Siren's Song: Shifting Magic Book Two Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Book Three Faerie’s Gold coming in April

  Siren’s Song

  Shifting Magic Book Two

  Lysa Daley

  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

  Book Three Faerie’s Gold coming in April

  Chapter One

  A boom in the middle of the night woke me from a sound sleep. Heart pounding and lying perfectly still in bed, I heard a strange shuffling. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a murky shadow moving back and forth in the living room.

  It was 3am, and someone was in my apartment.

  Except, I was certain that I’d locked all the windows and doors before I went to sleep. It was my first night sleeping in this apartment so I made sure to double-check. Maybe a raccoon or a stray cat had snuck in when I’d left the door open to carry in a few last boxes and had been hiding until I went to sleep.

  A darker thought crossed my mind. It could’ve been a specter or a phantom. Some sort of common ghost. This property had been built back in the 1920s, making this a relatively old house as far as California homes went. Ghosts weren’t all that unusual in old, quiet places like this.

  But then the sound of breaking glass echoed from the kitchen. Ghosts couldn’t break glasses. Could they? I didn’t know much about the spectral world.

  Lying there in the dark listening to the sound of my shallow breathing, it occurred to me that this might have something to do with my fugitive father. I felt even more afraid. The people who were trying to capture him, might be after me now. As well as the piece of faerie gold coin he’d told me to keep hidden.

  Hands trembling, I reached for my cell phone, but it wasn’t on my bedside table. I quietly rolled over and spotted the faint glow of my charging cell phone on a side table pushed against the wall. Great. It was too far away to be of any help. I silently wished I had a magic wand. Mr. Stroud had lent me one, but I’d given it back, insisting that I didn’t need it. Not a smart move.

  My intruder continued to thump around, seemingly rummaging through a stack of unpacked boxes. There wasn’t anything valuable left in those boxes. Just some summer clothes and a few random kitchen items. They had to be searching for the faerie gold. What else could they want?

  My gaze flitted to my leather jacket draped over the back of a chair in the corner of my bedroom. The tiny gold coin was zipped in a secret pocket in the inside lining. The little gun that Mr. Stroud had given me was in one of the exterior pockets. I hadn’t wanted it when he offered it to me the first time, but now I was grateful he’d made me take it. The bullets were wooden with a silver core. That meant I was in luck if my intruder happened to be either a vampire or a werewolf.

  I gathered my courage and quietly rolled out of bed. Tiptoeing cautiously over to the chair, I slid the gun from the jacket.

  My hands shook as I inched toward the bedroom door with the small revolver pointed. In the dim light, I could make out the humanoid outline of my three foot tall intruder hunched over near the kitchen. I flipped the light switch, flooding the room in a harsh light. My aim drifted as my eyes adjusted to the brightness.

  It was good thing because I wasn’t exactly looking at a terrifying psycho killer.

  A small, shaggy humanoid creature wearing a tattered UCLA sweatshirt, baggy khaki pants, and worn out Nikes spun around to see me. He held a stack of dirty dishes and a coffee mug from the dinner I’d had last night. Too exhausted to clean up, I’d just left the dishes on the floor next to my denim loveseat. The little guy looked more startled than I did, especially when he saw the gun in my hand.

  “Who are you?” I lowered the weapon slightly.

  Wide-eyed, the creature squealed with fright then dropped everything. Ceramic and glass shattered on the wide-plank oak floors. In a panic, he flew across the room, straight into the small fireplace, vanishing up the chimney in a puff of ash.

  What the heck was that thing?

  When it seemed certain that he wasn’t coming back, I walked around clicking on all the lights in the apartment. Then I cautiously closed the glass doors on the fireplace and latched them. They weren’t exactly impenetrable, but the closed doors still made me feel a little safer. I lowered my shaking body onto the loveseat to calm my breathing, keeping the gun on the cushion next to me.

  I wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake moving into this little guesthouse. After getting evicted from apartment in Westwood near UCLA, Mr. and Mrs. Radagast, owners of a bakery/bookstore near campus, rented me a small guesthouse in the back corner of their very lovely yard up in the hills of Los Angeles. Incredibly, my rent was now half of what I paid in my old apartment because they needed some help with a few chores.

  Or maybe the rent was so reasonable because I also had to share the place with a small nocturnal supernatural creature.

  The first thing I’d done when I started moving in was to unpack my small private library of books. They lined the shelves, neatly organized by subject and author, in the built-in bookshelves that flanked both side of the old stone fireplace.

  I located an old reference book and pulled it down. Book in hand, I locked myself in my bedroom and sat cross-legged on my bed, flipping through my worn, illustrated high school textbook on magical creatures. I examined each drawing or photograph, trying to figure out what the heck I’d just encountered.

