Page 5 of Bitter Spirits

That was how Micah had ended up dosed. Micah’s friends confirmed that the weekend Micah started acting strange had been the one he’d spent tracking Isaiah through a series of underground parties and a handful of clubs that accepted less-than-legit IDs. At some point, Micah’s behavior started to shift from focused and determined to easily irritated and quick to anger. Initially, his friends put it down to his having to deal with Isaiah, but when the level-headed law student with a minor earth-magic ability went after a snarky, drunken frat brat and tore multiple massive cracks into the club’s asphalt parking lot—setting off numerous car alarms and rupturing city water lines—the friends knew something was not right. After hustling Micah away from the scene before authorities arrived—a law student with an arrest never went over well—they hunkered down at one of the friend’s homes in the suburbs. When the sun rose, Micah was sporting a massive headache and a serious personality change. When his magic became scarily erratic, they feared he had been cursed. Cue the panicked hiring of a budget Key.

But as with all things, they got what they paid for, and the inept Key had only made things worse. By the time Lena got to Micah, his friends had resorted to sedation spells and restraints. Remorse plagued them, so when Zev and Locke started asking questions, they were quick to spill everything. They had no idea when or where Micah would have been drugged, but they were able to pin down when his behavior had started to change. Locke retraced their steps, checking video surveillance and asking questions, finally hitting pay dirt at the second club, the Alchemist, where video footage showed a known small-time dealer placing a roofie in Micah’s drink. The club’s security tagged the dealer as a regular visitor named Jigz.

Locke waited at the Alchemist, and sure enough, the wiry fucker made an appearance back by the bathrooms. When Locke stalked down the narrow hallway, the nervy dealer scented a threat and started to run. He didn’t get far before Locke had him pinned to the cement block wall that ran behind the club and proceeded to ask questions. After a few strategically applied “encouragements,” the story tumbled out.

Isaiah was one of Jigz’s customers, and Micah’s questions had started to interfere with Jigz’s nightly endeavors. It didn’t help that Micah kept pushing the issue even though Jigz hadn’t seen Isaiah in over a week. To get Micah off his ass, Jigz decided to spike his drink with a party gift shared by another customer, who happened to be one of Isaiah’s buddies and went by the name Leo Starini. Jigz had no clue what the party gift did or where it came from, but Leo promised it would rock his world. He provided a sample and said if Jigz wanted more, for the right cut, he’d be happy to facilitate. Jigz had no interest in taking on another supplier, but he figured if Micah’s world was rocked hard enough, it would make him stop asking about Isaiah, so when he spotted Micah’s drink at the bar, he dropped the pill and walked away. Problem solved. Locke had left a battered Jigz slumped in the alleyway and decided to track down this Leo guy. That was how he’d ended up rolling down Washington in the dead of morning.

He hooked a right on Seventh, grateful that at ass o’clock, the one-way streets of downtown Phoenix were empty. It was wild to drive here now that high-rise residential spaces had popped up like rabbits. In recent years, what had once been a small cluster of multistory buildings had grown into a dense urban canyon.

He made a right on Monroe and cruised the narrow two-way road as it carved its way between parking garages and high-rises until he hit First. Rising thirty-four floors into the night sky, the Evermore condos sat on the southwest corner, where a bland beige box of an office building had once stood. Locke bypassed the underground parking garage and managed to snag a metered parking spot across the street from the entrance. He took the time to pay the meter, since the HQ for the Phoenix Police Department was just down the road. Then he jogged across the street.

Locke used the access code pulled from the ethernet by Tana—the Cordova e-geek—to open the glass door to the lobby. Along with the code, she’d shared that no one would be on duty, as the concierge desk was manned from seven in the morning to eleven at night. He pulled open the heavily tinted glass doors and found the space empty of life. He headed straight for the elevators, noting the strategically placed security cameras tracking his passage. He didn’t worry about being recorded. If his conversation with Leo went sideways, Tana would take care of any digital evidence.

