Excantation Read online

  Table of Contents

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  8

  9

  10

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  23

  Epilogue

  Dictionary

  Author

  Published by Raconteur House

  Murfreesboro, TN

  EXCANTATION

  The Imagineer Series: Grimoire 2

  A Raconteur House book/ published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2020 by Honor Raconteur

  Cover by Katie Griffin

  Futuristic abstract vector technology background. Mechanical engineering wallpaper. by Sylverarts Vectors/Shutterstock; Eye glasses icon by Anatolir/Shutterstock

  This book is a work of fiction, so please treat it like a work of fiction. Seriously. References to real people, dead people, good guys, bad guys, stupid politicians, companies, restaurants, cats with attitudes, events, products, dragons, locations, pop culture references, or wacky historical events are intended to provide a sense of authenticity and are used fictitiously. Or because I wanted it in the story. Characters, names, story, location, dialogue, weird humor, and strange incidents all come from the author’s very fertile imagination and are not to be construed as real. No, I don’t believe in killing off main characters. Villains are a totally different story.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information address: www.raconteurhouse.com

  It doesn’t take much to make me happy. Six meals a day, ten hours of sleep, a pair of yoga pants, complete solitude, no social obligations whatsoever, and bam! Happiness. Needless to say, being yanked out of sleep after getting a whole thirty minutes in, while jet lagged, in a foreign country, in order to save Nixes from accidental magical portation? Opposite of happiness.

  Being an adult was the dumbest thing I have ever done.

  I mean, really. Who accidentally activated a magical portal and then was stupid enough to just waltz through? Who did that? And of course my own father was one of the people stupid enough to try it. The platform at his dig connected to the one here, which meant it had to have been a good ten-minute walk before he arrived on the other side. Hadn’t any second guesses gone through his mind? Doubts? Or had he been so caught up in this magic tunnel appearing out of thin air that he rode the high? Sort of a moot point now, since he was here.

  Not twenty minutes ago, Zoya had woken me up from a sound sleep with the wonderful, exciting news that more archaeologists from my father’s worksite had stumbled in. I said that with full sarcasm. The last thing we needed was more non-magical humans wandering around in here. I had no issue about my dad knowing—was kind of excited about it, honestly, as it gave me a chance to really interact with him. All the other Nixes? Not so much.

  I stumbled out of my guest bed, still wearing sleepwear of baggy shorts and a baggier shirt, black hair a rambunctious tangle around my head, and my eyes more or less glued shut. Someone had an arm—maybe not an arm?—wrapped around my waist and towed me in what I assumed to be the right direction. Cheerio.

  My phone rang, the Skype ringtone cheerful enough to crank my murderous irritation up a few notches. I stabbed accept and pried an eyelid up to glare at the screen.

  “Reagan, you look rough,” Jackson said by way of greeting, open concern on his mobile face. He was folded up, legs tucked off to the side—not that I could see much of his body. He was far too tall to fit in a laptop’s frame. “Have you not gotten any sleep?”

  “No, because stupid archaeologists keep opening the thrice-cursed platform and walking through,” I snarked, trying to push a stray lock of hair out of my eyes and failing. I huffed at it instead.

  What had started out as a simple trip down to Brazil to study the platform and hopefully get it back online and operational had…not gone according to plan, to put it mildly. In fact, the situation had rather rapidly snowballed on me. I’d gotten a call from the Jaadoo ka Ghar clan here in India that my father, while on an archaeological dig in Khopadi, had stumbled across a platform. Not only that, but he had figured out how to turn it on and had come through it to New Delhi. Alarming, to say the least.

  No one had panicked (much), and I’d been called in to weigh judgement on the situation. I’d explained things to my dad with the hopes that maybe he’d come around a bit. It’d be nice to be able to talk frankly to at least one parent. But the jet lag had also gotten to me and I’d called Nana over Skype for reinforcements.

  My father was still talking to Nana, getting caught up on the rabbit hole he’d fallen down. I’d explained quite a few things to him before my brain couldn’t take it anymore, and I was happy to let my grandmother handle the rest. Right now, emotionally speaking, I wasn’t sure how to feel about letting my dad into the magical world. On the one hand, this presented a chance to connect with my father over something we had in common. On the other hand, there was a very real possibility magic would just become another research obsession. I’d seen this pattern too many times in my life to get my hopes up just yet. Odds were, he’d go into a zone of looking into all of this and forget I existed again.

  I guess it was a sign of growth on my part that instead of just leaping in whole-heartedly, I was willing to wait and see how he took this. But then, I wasn’t the same person I’d been a year before. Not so desperate for attention now. Or maybe my family of choice had filled in the gap? I didn’t know and, frankly, wasn’t awake enough to psychoanalyze myself anyway.

  Zoya and I now got the joy and privilege of figuring out how to shut the platform down before something else went wrong.

