“I’m not picking anything up.” His blue eyes narrowed as he looked over the rubble, clenching his hand into a fist. “You?”
“I’m terrible at this,” I said.
“No time like the present to try,” he pointed out. “Use both hands, slow your breathing, let the magic come to the surface instead of trying to force it.”
With a grimace, I held both hands out, palms facing the road.
I did as he said, slowing my breathing, and tried to let the magic rise on its own. Almost leisurely, it flowed to my fingertips, like a snobby horse, feigning interest to see if I had anything worth working for.
Fingertips tingling, heat exploded down my arms. From leisurely to violent intensity, the Jinn magic was suddenly fire in my blood, coursing through me, waiting in my hands like an eager horse at the start of race. Testing me. So much for wondering if I had anything worth working for.
I curled my fingers ever so slightly as if I were holding reins. “Easy,” I whispered.
The magic settled a little, apparently satisfied.
With my eyes still closed, I swept my hands out, waiting for something to set off the magic.
There was nothing specific, but a tug on my feet, like a rope around my ankles urging me to move, calling me. I stepped forward, following it. Another tug, and another, like a gentle whisper that was just outside of reach.
“You feel that?” I asked. “Lila, did you feel anything before you realized you couldn’t shift?”
She shook her head fiercely. “No, I was busy talking to myself. I was working on my next Shakespeare quote that I was going to use when I scared you.”
My lips curled upward. Of course, she was.
The tug forward was gentle, soft, welcoming and so subtle that if I hadn’t been looking for it, I might not have noticed it. I opened my eyes and watched the ground as I walked, looking for a symbol, something that would indicate a spell. “Maks?”
“Yes, I feel it now too. It’s very . . . tender is the only word I have for it.”
We reached the end of the market strip and I turned to face the way we’d come. Balder was right behind me, and I’d barely noticed him there, so focused on the magic that I was picking up on. He bumped me with his nose and gave a soft whinny. I flicked my fingers to disperse the magic, then ran a hand down the side of his face. “No idea what this is, buddy, no idea at all.”
He bumped me harder and I looked at him, the way his eyes had rolled to show me white all around the edges. My stomach clenched with a pulse of fear. Another sharp whinny and he pawed at the ground. More than a horse, though I forgot because he had been like this with me for as long as I’d had him. No horn; it had been taken off to keep him safe from those who hunted his herds to near extinction, but who and what he was, was still his own kind of magic. From time to time, I picked up images from him in a sort of telepathy, and he’d more than once saved our hides.
“What?” I kept my hands on his neck, feeling him tremble. “Lila, go high, see if something is coming.”
“On it.” She launched off my shoulder and I held onto Balder. “My friend, what is it?”
I waited for something from him, a direction, or a picture in my mind.
Nothing.
A chill slid through me.
Balder banged both front hooves into the ground as if stomping a desert snake. I backed up a step and he shook his head, his frustration obvious.
I looked at Maks who shrugged, then looked to where Lila flew. “Anything?”
“Nothing for as far as I can see,” she shouted as she spiraled down to us. “What could have taken away my ability to shift?”
Balder stomped the ground in answer to her question and I looked at the earth below us. There was nothing different about it, no marks or lines, no major boom of power when we’d stepped onto this path.
“We’ve triggered something. Lila can’t shift, Balder can’t communicate with me . . .” I held my hand out and let my breathing slow again, welcoming up the Jinn magic. Any of the magic.
Bupkes, as my dad would have said. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. But even then, I wasn’t terribly worried, because I’d been without magic most of my life, and for all I knew, it was a hiccup in my giddy-up.
I was trying not to freak out, though, because something that could just snatch all four sets of very different magic without us even realizing was . . . well, that was bad. “Maks, can you reach your magic now?”
I made myself watch as he flexed his hands, as the veins popped up in his forearms and his eyebrows dropped low over his sky-blue eyes.
“Shit,” Maks whispered and blew out a heavy breath as if he’d been running hard.
“Nothing?” I asked, already knowing the answer but hoping to hell I was wrong.
“It’s gone, my magic is completely gone. This isn’t possible.”
“Back up, down the street. Now!” I pushed them ahead of me, moving them as quickly as I could.
Standing where we’d started at the western end of the market strip. Maks tried for his magic again with no result. Lila tried to shift. Balder tried to talk to me. And I couldn’t touch any of the magic that I’d so recently found inside me.
Every last ability we had was gone.
“You should try shifting,” Lila said. “What if you can’t even do that?”
She was right.
I blew out a breath that flapped my lips. “Yeah, that would be the shits.”
For me, shifting was like stepping through a doorway. On one side I was a human, and on the other, I was a six-pound house cat.
I shifted, blinked and found myself looking up at them from my house cat form. That was good. I, at least, had that ability. I tried for my other shape, the black jungle cat.
I didn’t really expect it to manifest since shifting into the large feline form was newer even than the magic I had. But it came to me quickly, and I found myself on a set of much bigger paws.
“That’s good,” Lila said, hopping across to land on my back between my shoulder blades. “At least I can get a free ride if I need a break.”
“You are always getting free rides,” Maks said.
They bickered a moment, and I knew it was just how they were dealing with an unprecedented moment. It was a way to blow off the steam of anxiety jumping through all three of us.
I found myself staring out at the far end of the market, at the seemingly innocent place we’d stood, their voices flowing over me. Obviously, there was something terrible and powerful in the market itself, and hidden very well. Did it have anything to do with the Blackened Market being razed? Or was it someone, or something, else working here?
As I watched, four pale orbs shot up out of the ground, so fast and so faint that if I hadn’t been watching, I’m not sure I would have seen them. And then they were gone, flying to the east. I blinked a few times.
“Did you see that?” I asked.
“What?” Lila tucked her head, bumping it against my cheek. “What do you see?”
I shook my head and shifted back to two legs, Lila clinging to me the entire time which told me just how upset she was. “It’s gone now.” I quickly described the orbs to her and Maks.
“I’ve no idea what they could be,” Maks said. “Nothing that I know of fits that description.”