The Painter Mage: Books 1-3 Read online

  “Shit. We need to get moving,” I said.

  I grabbed Devan and at first started toward the back wall of the park. We could cross that and get back to the house, hunker down in the protections until whatever Taylor did was complete. But Devan jerked her arm away and headed toward the center of the park.

  “Not a good idea, Devan,” I said.

  She ignored me as she hurried on, outpacing me as she so often managed.

  “Devan!” I yelled at her and she paused. “Whatever she’s planning is focused on the park. We don’t want to be here when it’s released.”

  “You don’t think I can sense that?”

  I frowned and caught up to her. “Then you know we need to get away from here. Whatever this containment painting is intended to do, it’ll draw massive amounts of power.”

  “And she’s focusing it in the park. Toward the center.”

  She turned away from me and ran forward, leaving me wondering what the hell she meant. I raced after her. I’d made a promise to her when we left that I’d keep her safe. As much as she was capable of doing, there was just as much that she wasn’t able to do. Sometimes she let herself get carried away. I was afraid this was one of those times.

  When I reached Agony, I found Devan standing in the middle of the stone circle. Energy crackled around her with enough energy to actually make her hair stand on end. She looked up toward the growing darkness and sniffed.

  Power built from her, the effect of it leaving the amulet cold against my chest.

  “Devan?”

  She didn’t look over at me. “It’s here, Ollie.”

  Had I been wrong? Was it not Taylor who worked some heavy-duty magic?

  A low howl erupted in the night.

  The shifter.

  There wasn’t anything I could do to stop the power I’d felt last night, and certainly not as weakened as I was, but I wasn’t about to leave Devan.

  I grabbed one of the satchels of ink and made a hasty pattern along the stones. I used a combination of a circle and a cross, infusing what I could through the ink to solidify it. One hand cupped the miniature Agony charm that we’d reloaded. If needed, I’d blast a way free, even if I wasn’t certain it would work.

  A growl came, eerie and deep, unlike anything I’d ever heard before. All I needed was to see the bright eyes flashing at me through the darkness, but the hairs on my neck stood up before that happened.

  And then it did. I saw the eyes.

  Everything seemed to happen at the same time.

  I sent a surge of power through the pattern on the ground, stretching through it to my lanterns around the perimeter. The shifter growled and jumped. It came as a flash of darkness moving quickly toward Agony. And then Taylor’s pattern reached a crescendo.

  We’d be crushed.

  Devan backed into me. “Ollie?”

  I grabbed her, wrapping my arm around her. “Hold on,” I said.

  Then I thrust the Agony charm overhead, hating that I had to do this here, not knowing how many trees the blast would take out. When I squeezed down, feeling the soft click as I did, I waited until the ink settled to infuse what strength I had remaining into it.

  The explosion lit the night with bright light.

  My first thought was that I hoped Jakes wasn’t watching. What new questions would I get? How would I explain another “gas leak” to him?

  The next was trying to hold onto Devan.

  Winds swirled around us, pummeling me and threatening to throw me to the ground. Had it not been for my first circle, I might have fallen. As it was, the circle held back wind and fragments of rock and branches.

  Somewhere nearby, lightning crackled and struck the ground. My ears felt like they’d burst. The skin on my arms felt thick and tight, stretched by the magical power being thrown around, shaper and painter powers colliding. My weak explosion was likely nothing compared to what the other two did.

  Then it stopped. The wind died suddenly. The light from the explosion faded, leaving me with a faint afterimage. The air held only a bit of residual energy.

  Devan trembled against me. I wasn’t sure if she was scared—probably not, considering Devan—or simply reacting to the magical power she felt.

  “You okay?” I asked. My voice was hoarse and weak. In another minute, I wouldn’t be able to stand. I’d used too much power the last two days, more than I had in a very long time.

  “I think so.” Devan twisted, peering into the night. “Do you think it’s still out there?”

  I didn’t know. Whatever was out there had a whole hell of a lot more power than I could manage. “Do you see anything?”

  “No. Where’s the shifter?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t think that was enough to scare off a shifter. Probably not even enough to slow a painter.”

  Devan raised her arm to point.

  I followed the direction she indicated and squinted into the night. A dark figure took shape and came toward us. As it did, I reached into the pockets of my duster and readied a charm, holding it over my head. If it were a shifter, I wouldn’t stand much of a chance, not if it was even half as powerful as I suspected.

  When the figure entered the light, I lowered my arm. I felt Devan tense and her magic built, pressing cold against my chest through the amulet. “Taylor,” I said.

  8

  Taylor studied me with dark eyes, a long, black jacket hanging loose around her, and the wind catching her hair. Streaks of blue still worked through it. Not accidental, then. I should have known when I first saw her what she was capable of doing, but I’d missed the signs. I’d spent too many years away from painters so when I finally encountered one with real skill, I’d missed the potential for danger. She glanced at Devan and then spun, hurrying into the park. She disappeared into the darkness without saying anything.

  I let go of Devan and started after her.

  “Ollie—” She grabbed my arm and kept me from going too far.

  I twisted my head to meet Devan’s eyes. “I have to know what this is about.”

