Anaphylaxis (Medicine and Magic Book 5) Read online

  “There’s something else that I was planning on doing tonight.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m still looking for information about this mage. Odian.” After learning his name, I had become almost obsessed with learning what I could of him, especially if he was involved in my mother’s death. The only problem was that there wasn’t anything I could find about him. Word on him was scarce.

  “The one you think is responsible for everything that’s been taking place.”

  “His followers are involved. They have to be.”

  Having a name was more than I had for so long, though the name was nothing more than a mystery still. If I could find some of his followers, I could find what happened to my mother. That was my magical goal these days.

  “If you want company, I could come with you,” Jen started. She trailed off as her phone rang. She reached into her pocket, pulling it out, and frowned.

  “What is it?”

  “My landlord,” she said.

  She answered the phone, listening. Her eyes widened as she did, and after a moment, she said, “I understand. I’ll be over later.”

  When she hung up, I looked over at her. “What is it?”

  “My apartment burned.”

  “What?”

  “There was a fire, and half the building burned. My apartment was part of it.” She stared at her phone. “I don’t even know what I’m going to do. Where am I going to go?”

  “You can stay with me.”

  “And have you seduce me?”

  “Like you would mind.”

  “You don’t need me in your home, Kate. Besides, you don’t even have a spare bed.”

  “I didn’t say it was forever.”

  Jen just stared at the phone. “I don’t even know how much I’ve lost. The fire department won’t let her go in and check on it, but everything’s wet.” She looked up at me, mouth pressed into a tight line. “And no comments from the peanut gallery about that.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “I guess I won’t be able to go with you on your magic hunt tonight.”

  “Why don’t you call me after you stop by your place and I’ll make sure you can get into mine.”

  “Thanks, Kate.”

  “What are friends for?”

  The overhead speaker buzzed. “Dr. Michaels. Dr. Stone. Please report to the front desk.”

  “I guess we’re back on,” I said.

  “It looks that way.”

  I peeled off my white coat, glancing down to see if there was any blood on my scrubs, and was thankful there wasn’t. I had a spare coat, but didn’t bother grabbing it. Instead, I headed out, following Jen, making our way back to work, pushing aside concerns of our personal lives.

  3

  I approached the massive building slowly, all too aware of the nervous energy coursing through me. This was like heading into a room filled with an agitated family and having to give bad news—only worse. Every time I came to this place, I felt the same way. It should have been better by now, but it wasn’t. Not even close.

  The house was massive. It was a Tudor style, and peaked arches rose high overhead. Wide windows let in the fading daylight. The lawn that was perfectly manicured over the summer had turned brown and a dusting of frost covered it. The garden running along either side had been cut back, leaving nothing more than a patch of dirt. Trees lining the drive gave a little shade, but not much, and their bare branches swayed with the late afternoon wind. Cold crawled along my exposed skin, the wind biting, and I almost wished there was the sense of magic.

  The door opened without me needing to do anything. The woman standing across from me wore a sour expression, though it was one I’d seen from her before. She had long dark hair and a wrinkled face, significant in a mage. It signaled just how old Sharon Ogilve was. “Dr. Michaels. It’s a little late for your visit, isn’t it?”

  I shrugged. “I had a few ideas I wanted to try and thought I could come and see if we could make any progress.”

  “Will these ideas have any more success than the ones you have tried before?”

  I looked past her, searching for any sign of Aron. There wasn’t any movement behind her, not that I could tell. He was here, resting and serving the council in the same way that he had since the accident. His mind was essentially a blank slate save for the knowledge that he served the council—and how to use magic—but little else.

  “Something has to work,” I said.

  “Does it?” Sharon stood with her hand on the doorframe, and I couldn’t tell if she intended to try and keep me out. I had the sense that she didn’t care about the frequency of my visits, but they weren’t even nearly as frequent as I would have preferred. Were it not for the nature of my day job, I would have been working with Aron even more than I had been.

  “Eventually. If this is some sort of global amnesia, if given the right stimulus, Aron should recover his memories.” I’d spent considerable time researching various medical maladies that might have contributed to the nature of his symptoms, though in reality, most of them were probably not likely. What had happened to Aron had been magical.

  Sharon regarded me with the same suspicious eye that she had for me every other time that I’d come. “Are you willing to answer any more questions today?”

  “What more do you have that I haven’t answered?”

  “We will see.”

  I suppressed the urge to shiver as she stepped off to the side, letting me into the house. Ever since forcing my way into the council’s presence, I had faced questions from her and a few others on the council. Never from Gran, though she had been required to recuse herself. I’d seen the relief on her face at learning the council didn’t intend to make her face any consequences for hiding me from them all these years.