  The act of walking (un)fortunately woke me up further, and I belatedly realized the thing around my waist was not an arm. My guide, who was a yali named Reyansh—the one with the elephant head and lion body from before—very kindly directed my stumbling feet toward the platform in the back of the Jaadoo ka Ghar clan’s complex. He guided me with a trunk wrapped around my waist to keep me upright and from falling into a planter. It was very nice of him. I didn’t like stumbling into planters. I let him blindly lead me through all the manicured gardens and around the flowing fountains as I kept Jackson up on Skype.

  “Wait, more archaeologists?” Jackson demanded incredulously. His dark brown eyes were wide in his angular face, threatening to fall out. He pushed too-thick brunette hair back, a low whistle escaping him. “I thought it was an accident your dad came through!”

  “So did we. But the platform over there in Khopadi is either powered and active, or they’re stupidly lucky. Unlucky? I don’t know at this point.”

  “I’d go more with unlucky. Well, this sucks. You can’t just shut the portal down from your side and expect that to solve all problems. If their portal is working so well, it can connect to anywhere else in India. Ouch—actually, it might have and we don’t know otherwise, right?”

  I would have stumbled to a stop if Reyansh’s hold on me hadn’t kept me moving. Irritably, I demanded, “What in the mint chocolate chip did you just say?”

  Jackson grimaced, holding up both hands in a pleading gesture. “Let’s focus on one problem at a time. Maybe shut yours down first, then figure out if anyone else is missing. We can hunt them down
and restore them to the dig sight later.”

  “You do not get to borrow more trouble for me,” I groused.

  I saw the flat platform ahead, the symbols still glowing to show the portal was still active. Manicured lawns and decorative benches hedged it in, like it was designed to be part of the garden.

  My fellow Imagineer gave me a sympathetic look that grated along my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. “I know you’re a little sleepy and jet lagged—”

  “Sleepy means cute and fuzzy-eyed,” I corrected. My head was literally pounding from the lack of sleep. I could feel the exhaustion eating away at my bones, and I would have quite cheerfully murdered someone if it meant twelve hours of alone time with a pillow. “Sleepy doesn’t cut it. I’m tired. I’m a murder and ten cups of coffee away from showing my displeasure to the world.”

  Reyansh snorted a laugh, which let me tell you, since that sound came from the nose wrapped around my waist? Felt more than a little weird.

  “This is a quick fix,” Jackson promised in a soothing tone. “I think. Pretty sure.”

  “Your confidence is overwhelming.”

  “I have a theory, but the platform over here is currently not connecting to the other platforms, for some reason, so I can’t test it. We’ll figure it out on yours, and then you may sleep.”

  Zoya came out from a different door of the building, waving to me as she quickly caught up. She looked unfairly awake, wearing her usual jeans and oversized shirt that made her look even more petite than she already was, every strand of her grey hair pulled back in a neat bun. “They’re wiping the memories of the archaeologists now. Your father assured me these were the only people on the dig with him, so once we send them back, we’ll be fine. And shut the platform off over there, of course.”

  I breathed out in exaggerated relief. “All good things. Are we carting them through unconscious?”

  “At least for now. Otherwise, they’d have to wipe their memory again.”

  “Figured.” I was happy to sink onto the edge of the platform to wait. I asked Jackson questions because if I didn’t stay talking, I’d fall asleep right here. “What’s your theory, Oh Great One?”

  “I’ve got two, actually. But let me catch you up to speed first. We figured out after you guys left that the glass vials really do collect aether. It’s what powers the platform.”

  I blinked. Blinked again. Right, we’d been looking at the three glass vials in the base of the platform’s columns before I left. They’d been surrounded by sigils on all sides, so the theory had been that the vials were what gathered power for the platform, somehow. “So, the theory was correct, huh? Okay, how does that power get routed?”

  “The sigils. The sigils are what determine energy flow and usage. That’s part assumption, by the way. I can’t actually prove that yet. We just can’t find any other reason for it. The glass tubes don’t connect to anything else. But the sigil designs lend credence to the idea. I think.”

  “You’re just oozing confidence over there.” Zoya looked more than a little doubtful. Her slate grey eyes practically spelled doubt in capital letters. “So?”

  “In theory, we can either remove the sigils so they can’t dial out, or I think we might be able to remove the glass tubes that collect the aether. Without those to charge the platform, it won’t work.”

  Zoya nodded approval. “Which would be easier to test?”

  “Sigils?” I glanced down at the box at the bottom of the column that housed the glass tubes. The sigils were inside the box, surrounding the glass tubes, and ostensibly like a circuit board, dictating how the platform worked. Or so was our working theory. “Because the vials are likely charged and might be tricky to remove.”

  “Hmm, da.” Zoya stared down at the sigils, obviously thinking of the best way to remove them. They weren’t incredibly complicated, their designs straightforward enough, but they were carved into the stone casing itself. Removing them might be tricky. Without banishing them, hopefully, because that sounded like it would cause further complications.

  At any rate, I didn’t get to ask. Several clan members came to us, carting the unconscious archaeologists. Zoya started up the platform so they could be transferred safely back. The platform lit up as it usually did, creating that tunnel effect with the baseboard running lights. The clan members carefully carried the archaeologists through to the other side. Yawning, I idly watched them go. The archaeologists would likely wake up in their tents, wondering just how they’d managed to lose three days.