  The creature wasn’t a gnome. They were usually only found outside in gardens. It wasn’t a sprite. Or a hinkypunk — thank goodness because hinkypunks were nothing but trouble. Finally, I stopped on a page that showed a female creature in a shabby dress holding a feather duster.

  “Ah ha,” I said quietly, pretty sure I’d solved the mystery. “There you are.”

  Despite her old-fashioned clothes, she looked similar to the small male creature I’d just encountered. A house brownie.

  The description stated that house brownies aided in domestic tasks around the house. However, they did not like to be seen and would only work at night, traditionally in exchange for small gifts of food. They especially enjoyed cake, candy, and honey. But they usually abandoned the household if their gifts were called payments, or if the owners of the house abused them in any way.

  Brownies made their homes in unused part of the house, often in attics, holes in walls, or chimneys
. If you offended a house brownie, it could potentially turn into a boggart. They caused all types of household mischief, including, but not limited to: making personal items disappear, milk to sour, dogs to go lame, and TV remotes to stop working.

  I wondered why the Radagasts hadn’t mentioned anything about my new place coming with a house brownie? After all, the prospect of having a little creature that would tidy up seemed promising. Then I remembered the pile of broken dishes and glass on the living room floor and considered the possibility that he might end up being more trouble than he was worth.

  Still, I really couldn’t complain. I was incredibly lucky to have landed in such a nice place. Even after I got paid for helping kill Bernardo, the rogue vampire, which gave me more than enough money to repay my back rent, as well as several months of rent going forward. Unfortunately, my landlord had already rented my apartment to a perky undergrad who had plans to stencil the walls with flowers and install new cheery tile in the kitchen.

  My new place had two rooms, a kitchenette and a bathroom. But the high beamed ceilings, the old wooden floors, and stone fireplace made me feel like I was living in the English countryside. The sparkling blue kidney-shaped swimming pool just outside my front door wasn’t too shabby either.

  The Radagasts only wanted me to help look after their animals and tend to the herb garden. I wasn’t exactly sure what all that entailed, but Mrs. R seemed convinced that it would be easy for me.

  The clock on my bedside table read 3:22am. I decided to let the broken dishes wait until morning and reread the passage describing brownies. Nothing indicated that they might be violent or cause me any physical harm, so I pulled the covers up and went back to sleep.

  Still, I kept the bedroom door locked and carefully placed the gun on the nearby bedside table.

  “Oh, you met Fred.” Mr. Radagast sounded surprised when I told him the story the next morning. “Gosh, he hasn’t been around in years. I don’t think he showed his face to our last two tenants at all.”

  “I guess he likes you,” Mrs. R said, handing me a steaming mug of coffee in the kitchen of their grand old Spanish-style house.

  The couple had lived in the sprawling house up in the hills of Studio City for over twenty years. They had lovingly restored this 1920s beauty to its former glory, while also adding modern conveniences like a large wine fridge and a small screening room.

  Their two kids were grown and living on their own. Their daughter worked in the spectral containment business in Chicago. That meant she was basically a ghostbuster. And their son was a banker. But happy framed family photos were scattered around the house.

  “Fred came years ago with a tenant we had who was originally from Scotland. Brownies sprout in the Scottish highlands, you know,” Mr. R explained. “I guess he decided to stay after that tenant moved out. Don’t think he liked the Scot’s fiancé very much. Used to tie her shoes together and put white pepper in her face powder.”

  “Oh dear,” I said, suddenly worried about my makeup.

  “It’s really quite a blessing to have Fred appear,” Mrs. R explained. “You just need to pay him with a few sweets, and he’ll keep your place clean.”

  “What does he like?” I asked.

  They exchanged looks. “I don’t recall,” said Mr. R.

  “I think that’s one of the tricky parts about brownies. Bit of a trial and error thing. You need to experiment to figure out what he likes to keep him happy,” Mrs. R suggested.

  “And what if I give him something he doesn’t like?”

  “Then check your shoelaces.” Mrs. R stepped into a pair of garden clogs and grabbed a floppy brimmed hat from a peg next to the French doors leading out to the backyard. “Would you like to come feed the animals with me?”

  “Of course,” I said, following her out across the flagstone patio down a little rustic path.

  Mrs. R, a simple hedge witch, ran a cafe that specialized in healing and charmed baked goods. She was wise in the ways of magical herbology and basic potions. Not to mention, she was a killer baker. She had a devoted following of customers, not only around the university, but from all across the city. If you found yourself in need of a love potion or a brain booster for a final exam, Mrs. R had just the right little baked good to help you out.

  “You know it’s getting harder and harder to find some of the ingredients that I need in my kitchen, so I’ve had to start producing them on my own.”

