Chapter 1
The moon was my witness and accomplice as it cast shadows over the stuccoed walls of the hillside mansion. Long, deep shadows, perfect for hiding, for stepping into. I liked the darkness. It made my job easier: slip in, steal a witch’s book of spells, and slip back out. No sweat. I breathed in the sweet night air up in the hills, the city of Valero’s lights twinkling like stars in the valley below. It was a beautiful night for thieving.
You read that right. I definitely said book of spells. Or a grimoire, as we called them at the office. I should have clarified. My name is Dustin Graves, and I steal stuff for a living. Dust for short. Not the most flattering nickname, maybe, but it kind of says everything about what I can do. Which, I’ve been told, is nothing short of magic. Okay, real talk: it is magic. But we’ll get to that.
The things I needed to steal? Arcane curiosities, mostly. Magical items, occult trinkets, sometimes, even ancient, powerful artifacts. Every assignment was different, depending on what the higher-ups at the Lorica asked me to fetch for them. Sometimes it was a piece of ensorcelled jewelry, one time, a gun modified to capture poltergeists. As a job, it was stimulating, challenging, and often totally dangerous. In short, I loved it.
See, there was a certain thrill to being a professional thief, this acknowledgement that I was being naughty and breaking rules on purpose. In fact, breaking into people’s houses was a large part of my occupation. I should have been nervous that evening, by rights, but I’d done it enough times to know how it would all go down. Just another day on the job.
But I wasn’t a criminal, oh no. Far from it. Sometimes people needed to be relieved of the dangerous relics they kept around the house. Sometimes people didn’t realize that their fancy new earthenware pot was a shaman’s soul jar, sealed and filled to the brim with the enraged spirits of their enemies.
I sifted around in my jacket’s pocket, looking for the most important tool in my admittedly limited repertoire. It was only a little glass bottle, by all appearances, but it was inarguably my favorite of the gadgets that the Lorica provided for field work. I pulled out the stopper and held it up as close to the wall as I could without triggering the security system’s sensors.
I loved this part. It was fascinating to listen for the faint crackle and the low hum as the phial began to fill with tiny bluish-white sparks that swirled, surged, then coalesced into miniature bolts of lightning. A storm in a bottle, so close you could taste the ozone and the electricity, all the power in the compound sucked neatly into this crystalline baby. And yes, that included the backup batteries for every camera, sensor, even the security system’s main panel.
Folks back at the Lorica were always warning me about how it was important to handle the phial with extreme care, because of how it stored a lethal dose of electricity in such a fragile space. It was never a problem for me, though. The crystal was pretty sturdy, and it wasn’t like I was ever dumb enough to hold it by the rim. There are lots of other less painful ways to die.
But yeah, life’s been great since I became a Hound for the Lorica, thanks for asking. Exciting might be the right word. Maybe the stuff I did was a little riskier than I was used to – vacuuming electricity into a bottle teenier than a shot glass, doing my best not to trip security systems, one time even running from a pack of really, really pissed off dobermans. Still, I guess I was more inclined to take risks and try new things since I’d already been dead once before.
We’ll get to that later. Promise. Because the actual magic comes next.
With the system out of the way, all that was left was to actually infiltrate the grounds, to slip into the house unseen and unheard. Some of my colleagues used cruder methods to gain access, whether with a set of lock picks or a carefully cut-out section of glass. Me? I got to use my magic, or the specific brand of it that I was good at.
I peered into the darkened house, picking out the right spot to enter. I didn’t need a doorway or a window, mind you, just a pool of shadow big enough to fit my body. Sounds weird, I know, but I work with what I have, and what I have gets me work. The moonlight streaming in through the floor to ceiling windows cast a nicely sized shadow, just by a large potted plant.
Perfect. I rubbed my hands together and stepped into the shadow of the house on the patio outside. The cold of the night faded as my body shifted and slipped through the ethers. Once my skin began tingling with a faint warmth, I knew that I had made it inside the house. I emerged from the darkness, from the exact pool of shadow I’d selected over by the potted ficus. I patted myself down to check that I’d shadowstepped in one piece, and I smiled at the plant, as if in greeting.
I wish I could explain how it worked. Shadowstepping was like teleportation, in some ways. I could move freely between two shadows, as long as they weren’t that far apart: pop into one, then step out of the other. My magic had gotten me out of more jams than I have the time to tell you, and it was also the reason the Lorica kept me around. That, and because I was cute.
My boss Thea said that everyone at the Lorica had some natural aptitude for the arcane. Every mage was destined to polish their specialty – shadow magic, in my case – but it didn’t mean that they couldn’t expand their portfolio. It would take time, she said, and plenty of effort, but I might eventually learn how to shoot fire out of my bare hands, or even fly. Like a superhero, or a proper fantasy wizard. That sounded amazing.
Not every person should do magic, though, especially not the normals. That was the whole point of my job: to keep the really dangerous stuff out of inexperienced hands. A jewel that changed colors? Pretty and wondrous, sure, but mostly harmless. But a grimoire owned and personally penned by an eighteenth century French witch who left specific instructions on how to bring back the plague? No bueno.
Incidentally, that was the target for the night: an ancient book, ensconced somewhere in the confines of this enormous hillside Hollywood-wannabe mansion. According to the dossier I’d been given, the occupants were the Pruitts, a thirty-something couple who had made their killing off of reality television. The guy was a producer, the girl one of the stars. Yet even together, I was sure as anything that they couldn’t make up even half of a competent sorcerer.
See, there’s really no telling who’s magical these days. I mean, it’s California. You see a guy with a beard, a walking stick, and a pointy hat, he could just be a
hipster, or maybe there’s a cosplay convention in town. Not that Valero gets a lot of those, but you get my point. You never know when it comes to modern magic. That barista who makes a face every time you ask for almond milk in your latte could be a talented elementalist, just as the lady behind the counter at your local bodega could be a bruja.
But this couple? The Pruitts were nothing close to magical, and they just had to get their hands on a collector’s item, this deadly-ass book of summoning. That was like the arcane equivalent of handing a pipe bomb to a toddler. The book belonged back at the Lorica, preferably wrapped in chains and placed under bulletproof glass and, like, a dozen spells of protection. The grimoire had to be removed, and I was the guy to make that happen. That was why the Lorica sent in their handsomest Hound.
From the vantage point of the potted plant I checked and checked again, making sure there wasn’t some miniature pet dog I had missed. The poor little guys were adorable, genetic mishaps aside – adopt, people, don’t support the shitty breeding industry – but they were yappy enough to wake their owners, and even small teeth could hurt like hell if the dog was agitated enough. Cats were even worse, little balls of fluff weaponized with tiny kitchen knives. I still had scars from a run-in with a Persian.
The coast was clear. The house had that minimalist yet somehow still ostentatious furniture you found in the homes of the rich and kind of famous, which limited my potential hiding spots, but it looked like I wouldn’t have to resort to them anyway. There were no pets in sight, and no humans, either, which was arguably more important. That meant I could relax a little, take my time.