After my imprint had been made public, I spent a great deal of time with experts in the Circle figuring out how to disguise my magic. The mages had a cloaking device, but it wasn’t meant to work with a sorcerer’s magic. Our solution had been a dragonhide cuff, specially enchanted by the fae to disguise my magic and make me appear like a human or a mage using a cloaking device. It made my magic undetectable to others when it was dormant, meaning I still couldn’t use it. If I did use it, it caused severe pain as the cuff worked to distort the magical imprint that was left behind. Even with the cuff, I couldn’t be in Elustria. In a world steeped in magic, the absence of it was only slightly less conspicuous than my magical imprint. Over time I’d grown used to its unending weight on my wrist. Some days it felt like a shackle keeping me on Earth, away from my home.

  The clock hanging above the mirrors in front of me read one o’clock, the time Alistair had asked me to meet him in my room. My run had proved too distracting. At the elevator bay, I bounced on the balls of my feet as I waited for one to arrive.

  In less than thirty seconds, a ding sounded. The doors opened and magic crashed into me like a gust of wind, taking my breath away. It settled around my skin with a warm velvety embrace completely at odds with its cold and earthy scent, like a mountain summit on a crisp autumn day. I kept my face neutral and looked at the man whose magic hung thick in the air.

  “Excuse me,” the well-dressed stranger said as he stepped by me. His black hair was cut short and stylish, and the smirk on his face gave him a mischievous appearance. His green eyes, so similar to my own in shade, showed no sign of recognition. With my cuff on, he wouldn’t be able to know who I was. But something about his magic left a warm feeling creeping through my gut like I should know him. I didn’t remember seeing him before, and I would’ve remembered him, even without the magic. The man had the type of bearing that commanded attention. I hurried into the elevator, eager to get the alluring caress of his magic off of my skin, and jabbed the button for the sixth floor.

  Midday was my favorite time of day in hotels, after checkout and before check-in time. In this instance, it meant the elevator didn’t stop on its ascent. I tapped my foot while waiting for the doors to open onto the sixth floor. When they did, it only took me a few seconds to reach my room and a few more to get the plastic key card to work. I burst into the room to see Alistair sitting at the small table, a look of surprise on his face.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, seeming unperturbed.

  My concern lowered slightly when I saw he was safe. “I ran into someone from Elustria as I was getting on the elevator.”

  “That was just Deacon. He works for the Circle.” Alistair waved his hand as if this was thoroughly uninteresting news. “He was here to talk to me about tonight’s mission.”

  After a lifetime of doing this, I shouldn’t have been so easily flustered, but I’d just lost Sasha, and I didn’t think I could bear losing Alistair. In this line of work, I saw everyone as a threat.

  “A heads-up that we weren’t going to be alone would have been appreciated,” I said as I sat across from him at the table. I pushed the encounter at the elevator from my mind. Surely my strong reaction to his magic had been from its unexpectedness. “So what’s the mission?”

  “As we suspected, the rune concerned Christoff. There’s a benefit happening at a hotel a few blocks from here. Christoff is going to be there, and Gregory was supposed to meet him. We’re going to go see if we can find out who he really is.”

  Christoff was a mage the Circle had tracked for ages. Every time we got close, we lost him. No one had ever made a positive ID on him, but we knew through the intelligence we’d gathered that he was at the center of the Directorate’s operations Earthside. Finding him would be a real coup on our part.

  “I take it this is a formal affair?” I asked.

  “Yes. I have an outfit hanging in the closet for you.”

  Eager to leave, I took a quick shower. The earlier we got to the venue, the more time I’d have to check it out for possible escape routes and hiding places. My heart pounded as I applied my makeup. Positively identifying Christoff would be a great victory for our side. If I was lucky, I might even get a read on his magic, depending on how good his cloaker was. The best option would be for him to stay in play so we could track him.

  I dried my long black hair and slipped into the gold silk dress and matching heels. When I emerged from the bathroom, Alistair was lounging on the bed reading the complimentary newspaper. How I envied the little time it took him to get ready.