  Then again, maybe not. Workaholics like them lost track of the days all the time.

  Zoya poked at the sigils inserted into the stone column, squatting down in order to look at them from all angles. She gestured for my phone, which I handed over so she could speak with Jackson. “How do you propose taking these sigils out? I don’t see a way of doing it without damaging the interior.”

  “Oh. Uhhh…our version here has a front panel so the sigils can be accessed. They’re on their own stone slab that’s inserted inside. Yours isn’t?”

  “No, they’re inset into the stone. I’d have to break something to get them out.”

  “Sounds like a design change to me.” I wasn’t surprised. The platform in Brazil was much newer than the one I currently sat on. By several hundred years. Of course the design would have changed and improved over the years.

  “We’ll have to wait until everyone is back before we try the glass tubes.” Zoya came around to sit next to me so she wouldn’t block the path. “You really think just taking out the glass tubes will take the platform offline?”

  “Think of it like the remote to the telly,” Jackson offered. “If you only have one battery instead of the three it calls for, does the remote work?”

  “No, of course it doesn’t,” Zoya said thoughtfully.

  This possibly sounded too good to be true. “So, I’m literally yanking one of the batteries out?”

  “More or less.”

  “I do love a simple solution.” I felt vaguely like that thought should connect logically to another thought. But it flitted away like a mosquito in the dark. I said mosquito because it would likely come back to bite me later.

  The conquering heroes returned, and someone who could be Reyansh’s twin stopped to assure us, “We placed them all safely in their beds.”

  “Thank you,” Zoya responded sincerely. “We’ll shut the platform down here for a while.”

  “We are grateful, Imagineer.”

  Zoya went up the ramp to tap the symbols off, turning the platform inert again. I hopped off the platform, feeling the gritty stone scrape against my shorts and the skin of my thighs as I dropped heavily back to the ground so I could pop the casing off the bottom of the column. At least the design on this hadn’t changed. The base of the column still housed three glass tubes, the sigils written into the bottom and sides of the box, giving direction on how to harness and use the energy. The glass tubes looked all spiffy and glowy. I put a hand near them but didn’t feel any heat. Safe to touch, cool.

  “Wait, devushka!” Zoya’s sharp warning brought my head up.

  “Huh?” Too late. I put fingers to glass and got the shock of my life. My hand snapped backwards and my teeth clenched together as I spasmed unpleasantly for an agonizing second.

  “Did she just touch them bare-handed?” Jackson sounded alarmed.

  “No one told me not to,” I whined, breathing heavily as I waited to see if anything else unpleasant would happen. Like my skin turning green. Fortunately, it did not.

  “She’s sleep-deprived and not thinking clearly.” Zoya hopped down and checked my hand, blowing on it to soothe the ache still throbbing under the skin of my fingers. “Otherwise, she’d have realized it herself not to do that.”

  I glared at the glass vials in question. “I want warning labels. I demand warning labels. Where are they?”

  “We’ll put some up later,” my master soothed. She may have been laughing at me internally. It was h
ard to tell under that stoic face she wore. “Until then, how about I take them out. With rubber gloves?”

  “Is this operating like electricity, then?” I glared at the vials suspiciously.

  “I’d say, considering the reaction you just had.”

  “Oh, so I’m the lab rat? Thanks a lot. I demand a revenge match.” I created my own rubber-insulated glove for my left hand, as right hand was still ouchie. Then I maneuvered past Zoya on my knees, reached in, and yanked a tube free. I held up the glass vial like one would a trophy from a hunt. “I am the champion.”

  “She’s definitely sleep-deprived. And loopy.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him. Because I’m mature that way.

  “That worked,” Zoya noted, ignoring our immature byplay. “The platform is now silent and not humming.”

  “Good. Well, we now have an easy way to turn things off.”

  “I vote to have an off switch in the future.” I still rubbed my fingers, trying to restore full feeling.

  Zoya gave me a nod. “It’s a good thought. In the meantime, how do we get to the other platform and shut it off quickly?”

  Reyansh cleared his throat deferentially as he stopped us both at the ramp going up. “Imagineers, if I may be so bold? We have one here who is good with such constructs. If we show her how it is to be done, she can fly down to the other platform and do the same. It will curtail further problems.”

  That was it! That was the mosquito-thought. “Reyansh, bless your brain. Yes, please go fetch her.”

  He gave me a bow of the head before trotting off, his lion tail swishing idly as he moved silently away.

  Zoya settled in to wait, sitting cross-legged on the ground. She asked Jackson with a sort of hopeful tone, “So how goes it over there?”

  “Mixed, as usual. We still haven’t heard from our lost clans in Brazil and Finland. We’ve lost all communication for almost a year at this point, and we’re not sure if something dire has happened. The druid we asked to check up on them hasn’t turned up either. It’s worrisome. On a positive note, I think we’ve managed—thanks to our magical community as a whole—to find some of the locations of the other platforms in the world. We’ll hunt them down systematically and see if we can’t get them to work. If we can, then we’ll jump to the other countries and start working on the rest of the platforms.”