Ask and Answer

  Ask and Answer

  Copyright © 2020 by Clara Coulson

  Cover Design by Christian Bentulan at http://coversbychristian.com/

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  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

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  For more information:

  http://www.claracoulson.com/

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  To contact the author, email claracoulson.author@gmail.com

  Contents

  1. Kat

  2. Liam

  3. Kat

  4. Liam

  5. Kat

  6. Liam

  7. Kat

  8. Liam

  9. Kat

  10. Liam

  11. Kat

  12. Liam

  13. Kat

  14. Liam

  15. Kat

  16. Liam

  17. Kat

  18. Liam

  19. Kat

  20. Liam

  21. Kat

  22. Liam

  23. Kat

  To Be Continued

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  Books by Clara Coulson

  About Clara Coulson

  To the writer’s block that stopped me from releasing this sequel back in 2018. You suck.

  1

  Kat

  The light fixture above the checkout counter exploded for the third time this week, and Kat King gingerly stepped back as glass rained down onto the countertop. Ever since she’d started practicing magic—actual spells, not the hack jobs she’d been casting in those weeks after her escape from Advent 9—she’d inadvertently caused some sort of electrical disturbance at least once a day. Sometimes, it was just a power surge that tripped the breaker. Sometimes, her phone or the cash register would get fried beyond repair. And sometimes, things blew up.

  Monday, she’d started practicing a precision telekinesis spell, which grabbed a specific singular object and manipulated it however the caster willed. Pinpoint spells, the opposite of unbounded spells, were one of Kat’s biggest magic weaknesses. Her almost primal magic, stoked by rage, was difficult to channel in small amounts and in highly localized ways.

  She was far better at lashing out with broad strokes of fire or force. But those raw, unfocused expressions of magic were only useful when Kat was fighting. And over the past month, Kat had not done any real fighting.

  No agents of Advent 9 had been spotted in Salem’s Gate since Auguste Vanderhall set the “ghost Kat” plan into action. As far as anyone knew, A9 was busy chasing the nonexistent travels of a fake passport around the globe. Eventually, when they failed to find to Kat too many times, they would realize they’d been duped and circle back to the last place they’d seen her.

  But that hadn’t happened yet. And so Kat had gone from living in perpetual fear to living in perpetual peace.

  It was honestly kind of boring. Kat liked it that way.

  She’d used up a decade’s worth of adrenaline running from A9 for only six weeks, and she’d been in desperate need of some R&R after that awful fight with Marta in the woods outside of town. So besides taking magic lessons from Yun and Liam—the latter of whom was brushing up on his own magic after years of disuse—and learning beginner’s karate at a dojo down the street, Kat had been taking things at a slow and easy pace.

  Adjusting to a relatively quiet life after what she’d been through, after two years of torture and almost two months of constant dogged pursuits, took a lot of effort and a lot of patience. Kat still woke up in a cold sweat most nights, expecting to find Marta breathing down her neck or Reagan and Kline advancing on her with those magic-binding ropes.

  And of course, she still had nightmares. Vivid nightmares. About the things A9 had done to her in that lab. About all the suffering she’d gone through. About all the death she’d witnessed.

  Liam had offered to find Kat a therapist, but Kat wasn’t comfortable with the idea of telling anyone about A9 unless it was absolutely necessary. A9 was rich and powerful and connected. Anyone who knew about them was at risk of being disappeared in the middle of the night, if not straight-up murdered in broad daylight.

  Kat would sit down with a therapist when it was safe for the therapist to sit down with her. And not a moment before. Until then, she’d just have to manage with the PTSD resources she’d found online. So far, she had done exactly that. She was relatively stable, emotionally speaking.

  Magically, on the other hand…

  Kat stared at the pile of glass on the counter and sighed deeply. Her magic was a tough bull to wrangle, likely due to the fact it wasn’t native to her body. Heck, it wasn’t even human magic. A9 had screwed with her DNA and turned her into some kind of hybrid supernatural. The results had not been perfect.

  Of course, they weren’t going for perfect.

  They were going for “effective killing machine.”

  Chewing her lip in frustration, she ducked underneath the counter and retrieved the dust pan and small broom that she’d placed there after the second light fixture explosion. She swept up the glass and deposited the shards into the trashcan.

  As she was sticking the broom into its slot at the top of the dustpan, the door to the store opened with a jingle of a bell, and a middle-aged woman entered.

  Close call, Kat thought. If she’d walked in a minute earlier…

  Seeing supernaturals in public wasn’t considered to be a spectacle these days—the Unveiling was more than twenty years past after all—but most supernaturals preferred to keep their powers to themselves. Like mundane humans, supernaturals enjoyed their privacy. They also enjoyed not being the targets of anti-sup groups, some of whom had displayed escalating patterns of violence in recent months.

