Finding Fae Artifacts Read online

  Finding Fae Artifacts

  Magical Artifacts Institute - Book One

  Isa Medina

  Copyright © 2020 by Isa Medina

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  Cover by Miblart

  Edited by Lori Whitwam and Rare Bird Editing

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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

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  www.isa-medina.com

  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

  Epilogue

  Two weeks later…

  About the Author

  Also By Isa Medina

  1

  My day wasn’t going well, and it was only ten-thirty in the morning. I gave my phone a last wistful glance as I opened the door into the offices of Proctor & Sullivan Accountant Services. What a way to start the second day of my new temp job.

  Ms. Dover, thank you for your application, but no.

  The email’s contents hadn’t changed since arriving earlier, but the font seemed larger and somehow in bold.

  “You’re late, Maddie,” Lisa said, blocking the way into the small space we shared at P&S. She was dressed in a neat white blouse and blue slacks matching her deep blue lipstick, her midnight black hair cropped short to the beautiful curve of her head.

  I wore jeans, a green sweatshirt, sneakers, my brown hair gathered in an easy ponytail, and the beginnings of a zit on my forehead.

  “But—”

  “You’re late.”

  Surreptitiously, I glanced down at my phone’s clock before pocketing it. “I don’t start until—”

  Lifting her chin, she looked at me down her upturned button nose. “You’re late.”

  I sighed and accepted defeat. “Okay.”

  Lisa gave me a sharp nod, happy with the acknowledgment of my erroneous ways, but didn’t move. I wanted to nudge her so she would step aside, but Lisa wasn’t the kind of person you casually nudged. Plus, I needed her on my side—office work was boring already as it was without friendly faces nearby.

  Also, I really, really enjoyed being alive.

  “I need you to go down to the archives.”

  Oh, wow. Scratch that about the day not going well—it was sliding right into a catastrophic debacle. “You mean down to the…?”

  Another jerk of her chin. “The basement, yes.”

  My face must’ve looked like an upside-down smile emoji, because she cleared her throat and got very busy unhooking her keycard from the waist of her slacks. “I need some files from an older client, and they haven’t been digitized yet.” She held out the keycard. “Make yourself useful for being late.”

  I eyed the card like it was a viper. This might be my second day at Proctor & Sullivan, but I was no stranger to the building, and had, in fact, done temp jobs at a few other businesses here. People involved with Fae magic tended to stick together, given the rest of humanity was unaware it existed, and something about the building made everyone happy. The parts above ground, at least.

  The basement, better known as the Bowels of Hell, was another thing altogether.

  “Shouldn’t you go?” I asked in my smoothest tone, blinking a couple of times for added effect. “It’s probably not legal for me to use your keycard, is it?”

  “Maddie, take the card and bring me the file. Are you going to drag your feet every time I need you to do something? Because in that case, I can ask Joe to—”

  At the name of my temp agency boss, I snatched the card from her hand. “No need to go there,” I grumbled. This might be a temporary job, but thanks to the email I had received that morning, I still needed it.

  Lisa beamed for a second then went to her desk and dropped onto her chair. “You know which room?”

  I searched my memory. Everyone—including me—went into the basement at least once, hoping to show off and demonstrate there was nothing scary down there. Some made it out…wrong.

  Or so went the stories.

  “I think so.”

  Lisa waved me away and swirled her chair to face her monitor. “Hurry up.”

  And that was how I found myself waiting by the elevators outside the office in the middle of a beautiful spring morning, about to go into the Bowels of Hell. Naturally, I decided the best thing to do was to take out my phone and check my email. Again.

  Yup, there it was, on top of the list. My newest, and seventh, rejection for the job of my dreams. And because I was me, I decided to further uplift my day by reading it again.

  Ms. Dover, thank you for your application, but no.

  A. Greaves

  Greaves, aka the Jerk, aka the boss at the Magical Artifacts Retrieval and Research Institute. The person who stood between me and my ideal job. Ever since I was a kid and my mother told me of the Fae, I had dreamed of joining the Institute, going on treasure hunts, and finding out everything there was to know about their artifacts. The Fae might’ve gone back underground a hundred years ago, but their magic and their descendants—part Fae like me—still ran amok on the surface.

