

  “He’s in a vision all the time,” he said. “Did you guys eat dinner?”

  “In town,” Ethan said.

  “More for me,” Jason said. Ethan grunted and leaned over, grabbing a sandwich.

  “I can always eat more,” Ethan said and Jason laughed.

  “There’s a kindred spirit.”

  “Is she going to help me?” Valerie asked Sam. “I don’t know what to do.”

  He nodded, his eyes sincere. He was a very attractive man, very true.

  “She’s going to do her best,” he said. “I don’t have any doubt of that. And if you can, you’re best off staying here until everything is settled. But there are a lot of moving pieces and a lot of things you don’t know. We need to figure some things out, how to keep you safe, and we’ll talk in the morning.”

  Valerie felt her shoulders fall.

  She didn’t know what she’d expected.

  But more adults who were too busy to talk to her certainly wasn’t it.

  “You’re a good student,” Sam said after a moment. “She always thinks that things are going to slow down, just around the corner, and they never do. It’s always one crisis and then the next.”

  “When we’re lucky,” Jason said around the sandwich in his mouth.

  Sam nodded.

  “When we’re lucky we’re only managing one. She’d like you, though, if she had the time to get to know you.”

  “Because you know me?” Valerie asked, and he grinned.

  “She doesn’t usually like women,” Sam said.

  “Hates ‘em,” Jason cut in, and Sam shot him a look. “Sorry.”

  “But I think she’d like how you take to information, and the way that you do magic… She’s the only one I’ve ever seen do magic like you do.”

  Jason sat forward at this.

  “She’s a mage?” he asked, and Sam nodded.

  “Not certified, obviously. They don’t even know what that means. But she’s a mage. That’s not it, though. She’s spontaneous. Sam calls it inspired casting. They call it being a natural. Funny how we keep finding these little corners where they’ve got a wholly different grasp on magic than we do.”

  “But Sam can stop it,” Jason said, and Sam nodded.

  “You two ever think about Samuel or Samantha?” Ethan asked.

  “His name’s Sam. Was long before we met her,” Jason said. “I’ve been calling her all kinds of other things since then, but she always threatens to stab me.”

  “Good friend,” Ethan said, and Jason grinned.

  “The best.”

  Valerie looked over at him, then at Sam.

  “You can tell me how to find my parents?” she asked, and he nodded. She nodded back. “Then let’s just do that. You tell me where they are, and we’ll go.”

  “Stay the night,” Sam said. “You shouldn’t be out wandering around this time of night. Your parents are taking good care of themselves
. Your mom is incredible. Get a good night’s sleep and we’ll talk in the morning. Sam still wants to help you. It’s just… complicated.”

  “Everything always is,” Jason muttered.

  “I know,” Sam said. He stood. “Eat. Rest. I’ll make sure that there are bedrooms upstairs that are ready for you when you want to go to bed. You are safe and welcome here.”

  “That’s it?” Valerie asked. “We came all the way here, and we’re supposed to eat and go to bed?”

  “For tonight, yeah,” Sam said, giving her a sympathetic smile. “I know that’s hard to hear. But you need to take a breath and let us figure out what we can do. It’s not nothing, I promise.”

  She frowned and nodded.

  Ethan had been the one all upset about traps and ambushes and whatever, and there he sat next to Jason, stuffing his face, comfortable as he could be.

  “Are you staying?” Valerie asked Jason, and he shook his head.

  “Only as long as the food holds out. People know to look for me up at the trailer. Got appearances to keep up.”

  “Crazy redneck?” she asked, and he grinned.

  “Not exactly, but I’m glad you like it.”

  Valerie didn’t think she’d said she liked it, but…

  It hurt her head.

  She didn’t know what to think, what to expect, what to want.

  The Council had accused her of being an ignorant traitor.

  Samantha Angelsword thought that there were too many things she didn’t know to be willing to talk to her.

  Maybe she was.

  Maybe she should just duck and let it all go over her head.

  And Ethan.

  Ethan said she mattered.

  Ethan said they were afraid of her.

  She was in love with him.

  He looked over at her, as if he’d heard her thoughts, and he smiled.

  “Do you want to stay?” he asked. “We can go.”

  “Sam didn’t tell me where my parents are,” Valerie said. Jason shifted in the couch, looking at it like he could see through it the way his brother had gone.

  “He will,” Jason said. “If you want, I’ll go up and get him to write it down and you guys can hit the road. But they got nice beds here and a fridge, I am not kidding you, Sam could feed an army in this place. Hot water that literally does not run out. And the demons are terrified of this place. We put up some people who need serious defending in this place. You guys are behind a brick wall a hundred feet high, here.”