  We came around to a small fenced paddock. Half a dozen large chickens with exotic looking feathers pecked at the ground. It took me a moment to realize that they all had two heads.

  “What kind of chickens are these?”

  “Very rare French breed called Provencial Doublais Tetes. These ladies lay the most lovely double-yolked eggs. They’re an absolute necessity in all cakes and muffins used to form a love bond.” At the coop’s gate, she murmured a quick spell to unlock the latch. “Can’t be too careful with all the coyotes up here. We need to keep the livestock area protected.”

  Once inside, a pair of goats hobbled over to us—hobbled because both had two front legs and one back leg.

  “Three-legged goats too?” I asked.

  “The creamiest goat milk imaginable,” she said. “My secret is I only feed them Minerva Mayfield’s Goat Chow. I have to import it from Slovakia, but it really is the best.”

  Just then my phone buzzed with a text from my grad school advisor Dr. Boyd. I winced.

  “Everything okay?” Mrs. R asked.

  “Yeah, I have to go meet with my advisor at school later today.”

  The text read: Lacey, I’m very concerned with your thesis’ new direction. Not sure I can approve. Come to my office immediately.

  Chapter Two

  “I don’t understand,” Dr. Boyd, my graduate advisor, said from behind her desk. She was what some might call a handsome woman—a former hippie who wore a severe black pant suit that matched her close-cropped hair. Despite her tough exterior and impossible academic standards, I really liked her and thought of her as a second mother. “You want to change the topic of your doctoral dissertation? Now?”

  “Yes.” I nodded firmly.

  “But you already have two thirds of your doctoral program completed?”

  I knew before I came into this meeting that it probably wasn’t going to go well. I’d been working on my PhD dissertation on the decline of magic in the modern world, focusing on the formal governing bodies like the Society of Shadows and the Magistrate of Magic.

  “But it’s been coming along so well.” She sounded incredulous. “After one more pass at the dissertation, you’ll be ready to defend it.”

  “I know,” I agreed.

  By the spring, once the thesis had been accepted by Dr. Boyd, my supervising professor, I’d go before the academic committee and "defend" my work. They would ask me questions about my research and the results. If the committee couldn’t find anything wrong with it, then I’d get my PhD and be able to get a full professor job at a major university.

  Dr. Boyd leaned back in her chair and studied me. “Can I ask why the sudden change of heart? The decline of magic is an excellent subject.”

  “It’s complicated.” I hated to be vague, but I couldn’t tell her the truth. I knew with certainty that magic wasn’t declining. It was still going strong. Possibly stronger than ever.

  I’d paid this quarter’s tuition just under the wire. I almost couldn’t enroll in class because my father had been accused of a crime he hadn’t committed, forced into hiding and had his assets frozen, so he hadn’t been able to pay my tuition. Then I’d stumbled into a job working as a seeker, or a supernatural bounty hunter/repo man, for the Society of Shadows. That experience opened my eyes to the secret truth. The magical world had just gotten a whole lot better at keeping themselves hidden from the regular, non-magical world.

  How could I possibly get my PhD based on an assumption that I now knew was mistaken?

  “Complicated?” Dr. Boyd sighed, frustr
ated. “Can you explain?”

  This was the problem. Dr. Boyd was a non-magical; a para-nothing, as some might say. She studied the history of the magical realms and was one of the world’s preeminent scholars on ancient faerie literature and lore. To her, it was all fiction. She knew nothing about what was really happening in the supernatural world.

  She’d just laugh if I told her about how I’d recently killed a vampire who had bitten and thus cursed a very nice LAPD officer. She’d probably call the looney bin if I explained that I’d recently discovered a troll in a secret lair in the LA River who’d stolen half of a charmed dragon’s tooth necklace.

  “I’d just like to shift the focus of my dissertation from the magical to the human.” I did my best to explain. “I’d like to look at the reasons why the non-magical world believes that the magical world is fading.”

  “I don’t understand why you would want to do that?” She shook her head.

  “I think it aligns more closely with traditional history.” This was the best answer I had. And it wasn’t a very good one.

  She raised her eyebrows and sighed. I hadn’t really won her over. “Okay, let me talk to the dissertation committee, and see if I can get them on board. This is not what we approved.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Boyd. That’s all I ask.”

  I left her office and made my way across campus. I still had forty-five minutes before my next class, a graduate level seminar on the History of the Salem Witch Trials, began. It was a fascinating subject, but the teacher was total snooze.

  The air smelled like pine, eucalyptus and hope.

  It was still early enough in the quarter that nobody felt bogged down with too much coursework or bored with their current classes. This feeling of goodwill and cheer wouldn’t last long. Maybe another week, ten days tops. And then the crushing college workload would kick in and everyone would be in a foul mood.