  I had waited to apply until I hit twenty, thinking the two in front of my age would serve me better than a one. It hadn’t. So I had moped for a bit then applied again. And again. And gotten temp jobs in the meantime, hoping to soak up more information while I worked around those who dealt with magic and artifacts.

  And now, at twenty-four, I was starting to wonder if what I needed was a three instead of a two.

  But! There was a bright side to all of this, I told myself with a wide smile. The Jerk had thanked me. It hadn’t been simply Ms. Dover. No. like the fifth and sixth rejections, or signed by his assistant like the fourth. I was growing on him. Perhaps the eighth would do the trick, or maybe what I was missing was more experience in the field of fakes versus authentic. I was, after all, only one-sixteenth Fae. I needed to supplement.

  I thought about nudging Joe to get me a job at Kane’s antiques shop on the second floor. Joe had contacts everywhere in the building, since he was the only one supplying temp workers with an inkling of the existence of Fae magic. He could put me in there even if they didn’t need a temp. I was an excellent employee. I deserved the assist.

  It was better than my current plan of simply outlasting the Jerk and hoping he got fired.

  The elevator doors opened, and I slipped inside along with a few other office workers. There were a couple of private firms similar to P&S on the same floor, along with a big insurance business—Fae magic could be pretty tricky, and activating a Fae artifact or a ward by accident could lead to interesting, if not devastating, results.

  The cab began its descent, and I opened a text convo with Kane. Hey, I typed, space for me at the shop? Thinking of getting in some extra hours. Better to ask first before forcing Joe’s hand.

  “Hi, Maddie. How’s the new job working out? We miss you at the office.”

  Pocketing the phone, I grinned at Bea. “Good so far.”

  “They got you on coffee runs, huh?”

  I touch
ed the keycard. If only. “Kind of.”

  The doors opened again, and we spilled into the reception lobby. The main elevators did not reach the basement, so I bid Bea farewell and turned toward the stairs in the back of the hall. My steps immediately slowed. You could sense the gloom emanating from the basement slowly encroaching on the sunny day. It turned the corner leading to the stairs into something akin to the entrance of a dark alleyway. Not the dark, irresistibly dangerous type, but more like the I bet there is a monster rat living in there kind.

  My feet got even slower when I noticed a man leaning against the wall by the second elevator. Like the basement stairs, his foreboding expression brought a cloud of gloom to the morning, and my instincts told me there was some Fae blood in there. I eyed him curiously as I walked by. He was tall, maybe in his late twenties, dressed in jeans, black t-shirt, and a bomber jacket. He wore his dark hair short, and his jaw had the beginnings of a stubble that looked like those scratchy sponges you use when you really need that grime off your pans. And his nose—slightly too hooked, slightly too long—commanded attention and had no shame in doing so. I could spend hours looking at that face, not because it was handsome, but because it was so interesting.

  Our eyes met and held for a couple of never-ending seconds. I was trapped. Until I stumbled sideways. He showed no reaction. His gaze simply moved away to land on something else.

  A slow roasting of shame heated my cheeks as I plowed on toward the stairs, my sneakers squeaking against the polished floors the whole way. Caught staring like a five-year-old. Thumbs up, way to go, Maddie. The squeaking turned my arms into a mass of goosebumps, the sound so loud half the lobby must be looking my way. Or more, judging by the thousand tiny pricks nailing my back.

  I inhaled deeply to calm myself. The day might not be showing a lot of promise so far, but really, it could only go up from there, right? Soon I would be out of view. The basement was just that, a basement. A rejection was just that, a rejection. Plus, the Jerk had thanked me. One day, when I was a member of the Institute (and in the Jerk’s chair), I would look back at today and smile fondly at all the adventure I didn’t yet know was to come.

  The thought improved my mood. The stranger forgotten, I bounced down the steps into the Bowels of Hell.

  2

  The basement was a series of interconnected corridors with creepy fluorescent lights lining the ceiling. The walls were a dull gray cement, and if the doors weren’t the normal sort, you’d think this was the type of storage place where murderers came to leave corpses stuffed in freezers. A distinct chill permeated my bones, and I shoved my hands deep into my jeans pockets to keep them warm. It didn’t help. Hell was, apparently, freezing over.

