The Painter Mage: Books 1-3 Read online

  “When the masters made it clear they wouldn’t be raised at the same time, the couple left. Stole one of Mac’s cars. It was all anyone could talk about for months.”

  I snorted. Arcanus was a closed community, so it wasn’t entirely surprising. “Mac didn’t want to go after them?”

  She shook her head. “He said he had other cars. Not sure why he likes them so much, anyway. All he does is use them to race into town for groceries, but he never stays long, always makes certain to get back well before evening. It still bothered him that the couple left.” She paused and met my eyes. “So, in spite of what you think, there were other artists who left Arcanus.”

  “Like my father,” I said.

  Taylor nodded. “The Elder was different.”

  “Is different,” I corrected.

  She hesitated, her brows knitted tightly together. “Why are you so convinced he still lives? Everyone thinks he’s gone.”

  I started toward the end of the garage door, wanting to take another look at the mark made there. “Not everyone.”

  The mark on this side of the garage door looked like a single line when I first examined it, but now that I was closer, I saw that it was more than that. Each end curled slightly, giving it a subtle rounding, almost like someone pierced a fingernail into the metal.

  Using another small pinch of red ink, I dusted the pattern. This time, I knew better than to push my will through the ink. Instead, I simply listened to it, feeling for other patterns that I might be missing.

  Power thrummed through the mark. Whoever had made it had strength. Now, I could tell what the intent of the pattern was, though not why someone would place it here on my garage.

  “Why would they lock it closed?” Taylor asked over my shoulder.

  “You assume I know who ‘they’ are.” I tried lifting the door again, and again it didn’t budge.

  “Let’s say this is another painter,” Taylor suggested. “Or even a tagger.”

  “I’ve not met a tagger with strength to do this.”

  “Either way,” Taylor went on, ignoring me, “whoever placed this did so with intent. Why the garage? Why your house?”

  An anxious flutter worked through me. The garage might be mine, but what was inside—what Devan made—was all her. After what she sensed, I knew I needed to be concerned. And if Devan had gone after it…

  “We need to get this open.”

  “You’ve already seen what happens when you try to disrupt the patterns.”

  “I didn’t disrupt. I only tried to see what they were for. Now I’ll disrupt them.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea? You got thrown back ten feet just trying to detect what that pattern could do.”

  “You don’t really know what I’ve spent the last ten years doing.” I pulled a knife out of my pocket and touched the blade. A single pattern, two interlocking triangles, etched carefully into the blade, made by the Trelking’s own smiths. Power suffused the blade. The hilt of the knife was smooth, made of a polished ivory. I never asked the source, but given where I got the knife, it was likely unicorn horn.

  Taylor’s eyes widened as I used it to peel through a layer of paint on the garage door, effectively lifting the pattern off.

  Doing this required concentration and understanding of the intent of the pattern, but it also took some balls. Taylor had seen what happens when powering a pattern backfires. I wondered if she’d seen real explosions before. It’s not like I haven’t gotten knocked on my ass by patterns I didn’t understand before. Doing that was easy, and unfortunately, too often necessary. It was getting back up that was the hard part.

  I brought the knife up to my face and sniffed at the paint. It was too bad I had to remove even a little paint from the garage door. Anything painted by the Elder carried more power than I could manage, but it was necessary. And besides, I’d already damaged the paint on the house. When I got around to finishing repainting it, nothing I could add would be greater than the protections placed by him. I mean, it had survived an epic battle between a powerful shifter and an artist with nothing more than a few soot marks.

  The other pattern proved more difficult.

  The knife had particular enchantments that allowed me to remove paintings. It was one of the tasks I’d done for the Trelking, sort of service for survival if you will. With the knife, I could detect how deep I needed to go to remove particular marks. Sometimes, only the top layer of a painting needed to be removed. I could skim away the thinnest layers of paint using the knife, just enough to lift the pattern clear. I’d had to do work so meticulously a few times that painters weren’t aware that their work had been disturbed until it was too late. Such had been my life.

  This mark went through the paint and somehow pierced the metal beneath. I hadn’t seen someone manage that in quite a while. Thankfully, I kept the knife sharp, and marked as it was, I could lift the paint and the layers of affected metal away. I flicked it off the tip of my knife, letting the wind catch it. Mostly, I didn’t want it in my yard.

  “How were you able to do that without setting it off?” Taylor asked.

  I slipped the knife back into my waist holster and lifted the garage door. It slid upward with a noisy rattle. The garage was dark, and a haze drifted toward me, acrid and biting. Something about it was familiar.

  “Devan?” I called, suddenly not expecting an answer.

  Taylor scraped a navy circle around her with the toe of her shoe.

  “You expecting something?” I asked.

  “Can’t you feel it?”

  Now that she mentioned it, I did. Energy pulled on my skin, making it dry and tight. A painter’s energy.

  Magic had particular signals. Working around it over the years as I had, you get to recognize different aspects to it. There was my type of magic, the type made up of power drawn through me, augmented by the inks and patterns I used. This magic gave a tingling sensation to my skin, drawing it tight like after a bad sunburn. When the magic released, the tightness eased. Then there was the magic Devan used. Far vaster that what I could draw, she had no need of the augmentations I worked. Either it worked or it didn’t. She couldn’t use her power the same way as I could, either. It gave her strength and speed and enhanced sight, but she couldn’t throw it off her or create protections around her like I could.