  Gran still didn’t seem to recognize that we had the upper hand when it came to negotiating with the council—most of the time. With what they had done, the fact that they hadn’t bothered to try and understand the shared connection among the magi, and the willingness to turn a blind eye to what the vampires had been doing with the dark mages, there was more than enough for the council to need to hide.

  “What more do you think I might be able to tell you?” I asked.

  It was the price for her allowing me to come. I had to be willing to let her question, and had to be willing to face the tests of my magic. Most of the testing was minor, though there had been a few times when she had subjected me to spells that were nearly as awful as anything the Dark Council had ever done to me, simply to see if I could escape from them.

  “There has to be some indication of the true nature of your magic. I would like to find it.”

  I bet you would.

  There was no point in antagonizing her. They knew too much about me already, regardless of how much I had tried to keep back. In order to get to the point where they would allow my presence, I had to give them something, and that had turned out to be everything I knew about my magic.

  “You know everything that I know,” I said.

  “I know everything you’ve shared with me.”

  I paused at the base of the stairs, glancing up. Where was Aron? He had to be here somewhere, though when I came to visit with him, there were times when he would be absent for most of the visit. Did he know that I was trying to reach him? Did he think to avoid it somehow?

  I pushed those thoughts away. Believing that Aron knew and didn’t want to be a part of what help I might have for him wasn’t anything I wanted to consider.

  “And I’ve shared everything that I know.”

  Magic built from her and instinctively, I placed a barrier around myself. I’d learned that I needed to protect myself around Sharon, as she could often reach out in an attack before I had a chance to respond. My best defense was to simply protect myself the moment I felt magic used around me.

  Her spell slipped over my barrier.

  “You defend yourself quickly these days.”
<
br />   “After everything that you’ve attempted with me, why wouldn’t I?”

  “Do you really believe that I would harm you?”

  I didn’t know if she would or not.

  Since I wasn’t a part of the mage council, and wasn’t even a mage, the consequences of her attacking me would be minimal. The rest of the council wouldn’t object to one of the council deciding that I represented the kind of threat they needed to eliminate. But with my grandmother serving on the council, I thought it unlikely that she would do anything that would really harm me.

  “I’m not willing to take that chance.”

  She cocked a brow at me, smiling.

  A test. That was all it had been.

  When it came to Sharon, everything seemed to be something of a test. Every interaction was designed to learn more about me and what I might be capable of doing.

  But then, wasn’t I getting the same benefit? With each interaction, I learned more about how quickly I could respond. Forming a barrier didn’t take that much energy—and less than it once had required. The more that I used my magic, the easier it came.

  “I still find it intriguing that you don’t use spells. Perhaps we should discuss that part of your magic today.”

  “It’s not that I can’t use spells,” I started, sweeping my gaze around the inside of the home but still not finding any sign of Aron, “it’s just that they don’t work for me the same way that they work for you.”

  “From what I’ve seen when you’ve tried to use spells, your magic is less effective.”

  There was that. When I tried to use the same type of magic as my grandparents, the spells didn’t work quite the way that theirs did. Even when trying spells like the dark mages used, I found my magic different enough that it wasn’t effective.

  “The spells give me an idea of what’s possible with my magic,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t know otherwise?”

  “I don’t know all that’s possible with magic.” As much as I wanted to be as capable as my grandparents, the type of magic they could do was above and beyond what I could do. Mage magic was different, and often times it was simply better. I couldn’t imagine repairing my home the way Aron had after it had been attacked, but maybe that was because my magic was typically doing the attacking.

  Sharon led me into the living room. It was a large room, much larger than mine, with two long sofas facing each other. A fireplace at one end crackled with a soft heat. There was no TV. The time I’d told Jen about this place and the lack of a TV, she’d asked what they pointed their sofas at.

  “Sit,” she said.

  “Where is he?”

  “Sit,” she said again.

  I perched on the edge of the cushion, not wanting to sink too deeply into it. They weren’t that comfortable anyway, not like the ones in Barden’s compound. Sharon disappeared for a moment and returned with a glass of red wine, handing it over. I took it carefully, glancing down to see if there was anything in it, though I doubted I would even know if she tried to poison me.

  Sharon snorted. “Do you think I would resort to something so simple as a poisoning?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “And if I did, what do you think your grandparents would do to me?”

  The idea of Gran and Gramps getting vengeance on my behalf was something that I once would have laughed at, but the more that I learned about them, the more that I realized they were far more capable than I had ever suspected. “I don’t know what they’d do to you. Maybe give you a stern talking to.”

  Sharon took a seat on the opposite sofa, leaning back and taking a long drink from her glass. “I’ve been researching various forms of magic to see what I can come up with.”

  “You’ve done that for a while.”

  “Yes, but I might have found something.”

  I stiffened, the wine glass halfway up to my lips. The one thing that I hoped to learn from Sharon and the council was about the type of magic I had. I knew it didn’t really matter, but that didn’t change the fact that I wanted to know. If I could discover what I was, then maybe I could get a better handle on how to use my magic—and why I had a connection to the other side of the Veil.

