Chapter 2
SATURDAY
IN WHICH JAMISON IS COMPLETELY LOST
In a rather lame act of rebellion, Jamison wandered the Magicker quarter of Azalea Springs with aimless, scuffing steps.
The sun had long since set, and the windows of the closed shops glowed gold under the streetlamps.
A blanket of hushed quiet lay over the town with only a few pedestrians scurrying to and fro, none of them betraying the magical nature of the businesses or the residents who ran them.
He knew he wouldn’t find answers here. Not at this hour anyway, but his relatively new supernatural senses haunted his sleep with blurry visions that were impossible to interpret and soaked him in fear. So instead, he walked the town he’d lived in his whole life.
A town he’d apparently never truly known.
But now, of course, everything was different.
Despite the other horrors that clung to his family in the last year, he could see.
He now understood that to a casual, non-paranormal-afflicted observer, the street looked ordinary, with small stores hawking candles, caffeine, pastries, knickknacks, furniture…
he could go on. In fact, some of the shops were ordinary, but it was only once you were paranormally infected that you noticed they mostly employed Magickers, Werewolves, and Vampires.
For Jamison in particular, the thoughts clogging his head would’ve seemed crazy a year ago. But a year ago, he didn’t have magic scrabbling beneath his skin, courtesy of a curse that had crashed onto his family from the friggin’ aether.
A curse that had left three women dead.
Jamison’s senses twinged as a shadow fell into step behind him, the clomp of heavy boots loud in the quiet night.
He slowed under a streetlamp, the subtle itch of unwanted magic rising in a way he still didn’t fully understand.
In the glow of a shop window, his gaze caught on his own reflection, and he winced.
The maddening insomnia wasn’t doing any wonders for his look.
His dirty blond hair had grown into a ragged mop, and an untrimmed beard roughened his face.
Unless someone was close enough to see the expensive brand of his ripped jeans and fitted hoodie, he probably could’ve passed for a homeless dude.
The well-groomed and patently carefree Jamison Kane of last year probably wouldn’t even have recognized himself.
Over the course of his nine months as a murder suspect—well, former murder suspect—he’d barely gone out of the house at all.
So, why would anyone be following him?
He leaned against the lamppost as he waited for the stranger to catch up or pass by.
The man probably had two inches and at least fifty pounds on Jamison’s lean six-foot frame.
Though he was dressed casually in a loose plaid shirt and baggy jeans, his bright blue eyes keyed in on Jamison in a way that said this meeting was no accident.
Vampire? Werewolf? Jamison had no idea, but though the wretched magic was obviously trying to tell him something about this guy, it would have to speak a little more clearly if he was going to listen.
Honestly, he’d just as soon snap his fingers and get rid of it altogether.
Either way, Jamison was pretty much at the end of his rope, so whatever this man’s intentions, he was fresh out of the drive to care.
Whatever name-brand or generic monster this guy was, along with the probable violence he had planned for Jamison, it would be pretty on brand for the hellhole he’d been wallowing in since the murderous magic had burrowed into his bones on an unsuspecting Tuesday.
“Jamison Kane?” The man’s tone was friendly, a fraying baseball hat sat backwards atop his head, and his posture was completely relaxed despite the late hour. “Your lawyer sent me. My name’s Brad McKinney. Mind if I walk with you?” He stretched out an arm to invite Jamison down the sidewalk.
Jamison frowned, leaning harder into the lamppost. In his experience, any sentence featuring the word “lawyer” wasn’t good.
“McKinney, like related to Dessa Blue McKinney?” The memory of a girl with black, blue-tipped hair and cobalt eyes sitting in front of him in Advanced English flashed through his mind.
The clear resemblance stared back from this man’s gaze, and a smile emerged from Brad McKinney’s scraggly beard. “That’s right; she’s my niece. I guess you two probably went to school with each other then?”
“Yeah.” Jamison pushed off from his perch and ambled down the sidewalk.
He was five years out of high school, but Dessa McKinney was the kind of girl that seemed to stick in your head.
Despite his best efforts though, and a lot of classes together, he’d never managed to get her attention.
He ran with the country clubbers by default, and she’d had her own group of tight-knit friends that took the word clique to a different level.