  Kat couldn’t fault that logic. Having a target on your back sucked big time.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am,” Kat said cheerily. “Anything I can help you find today?”

  “No, just browsing,” the woman replied as she began to meander through the rows of bookcases. She stepped over a book, not for a moment thinking that the reason it was on the floor was because Kat had lost her hold on a telekinesis spell when the light fixture burst like an overripe melon.

  Watching the woman in the corner of her eye, Kat pulled her phone out of her back pocket to make sure the magic surge hadn’t damaged that too. It seemed to be in perfect working order, likely thanks to the charmed case Liam had gifted her a few days prior.

  On the screen, there was a new notification, a text from Liam that stated he believed he’d caught a good case and would relay more info soon. Kat smiled, hoping the case turned out to be interesting.

  Since his scuffle with A9 had renewed his interest in, well, everything, Liam had stopped accepting crummy adultery jobs and sought out more challenging opportunities befitting of a private detective with access to magic. Over the past four weeks, he’d tracked down a few missing people, including a teenage girl who’d been abducted by an alligator shifter; busted a ring of goblins selling stolen computer parts and earned a monetary reward for doing so; and reunited a little girl with her Golden Retriever after it was remotely stolen by some schoolyard bullies trying their hand at teleportation.

  Liam seem
ed to be proud of his work now, a huge improvement to the way he’d been when Kat first met him.

  She opened her message app and texted a quick reply. Let me know if it pans out. I might tag along.

  Kat had gone along on the Golden Retriever case, and she’d been delighted to watch the little girl’s tearful reunion with her pet. Maybe this new case would yield a similar heartwarming result.

  The woman who’d come into the store had picked out a few new titles from the romance section while Kat was busy daydreaming. A moment after Kat sent her text, the woman ambled over to the checkout counter and held out her four choices. “Just these, please.”

  “Certainly.” Kat took the books and rang them up. “Did you find everything all right?”

  “It was a much better experience than the last time I was here.” She snorted. “I’m glad Mr. Crown finally decided to fix the place up. He really let it go to pieces after his father died.”

  “Yes, he’s been working hard to revitalize the business lately.” Kat tucked the books into a brown paper bag with the store’s logo printed on it. Yun had ordered the bags off the internet, claiming they would be a good source of advertising. The verdict was still out on that one, but Yun had paid, so Kat was fine with the result either way.

  “Good to hear.” The woman took the bag from Kat’s outstretched hand. “Hope he keeps it up.”

  “You and me both,” Kat said unironically.

  The woman thanked Kat and left.

  Kat checked the time on her phone—it was almost four, near enough to closing time—and rounded the checkout counter, heading to the front door. She took a peek at the street to make sure no more customers were approaching, then flipped the sign on the door to closed. Grabbing her coat from where she’d draped it across the stool behind the counter, she tugged the door open and stepped out into the crisp day.

  After locking the door, she paused for a moment and turned out her coat pockets to find her gloves, then jumped down to the sidewalk.

  Nearby, her noble steed awaited.

  Parked in a street-side space allotted for the store was a teal moped that Liam had bought secondhand from a former client. It was ten years old and looked it, with scuffed paint and a cracking seat cushion, but it was Kat’s.

  She had almost burst into tears when Yun and Liam pulled off the tarp to reveal the little scooter a couple weeks ago, and she had tried several times to reject the gift because she felt bad that Liam had spent so much money on her.

  Liam wouldn’t hear it. He’d promised to help her adjust to regular life after her awful experience with A9, he claimed, and part of that was helping her become an independent adult. Part of that was having a reliable form of transportation.

  Salem’s Gate had a decent public transit system, but given that Kat was a supernatural with a criminal organization pursuing her, it was perhaps not the best idea to travel in the same vehicle as countless vulnerable humans.

  A car would’ve been the preferable alternative to public transportation, of course. But Liam couldn’t afford two vehicles; he’d had to replace his Jeep Cherokee after Marta totaled it. And even if he’d been able to, Kat wouldn’t have let him foot a bill that big.

  So this was the alternative: a moped. It wasn’t an ideal solution for winter driving, but Kat had learned a warming spell to replicate the effects of a car heater. She’d gotten kind of good at it over the past two weeks.

  Lifting up the seat to reveal the storage space, Kat grabbed her helmet and shoved it on, smooshing down her ponytail. Then she slipped on her leather gloves, sank onto the cushion, and used the other key on her ring to start the engine.

  Kat swept up the kickstand with the back of her foot, and after looking both ways for oncoming traffic, she hit the accelerator and zipped off down the street.

  Cold air blew past, chilling her cheeks and making her teeth chatter. So at the first red light, she whispered the incantation for the warming spell. She grinned when it worked flawlessly, creating a small buffer of pleasantly warm air around her entire body.

