The Games of Enemies and Allies: Magiford Supernatural City (Magic on Main Street Book 2), page 1
THE GAMES OF ENEMIES AND ALLIES
MAGIC ON MAIN STREET BOOK 2
K. M. SHEA
THE GAMES OF ENEMIES AND ALLIES
Copyright © 2024 by K. M. Shea
Magiford Supernatural City is a registered trademark of K. M. Shea LLC.
Cover Art by S.J. Fowler
Edited by Marla Rogers
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any number whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of quotations embodied in articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historic events is entirely coincidental.
www.kmshea.com
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Afterword
Jade’s adventure continues in…
Other books by K. M. Shea
About the Author
CHAPTER
ONE
Jade
“By the scenery in this café, am I to assume you have aspirations to become what the humans refer to as a cat lady in your dotage?” Connor’s rich voice floated over the top of a bookcase.
I looked up from the cat I was petting—a beautiful, pristine white feline who was stretched out on a plush bed arranged in a nook of the second to lowest shelf on the bookcase—and stood up. “I like the cats, but don’t forget we’re here for you. You said you had to have a blood pack, and this was the nearest location that sold them. You got one?”
Connor was so tall even his shoulders were visible over the bookshelves, so he kept eye contact with me—his vampire-red eyes were hypnotic in the low light of the café/bookstore that was Cat Tails—as he strolled around it. When he was on my side of the case, he held up the snack-sized pouch of blood he’d purchased. “Consider me satiated.”
Instead of using the straw that was stuck to the blood pouch, Connor pierced the package with a fang tooth. Then he folded the pouch over to the spot he’d pierced and sucked it out with more finesse than was fair considering that I would have spilled my drink everywhere if I’d tried something similar.
“Did you want anything?” Connor looked back at the small counter.
“Nah, I still have my smoothie.” I held up the travel mug that contained today’s green sludge-like smoothie. The flavor was peach-carrot. (I was not the best cook. Or any kind of cook. But I had mastered the art of making smoothies for survival.)
Connor made a gagging noise. “That dreck hardly counts as edible.”
I took another swig—it was a little gritty since my blender had failed to pulverize all the shredded carrots. “It doesn’t taste so bad. I added honey today, so I can’t even taste the spinach.”
“Oh yeah, that’s really selling it.” Connor managed to look ridiculously handsome even while scoffing—a vampire trait. Being good looking, I mean, not scoffing. “Do you want anything that is actually pleasant to consume?”
I glanced at the chalkboard menu, considering the offer.
Cat Tails only sold the basics—coffee, lots of tea for fae, and water, with a few bakery items, salads, and sandwiches. The food was good, and it was the closest supernatural-focused eating place to the Curia Cloisters, so it was popular with wizards—and more recently, fae.
It was more bookstore than café, but I still loved it for the papery smell of new books, the maze-like arrangement of stuffed bookshelves and cat towers/beds, the dramatic gold and green striped wallpaper, and—admittedly—the cats.
“I’m good,” I said. “I’m going to wait here. I got a text while you were ordering. Sunshine—a friend from work—is going to stop by and walk with me to the Cloisters for work.”
Connor placed a hand over his heart and staggered backwards in dramatized shock. “You actually have work friends?”
I nodded. “Miracles do happen. Sunshine has the patience of a saint. She was willing to listen as I stammered my way through our first few conversations together until I got to know her. It’s tough work for both parties, but I can make friends.”
“I was aware of that.” Connor sucked down the last of the blood in his snack pack, then crumpled the packaging in one hand. “You have me after all. In all possible ways.”
I cocked my head and squinted, trying to make sense of him. “I assume that’s your vampire need for mystery that’s making you talk oddly?”
“It’s true,” Connor said. “As time passes, we vampires don’t age. Instead, we grow insipid or raving mad.” He slipped a hand into the pocket of his navy-blue trench coat.
With his black dress pants and white undershirt, his perpetual five-o-clock shadow, and his olive-toned skin, he looked more like somebody who would get scouted by a street photographer than a vampire.
Vampires usually favored fashion from past eras, spanning everything from petticoat breeches a la Europe in the 1600s to the wide-legged pants and the red colored handkerchief of historic gauchos in Argentina. (You could tell a lot about a vamp based on the kind of clothes they favored, which was why I’d spent multiple years learning historical fashion from my family as part of my slayer training.)
It was Connor’s clothing choices and his relatively modern way of speaking that marked him as a newer vampire—which was surprising, considering he lived in my human-owned apartment building, and young vampires were rarely allowed outside their Families since it was so hard to turn humans and create new vampires these days.
“It’s not nice to criticize your elders,” I said. “Do you want to stick around and meet her or do you have to head out?”