After a tragic car accident senior year, he knew she’d gone up north for college, but a familiar curiosity remained, always tickling his mind.
Where did a girl like Dessa Blue end up?
“But what do you want with me now?” Jamison asked.
“I know you’re cursed.”
Jamison staggered back as though struck.
One of the rules about his family’s shiny new curse was that they couldn’t talk about it.
Hell, he didn’t even know what the curse actually did.
And yet here was this rando speaking about it on the sidewalk like it was as normal as an ugly rash.
Hope burst through his chest and spilled out in a stream of questions.
“Wait, how can you possibly know that? Are you a Magicker? Can you help me?”
Brad’s amiable, unaffected expression didn’t change as he continued walking. “I run the Azalea Springs Records and Intermediary Office for the surrounding paranormal community. Do you know what AzRIO does?”
“Um, fix problems like mine?”
“Not exactly,” Brad chuckled.
Jamison should’ve known he didn’t have that kind of luck.
“We serve as a mediator between the Vampire, Werewolf, and Magicker communities here. Each neighborhood has their own internal laws, but for anything that crosses the boundaries between paranormal kinds, their representatives depend on AzRIO to resolve disputes and solve cross-community cases.”
Jamison tried to restrain the eagerness threatening to boil out of him. It was too good to be true; it had to be some kind of weird paranormal scam. Even so, the hope of answers made this the best day he’d had since the triple-homicide case had been thrown out last month.
“And my problem would count as a cross-community case, right?” Jamison asked as they stepped around a pair of men laughing, their sharp canines glowing in the lamplight.
“Not exactly.” Brad’s face folded into a sympathetic frown, and Jamison deflated like a punctured balloon. “Curses are as different as fingerprints, and to be quite honest with you, that’s not my area of expertise.”
Jamison’s optimism plummeted like a shot bird. “Okay, then why would my lawyer call you?”
“Well, first of all, because Terry and I go way back. I know it’s hard to believe, but we were once classmates at Azalea High too.”
Jamison shoved his hands in his pockets, wondering how soon he could ditch this dude and all his unhelpful blathering. Couldn’t a guy stew in peace these days?
“And secondly, I have a paid intern position available in AzRIO. It’d be easy work. Mostly admin stuff like answering emails, taking notes, processing clients—”
“You’re offering me an internship?” Jamison leveled him with a flat stare.
“You know my family runs the Kane Enterprises Group, right? I have a six-figure management job waiting for me.” Technically it was a figurehead position with no real responsibility, designed to redeem the family’s reputation after Jamison’s wild-haired teenage years, but Brad didn’t have to know that.
Brad chuckled again, but this time it had a bitter tinge.
“Yeah, kid, trust me, I know. KEG has had a finger in every pie within three hundred miles since before you were born, and I’m aware your grandfather has a nepotism gig waiting for you on a platter.
But Terry also told me that you have yet to accept said job.
I also know you have a trust fund the size of the state, one that ensures you don’t have to work a day in your life after you turn twenty-five.
” Brad flashed a shrewd grin. “But I don’t think all of that money and opportunity is helping your curse problem, is it? ”
Jamison’s lips twitched. Brad had him there.
“Well, the money at least was enough to buy us a good lawyer.” A lawyer who’d dubbed Jamison the screw-up king of A-Springs.
At this point, Jamison was surprised his grandfather was still offering him a job at all.
Though Jamison had graduated from college with a business degree, his true expertise had been in the party scene, and if he had a resumé, the experience column would be blank.
Well, unless he included his golf game and pick-up beach volleyball record.
“How does Terry know about my…issue anyway?” For the love of all things holy, he couldn’t even say the word curse.
“Because Terry’s a Cog.” Brad turned onto the paved walk of a shaded park, and Jamison swore the yellow eyes of a wolf stared at them from between the trees.
Jamison raised a brow. “A what?”
Brad laughed again. “It’s short for Cognizant.
It’s what we call humans without magical abilities who live in the paranormal world.
They usually have a paranormal relative or have had a paranormal experience that broke through their senses.
Terry recognized your situation was paranormally influenced and gave me a call. ”