Wedding Bells, Magic Spells by Lisa Shearin Read Free Book Online Page B

location here on the Isle of Mid.
    We’d met when a cash-strapped noble started working his way through his wife’s jewelry to support his gambling habit. The wife hired me to find her grandmother’s favorite ring. I tailed the ring—and her husband—right to Sirens’ high-stakes card table. I’d heard that the owner of Sirens was a scoundrel and an opportunist, but he was also a savvy businessman. Working together—and after entirely too much risk to life and limb—we got the ring back and returned it to its rightful owner.
    It looked good for him to return the lady’s ring. Tam told me later he did it to impress me.
    He needn’t have bothered. Being a Benares, I’d always been attracted to rogues. Kind of like a moth to flame. Most times I had the good sense to steer clear, but with Tam, I’d come close to getting my wings singed more than once.
    Tam had been Queen Glicara Mal’Salin’s magical enforcer for five years. Chief mages for the House of Mal’Salin tended to have short lifespans. The lifespan-shortening was usually done by others who wanted to be chief mage. For Tam to have survived for that long at his queen’s side meant that he’d left his conscience and any morals he possessed at the throne room door.
    After his wife’s murder, Tam left the court and sought out one of his early teachers, Primari A’Zahra Nuru. Like a drug, black magic was addictive—and it exacted a price you did not want to pay. With the help of A’Zahra Nuru and Mychael, Tam came back from magic’s dark path. Even though he’d been through what was essentially black magic rehab, Tam was still a dark mage. When I’d been bonded to the Saghred, Tam had nearly fallen off the recovery wagon. Hard.
    The Sirens nightclub in Mermeia was mainly a gambling parlor. The Sirens on the Isle of Mid offered spellsinging as the featured specialty. On the outside, Sirens looked more like an expensive manor house than a nightclub. The diamond-shaped, lead-paned windows belonged to the restaurant part of the establishment. We were in the interior theatre where the shows took place.
    Small tables were scattered across the main floor of the theatre, each covered in a crisp white cloth and set with a single pale lightglobe in its center. There were either two or four chairs at each table, with enough room between each for servers to discreetly fill drink orders—and to give Sirens’ guests privacy to enjoy the show. The second-floor dining suites were like private boxes in a fine theatre. Columns stretched from the floor to the high, vaulted ceiling, carved with mermaids and mermen—sirens that could sing men or women to their doom, or somewhere much more enjoyable.
    The stage wasn’t large; it didn’t need to be. Sirens was about spellsingers and what they could do to an audience. Spellsingers didn’t need space, just flawless acoustics, so that a whispered word sounded as though it was being whispered directly into a patron’s ear even at the table farthest from the stage.
    Shields at the base of the stage prevented spellsongs from having their full effect. They could be strengthened or lowered as needed. With spellsinging, the sex of the singer and the listener shouldn’t matter. A truly gifted spellsinger could make you forget that you even had a sexual preference.
    Entirely too much had happened here over the past three months—all of it bad. Justinius had nearly been assassinated with a spellsong, the queen of demons had sent her undead minions here to make me an offer that I could refuse and die, and I’d nearly been killed (twice) by a thousand-year-old goblin dark mage who’d basically been a reanimated corpse.
    Good times.
    At this time of day Sirens was closed, but Tam had told his manager that either Mychael or I were to be allowed in at any time.
    Apparently Sirens’ basement contained much more than stage equipment and old costumes. That was all I’d seen on my first and only trip down there.
    The air smelled as