  Her smile waned a bit, however, when she felt a faint pulse of energy at her wrist. It came from the anti-scrying bangle she’d created under Liam’s tutelage. The pulse was a reminder.

  All anti-scrying spells had a limit to the amount of power they could mask. The more robust spells, like the ones that were woven into building wards, could mask a great deal. But the more limited spells, like the ones placed in small mediums worn on the body, could easily be overwhelmed if the wearer utilized more than a modest amount of energy.

  Consequently, Kat, being a magic powerhouse, had to police herself quite strictly. She couldn’t sling magic around willy-nilly out of doors.

  The bangle had three warning levels. The highest level—a warning that she was about to break the spell—manifested as three pulses in rapid succession. Liam had warned her to stop casting immediately if the bangle buzzed twice.

  It was unlikely that A9 had active tracking spells searching for her magic signature every minute of every day. But they were probably doing sweeps often enough to eventually spot her if she didn’t mask her magic properly.

  When it came to A9, Kat couldn’t afford to be lax.

  The light turned green, and Kat took a left, joining the dense flow of afternoon traffic on the highway. Warm and cozy despite the moaning wind rushing past, she took the opportunity to observe the sights of the city around her.

  All the restaurants, some of which she’d eaten at, some of which she planned to try. All the clothing shops, several of which Yun had dragged her to on one Saturday or another—she insisted on having a “girls’ day out” at least once a week. All the special interest stores, like the comic book shop and the old-fashioned arcade wedged onto a street corner between a movie theater and an electronics store.

  Kat had been living in Salem’s Gate for a month, and she felt like she’d hardly explored the place.

  But you have time, she reminded herself. You have plenty of time.

  That was a pleasant change.

  At the next intersection, Kat turned onto a cramped two-lane street jam-packed with a variety of small, family-owned stores. To her dismay, she found that the hardware store from which she’d purchased the last few replacements for the cheap commercial light fixture was closed for the day. Usually, the store was open till six, but something out of the ordinary must’ve prompted the store to close early.

  Swearing, Kat parked the moped across from the store and yanked her phone out of her pocket. She didn’t want Liam to come home and gaze despondently at the broken fixture—he’d already replaced it with his own money four times—so she brought up the map app on her phone and searched for alternative hardware stores.

  Turned out there was another just eight blocks northwest of her current location, a place called Hunt Hardware. According to their bland website, they sold a small assortment of commercial light fixtures that might fit the bill.

  Returning her phone to her coat pocket, Kat guided the moped back into the lane and continued on. A few twists and turns later, she spied Hunt Hardware, a small square building perched on the end of the block.

  Parking the moped under a skinny tree, she whispered the words to activate a basic security ward she’d drawn with a marker on the bottom of the seat cushion. A dash of her green-tinted energy emerged from her pointed index finger and sank down into the seat cushion, arming the ward. This time, her bangle did not pulse.

  Setting a high-pitched alarm to sound if anyone but her sat on the seat took much less effort than controlling the temperature of the air.

  There was a hierarchy to magic spells that fell along two axes: how complicated they were to invoke and how much energy they took to maintain. Alarm wards lay at the very bottom of both axes. Child magicians, she had been informed, could successfully build such a ward.

  That fact had embarrassed Kat immensely when she’d screwed up the
ward fourteen times before she finally got it right.

  When it came to magic, she was kind of a waddling toddler.

  Assured that her ward would alert her with a deafening screech if anyone attempted a scooter-jacking, Kat crossed the street to reach Hunt Hardware.

  The exterior of the building was, to put it nicely, dilapidated. But the owner had obviously put a lot of effort into making the interior of the store as presentable as it could be when housed in such an ugly shell.

  The floors were swept. The shelves were neatly arranged. The faint scent of fresh linen led back to an air freshener plugged into the wall.

  It all seemed orderly enough.

  Kat perused the shelves at the back of the store, where the bigger pieces of equipment were kept, and found the small selection of fixtures tucked among a few boxed ceiling fans. One of them was the right size to replace the fixture that had broken.

  While it wasn’t exactly the same style, it was close enough that Kat thought Liam would pay it no mind. He didn’t concern himself with the day-to-day running of the store now that Kat manned the counter, so he often failed to notice little changes to the layout.

  She would’ve chuckled at that, what with him being a detective and all. But she had learned that when Liam became focused on a case, the details of the mundane aspects of his life fled to the furthest reaches of his mind. They didn’t crawl out of their hiding places until he solved the case.

  Kat grabbed the box for the light fixture and ambled over to the counter. Behind it stood a broad-shouldered man with short gray hair, reading today’s edition of the city’s most popular newspaper. A jagged scar, faded by time, curved down the right side of his face, stretching from the corner of his eye all the way to the cleft of his chin.