The ride to the fourth floor was short and quiet. He got off and did a check of the two closest unit numbers, 4001 to the right and 4009 to the left. Since the hall appeared to loop around, he figured there were only nine units on this floor. He’d started down the right hall toward 4005 when a dark smear on the floor caused a hitch in his stride. When his magic quivered, he stopped and sank into a crouch to get a closer look, and a touch of iron hit his nose.

Blood.

The smudge held the edge of a tread. He looked at the hall and found a couple more drops staining the floor a little farther down, their shape and spacing indicating that someone had been moving erratically and fast while wounded. The power that lived inside him came on point, urging him forward. He pulled a thin blade out of the hidden sheath in his belt and stood up. Holding the blade down at his side, where it wasn’t easily spotted, he prowled down the hall on silent feet. At the corner where the hall turned was another smear, almost as if someone had bounced off the wall. He continued walking and wasn’t surprised to find that units 4004 and 4005 shared that side of the hall.

His pace slowed as he released his magic, letting it sniff over the doorways and draw in the lingering blend of emotions and magic. It slipped over 4004 and homed in on 4005. In the entryway, the muddied scents of an illusion mage mixed with the diluted blanks of a nonmagic user. There was a sharp bite to the fading trace of an illusion mage, a hint of fear or apprehension—it was hard to tell.

He angled his body, putting his back to the door, and let his hand hover over the knob. A flex of magical muscle determined there were no active runes at play, so Leo used either standard electronic security or nothing at all. His fingers closed around the cool metal, and he carefully twisted, the knob turning smoothly.

He eased the door open. A rush of cool air curled around him, carrying the sharp sting of fear, the acrid bit of anger, the tangle of an illusion mage, and the burnt ash of a fire mage, but it was the alluring darker scent winding through it all that had him cursing.

“What the fuck, Isa?”

Chapter 3

Isa

Crouched next to Leo’s sprawled body, Isa pivoted so fast she almost landed on her ass while her heart tried to beat its way out of her chest. She barely caught herself with a shaky hand on the nearby coffee table as she faced down the one person she had no desire to see that night.

With sickening sweetness, she said, “Good morning to you, too, sunshine.”

“Don’t be cute, Isa.” Locke glared at her as he walked inside and carefully closed then locked the door behind him.

Afraid I’m going to run, are you?

Instead of letting her mouth run free, she kept a wary eye on him as he stalked closer, the air around him nearly vibrating with that fascinating tension he carried like a shadow.

He stopped next to Leo’s outstretched hand, his unusually light eyes shifting from the body to her. “What did you do?”

“Not a damn thing.” She kept her voice cool and tried to ignore the sting of his accusation. Of course he thought she was at fault. She rose slowly, relieved when her legs didn’t fold. “I found him like this.”

A long moment passed as he stared at her, but she refused to look away first, a reaction that hadn’t changed since the first moment he’d walked into Wonderland and hit her radar. To stand unmoving under that intense, predatory stare was a personal challenge, but she managed another win when he finally shook his head, sank into a crouch, and turned his attention back to the body between them.

“I’m assuming this is Starini,” he said.

“Who?” Still rattled by the scene she’d walked into and the fact that her magic was acting like an overeager puppy wanting to play, she had to take a second to make the connection. “Oh, you mean Leo?”

“Is Leo the body on the floor?” Locke asked, his strained patience laced with sarcasm.

The familiar tone would normally set her hackles on end, but tonight, they barely quivered, too exhausted by her earlier emotional roller coaster ride with Kelly. “Well, I didn’t check his ID, but I’m feeling like it’s a safe assumption.”

“Smart-ass,” he muttered.

“Better than a dumbass,” she shot back so fast it earned her a serious side-eye. She turned away, hiding a wince. How he managed to always reduce her to a bratty teenager, she’d never understand. It seemed to be his superpower. “Why are you hunting him?”