  Devan had made me an amulet long ago that would turn cold whenever she was using her power. I reached for it and realized that I’d sensed nothing from it for a few hours. That wasn’t unusual, but with her missing, it made me worry. The others of her kind were different, leaving the air feeling light and refreshed. Strange, but you learn to detect it when you’re around it long enough. And then there was Jakes. I still had no idea how to tell his power. Maybe that was the point.

  Without question, what came out of the garage was a painter’s power.

  I reached for the light switch and flicked it, but nothing happened. My heart started fluttering. Between the painter in the garage and the fact that I couldn’t find Devan, I was beginning to get nervous.

  I pulled a charm from my pocket and pressed. Yellow ink shot into the air, hanging suspended for a moment. In that time, I infused power through it. Soft yellow light glowed, lighting the garage.

  Everything was chaos. An air compressor rested on its side. Devan’s long bench was crooked, two legs cracked so it listed toward me. Tools scattered onto the ground. From what I could tell, the truck looked fine.

  I hurried to the bench. A pair of tiny metal figurines Devan had been working on rested on their sides, half covered by a long metal file. I grabbed them and stuffed them into my pocket. A few incomplete charms lay near the back corner. One looked something like the sculpture Agony in the park behind my house, a sculpture my father had made. The other like some twelve-sided cube. As I reached for them, I paused.

  There was a pattern here.

  I wouldn’t have noticed had I not gone for the charms. Even then, I still wasn’t certain what I saw. Maybe it
was nothing, but if it was what I thought, then Devan was in serious trouble.

  Using the scattered tools, a trapezoidal pattern was made on the counter. It could have been chance, but the lines were too equal. Devan had left it.

  “Damn,” I said.

  Taylor looked over the counter. “What happened here?”

  I motioned toward the pattern. “That’s the other painter.” At least now I knew what Devan had sensed, and what had Jakes on edge.

  She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  I looked for anything else of use, but saw nothing. Either there wasn’t anything, or it was gone. Pulling Taylor with me, I ducked back out of the garage. Anger boiled inside me.

  “You know who it is?” she asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  I knelt on the ground outside the garage. “I need brown,” I said.

  Taylor pulled a bottle of ink from her leather satchel and handed it to me.

  With a pinch of ink, I made a careful reproduction of the pattern. “I wasn’t the only painter in the Trelking’s world. It was part of the reason he employed me, the reason I’m still alive today. I was useful to him.”

  “Devan’s father?”

  “You didn’t really learn much during your year away from Arcanus, did you?”

  “Enough to stay alive,” she said. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  I snorted. “Yeah. And you nearly got us killed trying to summon the gate. Nice work with that.”

  Taylor glared at me for a moment. “You’re the one who was going to take me back there. Is that no longer the plan? I can stay here, I can help…”

  I sighed. As much as I wanted to get Taylor away from Conlin and keep her from trying some other stupid plan, Devan’s absence made everything different. “I’m sorry. I’m upset. Devan is missing. If not for her, I wouldn’t have made it through the last ten years. She helped keep me safe. She taught me more about patterns than I ever learned in Arcanus. And once I knew what I was doing, she kept me company. I owe her more than you could ever imagine.”

  Taylor glanced at the garage. “You love her.”

  “Well, yeah.” I didn’t know how to explain it any better than that. Devan and I were closer than family. What we’d been through together forged a bond that I’d never shared with anyone else. And neither of us wanted to risk ruining that with any romantic crap.

  Taylor eyed me with a strange expression and then turned to study the garage. “And this painter?”

  “His name is Adazi. And from what I know, he’s incredibly talented.”

  “Sounds Italian.”

  I laughed darkly. “Italian. French. German. Even American. I’ve thought the same thing over the years. He might not even be from this world.”

  “Is that possible?”

  I gaped at her. “You saw Jakes. You saw what he is. And you’re asking if something is possible?”

  “I’ve just never heard of painters from anywhere else. And I thought you said painter magic was specific to this world.”

  When I had been on the other side, when I was in the Trelking’s world, there had been a few other painters, but not many with my ability to master arcane patterns. That was what made me valuable to the Trelking. Without that, I would have either been sent back or more likely sent to die.

  “So Adazi. He’s a painter from her world?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know. No one does, not really. I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Then how do you know that was his mark?”

  “Because I’ve seen that before. Enough times that I learned to search for that mark before doing anything else. There were several times when Adazi made threats to the Trelking. Had I not removed the patterns, I’m not sure what would have happened.”

  “You make it sound like you were some sort of servant to a king.”

  I grunted. “Servant. Destroyer of magic. Breaker of oaths. Warrior. Occasionally protector.”

  Taylor nodded slowly. “I see.”

  I turned to stare at the garage. “No, I don’t think that you do. If Adazi was here and he knows about Devan, then she’s in real danger.”

  “I’ve seen what your friend can do. I doubt she’s in any real danger.”

