Black Magic (Black Records Book 1)

  Black Magic

  Black Records 1

  Mark Feenstra

  Contents

  Books in the Black Records Series

  Free Book Offer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Afterword

  The New Black

  Black Market

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  © 2016 Mark Feenstra

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, businesses, places, events,

  and incidents are either the products of the

  author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead ,

  or actual events is purely coincidental.

  First Digital Edition, 2016

  ISBN 978-0-9948589-0-0

  www.MarkFeenstra.com

  Books in the Black Records Series

  Out Now:

  BLACK MAGIC

  BLACK MARKET

  Forthcoming:

  BLACK ICE

  BLACK & TAN

  BLACK ARTS

  Want to shed light on Alex’s dark past?

  Visit markfeenstra.com/mailing-list to sign up and get your free copy of The New Black prequel novella. Available exclusively to subscribers.

  FOR MY DAD

  The man who taught me the value

  of indulging my inner child.

  AND FOR SARAH

  Whose love and support helped me

  to do just that when I decided

  to write this book.

  Chapter One

  Hours of focused spellwork nearly came unraveled at the grating buzz of my phone juddering across a hardwood floor. It was an amateur move not remembering to at least flip it to airplane mode. No point dwelling on that now though. The interruption was annoying enough, and the last thing I needed was to slide into old patterns of self-criticism. There’d be time enough for that if I failed to crack the complex weavings protecting the small wooden box on the floor in front of me.

  Falling back into a pattern of rhythmic breathing, I focused all my attention on the work at hand, ignoring the person pacing back and forth in the background. My knees ached something fierce from sitting cross-legged for the better part of the afternoon, but this too I compartmentalized into its own little mental prison.

  Once back in the zone, I returned to delicately probing the seemingly impenetrable ward.

  No spell is perfect. Any bit of cast magic had an exploitable weakness, but isolating and taking advantage of that opening was almost always impossible when a spell only existed for a matter of seconds. Wards, on the other hand, were more stable and built to last. With enough time, a bit of determination, and a hell of a lot of skill, any ward could be peeled back like the skin of an orange.

  Building a protective ward starts with the relatively simple act of wrapping layers of spellwork into a sort of metaphysical knot. It’s in hiding the seams where the true art of it comes into play. All knots have a beginning and end — pieces that must be joined in such a way that the thing can eventually be undone by anyone with the key. Breaking the thing apart without said key meant sidestepping or disarming any number of safeguards and masking spells before picking apart the one little weakness that would cause the thing to collapse upon itself like a too tall Jenga tower.

  As a consulting mage trying to build a reputation for myself in a world where ninety-nine percent of humans didn’t believe in magic, I’d figured specializing in a niche was my best bet at picking up regular clients. Breaking magical protection had never given me as much trouble as it did some other mages, so it seemed like a natural fit.

  This job, however, had me worried I’d have to find a new line of work. The spellwork swirling around this particular box was so tight and clean I couldn’t see a single visible edge to even poke at. Even the slightest probing of my magic made the box flare with searing white light. I hadn’t even figured out what would happen if I triggered any of the safeguards, but it was a good bet that if I screwed up, the only thing left of us to bitch about my carelessness would be a pile of ash.

  “Well fuck me sideways,” I muttered.

  Xander crossed the room in a few eager strides. “What is it? Did you figure it out?”

  “I think so.”

  I closed my eyes for a second, letting the afterimages of radiant amaranthine magic fade a little. Tears welled. The sudden flush of moisture stung my eyes after staring unblinking for so long.

  “You might want to wait in the other room, Xander.”

  I turned my attention back to the box and formulated a plan of attack.

  “On second thought,” I added, “you may want to go outside and across the street in case I blow this.”

  “Whatever. I’ll just stay here and shield myself.” The tremor of fear in his voice called bullshit on the over-confident attitude he tried so desperately to maintain.

  Human magic users are few and far between. While his father was one of the few other mages I knew by reputation, Xander was the apple that had fallen so far from the tree it was practically a peach. No shield he could conjure would be strong enough to save his ass if things went south. Then again, he wasn’t paying me enough to play babysitter. It wouldn’t be my fault if his overconfident posturing led to vaporization when the box’s wards were triggered.

  Pushing all external stimuli to the edge of my consciousness, I slipped back into a focused trance. Spellwork floated in the air like dust particles hanging in the light of a sun-drenched window. I held each breath longer than the last. Minutes ticked by like seconds. My awareness shrank to little more than the glowing ward forms in front of me; tendrils of my own energy probed between the fibers of the weakness I’d spotted before being interrupted.