  “You look ravishing,” he said as he set the paper aside.

  “Thank you, but your compliments don’t make this any more enjoyable.” Pretending to be human never quite sat right with me. It wasn’t just not using magic, it was the denial of my identity. Back in Elustria, I had worked undercover, but I had never had to deny that I was a magical being. While Earthside, I lost myself entirely behind the façade the Circle thrust upon me.

  Alistair put his coat on as he briefed me about the mission. “Your main objective tonight is to observe. We don’t want to take him in, and we especially don’t want to kill him unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”

  “Are you saying you want me to leave my dagger?” I already had it strapped to my thigh. I never went on a job without it.

  “No, keep it just in case, but it’s a last resort.” From Alistair’s tone, I gathered that the Circle had indeed wanted me to leave it behind, but my handler always fought for my best interests and won. I sometimes wondered what price he had to pay for his loyalty to me over the Circle.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I asked. Alistair’s gray eyes shifted uncomfortably. Lying had never been a strong suit of his. I often thought that was why the Circle had made him a handler instead of an agent.

  “You know that for the safety of our operations, I can’t tell you everything. You’ll find out soon enough anyway.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Surprises from the Circle never pleased me.

  6

  In the car on the way to the venue, Alistair went over the details of the plan as the lights of the strip passed by. I’d long ago become immune to the spectacle of Vegas. Plenty of mages passed through here, easily blending into the crowds.

  “If Christoff’s using a cloaker, how will I recognize him?” I asked. The event would be crowded, and even if Christoff did give off some magic, it’d be hard to pinpoint him. I wasn’t trained as a tracker.

  “Put this in your purse.” Alistair handed me a rune. “The rune you recovered from Gregory was putting off a signal for Christoff to recognize. The instructions that were in the rune indicated Gregory was to have it on his person for the meeting in addition to memorizing the passphrase. The Circle’s confident they mimicked the signal.”

  I placed the fake rune in my purse. This all seemed too easy. “You don’t think he’s going to notice that I’m not Gregory? I know there’s never been any sort of attraction between us, Alistair, but really, I had hoped you didn’t think that little of me.”

  Alistair didn’t even smile at my teasing. When it came to work, he was all business, especially when my safety was involved. “Given the way the instructions were written, we don’t think Christoff knows the person he’s meeting. Otherwise, he wouldn’t need the signal.”

  That made sense, but it was also sloppy. “Something doesn’t feel right about this. The Directorate wouldn’t entrust something like this to someone as inexperienced as Gregory unless it was a trap.”

  Alistair pulled into a parking space at the hotel parking garage and faced me before he answered. “The intelligence we gathered indicates that Gregory wasn’t the initial agent. One of your peers took out Cassandra Evangeline a few days ago. We think she was the original messenger.”

  Cassandra had been notorious. We’d lost more than a few agents to her. I wished I had been the one to finally take her down. “So if they’re still going through with the meet, it’s urgent.”

  “Exactly,” Alistair said. I moved to open the door, but Alistair stopped me with a hand on my wrist. “You know what Christoff means to us, but you’re more important, Nadiya. If this goes bad, you do what you have to do. You let me worry about justifying it to the Circle.”

  Alistair’s support was the only constant in my life, but I knew from the way he said it, that the Circle would not be apt to accept excuses. They expected results. Given what was on the line, I couldn’t blame them. The mages had taken enough from me, I wouldn’t let them take more from my people.

  The ballroom for the benefit was a breath of fresh air. The elaborate lighting and decorations were the closest thing I’d seen in a long time resembling my home. A grand fountain stood in the middle of the ballroom and fresh flowers decorated the space. The dim blue lighting was accentuated with little white lights strung across the ceiling.

