Page 21 of Magic Betrayed

But Callum remained unperturbed. “Can you identify the fox?” he asked calmly. “She may feel as if she’s a separate person sharing your space, with her own thoughts and preferences. Or she may feel like another facet of your own personality. It’s different from shifter to shifter.”

It was kind of him not to point out the truth—that I wasn’t really a shifter at all.

But I shut my eyes again and tried to remember what it had felt like to be the fox. To view the world from so much closer to the ground, my vision extending in a wide arc around most of my body. I’d been able to hear what had seemed like every sound in the universe—a cacophony of noise, from the whispers of a sleeping gargoyle to the roar of traffic on the interstate. And the smells… varied and pungent, many of them unpleasant.

My paws had been tiny and white, my tail a long fluffy thing that wanted to wrap around my feet when I crouched low to the ground. I’d experienced an overwhelming desire to hide from danger, but also a surge of bloodlust when I’d tried to rip out the throat of the teen who’d attacked me. I’d felt the roughness of concrete beneath my pads. The rasp of a whine in my throat…

And then she was there inside my head, or maybe my chest—somewhere at the very core of my being. A beautiful little bundle of white fur with bright eyes and a soul brimming with curiosity. She was not me—not exactly. She was more capricious, more brash, and I wondered distantly whether those were echoes left behind by the person she’d once been.

But somewhere in that inner space, I chose to abandon caution. Crouched down, opened my arms, and felt her leap right into my heart.

I opened my eyes, and everything was dark.

I was trapped. My arms and legs were wrapped in some kind of fabric, and I whimpered as I began to thrash against the bonds.

Until my head found the collar of my t-shirt and popped through it.

I looked up. Way up. And felt even my fox heart skip a beat when I spotted Callum, smiling at me as if I’d done something miraculous.

“You found her, didn’t you?”

The fox did not appreciate being ignored and yipped at him. She was a strong-willed little creature, and I had to force her to focus. We had a job to do.

“All right then.” Callum crouched down so he was closer to my level. “The first thing is to identify the scents thatshouldbe here.”

Oof. With the wide variety of smells assaulting my nose, that wasn’t going to be easy. I needed to isolate them. So I nosed my way out of the heap of my clothing and trotted into Logan’s bedroom. Jumped up on his bed and took a good sniff…

…then gagged and almost threw up on the bed. I knew teenage boys smelled bad, but this? Stale sweat and socks and old food all overlaid by a pungent musk that was probably his deodorant. If there was any hint of his earth magic, I didn’t think I could identify it with any accuracy. But if this was what Logan smelled like to my shifter nose? I could track this hideous miasma to the ends of the earth.

My disgust must have been visible even on my fox face, because I heard a huff of amusement from the doorway.

“Not exactly roses?”

I meant to wrinkle my nose, but instead felt my lips peel back from my teeth in a silent snarl. The dragon only grinned as I leaped off the bed and trotted back across the living room to the bedroom that Kes and I shared with Ari.

First, I nosed at a sweater Ari had left on the floor, then the blanket she’d taken to carrying everywhere. Just the sight of it stung my human heart to near-tears, but the fox was too busy cataloging scents. There was something different here… In addition to shampoo and apples and dirt. Something airy and bright. Something like the first spring breeze. Was it her sprite magic?

“I’ve never been around enough sprites to know what you might be able to smell,” Callum noted, “but even half-fae have a distinctive scent—like winter woods, sometimes with a hint of chocolate.”

Kes’s favorite sweater was lying at the foot of the bed, and I suppressed the fear that filled me at the sight long enough to take a deep sniff. Sure enough—something piney and brisk flooded my nostrils.

And with all three scents rattling around my head, I returned to the living room. What could the fox detect that my purely human senses had missed?

The smell of dirt and growing things. A small puddle of spilled juice beneath the table that was just beginning to go sour. The trash needed to go out. And the blood… I tried again not to gag, but the fox remained unbothered. Taken together, though, the scents were just too strong to catch anything else in the area of the kitchen and living room.

But what about the utility room? When I’d walked in last night, I’d sensed something off. Maybe one of my attackers had been hiding there.

I trotted over and nosed my way through the partially open door. The light was off, but I didn’t need it.

We didn’t use the utility room for much of anything yet—we hadn’t been able to afford a washer and dryer, so the space was empty except for a few pairs of shoes and a set of hooks we used for coats.

Which made it much easier to identify something that didn’t belong in our apartment at all—the faintest whiff of stale beer.

Before she died, drinking had been one of my mom’s many vices, so I recognized the smell. Neither Kes nor I drank, and the kids certainly wouldn’t have access to beer, so this must have come in on one of my attackers.

Which, again, suggested humans. Most Idrians preferred their own brews, as alcohol didn’t really affect them the same way.

But why would humans other than Blake’s have broken into our apartment? What could they possibly have wanted, and why take Kes and the kids with them?

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