Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
H yax had pored over the data he’d collected several times, and there was nothing that suggested anything strange was going on.
Over the last two days, he’d filtered out the energy patterns from any legitimate magical activity that might be part of the day-to-day running of the store, expecting to find something that would point them in the right direction, but instead all he had was a large case of frustration.
Gwil peered at him over the book he was reading. Midnight was sitting on his lap and she was giving Hyax a similar curious stare. “I don’t understand,” Gwil said. “There’s nothing, and that’s worse than finding something we can’t identify?”
“Yes.” He didn’t expect Gwil to understand, even as a magic user Hyax was struggling to get his head around his findings. “There should always be something, background level noise or residuals from spells from the history of the land the place was built on, but I didn’t get the slightest whisper.”
“Any idea why?”
“Honestly, Gwil, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be so worried. I’ve never heard of something like this. I’m stumped.” Admitting he didn’t know was almost as annoying as being in the dark. “I had thought that the consultants must have missed something, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
“Unless you’re all missing something, which might be the answer, or it’s being deliberately hidden. Remember, the lich managed to hide his manor house where I went undercover.”
The case Gwil was referring to was different. “The lich employed a forget-me-not-mist, which diverted and confused people, and even those have a signature that a strong enough magic-user will notice something’s going on.”
“Whereas here, we know incidents are occurring, but if they hadn’t been witnessed by other means, then there’d have been no evidence they’d occurred?”
“Exactly. I’ve never heard of anything capable of dampening magic so completely, but still let people cast magic in the vicinity.
Some charms and spells can limit magical signatures, but not, that I know of, on such a level or for so long, or that removes all evidence they’d been cast in the first place. I may need to consult a friend or two.”
One of the monitoring orbs he’d left on the table glowed red and let out three sharp notes. He snatched it up and tried to look into the smoke within. He’d set them up to act like scrying mirrors, but while the alarm had been triggered, he couldn’t see why.
“What’s going on?” Gwil asked.
“You see the mist in the orb?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. The noise was the alarm being triggered at Dante’s, and this is supposed to show me why?” He tapped the glass. “This isn’t right either. We need to get over there now. But we’ll need to be careful.”
Gwil hadn’t been awake long, it wasn’t fully dark, and the store wouldn’t be open to the paranormal public for a while. There could even be normal human shop staff still milling around and he didn’t want to have to take care of distressed store assistants on top of everything else.
“Let me grab a hoodie and some shades. I’ll make sure to stay away from the windows.”
He ruffled Gwil’s hair as he went past. “Don’t worry. I won’t let my favourite vamp-boi get crispy.”
While Gwil grabbed what he needed, Hyax tried again to figure out what was going on in the orb. He could see a shadow, a shape with no real definition, move within the shifting mist, but it was gone as soon as it appeared. Fucking weird.
Gwil returned, the hood of his sweatshirt up to protect his face, and he wore sunglasses and a pair of gloves. “Ready?”
“I’m going to open a portal into Mr Smithe’s office. I would think he’d be investigating whatever set off the orb, so it should be a safe area for us to appear as he has a separate office from the manager who runs the human side of the operation.”
Hyax was relieved to find the office empty as predicted, and he was quick to close the blinds to ensure Gwil wouldn’t be exposed to any sunlight they could avoid. “The orb that went off was monitoring homeware. We need to get there.”
“Sixth floor,” Gwil said.
Hyax cast a cloaking sphere. “We should be able to pass undetected. I’m hoping there’s not too many staff about as the spheres are difficult to maintain on the move.”
“Although it does give me an excuse to be super close to you.”
Hyax loved the fucker but now was not the time to be thinking with his prick. “Come on. Whatever went on will be over, but if we’re fresh on the scene, I might be able to get a read of what happened.”
They left the office, and it became apparent that there was no need to remain hidden.
There were several paranormal store staff around, but no humans and Hyax cancelled the cloaking spell, causing a naiad cleaner to gasp and drop his duster as they appeared out of nowhere.
The offices were on the upper floor, and they raced down the escalators to the sixth, thinking it would be quicker than the lift.
A small crowd of shop staff had gathered, blocking the way.