  In a method that was a lot like nudging the pins and tumblers of a padlock, I wove my energy into the weft and warp of the magical seal. Since I hadn’t figured out the proper unlock sequence, I had only one option at my disposal. Inch by inch, I forced energy into the ward until the thing pulsed and hummed like it was about to go nuclear.

  That was my cue to crank up the volume.

  I sent a flood of kinetic energy into my meticulously conjured spell, forcing the ward’s energy to expand outwards at something approaching the speed of light. Warmth washed over my body, and I exhaled a lungful of stale air. Either I’d incinerated myself so thoroughly that I was now sitting in some sort of limbo, staring at an afterimage of my earthly surroundings, or it had worked exactly as planned.

  “Is… is it done?” asked Xander.

  That answered that question.

  “It’s done.”

&nb
sp; I uncrossed my legs and leaned sideways to pull my bag closer. Too cramped and drained to try standing after such an intense session, I instead shuffled backward until I could rest my back against a couch. I then rifled through my bag until I found an energy bar.

  “So what’s in it?” I asked around a mouthful of chewy oats and dried fruit.

  Xander knelt before the ornate wooden box. Very carefully, as though reaching for a nest of angry wasps, he tipped open the lid with his index finger. Eyes aglow with wonder, he retrieved his prize and held it up for me to see.

  “A fucking card?” I squinted and leaned forward, trying to make out the words and images beneath the reflection of the protective plastic case held tight with a tiny brass screw in each corner. “You had me spend all day trying to crack that ward for a Magic card?”

  “Not just any Magic card,” said Xander, beaming like an idiot. “This is a mint, first-edition Black Lotus. Do you have any idea how much this is worth?”

  “Probably not as much as you paid me to get it out of there. Why was it even locked away like that in the first place?”

  “My dad sealed it in this box as some kind of lesson fifteen years ago,” said Xander. “I only just broke through his concealment spells to find the damn thing in the attic last month, but I couldn’t break his ward on my own.”

  Too tired to be angry, I crumpled the mylar wrapper from my energy bar and tossed it at Xander’s head. It only made it halfway there before fluttering to the floor. He could pick it up later for all I cared.

  “Give me a hand up,” I said.

  Once on my feet, I took a moment to steady myself before bending down to collect my phone and bag. I swiped a nine digit security code into the lock screen and pulled up the email app to see what had nearly caused me slip and trigger the ward. I hadn’t fully been able to decipher the payload spell encapsulated within the ward, and knowing the story behind how the contents had been locked away did little to assure me it would not have ended violently. When old school mages wanted to teach someone a lesson, they rarely fucked around. There was every chance Xander’s dad would have rather have lost his only child than to accept anything less than a hundred percent competence.

  But that wasn’t my problem. One of the first things I’d learned about dealing with mages more powerful than myself was to not question the way things are done. Given my place in the world, that almost always meant keeping my mouth shut and my opinions to myself.

  The email beckoned me to come as quickly as possible to an address not far from Xander’s house. I wanted nothing more than to go home and crash in front of the TV for a few hours while stuffing my face with empty calories, but something about the message’s clipped sentences tugged at the part of me that can’t seem to ignore a cry for help.

  Besides, I needed the money.

  I fired back a canned response with my rates and an ETA, then shouldered my backpack.

  “Do me a favor and leave my name out of this when your dad finds out,” I said to Xander.

  I didn’t stick around long enough to find out if he bothered looking up from his prize. I’d been awake since five o’clock in the hopes that the transition of dawn might temporarily weaken the ward’s strength, and I was keen to get on with my day. Odds were high that the emergency call wouldn’t be as serious as this Mabel Weathersby lady thought it was. If I was lucky, I’d make it home by dinner.

  The glass pane rattled in its frame when I rapped my knuckles against it. Whereas the buildings on either side of this one had been renovated in the last few years, the curio shop was old and worn. Cracked flecks of paint clung for dear life to the old wooden door. A large bay window showed off a dusty assortment of random junk including a faded globe atlas, a brass telescope in need of a good polish, and a goddam terrifying stuffed peacock. If I hadn’t had a reason to be knocking in contradiction of the crookedly hung CLOSED sign, I’d probably have just walked on by without a second look. The longer I stood in the freezing January rain waiting for someone to answer, the more I wondered if that was exactly the effect the owners were going for.

  I gave it a minute then knocked a little harder. This second attempt summoned a looming shadow that resolved itself into an elderly woman who opened the door to frown at me. She held a crumpled handkerchief in one hand, and her eyes were red and watery. I took that as a sign that any chance of me eating dinner at home was about to be ripped off the table.

  “I’m sorry, dear. we’re closed for the foreseeable future.”

  I tried my best to channel the gravitas of every detective I’d ever seen on TV. “I’m here about the job, Mrs. Weathersby. You emailed me about twenty minutes ago?”

