Trial of Shadows (Order of the Elements Book 3) Read online

  She sounded like she’d been halfway to saying something else, but she’d changed her mind. Maybe to offer me advice, not that anyone would be able to make the decision but me. At least he’d given me the chance to think over his offer.

  In my experience, it was a bad idea to turn down well-paid work, especially during a phase like this where Devon and I had one big job from the Order and that was it. In our line of work, it was feast or famine, and we’d be wise to save every penny we could for when we hit another rough patch. I wouldn’t like to reach the point where I’d end up reduced to selling old trading cards on eBay for rent money again. Or worse… having to take on independent work in the Parallel.

  On the other hand, I had zero training in being a bodyguard. Granted, my abilities in spirit magic might be an asset, but I couldn’t help thinking that the Death King was acting as though I’d accepted the other position he’d offered me. A chance to be his own personal Spirit Element. In your dreams, mate.

  I went back into the shop to find Devon speaking on the phone herself. She hung up after I walked back in. “You’re not going to believe who that was.”

  “The Order?”

  “You’ve got it.” She scowled. “They’re denying they received the last shipment I sent them.”

  “You mean the shipment they came here to pick up yesterday?” I frowned. “What did they do, leave it on the bus?”

  “Don’t ask me, but they’re insisting it never reached their base.”

  I gave an eye-roll. “They must have forgotten to fill out the paperwork. Even Judith isn’t unobservant enough to leave a box of cantrips lying around in public.”

  Like many people at the Order, she disliked me on principle due to my past involvement with spirit magic. She’d been my classmate at the Order’s academy, and she was also one of those people who’d thought the academy years had been the best of her life, which made her even more difficult to like. Still, she wouldn’t have ‘accidentally’ lost a whole box of cantrips on purpose. Even Judith wasn’t that vindictive… right?

  “They’re being insistent,” she said. “I wouldn’t ask you to go, but—”

  “But they’ll come here next, and we don’t need that shit,” I said. “I’ve already turned down the Death King today, so I might as well go and piss off the Order, too.”

  “What did he want with you, anyway?” she asked.

  “He wants me to play security guard at his contest to find the next Fire Element.”

  She arched a brow. “Wow. He trusts you not to let anyone in who shouldn’t be there?”

  “After last time? I know.” A familiar sense of dread rose within me at the reminder that the Order currently held my ex-boyfriend captive inside their headquarters. I wouldn’t lie, I’d been avoiding the place ever since.

  But I had to go, for Devon’s sake, if not my own. Besides, they were still technically my employers, even if they’d pretended that I didn’t exist for the better part of a month.

  I headed upstairs, swapped out my glasses for contacts and grabbed my Parallel bag as though I was off on a mission to the Court of the Dead. Which I might be, at this rate. It was that sort of day.

  2

  The bus to town showed up the instant I reached the bus stop, a rare stroke of luck which was soon dampened by the only available seat being next to the usual woman who insisted in describing her medical problems to me in graphic detail. Some things were nothing if not predictable.

  I’d have gone to the Order the easier way—namely, through the node on top of our house—but they were watching the node outside their headquarters closely after a fire mage had tried to burn the place down the other week and it wasn’t worth the risk of drawing their ire. I’d been lucky to escape without punishment after that incident, and I’d rather not run the risk of pissing them off even more.

  The Order’s headquarters was located in an office block which looked deceptively ordinary from the outside, and the two security guards on the doors spent an excessive amount of time scanning my ID—specifically, the black mark which indicated I’d broken one of the Order’s major rules—before letting me inside. Nothing new there, but it didn’t help my mood in the slightest.

  Hardly anyone was around in the lobby, aside from the woman who worked on the reception desk and a few employees milling around, talking and carrying boxes of goods from the Parallel to the delivery bay through the back doors. The Order had continued buying cantrips from the Collective of Spells at Arcadia’s market despite the illegal dealings that’d come to light in the wake of the Crow’s death, and while they’d also taken a massive custom order from Devon, it’d taken the Death King’s intervention to persuade them to keep us on their staff. As if I needed another reminder of the tightrope I walked.

