Read Shadow Rites: A Jane Yellowrock Novel for Free Online

drew on Beast-sight and the thick flash of magics were instantly visible. The energies were a bright glow, light green, the exact shade of the scan that had gone over my house.
    When the foil was unfolded, the pale green energies glowed with power, so bright I had to close my eyes against the brilliance. With my eyes slitted against the glare, I studied Bruiser’s find. It was a brooch, the focal stone a large green jewel carved into a scarab. There were peacocks to either side of the scarab, the birds facing away from the green, beetle-carved, central gem. Jeweled tails swept up and out from the birds and over the scarab, their jeweled peacock tails spreading above it.
    “Are they the same color energies used by the women in the working?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Where did you find it?”
    “In the alley. From what you said, it was possible that they dropped it when they fled, possibly why the younger woman screamed, unable to retrieve it or keep it from being captured by the police. The older woman may have stopped her from going after. Or . . .” He turned the brooch in his hands, the long fingers brushing the edges as if reading the magic. “Or it could be bait leading to a trap.”
    “Why leading to a trap?” Eli asked. The limo made a left turn and the green energies wafted off to the side in a slow trail of light that even Eli could see. “The energies point west,” he said, understanding.
    My internal compass was pretty good, but Eli’s was better. He said he had iron filings in his nose so he always knew which way was north. I hadn’t laughed. He might have been serious.
    “That’s why it might be a trap,” Eli added. “And that would make the scanning of the house all smoke and mirrors.”
    “More,” Bruiser said. “It has a scent.”
    I leaned in and sniffed it. “No, it doesn’t. Except for magic.”
    His eyes on me, Bruiser said, “You can’t smell it. Because it’s your scent.”
    Eli’s eyes narrowed. I went still for the space of several heartbeats. I unfolded my left hand from the stem of the champagne glass and looked at the palm, thinking back. “I was asleep and maybe dreaming about Angie. There was this prickly sensation crawling over my left fingertips, up my fingers. It snuggled into my palm like Angie’s fist. I remember being happy. Smiling in my sleep.
    “Then it burst up my hand and arm and into me.” I looked between my business partner and Bruiser and set the champagne glass down. “It felt like a magical bomb going off.” The remembered sensation rushed through me again. “I remember thinking it was something like . . . like burning cactus, the thorns on fire, the blooms like some kind of weapon blossoming open through me. For what was probably only a few seconds I felt scorching thorns ripping through me like heat-seeking missiles. Which had been way too poetic for me.”
    “The actual wording of a spell, perhaps?” Bruiser murmured. “Or something tied to the brooch itself?” Studying the jeweled pin in his hand, holding it by the edges as if to preserve fingerprints, Bruiser rotated it, tilting it one way and another. Then hefted it up and down slightly, as if weighing it. He said, “There is a distinct pulling sensation to the west as well. When I move it, I can feel a directional tug on my fingers. If it isn’t a trap, it could be a homing beacon. Or a tracking beacon.”
    Eli shrugged. So did I.
    “So we’re back them dropping it on purpose,” Bruiser said. “To lure you somewhere?”
    “It didn’t smell or feel like that,” I said. My palms itched and I scratched first one, then the other.
    “Body language suggested the younger woman was violently angry just before they disappeared,” Eli said.
    “You have to report to Leo, so . . . we can let him examine it while we’re there,” Bruiser said. His eyes were stillserious, his body held tightly, as if ready for a fight. Worried about how I would react to what he said. I