  “Are you Mr. Black’s assistant then?”

  “Not quite.” I forced a smile. “I’m Alex Black. It’s short for Alexis.”

  The woman eyed all five foot six of me with obvious confusion. I’ve had to get used to the idea that I’m not what most people expect when they go searching for someone with my particular set of skills, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t bother me. There’s something about being told I’m “too cute” to be a mage that triggers a serious impulse to force-choke people. I’m not even sure I could use my gift to do it, but imagining patronizing assholes writhing in agony while I mock them with Vader quotes has proven itself a therapeutic tactic. I’d had to learn the hard way that antagonizing prospective clients is a great way to end up perpetually unemployed. In recent years I’d taught myself to just smile and wait patiently while they reconciled their expectations with the twenty-six-year-old girl standing in front of them.

  Thankfully, it didn’t take Mrs. Weathersby all that long to accept that I was indeed the mage she’d hoped to hire. She gave a curt nod and retreated into the shop, leaving the door open for me to follow. I closed it behind me, flipped the deadbolt back into place to prevent anyone from wandering in, then went to the back of the store where the old woman stood waiting.

  “Norman is there,” she said softly, gesturing to a shadowy lump propped up against the wall behind her. She hung back several paces, her head angled away while I moved to inspect the body.

  Slumped with chin on chest was a man in his late eighties. He wore a rather dapper three piece tweed suit complete with bow tie and pocket watch chain. His dark gray hair was neatly parted and slicked with what I suspected was Brylcreem. Tortoise shell reading glasses sat on the bridge of his nose. If you could ignore the fact that his arms had been sheared clean off, he looked like he’d simply sat down and decided to take a nap with his eyes open.

  I knelt down and inspected the spot where his arms should have been. I’d seen a couple of dead bodies in my days, but no amount of vacant-stared overdosing junkies could have prepared me for the way this guy had been mutilated. His arms had been cut away more cleanly than I’d have thought possible, leaving behind a cross-section of flesh, bone, and sinew that would have been right at home in one of Von Hagen’s plastinated body exhibits. Whatever had removed his limbs from his torso had also left a perfectly clean edge on the fabric of his jacket. It was like some kind of powerful laser had sliced through him, but there were no burn marks to back that theory up.

  Equally weird was the complete lack of blood on the floor. There wasn’t a drop of it anywhere I could see, meaning the wounds had somehow been sealed as soon as they’d been inflicted. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that magic had been involved in whatever the hell had gone down here. While it was possible Weathersby had lost control over a particularly wild artifact, it looked an awful lot like a deliberate attack.

  “How long has he been like this?” I asked, too engrossed in my inspection to look up.

  “I found him this morning.” Her voice cracked a little, and I hoped she wouldn’t start crying on me. “I had come down to bring him his tea as I always do, and he was lying there as you see him now. I checked his pulse, but…”

  I stood up and nodded as sympathetically as I could manage. Consoling a grieving widow was new territo
ry for me, and I had no idea what to say to the poor woman. There were ways a person could survive an attack like this, but odds were good that Norman had died long before his wife had discovered his body. Somehow I didn’t think she’d find that very comforting.

  “Why did you contact me instead of calling the police?”

  “They won’t be able to help,” she said with a shake of her head. Her words fell from her mouth like it had taken every ounce of strength left in her to force them out. “The way he… his arms… it’s obvious that this is not the sort of thing the regular police are capable of investigating. I was told you could help, and that you knew how to be discreet.”

  I made a mental note to thank whoever had given me the referral. Work had been pretty dry over the last few months, and I was on the verge of maxing out my last credit card. The unspoken promise of discretion was added value for the few clients who managed to find me, but it didn’t exactly help much in the advertising department.

  “Any thoughts on why someone might have done this to your husband?” I asked.

  “Norman is… was an artifact dealer.” She glanced at the body before returning her attention to me. “He’d been extremely agitated for a few days, and he wouldn’t tell me what it was about. I begged him to be rid of whatever he had that was causing him so much trouble, but all he would tell me was that we’d be set for life once he made this deal.”

  I looked around the room and began to see it for what it really was. The cluttered little shop was stuffed to the rafters with tchotchke and junky faux antiques that gave the place an impression of being a haven for unsellable yard sale crap. Most of the items looked worthless. It was the kind of shop you’d walk by time and time again, never seeing anyone inside, prompting questions of how the damn place could afford the rent in an increasingly trendy neighborhood. You’d try to convince yourself that the owners had probably bought the building back when real estate was affordable. More attractive though, would be theories of how it was a front for the mafia, or that they must be cooking meth in the basement.