Chapter 1
AS EASY AS FINDING A UNICORN IN A GRAIN BIN… OR NOT
NELSON
People used the word “unicorn” to describe the rarest of the rare. The thing that was more myth than reality. The thing that made you question if it even existed.
Yeah.
That was an apt metaphor, because trying to find an abducted unicorn was about as easy as finding rocking-horse shit or teeth in a hen or whatever other similar idiom you liked best. I knew it all too well because I’d been searching for months with fuck all to show for it.
This, though, would be the moment of my triumph.
I stared at the small grain bin in the abandoned farmyard and felt a sense of knowing. That’d never happened to me before. So this had to be it, right?
The Eternal Magic was flashing me a big old two thumbs up. Here’s a pat on the back. You’re done. You can do something else now.
I know, I know. I shouldn’t count my unicorns before they were safe, but I couldn’t help it. This lead was solid. I knew it. It came right from the guy’s phone who’d been trafficking Morgan.
Honestly, I was pissed it’d taken the Supernatural Council this long to figure out that the lists of numbers were a bunch of coordinates. If they’d shown them to me from the beginning, I would’ve known exactly what they were. I referred to coordinates all the time while geocaching.
But the SC had finally done it, and now I was here.
After today, I could rest. I wouldn’t have to track down any more questionable leads. I wouldn’t have to haunt all the shady supernatural dives where assholes hung out. I wouldn’t have to keep guzzling magically enhanced coffee like it was an elixir capable of fixing all my worldly problems.
My imagination could stop producing all those desperately disturbing images of the unicorn trapped in a cage, unable to escape, slowly fading away.
Because the unicorn would be here.
Then I could do… I don’t know what… but something else. I wouldn’t have to spend all my waking hours thinking about some supe I’d never met. All I had to do was get in that grain bin on the other side of the otherwise derelict property.
I was in my shifted form, which, as a shadow jumper, meant I was more air than solid.
I hadn’t seen anyone coming or going since I’d arrived, but I hadn’t moved in yet.
It was better to be safe. Luckily, in this form, I doubted anyone would notice me hanging out in the shadow of an ancient tractor that probably hadn’t moved since 1962.
Even through the thick layer of frost, I could see the machine was mostly rust.
I’d waited a while now, just to be sure. I wasn’t certain of the time—it wasn’t like I could check my phone when it’d disappeared with the rest of my body and clothes with my shift—but it’d felt like I’d been here for an eternity already.
I didn’t want to move too quickly, though, in case it was a trap. That was the thing about shadows, we could move slowly when necessary.
As twilight neared, the shadows around me grew longer and longer.
The days in November were always appallingly short, and they became progressively shorter until the winter solstice.
It stirred something in my blood, beckoned to me.
My kind loved when darkness overwhelmed light.
It’d be so damn easy to lose myself in it.
I ignored it.
I liked the darkness as much as the next shadow jumper, but I refused to be like them.
I certainly didn’t feel the need to sink into the shadows at the autumnal equinox and stay there until the spring equinox, like so many of my kind did.
Too many shadow jumpers faded into the shadows and never emerged again.
To survive had been seen as a point of valor in my gloom, but they weren’t the brightest beings around… literally.
Of course, that also explained why I didn’t live with them anymore. I hadn’t for a long time.
I eyed the decrepit wooden structure again to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. I still didn’t see any tripwires, cameras, or shiny new locks.
“Let’s do this,” I whispered to myself.
I jumped into the shadow cast by the building.
When nothing happened, I slipped around the foundation slowly.
If I moved too quickly, I could trigger motion sensors, if there were any, and that was the last thing I needed.
Finally, I found a gap I could slip through. I flowed into the shadowy interior.
The windowless structure was deteriorating, but it was still solid enough to keep out most of the light. As a shadow in the dark, I never saw colors well. They might be muted and dull. But I could see well enough to know the unicorn wasn’t here.
“What the magical fuck is going on?”
My shift swept over me until I was human again.
I crouched on the dirty wooden floor and yanked my phone from my pocket.
Then I fumbled to turn on the flashlight.
As soon as the thin beam of light sliced through the darkness, it showed the muted browns and grays of the decades-old wooden structure.
And in the center was a shiny metal cage.
It was exactly as I’d envisioned it, right down to the little wheels on the bottom, except for one big, ugly problem. It was empty, as was the rest of the grain bin.
Was this a trap?
I braced, ready to act. I could shift fast. They’d never catch me.
People rarely anticipated a shadow jumper, so I’d be able to escape.
I angled my light to the floor, then the walls, and lastly the ceiling.
I didn’t find any runes etched into the wooden planks to make a trap, nor could I sense any magic lingering in the air.
The only movement came from the small vapor clouds bursting from my mouth into the cold air on each exhale. No one was coming. Magic didn’t stir through the air. After a few long minutes, I slowly relaxed enough to search for clues. I needed to know what the hell was going on.
I studied what little evidence there was.
The pouch Simon had thrown through the portal was there.
Tiny bits of plastic and circuitry lay broken beside it.
The dust on the floor had been disturbed, but not recently.
Already new dust had settled over the one set of footsteps leading from the cage to a small, square access panel in the exterior wall.
The dirt was disturbed there, like someone—presumably Morgan Russell, the unicorn I was searching for—had wiggled through the small hole and then replaced the panel.
I inched closer to the cage, hoping for more clues.
The door was ajar. It didn’t make any sense.
All the interviews we’d conducted with others who’d been imprisoned with Morgan suggested he had been caged for a long time.
Ogden, a local dragon shifter who’d actually met Morgan while imprisoned, described him as resigned to his fate.
So, if the damn unicorn could get out on his own, why hadn’t he done it before? What had changed?
Had this lock not been secure? The thin beam of light caught something reddish-brown smeared on the steel lock. I leaned closer. Ah shit. It was blood. My stomach churned.
Before I even realized what I was doing, I reached for it. My hand trembled before I could touch it. That bit of dried blood was drenched in magic. I yanked my hand away. It was better not to test it.
Was it Morgan’s or someone else’s? I hoped it wasn’t Morgan’s.
I wasn’t a stranger to violence or death. I’d killed people. It would have been impossible not to have killed people when, until recently, I’d belonged to an elite team who worked for the SC. So I wasn’t sure why a little blood was making me queasy.
I stared at that smudge for a long, long time.
Then I got to work searching for more clues, but there was nothing more to find. Morgan Russell was gone.
Now, a rookie SC agent might think that was the end of it, right? The unicorn was free. Everything should be right with the world.
Except I knew something that few others did: An oracle had foretold that the unicorn was in danger, and that I was destined to be the one to save him.
Which meant I wasn’t done yet.
Fuck my magic-cursed life.