  I headed down into the basement where the retrieval unit was located, and found Mrs Carlisle, the department head, sitting behind the computer desk. Her dark hair was pulled back into a bun, her face lined in a severe way that suggested she hadn’t smiled in years.

  “Olivia,” she said. “I don’t recall asking you to come into the office.”

  “I’m here on Devon’s behalf,” I said. “I’m told the shipment that two of your employees picked up from our shop never made it here, so I wanted to check up on it.”

  “That isn’t my department.”

  “Isn’t it?” I gestured to the boxes stacked around the room. “Didn’t you see them bring in a box?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t spend every second of my life here in this room, Olivia,” she said. “You’ll have to check with the delivery unit.”

  Anything to avoid responsibility, huh. “Is there any work going in the Parallel at the moment, then?”

  “You’ll hear from me when I have any missions available.”

  Translation: not anytime soon. Recklessness rose inside me, and before I could question my decision, I said, “So I assume it’s fine if I take employment from the Death King in the interim? I assume he’s visited recently?”

  “Yes,” she said, her tone frosty. “He has. You are free to take on any work from him you may desire, but if any member of the upper room decides otherwise, I will not be able to prevent them from intervening.”

  Then we’d better hope I don’t attract the wrong attention again. If it took an unstable alliance with the King of the Dead in order to make the Order notice I existed, though, it was better than a punch in the face.

  The sound of footsteps echoed downstairs, and a young Order assistant came into view.

  “Olivia Cartwright?” said a pimply kid who hardly looked old enough to drive. “You’re wanted upstairs.”

  “Upstairs?” I echoed. “Where?”

  “Mr Cobb’s old office,” said the kid. “Mr Holland would like to speak to you.”

  Oh, boy. Holland was head interrogator and had been the one who’d given Brant an extended jail sentence a few weeks ago. He’d also been involved in my own trial, come to that, so I’d bet he hadn’t invited me into his office to chat about the weather. One of the most annoying parts about my glitchy memory was that I never knew if Order members were friend or foe until I met them face to face.

  Bracing myself, I headed upstairs and towards the office which had once belonged to Mr Cobb, before he’d been arrested and locked up in the same jail which now held my ex-boyfriend. I didn’t disagree that Brant had deserved his punishment, but the Order knew we’d been involved with one another, and for that reason, I’d feared they might suspect I’d been involved in his criminal activity, too. There was no denying that it would have hurt less if he’d let me in on his dodgy dealings, but if he had, events would have taken a different turn.

  One black mark on my record was enough for a lifetime.

  I halted outside Mr Cobb’s office door, then I knocked on the wooden surface.

  “Come in,” said a voice.

  I entered the room, and a rush of familiarity hit me at the sight of Mr Holland, a tall man with neatly trimmed grey hair, si
deburns, and a pair of spectacles balanced on the end of his nose that almost masked his startlingly clear grey eyes.

  “Olivia Cartwright,” he said, in a soft voice. “I’ve intended to speak to you for some time.”

  My gut clenched. Icy fear flowed down my spine. This is it. They’ve found out I’ve started using spirit magic again.

  “And why’s that?” Somehow, I managed to keep my voice even. His intent stare caused memories to swim in the forefront of my mind, only to be whisked away an instant later. He’d been involved in my trial, all right, and from his unfriendly tone, he hadn’t voted in my favour.

  “Your fire mage companion.” He gestured towards a seat opposite him. “Won’t you sit?”

  Damn. So it was about Brant after all. I’d been lucky the Order hadn’t insisted I attend Brant’s trial, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be looking into the connection between the two of us. Because the universe couldn’t just give me a break for once.

