Magic Dreams Read Free Page A

character on the floor in the middle of an office smelling of blood—he should’ve remembered it. The symbols weren’t that complicated. Something had fried his memory.
    “What was next?”
    “I called you.”
    We both looked at my answering machine. The screen was dead—the magic had taken down the electricity. No way to tell if Jim had called me.
    A green glow sparked in his irises and vanished. Frustration rolled off Jim in a hot wave. He was acting like a person with a concussion, but Lyc-V cracked concussions like nuts. I ought to know, I had gotten enough of them. Thirty seconds, and your brain was like new. Still …
    “Do you think someone might have whacked you on the back of the head?”
    Jim looked at me for a long moment.
    “Sometimes trauma to the head results in short-term memory loss.”
    “Nobody traumatized my head. Nobody quiet enough to sneak up on me would be strong enough to knock me out. I wasn’t knocked out, I passed out.”
    Huh. “Passed out?”
    “Yes.”
    “What do you remember before passing out?”
    “The magic wave hit. I saw a woman.”
    “A woman?” Great, now I’ve turned into a manga character who repeated everything everyone said.
    “I saw her in the house.”
    “What did she look like?”
    “She was very beautiful.”
    It stung like a slap. “Jim!”
    “What?”
    Yes, what, Dali? What exactly? “When did you see her? What was she wearing? Concentrate.”
    He shook his head. “I was in the doorway. I looked up and she was standing at the back of the room. She was wearing some sort of a long robe or gown. The fabric was almost transparent, like a negligee.”
    And he probably took a second to look at her boobies. Awesome.
    “She had long dark hair. I told her to come outside. She said, ‘Help me.’”
    “In English?”
    He nodded. “She started backing up into the house and I went after her.”
    “Four shapeshifters are missing, the office smells like blood, you see some weird woman in a transparent gown who clearly shouldn’t be in the building, and you run after her?”
    “It’s my job to run after her.”
    “Without backup?”
    “I am the backup.”
    I waved my arms. “Fine, what happened next?”
    “I remember my legs getting heavy and thinking that something was wrong. Then I woke up in the middle of the floor.”
    “How long did you sleep?”
    “Eighteen minutes. I woke up tired as hell. I knew I’d pass out again if I didn’t leave, so I got up, locked the door, and got the hell out of there. I knew I’d called you and I thought you might go to the house. The magic was up, so I ran over here, got inside with my key, but you were gone. I went to the bedroom to see if your calligraphy kit was still here, because I knew you would’ve taken it, and then I don’t remember.”
    And then he’d fallen asleep on my bedroom floor. “Do you feel any different?”
    “I feel tired.”
    “Right now? Even after sleeping?”
    He nodded.
    Jim could go forty-eight hours without sleep and still be as sharp as his claws. That was one of the fun gifts of Lyc-V: improved stamina, immunity to diseases—and crazy homicidal rage, just to spice things up. Something was seriously wrong. If it had been a typical curse, my magic would’ve purged it by now. He had to go to the medic. “We need to see Doolittle.”
    “No. No Doolittle.”
    “Jim, you keep falling asleep.”
    “Doolittle is a surgeon.” Jim bared the edges of his teeth. “If he can’t cut it out or stitch it back together, he doesn’t know what to do with it. I have no symptoms. Pulse rate is normal, temperature is normal. I just fall asleep. You’re Doolittle. I come to you with this story. What’s your first move?”
    “Lock you up for observation.”
    “Exactly. I don’t need to be locked up.”
    “How do you know something isn’t interfering with your regeneration?”
    Jim pulled a knife from his waist sheath so fast I barely saw it. The bluish metal flashed, slicing across his