  “Just… be careful,” she said.

  “You know I will.”

  She snorted. “You’re an idiot.” I shrugged. “Don’t be fooled by the girl.”

  “I—”

  “I know you, Ollie. That’s what happened with Lacy. But you’ve seen what she’s able to do. What she’s willing to do.” She jabbed me in the chest and I winced, trying to hide how much her pokes hurt. “Just be ready, okay?”

  At that, Devan walked to the edge of the plaza and took a seat on one of the cement benches, turning to study Agony. She crossed her legs and flickered her eyes over to me. I sensed the power she pulled, but didn’t know what else I could do.

  I hurried into the darkness. Fatigue threatened to knock me down, but I needed answers. With what strength I could muster, I let a trickle into the lanterns surrounding the park, and they flickered on. At the same time, I used the power stored there to follow Taylor as she made her way in the dark. There seemed to be only one place she would be going.

  As I suspected, she moved toward the flat stone Jakes had shown me earlier.

  I caught up to her as she crouched over it. My lanterns couldn’t illuminate much out here, but there was enough diffused light for me to see her flicking her wrist in a steady motion, splashing ink over the stone. Somehow, even after the power she’d just used, she still had strength remaining.

  “What’s this about, Taylor?”

  She paused long enough to look up. “You shouldn’t have interfered.”

  “Interfered?” I repeated, taking a step toward her. I wouldn’t have enough strength to do anything to her, but she wouldn’t know that. “You came to me. And you’re the one who came into my house, who stole from me.”

  Her breath caught and she looked back down at the stone. She swirled a finger in the paint, creating a series of patterns more quickly than I could accomplish. “I’m sorry about that. If there had been any other way—”<
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  I took a step toward the flat stone. “You could have asked me. That would have been another way.”

  Taylor tilted her head. “Would you have simply let me have it?”

  I wouldn’t have, but that’s not what I said. “Why do you need it?”

  In answer, she flared power through the painting she had just made on the stone. Symbols that hadn’t been there before suddenly appeared, working across the surface. In spite of myself, I moved forward, staring at them, recognizing some of them. I’d seen them in the book she’d stolen.

  “What is that?”

  “A doorway,” Taylor answered.

  “There’s no doorway here,” I said. I would have known. “Not in Conlin.”

  There were doors near Conlin. That was how I’d gotten here. Possibly how Taylor had gotten here, but there weren’t doorways in the town itself. Outside the town was a different matter.

  But I couldn’t deny what I saw in front of me.

  “Trust me, Escher. This is a doorway.”

  “Oliver,” I said reflexively. “This? This is why you came?”

  It looked nothing like the other doorways I’d seen. This was set into the ground rather than standing upright, as if the ground tried to swallow it.

  “Partly.”

  “And the shifter?”

  She tensed. The painting she’d been working stopped. She glanced up at me, looking through hair sweeping into her face, across her eyes. “Your friend shouldn’t have seen it.”

  “Why? You think we couldn’t feel the energy that thing was controlling?”

  “I expect everyone could feel it. But she shouldn’t have seen it.”

  “Well, she’s not exactly human, so you’ll have to cut her a little slack.”

  Taylor shifted her feet as she frowned at my comment, widening her stance. I’d done the same thing as soon as I stopped at the flat stone. Now I knew she’d had more training than she let on.

  “Are you really from Arcanus?” I asked.

  She tipped her head. “Don’t worry, Escher. I’m not here to drag you back.”

  “You could try.” I felt stupid saying it that way. If Taylor wanted to drag me back to Arcanus, I suspected she had the strength to do it. There wouldn’t be much I could do to stop her, especially if she wanted to do it now, while my power was still weak.

  “Do you think you’re the only one who struggled to learn what they wanted in Arcanus?”

  “Like how to stop a shifter?”

  She shook her head and her hair slipped farther in front of her eyes. “Not stop one.”

  The offhand way she said it caught me off guard. “If you’re not here to stop it…” I trailed off, the patterns she’d placed around the park suddenly making a different kind of sense. “You can’t think to capture it.”

  Taylor finished her painting on the doorway and stood, dusting her hands on her pants. She kept looking down, staring at the patterns she’d made. “It was a mistake.”

  “What was?”

  She looked up. “Coming here.”

  “Why did you come here? Is Hard really gone?”

  She sighed and stepped away from the doorway. “Hard opened the door in Arcanus about a year ago. And then he disappeared. I’ve been looking for him since.”

  “And the other side of the doorway in Arcanus?”

  She shook her head. “It’s there. As I showed you.”

  “If it’s there, then why did you leave?”

  “Because I needed to learn more than they could teach in Arcanus. If I was going to find Hard, I needed to know things I couldn’t learn in Arcanus.”

  I glanced at the pattern she’d made on the doorway before noting the way she placed her feet. I hadn’t noticed at first, but she moved slightly in a subtle shifting pattern that I recognized would give her even more focus. “Seems like you’ve learned quite a bit in your time away.”

  “Not enough to find Hard.”

  There was a hurt to her words that I understood. With what happened with my father, I’d felt the same. The Masters all thought he’d died, but I knew he hadn’t. None of the Masters believed. If Hard returned, maybe he finally might.