  I sat down, perching on the edge of my seat, and tried to ignore the overwhelming instinct to flee for my life.

  “Brant Edwards has been found guilty of conspiring against the Order and misusing our permits several times over,” said Mr Holland. “You were involved with him while he was working against us.”

  Not this crap again. “I didn’t know he was conspiring against anyone,” I said wearily. “He was working against me, too. I didn’t have a clue until I visited his apartment in Arcadia and found it full of illegally acquired cantrips.”

  “Then you confronted him?”

  “No, because he ran away.” I skipped over the part where a lich had attacked me in Brant’s bolt hole, because that would lead to questions the Death King would not be pleased with me for raising. “I was on the lookout for him when I heard he attacked the Death King and got thrown in jail.”

  “Which he later escaped,” added Mr Holland. “I have this report from the Death King claiming his ex-Fire Element was the one who attacked our headquarters and not Mr Edwards.”

  “Brant’s guilty of a lot of things, but he’s not the one who started the fire,” I said. “The ex-Fire Element, Davies, came here to break out the three vampires who were held in custody in this very building.”

  “And where are those vampires now?”

  “Dead,” I said. “They died in the confrontation with the vampire who called himself the Crow. He was an ex-employee here, I heard.”

  “That is neither here nor there.”

  Right. It’s only suspicious when I’m the one whose name comes up in connection with the enemy, not the Order in general. Okay, the Order had thought the Crow was long dead, and they’d been right, technically. He’d fled justice by turning into a vampire and hiding in Arcadia, establishing himself among the vampire elite while scheming to turn himself into a living human again. Yet it was another ex-Order employee, the late Dirk Alban, who connected all of us like the tapestry of a spider’s web, and I had no way of knowing which other people in this building were as entangled as I was.

  “Just passing on what I heard,” I said in casual tones. “I’ve told you everything I know, and my report has been verified by the vampire council and the Death King. Why do you need me to repeat the same information?”

  “I’m finding it difficult to believe you ended up at the scene of the vampires’ attack by coincidence alone,” he said. “Much less that you escaped.”

  “The vampires held me hostage in their hideout because they were angry with me for bringing them into the Order’s custody,” I said patiently. “The Death King came to confront the Crow and helped me escape capture.”

  “How did the Crow die, then?” said Mr Holland. “His remains were barely recognisable.”

  “Brant tricked him into using one of his own dodgy cantrips to turn into a living being again, which then backfired and took him to pieces.” I folded my arms across my chest. “He also set the safe house on fire, which you’d know if you read the reports.”

  His mouth pressed into a line. I’d given him an ironclad alibi, not to mention mostly told the truth. “Why would Mr Edwards choose to aid you after betraying you as he did?”

  A fist clenched around my heart. “He still cared about me. He felt he had no choice but to ally with the vampires. Now the Crow’s dead and Brant is in jail, so it doesn’t matter what he thinks.”

  “I beg to differ,” he said, “because the vampires have requested for Mr Edwards to be brought to stand trial in front of their own council.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “They have?”

  “Yes.” He scanned me. “I wanted to confirm there’ll be no interference on your part.”

  “If you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known it was happening.” The vampires are putting him on trial? I’d barely begun to heal from the damage Brant had inflicted, and yet I didn’t want him to face trial by vampire. Not when their punishments were believed to be even harsher than the Order’s.

  “Then there’s nothing more to be said.” He rose to his feet. “A tragic waste of a life, but the vampires’ word is law.”

  And just what is that supposed to mean? He might well be trying to get a rise out of me, or to get me to admit to some treacherous thoughts about the Order’s attitude to mages. Maybe he wanted to hand me over to the vampires, too.

  “Only in the Parallel.” Instinct screamed at me to get the hell out before I said something that caused him to turn the sentence on me instead. “The Order is the authority in this city, and you arrested him before the vampires did.”

  “If what you said is true and he was not the arsonist who attacked our headquarters, then the vampires have more reason to convict him than we do.” He waved a hand. “You may leave.”