  My mind took it all in, catalogued it, and moved it to the side. I was here to do a job, and I would do it well. All thoughts of my discomfort—the annoying high heels, the tediousness of human conversation—faded to the back of my mind. I made a mental note of the exits and potential blind spots should something go wrong. Then I went over my cover story. I was April Whitaker, a socialite from New York whose family money was in real estate.

  A waiter passed me with a tray of champagne flutes, and I took one in an effort to blend in. Mages were experts at pretending to be human. It’s what made them dangerous.

  “Oh, excuse me, I don’t believe we’ve met.” A woman stepped in front of me. Her perfect smile and Botoxed forehead annoyed me. “You must be April Whitaker. Only yours and one other woman’s name were unfamiliar to me on the check-in list, and the other woman in question is sixty-five. My name’s Marjorie Hansen. My husband and I are the ones putting on this event tonight.”

  I paused from scanning the room to give her enough attention that she would leave me alone. I plastered a large grin on my face. “Yes, that’s correct. I’m only in Vegas for a little while, but when I heard that a benefit was being put on for the Portrait Gallery, I couldn’t resist. There just aren’t enough people who do much for the arts.” Marjorie looked like she wanted to speak, so I rushed on. “You know, I studied art in school. I’m much more interested in the Renaissance period myself, but really, I’m a fan of most anything put on a canvas, as long as it’s not modern. Nothing made in the last century for me, thank you. That’s why this benefit interested me so. The classics are in such need of restoration, and I want to support that anyway I can. I’d love to talk to you about the gallery’s collection.” My eager eyes and smile promised to take up oodles of her time.

  Marjorie’s eyes shifted, looking over my shoulder, anywhere but my face. “I’m sorry, dear, but as hostess I need to make sure to greet everyone. We do have the curator here. You may want to speak with him.”

  She didn’t even stick around long enough to point me in the direction of the curator. Experience had taught me that at these types of affairs, the cause wasn’t nearly as important as seeing and being seen. The quickest way to get rid of an unwanted person at anything costing more than a thousand dollars a ticket was to speak enthusiastically and earnestly about the cause.

  Guests mingled around me, greeting each other with big, fake smiles and cheery voices that couldn’t possibly be real. Walking slowly through the crowd, a familiar face across the room caught my eye. Green eyes, dark hair, but the smirk was gone, replaced with a rather intense look. He stuck out like a sore thumb among all the frivolity. If he was from the Circle as Alistair had said, he wasn’t a trained agent.

  “Excuse me, miss?” a man said from behind me. I turned to see a man who oozed calm confidence and control in a three-thousand-dollar suit. “My name’s Forrester. Grant Forrester. I’d love to show you some of the portraits.”

  This was him. He hadn’t altered the passphrase at all. “I’m sorry, but I’ve never much liked portraits.”

  “Perhaps I can show you what all the fuss is about.”

  “If you insist.” That should be the end of the exchange. If the Circle had done their job with the rune, he should buy it. Nothing in his expression or his body language indicated that he thought anything was amiss. My heart rate and breathing were steady, the product of years of training.

  “No, I wouldn’t want to bore you. However, there’s a meeting tomorrow morning that might be more to your tastes. It’ll be in conference room C of this hotel at ten o’clock in the morning. We’ll talk more there.” Christoff drifted into the crowd as if he belonged there. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said he was human.

  On my way to the buffet, I saw Deacon from the Circle again. The way he breathed, sniffing as if he smelled something funny, put into place all the pieces of this puzzle. I should have figured it out when I ran into him earlier in the day. The green eyes. The powerful magic.

  Deacon was a dragon shifter.

  7

  After the event, Alistair and Deacon stood waiting for me in the room. Alistair didn’t even wait for the door to shut behind me. “Nadiya, this is Deacon.”

  Deacon held both his hands out in front of him, palms up, the way we greeted each other in Elustria, as if this were a normal, everyday meeting.

  But it wasn’t normal. I knew what he was. My instincts had told me so, but the idea of a dragon shifter Earthside was ludicrous. The only reason I believed it now was because I knew how important this assignment was to the Circle.