Connor’s dark hair was so luxurious it seemed to shine under the bookstore’s fluorescent lighting. “As much as it pains me to admit it, I should be going. There are boring people to meet and greet, when I wish they’d just skip off. Have fun at work.” He chuckled, amused at some private joke I didn’t get—he’d been doing that a lot lately, which did make me wonder if the typical vampire bewilderment of social niceties was starting to set in.
I gave the white cat one last appreciative pet, her white fur silky soft on my fingertips, then followed Connor as he made his way through the maze of bookshelves heading toward the front of the store.
“Have a good night,” I said. “I hope you enjoyed the boardwalk?”
“Every moment.” Connor’s smile was extra big as he tossed his empty blood pack into a garbage can.
Earlier in the afternoon I’d dragged Connor onto the wooden walkway that cradled a good portion of the two lakes that squashed against Main Street.
As he was a vampire, it had been asking quite a bit of him since that meant we were out and about while the sun shone—the sun drastically weakened vampires, which was why they were nocturnal creatures.
“Goodbye, Snack.” Another smirk and Connor leaned in, briefly wrapping an arm around my shoulders.
My slayer senses sounded the alarm that a vampire was so close but Connor was my friend, so I brushed the concern off. Besides, by the time I raised a hand to pat his back, Connor was already slipping away sauntering out the door and disappearing into the cool, gusty afternoon.
Yeah, he definitely still has the vampire propensity for dramatics.
I took another swig of my smoothie, finishing it off, then wandered toward one of the high-top tables to wait for Sunshine.
When I sat down at the table, easing into the tall, wooden seat, I picked up the day-old newspaper a previous customer had left behind.
It was the Magiford daily newspaper—which was human run and focused, though they occasionally published articles about supernatural events that affected the city.
I’d never been interviewed—something that pleased me to no end because I’d probably choke and die on my own spit under the pressure. But Sarge, the leader of my squad, had been interviewed for an article the newspaper had written about Orrin, the fae who was responsible for releasing a number of fae creatures on Goldstein Street—a business district that mostly housed human office buildings and banks with the biggest supernatural business being Tutu’s Crypta & Custodia.
The newspaper’s front-page spread was mostly about the progress of the construction of the new clocktower that had broken ground in late summer. It looked like they were going to finish earlier than estimated—whoever was funding the project had to be pouring money into it at the pace they were going.
I was about to flip to a new page, when I spotted an article at the bottom of the paper a
I frowned—I’d heard nothing at work about supernaturals helping during the windstorm. I hadn’t thought the storm was bad enough to do more than strip some leaves off trees—and rotated my grasp on the paper so I could read the article.
It detailed the damage—all of it had been centered on one human neighborhood, apparently the rest of the city hadn’t been nearly as bad—before going into the wizard part of the story.
—storm hit six trees in the neighborhood and started a fire before six wizards from the venerated wizard House Tellier arrived on the scene and used their elemental powers to quell the lightning and growing flames.
Venerated? “House Tellier is anything but venerated,” I grumbled.
House Tellier had been involved in a big scandal about two years ago when it tried to meddle in the succession of another wizard House.
Since the rightful heir of the House had regained control, the Telliers were socially shunned and had gotten smacked on the wrist by the Cloisters for their actions. (Since I wasn’t a wizard I didn’t typically keep up on wizard politics, but I did try to keep aware of all incidences over the past couple years that the Cloisters had gotten involved in as the information could be useful to know for the sake of future cases.)
I studied the color printed picture, which showed wizards wearing jackets designed with the House Tellier colors of orange and yellow. “And I thought they didn’t like humans…”
Maybe they were changing to crawl back into the Cloister’s good graces? Connor and I had attended the Supernatural Fall Festival in September, and the Telliers had sponsored a fireworks show for the event so it seemed possible.
But why, then, aren’t they doing all these things in front of Supernaturals? Unless they think the humans will be an easier target?
“My precious jewel of Jade—hello!”
Sunshine—a willowy limbed brownie with brown hair, brown eyes, and brown skin—burst into Cat Tails. She was wearing a white coat and a coral-colored sweater that brought out the warm tones of her hair and skin and had to scoot around the bookcases to see me since, being a brownie—a kind of fae—she was under four feet tall.
“Hi, Sunshine.” I slipped off the chair and bent over to hug her. “Did you have a good day off?”
“Off? Hah! My family spent the entire day cleaning out our garden from all the dead plants except the pumpkins and gourds, and then scrubbed the floors until they shone like a mirror. Chores, ugh.” She made a face, crinkling the tip of her button nose, then leaned back on her heels and rotated so she looked out at the bookshelves. “Do we have a minute? I need to grab a new sudoku or crossword puzzle book.”