  “Why do you need my father’s book?”

  Taylor turned from side to side, looking out into the trees, before turning her attention back to me. “The Elder left a few notes in Arcanus. What I found there indicated there would be others.”

  “What kind of notes?”

  She motioned toward the doorway. The paintings she’d made shimmered with an internal light. Power emanated from them. If she pressed part of her will into them, she would infuse them with more power. I didn’t know what would happen if she did.

  “Where did this come from? It wasn’t here before.”

  A half-smile turned on Taylor’s mouth and she licked her lips. Maybe Devan was right. I had to be careful with Taylor or I’d be dragged along because of some pretty girl again.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t?”

  “I grew up in these woods. And since returning, I’ve wandered through here more times than I can count, trying to understand the sculptures my father placed here.” I circled around the stone to get a better vantage. As I did, a thought came to me. “Wait—this has been here all along?”

  Taylor nodded. “Buried.”

  The way she said it told me that it wasn’t just buried, but hidden by a painting. “And you figured out how to free it?”

  “The Elder was clever. Probably too clever,” Taylor said. “But he probably needed to be with this doorway.”

  “Explain it to me,” I demanded. “Tell me what my father did.”

  Taylor tipped her head to the stone. “I think he protected this. For all I know, the Elder put it here in the first place. With his paintings, he obscured it, ensuring that only another painter would discover it. He left notes, but not enough for me to understand how to find the door.” She turned and met my eyes.

  When I first saw her, I thought she was young, but I think she’d only wanted me to think that. Now I saw her age. It was in her eyes, buried with knowledge only gained through experience. The type of knowledge I’d gained over ten years. Could she really have learned what she needed in only a year?

  A painter like her could. The difference between her skill and mine was like the difference between a child’s spelling and that of a college-educated adult. And I was the child.

  “What did you do?” I wanted to know. If this was something my father had done, then I needed to know.

  “What I had to.”

  She crouched and reached toward the stone door, already summoning power. In another moment, she would open the doorway.

  And if she opened it, she could cross the Threshold. Suddenly I understood why she set the patterns, what purpose they had. “You want the shifter’s power to open this, don’t you? All of this,” I swept my arm around the park, motioning to the patterns on the trees, “was to capture that power, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m not the Elder,” she answered.

  “How did you know there would be a shifter here?”

  “Let’s just say I had some help.”

  That didn’t bode well. What kind of help would Taylor have found that would have known about a shifter in Conlin? What kind of help would she have that would show her how to trap a shifter?

  I grabbed Taylor’s arm. She tried pulling against me, but I had set my feet in such a way that she couldn’t overpower me. With one free hand, I tossed a pattern of brown ink atop hers, distorting the pattern so she couldn’t simply disappear. “You don’t even know where this leads.” If it was like any of the others, I knew she couldn’t open it. Not without repercussions.

  “Let go of me, Escher. I know you’ve experienced quite a bit since leaving Arcanus, but trust me when I tell you that you haven’t seen a tenth of what I’ve seen.”

  I wondered how true that might be. She hadn’t recognized Devan. Had she crossed the Threshold, she would have recognized one of the Te’al
an, especially Devan. And if she’d never crossed the Threshold, there was no way she’d seen the same things that I had seen.

  “And still you were scared when you came here.” I pulled her back, twisting her so she had to look at me. “Don’t think I didn’t recognize the fear. It was real. I’ve seen it before. Hell, I’ve felt it before. You can’t fake that sort of emotion.” I relaxed my grip on her arm when I realized she wasn’t going anywhere. “So what are you afraid of?”

  Taylor leaned back on her hands. Her eyes drifted from the doorway over to me. “Hard opened one of the doors in Arcanus, but I wasn’t certain which one. Without knowing that, we tried opening the others until we realized where Hard would have gone.”

  “We?”

  She nodded, but hesitated. “Ash and Reem.”

  Ash. Now I knew why she’d hesitated telling me. His interest was in inks and finding more powerful ways to use the powdered inks painters favored. Probably other things too, but I never had the opportunity to study with him. Ash had been the one to push me away from Arcanus. He’d felt the most strongly about taggers not learning arcane patterns, and I don’t think he ever liked me. “Not Mac?”

  “Mac thought it was too dangerous without studying it more.”

  Sounds about right. When I was in Arcanus, Mac was nearly as skilled as Devan at using patterns and painting to take everyday objects—things like clocks or pens or cars—and infusing them with enough magical power that they did extraordinary things even without a painter’s involvement. But Mac recognized the need to understand the intent of the pattern before jumping in. He always used to say it kept him alive.

  It was from him that I got the idea of the charms. When we returned to Conlin and I mentioned it to Devan, she’d jumped in with a knack for it that surprised her, I think.

  Then there was Reem. The strangest of the Masters, she kept mostly to herself. She rarely taught, and when she did, she spoke so softly that few understood her. She could go on for hours about painting styles and techniques, focused more on the actual painting, as if she intended to sell her work to galleries. Not that she couldn’t. Reem might be the most technically competent painter in Arcanus.