  Fucker. I hadn’t guessed that telling him Brant wasn’t the person who’d attacked the Order would cause the upper room to condemn him to a worse fate than an eternity in prison. To add insult to injury, Davies, the ex-Fire Element, had run away and was unaccounted for, so he hadn’t suffered in the slightest for his crimes.

  Mr Holland, on the other hand, seemed to be looking for a reason to convict me along with Brant, and I wasn’t about to give him one, so I left the room and walked out into the lobby. I was halfway to the doors when I remembered the ‘missing’ package, so I headed for the back exit instead.

  Stacks of boxes littered the walled yard at the back of the Order’s headquarters, and a skinny Asian guy accosted me at the door. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m looking for someone I can ask about a delivery that you picked up from my house yesterday,” I said. “The Order claimed it never showed up here, but we saw two staff pick it up in person.”

  “Huh.” He scanned the boxes around the yard. “Lemme see.”

  Most boxes were labelled with the COS’s logo, containing shipments of handmade cantrips. Others contained magical junk confiscated from practitioners on this side of the nodes, items which weren’t allowed here on Earth without the Order’s express permission. Judging by the cawing noises coming from the cages stacked in the corner, someone had been breeding vampiric chickens again.

  He picked up a box from among the piles around the yard. I peered over and read Devon’s scrawled handwriting on the side. “Yeah, this is yours. I’ll get it logged in.”

  “Thanks.” He might well just be saying that to placate me, but my head was not in the right place for an argument, not now I was aware that Brant would be on his way to his death within a few days. Only the Death King had the clout to fight the vampires, or at least get them to reconsider their sentence.

  Oh, Elements. What choice did I have, though? The vampires were as ruthless as the Death King and had no reason to spare Brant’s life, and they didn’t seem thankful in the slightest that I’d helped save them from the Crow’s rampage.

  It looked like I’d have a reason to strike a bargain with His Deathly Highness after all.

  I returned home to find Devon closing up the shop for the night. Friday evening
was our weekly D&D session, and while it was normally my favourite night of the week, worry gnawed at my insides as Brant’s plight weighed on my mind.

  “What’s wrong?” Devon, who wasn’t the most observant person, nevertheless always knew when something was bothering me.

  “Brant’s going on trial in front of the vampire council.” I exhaled in a sigh. “You know what the vampires do to most transgressors.”

  Execution. Usually without any trial at all, which was one point in his favour, but not enough. Brant had been involved in an operation which had threatened to undermine the vampires’ rule over the city of Arcadia, and while he’d also killed the vamp who’d been responsible for pushing him into it, he was one of the few who’d survived long enough to be jailed.

  “Oh.” Devon looked as though she didn’t know what to say. “Is there no revoking it?”

  “Not alone.” I walked through the shop to the living room and slumped on the sofa. “The Order won’t help. They’re happy to hand him over to the vampires and be done with it.”

  “Bastards,” she said. “What about the package?”

  “They promised to get it logged in,” I said. “Not that their promises are worth much. Even less than the Death King’s.”

  I needed to speak the man himself in person, and soon, but I wasn’t about to miss D&D night. Besides, there was a member of the Death King’s contingent among our group.

  I didn’t have to wait long. Within the hour, the first arrivals showed up. When I answered the door, the Air Element, Ryan, entered, dressed in ordinary clothes instead of the armoured outfit they usually wore. Two sprites floated behind them, each shaped like a miniature humanoid figure. One glowed with orange-red flames, while the other hovered in a cloud of purplish-green.

  “Hey, Dex.” I waved the sprites into the house. “And Aria.”

  The air sprite swooped ahead of Dex. She’d attached herself to the fire sprite ever since we’d rescued her from a cage in a vampire’s basement and the pair of them had been living in the Elemental Soldiers’ section of the Death King’s castle for the last few weeks.