  “If you’re around her long enough, you’ll get to realize she’s got a lot of power, but it’s not like ours. She can’t protect herself from magic the same way we can. She can’t attack with magic the same way we can. That makes her vulnerable.”

  “Why did she come with us to the park? If she’s so delicate, why risk her with the hunters?”

  I laughed. “Don’t let her know you called her delicate, or she’ll kick your ass. And she wasn’t at risk with the hunters. I was there.”

  “But what if something had happened to you?”

  I refused to think of what Devan would have done had I been injured. That was part of the reason I was willing to use the Death Pattern, but then she had prevented me from completing it. Devan was capable and fast, more than that, she was smart.

  “Nothing did happen to me,” I answered.

  Taylor watched me for a moment then touched the ground. “You need to find her before she’s injured?”

  “I don’t know what Adazi wants her for. But I need to find her before he succeeds.”

  “What if he crosses the Threshold? What if he takes her back?”

  That was my fear. If that happened, it would be all but impossible to find Devan. Not that I could find her easily now. But if they went back through, there was nothing I could do that would protect her. As soon as I crossed over to the Trelking’s world, I’d be detected. Hunted. There wouldn’t be time to help Devan. Even if there were, there was the little issue of what would happen to her when her father found her and where he’d send her.

  That left only one solution.

  I hoped Devan would forgive me.

  4

  I found Jakes at the Rooster, a local diner. Nothing fancy about it, just your typical bacon and eggs for breakfast, hot sandwiches for lunch, and—if you’re lucky—you might be able to get a slab of meatloaf for dinner. Not every night. Meatloaf was special. Once you had the Rooster’s meatloaf, you’d understand.

  An old-fashioned jukebox nestled into the corner was playing some modern hip-hop. For all I knew, that had been Devan’s work. She’d fixed the damn thing the first time she’d come here, curious about what it was and willing to tinker until she had it right. The owner, an older man named Tom Brindle, gave her free lunch in exchange. I think Devan came by here more for the challenge than the food, but I think she also really liked Tom. With his graying hair and glasses slid too far down his nose, he always looked a little dumpy, but he had a glimmer to his eyes and a smile that warmed you as soon as you saw it.

  A long counter ran down from the jukebox. A slender girl named Kacey worked the counter. She had auburn hair always pulled back in a ponytail and a smile that matched Tom’s. She was here most days I’d come, and I wondered if they were related. When the door opened and Taylor and I slipped in, she smiled and nodded. Jakes was sitting at the counter.

  The rest of the Rooster was empty. Frankly, I was surprised. Usually at this time of the day, there were three or four old retirees sitting around sipping coffee, most of the time reminiscing about the olden days. Today, the booths were empty. The chessboard the retirees played on sat unused.

  Jakes looked up, his eyes sliding past me to fix on Taylor. I wasn’t sure he’d quite forgiven her for what happened in the park. I couldn’t really blame him. Jakes had lost his father that night, protecting the gateway and keeping back the hunters.

  He nodded politely and turned on his stool to face us. “Surprised to see you here, Morris. I thought you made plans to leave.”

  “Yeah, well I was getting an urge for some of Tom’s eggs.”

  Jakes didn’t smile. He rarely did.

  “You seen Devan?” I asked.

  His face clouded. “No. And from the question, that means you
haven’t, either.”

  I glanced at Kacey. She worked quietly behind the counter, wiping plates and stacking them to the side. She seemed to be paying us no mind. “She wasn’t at the house this morning. The garage was locked, and I had to force it open.” The way Jakes’s eyes widened told me he recognized the problem with doing that. “Her shop was a mess. Stuff tipped over, projects left untouched. And this.” I made Adazi’s mark on the counter with my finger, smearing it across the slick surface. Even doing that much left me with a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. “You recognize it?”

  He shook his head slightly.

  “Someone strong,” I said. “Strong enough to take Devan. You know who she is, right?” This was the part I was least certain of. Devan protected certain secrets about herself, and I’d seen the interested way she looked at Jakes, but I needed to help her. To do that, I would need his help. I might need all the shifters to help, though I still didn’t know who any of the others were. For all I knew, Kacey could be a shifter. Hell, even Tom Brindle could be a shifter.

  Jakes lowered his voice. “I know what she is. That is enough.”

  I pulled out the stool next to Jakes and plopped down. It was green vinyl, probably from when the diner was first built, but still comfortable enough. A small tear in the covering poked at my legs, and I picked at it to keep from putting my hands on the counter and fidgeting so openly in front of Jakes.

  “No, that isn’t enough,” I began. “Devan is the Trelking’s daughter.”

  Jakes met my eyes as he took a steadying breath. I’d expected him to know about the Trelking. Most with any real magical ability did. “If she’s missing and they took her across the Threshold, I can’t help, Morris.”

  That surprised me. “What? You were willing to jump in and attack the nightmare hell creatures at the gate. You were willing to help me get her back to Arcanus.” He pointed at Taylor. “But now that Devan has been abducted, you’re not willing to help me keep her from being dragged back to her father?”

  “We’re not permitted to get involved.”

  “I think you’re involved just by being here. What did you think you were doing helping to protect the gate?”