“Yeah, for sure. My shift doesn’t start for almost an hour.” I started to follow Sunshine but my phone buzzed. I checked it to see a text from my oldest brother, Jasper.
Jasper
Heads up, Dad knows you used the slayer database.
I grimaced—I’d expected that he’d noticed, but a part of me had hoped I’d lucked out. I slapped on a smile for Sunshine’s sake. “Why don’t you go ahead and pick out whatever book you want—I gotta answer this text.”
“I’m on it!” She winked at me, then disappeared behind a shelf.
I took a deep breath to clear my mind and tapped out a quick reply to Jasper.
Is he mad?
I held my breath as I waited.
I was on shaky ground with my family. It wasn’t that my parents were angry that I wasn’t working as a slayer—my mom’s entire family were slayers, too, but they were semi-retired and now owned a very successful construction company.
No, they were upset that I’d moved away from the family—something unfathomable to them—and that I was still working in a combat-based position, without them.
My parents and I didn’t fight. It was more like our conversations were heated and my dad was—in general—loud and growly.
My phone beeped as Jasper’s reply came in.
Jasper
No, but he’s wondering why you had to look up elder vampires.
All the air I’d been holding in leaked out, and I slumped with relief.
He hadn’t noticed my perusal of the file we slayers had on one particular vampire, good!
I’d used the database to pinpoint the identity of Ruin, the mysterious vampire that had claimed downtown Magiford as his territory in early September. I knew Ruin was old, but it wasn’t until I saw him turn into a bat that I’d realized he must have been turned in the BC timeline.
Turns out, Ruin was most likely Considine Maledictus—one of the oldest and most powerful vampires still alive, and one we slayers had labeled as someone to be avoided at all costs.
If Dad realized Considine Maledictus was in Magiford, he would bust out one of the family’s more expensive methods of transport usually reserved for work, pack me up, and drag me back home no matter what I wanted.
Thankfully, it seemed like I was safe. For now.
I looked up from my phone tilting my head as I instinctively tried to pinpoint Sunshine’s movements through the store—a cat’s happy meow of greeting tattled on her: she was in the heart of the maze.
Sunshine secured; I peered down at my cellphone again mulling over all possible responses I could give before constructing a reply. Jasper wouldn’t tattle to Dad if I told him about Ruin, however, I couldn’t risk him figuring out that Ruin was Considine or he’d be the one driving out to get me.
I was trying to remember the sire of a vampire Family, and we have better records than the Cloisters.
Jasper
Naturally. The Cloisters couldn’t find a vampire in a blood bank.
I rolled my eyes but let the insult at my employer go—my family would always be convinced the Cloisters were less efficient and skilled than vampire slayers—and put my phone away.
Sunshine paid for her new puzzle book—a collection of crossword puzzles—then marched through the store, clutching it to her chest. “Everything okay?”
“Yep! It was just my brother checking in on me,” I said.
I hadn’t told Sunshine or anyone at work about Considine. Yet. I’d have to tell Sarge or Captain Reese eventually, only I wasn’t sure how to spill the news.
“Aww, that’s sweet,” Sunshine said. “I got my crossword book, so I’m ready to head to the Cloisters!”
“Okay—are you sure you don’t want to hang out here for a bit? I still have time. I mean, I appreciate that we can hang out for even this little bit. I don’t want to drag you to work on your day off.”
Sunshine flashed me a smile that was as warm and bright as her name. “You’re too sweet—I’m the one that should be apologizing. I’d be able to hang out at better times if my family wasn’t always so busy. But! I was planning to stop by the front desk tonight anyway. Emi texted me to let me know she was going to leave the bread loaf pan I lent her at the front desk. Oh—I almost forgot! She said she also found another Cloister manual she’d leave for you. She thought it might be useful for your paper.”
Ahh yes, my paper.
I’d upset Sarge the previous week when I’d lured a giant snake to Ruin’s territory by myself, leading it away from my injured squadmates but risking my life in the process. Now that I knew Ruin’s identity, I’d be upset with me, too.
As a result of the mess, Sarge had given me an assignment to write a paper about the culture and design of the Magical Response Task Force. He told me it would make me understand why my slayer training that dictated self-sacrifice for the sake of the mission and the good of the team was not the standard within the Department of Supernatural Law Enforcement.
“Great. I’ll have to thank her.” I rattled my empty smoothie thermos. “I need every resource I can get. All these employee handbooks and manuals Emi keeps finding are lifesaving.”
Sunshine’s smile dimmed, and she suspiciously peered up at me. “You are working on your paper then?”