Hyax pushed through none too gently, Gwil on his heels.
He stopped at the sight in front of them—every one of the kitchen knives levitated in mid-air, circling on their points.
From the corner, he heard a whimper as three people cowered, trapped by a host of meat cleavers hanging in front of them.
Hyax knew he had to act, but if he used his magic, his signature would swamp the area, and they’d have to unpick it from anything else that might be present.
He had no choice. He wouldn’t risk the lives of those three people and unleashed a netting spell, which scooped up the cleavers. Whatever was levitating the knives dissipated and they clattered loudly as they dropped to the floor.
One of the women who had been pinned in the corner let out a sob and ran out through a door marked Staff Only.
The other woman was trembling too hard to move unassisted but one of the onlookers came and led her away, muttering gentle words of support.
The remaining person was a man in his late forties, dressed in a grey suit and his hair slicked back with pomade, who seemed far less flustered than Hyax would have been had their roles been reversed.
“Thank you, Prince Hyax. I hoped you’d received the invitation to your personal shopping session. We didn’t intend for you to be put to work.” He held out his hand. “I’m Mr Smithe. The manager of Dante’s. I can only apologise for not being able to join you on your previous visit.”
It dawned on Hyax that Mr Smithe was still trying to cover up his and Gwil’s involvement. “This was one of the few gaps on my agenda,” he replied carefully. “I do hope that Mr Hilt and I are still welcome to browse despite whatever drama you have going on here.”
“Of course. Are you interested in cookware? Or perhaps Mr Hilt might wish to see the blood decanting stations?” Mr Smithe smiled, his incisors on the pointy side, hinting at his lycanthropy.
“Not with our current audience.”
Mr Smithe took that as a cue to shoo away the onlookers, and only a couple remained, picking up the fallen knives.
Hyax tried to concentrate, hoping to lock on to the residual magic behind the acrobatic silverware.
He could sense the presence of an elf, but they’d not cast in the vicinity and there was nothing else.
It made no sense whatsoever. Gwil was pretending to examine the blood dispensing system, or at least Hyax hoped he was pretending, because while he had come to terms with Gwil’s vampiric nature years ago, he didn’t want the red stuff on prominent display in their home.
“What happened?” Hyax asked Mr Smithe once they were alone enough to talk.
“I arrived to see what you did. Knives revolving in mid-air, and when myself and the two ladies approached, we were pinned in the corner by cleavers.”
“Who cast the spell?”
Smithe shook his head. “There was no one here. Perhaps it was timed to go off.”
Hyax was sure that couldn’t be the case. His trackers would have picked them up. “From what I can tell, there’s nothing to suggest it was a timed spell.”
There had to be an explanation. His monitoring spells would have set off alarms if someone had left a spell primed or if someone had been here to cast, since knives didn’t float on their own.
He sent a wave of magic across the area, but he had the same sensation as before, an absence of anything, and it was fucking annoying.
“This is odd,” he said, sensing from Mr Smithe’s expression that he was waiting for Hyax’s initial conclusion.
Smithe snorted. “The understatement of the century. I’ve seen all sorts of strange things in my time, but I have always found an explanation. This has me lost.”
“You and me both.”
Gwil wandered up to them holding a scrap of gold paper. “The rest of the place is meticulously clean, but I found this in the corner.”
Hyax took hold of it. “It looks like a sweet wrapper of some kind.”
“Dropped by our mystery magician, maybe?” Gwil said. “You might be able to get something off it.”
He would need to study the paper and would prefer to do so without an audience so he muttered a neutral protection charm and then placed it in his pocket.
Apart from the knife display, there seemed to be nothing amiss, although he wasn’t interested in high-end cookware and table dressings, so lacked a reference to whether there was anything out of place, but it didn’t appear to be the case.
Gwil looked genuinely interested in a soup maker, which, given soup was his fallback human food, made some sense. “Want me to get that for you?” he asked, smirking.
“I doubt I’d get the use out of it to justify the purchase.” He sounded remorseful and it reminded Hyax that Gwil wasn’t used to Hyax’s lifestyle. Time to start remedying that.
“Let’s get one and have it delivered—my treat. And while we’re here, we could visit menswear.”