  “You see, it’s the connection to the Veil that troubles me the most.”

  “You and me both.”

  Sharon paused before taking another drink. “Yes. There aren’t many who can utilize the power found on the other side of the Veil, though there are spells that allow for it.”

  It had happened with me a few times. The first had been in the basilica when facing the gorgon, but then it had happened again when working with Barden to save him from the vampires. Whatever connection existed allowed me to draw magic that I should have no business drawing. It was almost the same as the type of magic that I could use when around someone who was dying.

  “Can you?”

  “If given enough time. The spell is complicated, as you must imagine.”

  “I don’t know anything about complicated spells.”

  “That’s right. You draw it without even knowing what you’re doing. Which is even more impressive.”

  I didn’t like where she was going with this line of conversation, but couldn’t help feeling curious about what she might have uncovered. “We both know that my mother was a mage. Considering her parents, she would have been a powerful mage.”

  “Likely. Had she remained with us, she would have been able to serve the council.”

  Serve? I suspect that had my mother not dabbled in the dangerous forms of magic like she did, she would have been able to sit on the council.

  “It’s your father that we need to understand.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

  “Of course not, but what we must look for are the ways that your magic works, trying to understand just what it is that you can do—and how that might be explained by magic we know exists on the other side of the Veil. Now, I have gone to the Seelie queen to see what she might—”

  I jolted to my feet, my wine splashing around the rim of my glass and dribbling down the side. I had half a mind to toss it at her. “You did what?”

  Sharon stared at me as if I were crazy. “I went to the Seelie queen. The council has an open line of communication with her within the neutral ground and I thought that since we weren’t getting anywhere here, that we could go and see what she might be able to offer.”

  I sunk back down onto the sofa, scooting back in the seat and taking a long drink. I’d gone to Solera for answers, brought there by Aron, but that hadn’t been effective, especially as Solera required a particular price for the knowledge she was willing to share. Would the Seelie queen require something similar? They were both fae, so it seemed to me that she would.

  “Unfortunately, she is indisposed, which means that my message will be delayed getting to her. I anticipate her sending word to me within a few days, but until such time.…”

  Sharon did nothing to hide the annoyance in her voice, and it was almost enough to make me smile. Of course one of the mage council would be annoyed by a fae queen ignoring her pleas for her help.

  “If Solera didn’t have answers, then what makes you think the Seelie queen would be any different?”

  Sharon glanced up at me. “What makes you think Solera doesn’t have answers? They might not be the answers that we want, but I suspect she has them.”

  I stared. Were I honest with myself, I suspected much the same. Solera didn’t like to share, not without a price, and after what I’d done and the way that I’d used her magic, I doubted she would be too inclined to help me at all. More likely than not, she would simply attack the moment I appeared. With her connection to magic on the other side of the Veil, I doubted I would be able to withstand that sort of attack. It would likely be nearly as powerful as facing one of the Great Ones.

  “I’ve been looking for what I can find on Odian,” I admitted.

  “Odian is dead. He has been fo
r years. There is nothing you can find about him.”

  “Other than those who have followed him.”

  “Perhaps. We have seen no evidence of others who followed him. You would do better focusing your efforts a different way.” Sharon finished her drink and stood. Magic surged from her again and I braced for the possibility of an attack—another test—but it didn’t come. Instead, magic swept away from her, racing through the home, where it reverberated against a distant sense.

  It took a moment for me to realize that distant sense returned the connection to her. An answering call.

  Aron.

  That was what it had to be.

  The sense from him continued to build, nearing me until he stood in the doorway facing Sharon and saying nothing.

  He didn’t turn his attention to me.

  It pained me the way that it did every time I came to him, hoping to get some reaction out of him, but each time there was nothing. He would look over at me when prompted, but nothing more than that, as if he were a shell of the person he once had been.

  “Dr. Michaels is here to visit with you again,” Sharon said, turning to Aron.

  He slowly swiveled toward me. Every so often, there was a hint of the person that he’d been, enough that it left me hopeful that I would be able to reach him, but it faded quickly the longer that he stared at me.

  Getting to my feet, I stood in front of him, letting magic drift out from me, probing him the way that I did each time we came together. Much like the other times, there was nothing unusual. I had been using my magic to probe my patients on a regular basis and had gotten used to detecting when things weren’t quite right. With Aron, there was simply nothing.

  “Why don’t you take a seat,” I asked.

  Aron followed the directions, sitting without saying another word. Despite his size, much larger than either Sharon or me, he somehow seemed smaller on the sofa than either of us.

  Sharon watched for a moment before turning away. I never learned what she did when I worked with Aron, but it probably didn’t matter. As long as she stayed out of my way, I didn’t care what she decided to do.