  “Yes, funny seeing a dragon shifter Earthside,” I said. “He was the Circle’s insurance policy tonight, wasn’t he? In case I failed, he was there to make a positive ID of Christoff.” Dragon shifters could sniff out magic in a way no one else could. He’d be able to smell Christoff’s magic even behind a cloaker without getting close enough for Christoff to feel his magic.

  “Yes, he was,” Alistair said. “The Circle was insistent that we use him. It’s not that they thought you’d fail, it was that this mission was too important to risk anything.”

  I held up my hand to stop him. “It doesn’t bother me that the Circle implied I might fail; it bothers me that they think so little of me to not tell me beforehand, as if I don’t understand the importance of this mission, as if I put my pride and ego above what we’re fighting for.”

  “Don’t blame Alistair,” Deacon said. “This came directly from the Circle. He wanted to tell you beforehand, argued quite forcefully for it, but he was overruled. We all have to follow orders.”

  I whirled on the interloper. “You don’t have to do anything. Dragon shifters don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the Circle of Sorcerers. This isn’t your fight.”

  “Of course it’s my fight.” Deacon’s brow furrowed and a hint of anger and hurt glinted in his green eyes. “The radicals are going to destroy Elustria if we let them. Then when they’re done with that, they’ll move to this world and destroy it as well.”

  I hadn’t expected that response. The passion with which he spoke, so different from the calm composure I’d seen from him, took me aback. He grudgingly had my respect, but I didn’t know how to respond. I wasn’t ready to back down. We glared at each other in silence, the heat of our impassioned arguments mixed with his magic swirling between us, building into a tension that neither of us could break.

  “Why don’t we eat?” Alistair asked, inserting himself between us. “We can take a break, go to a restaurant somewhere.”

  “That’s not going to make anything better.” I broke eye contact with Deacon and looked at Alistair. “Besides, we need to debrief. That comes first. Apparently I have to remind you of where my priorities lie.” My tone bit, but I was in a biting mood.

  “No one is questioning your dedication,” Deacon said, back to that calm tone that suggested he had himself and everything around him under control.

  “You did what you came here to do, so you might as well leave.” Even if Deacon and Alistair weren’t questioning my dedication, the Circle was. I’d given them my entire life, and this was the way they treated me. To them, I was a tool with specific uses, nothing more.

  “Deacon is staying. I need to debrief both of you.” Alistair sat on the end of the bed. “So you made successful contact with Christoff?”

  I took a seat in one of the chairs at the table and kicked off my heels. Deacon sat next to Alistair at the foot of the bed. “Yeah, he didn’t suspect a thing. He relayed that there’s a meeting tomorrow morning at ten o’clock in conference room C in the same hotel. He didn’t seem the least bit surprised that it was me, so he definitely didn’t know who was coming.”

  “Did he give you any indication of what the meeting would be?” Alistair asked as he leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.

  “None.”

  Alistair turned his attention to Deacon. “And did you find anything interesting?”

  “Not a single latent mage in the group. Christoff’s cloaker was good, but not good enough to fool me. If there had been someone else there, they wouldn’t have been able to hide from me.”

  So that had been another reason to send Deacon. We knew the Directorate was looking for latent mages—humans who were mages and didn’t know it—on Earth and sending them back to Elustria. Deacon’s magic-sniffing abilities hadn’t just been for Christoff. “Do you think this meeting will have anything to do with latent mages?” I asked. “This whole thing seems odd. Tonight’s contact was strictly to help Christoff avoid exactly what happened. He didn’t expect we would figure out how to mimic the rune.”

  “We’ll have to wait and see, but I hate you going in there blind. I wish we had more intelligence to work with.” As my handler, Alistair always worried about me. It was his job, but I knew it was more than that. His concern sent a little prick of guilt to my heart over how I’d treated him tonight.

  “I’m the one who gets us intelligence,” I said, confidence working to drive away Alistair’s concerns. “I’m not worried.”

 

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