  My sneakers made no sound as I crept forward. The corridor wasn’t long enough to feel as if the other end was lost in shadows, but not knowing what might wait around the sharp bend ahead was worse. A feeling of otherness emanated from that corner, as if whatever haunted this place was just a step ahead, egging me on, knowing I’d have to go in that direction eventually.

  A shadow crossed the edge of my sight.

  I jumped with a yelp and whirled around. The corridor was empty, the stairs bathed in a strong light. A shiver ran up my back, and I couldn’t stop a shudder when it reached my neck.

  Just a rat. Rats loved creepy basements. Telling myself this, I faced the corridor again and made my way down its length, passing a couple of unmarked doors with electronic locks and admiring how clean everything looked. I remembered thinking the same the previous two times I had investigated the place. I hoped they paid the cleaning crew their weight in gold, and I hoped they never needed a temp to fill in. Because, yikes.

  The thought was disturbing enough to shake me out of my slow progress. I hurried my steps and checked my phone. No reception down here—this was basically a horror movie, so why would there be reception?—but Kane still hadn’t answered. I hoped this meant he was asking his boss. He usually answered my texts pretty fast.

  While the basement had almost a maze pattern, it wasn’t too hard to tell where I was. Not this close to the stairs, anyway. The doors were all the same, but some had metal name plates indicating who the rooms belonged to, and they were grouped differently on each stretch. Whoever had designed this place had had some fun. Kane thought they had just given their kid some crayons and had them go at it, but I’d always felt there was a deeper pattern buried in here. Along with some corpses, probably.

  That was why a while back I’d decided to make another excursion down here, my curiosity leading the way while I attempted to draw a map on my phone. But after a few corridors, it had seemed so silly, and the place so gloomy and silent and empty that it had been easy to imagine myself stumbling, breaking my ankles, and dying of starvation before anyone found me. Needless to say, the trip was cut short. Thanks to that exploration, though, I knew where to find P&S’s archives.

  Proctor & Sullivan was written very clearly on the plate attached to one of the dark gray metal doors.

  The thing is, though, the door right next to it was slightly ajar.

  I licked my lips, staring at the small crack into darkness. Like dangling chocolate cake in front of my face, really. The two doors were side by side, so even with no P&S written on it, I knew they both belonged to the company. That was the whole point of most of the businesses in the building: the official face, and the private face. And the private face always had something to do with the Fae.

  As did the slight wisps of magic dangling from the door. A broken ward.

  I focused on the door in front of me, closed tight, the electronic lock’s tiny red light scolding at my thoughts. Don’t get involved, it said. Grab the files and go back upstairs, ye little adventuress. Protect yer soul from the evils of curiosity.

  I have no excuses for what I did next. None. Zero. But there you have it.

  The first thing I noticed when poking the open door wider was the smell. I scrunched my nose in distaste. A sleeping potion had been used there, and not long before. Like most things carrying Fae magic, potions had their own set of give-and-take.

  You see, Fae magic is all about the trade. And the Fae always take more than they give.

  In this case, a sleeping potion would send you to sleep, but not before you became aware of the horrid smell and knew you had a few moments to spare before you fell like a log.

  The second thing I noticed was that something was blocking the door.

  I ran my finger across the wall, searching for the light switch. When I found it, another two things came to light: One, how many clients could P&S possibly have that they required the two dozen filing cabinets and piles of boxes stacked against the walls, and two, the thing blocking the door was an unconscious person on the floor. At least, I hoped he was unconscious. I wasn’t about to touch him to make sure.

  I mean, there was no blood. That was encouraging, right?

  The man was crumpled on his side, like he had been trying to get out of the room in a hurry when the sleeping potion had caught hold. Yes, sometimes I shocked myself with my powers of deduction. Too bad the Jerk wouldn’t allow me to use them for a worthier cause.

  Carefully stepping over the body, I turned in a slow circle, finding nothing seemingly out of place except for one of the drawers. It lay slightly open, the way metal drawers get when you try to slam them shut in a hurry and they bounce back. I had little experience with this since I was more of a nudge-closed kind of girl, but it seemed a likely scenario.

  And why had he tried to close that drawer?

  I opened it the whole way, and something rolled against the metal base. Pulling the files close to the front revealed an empty space with a sphere the size of my fist lying inside. I caught my breath at the unmistakable whisper of power.

  A hidden Fae artifact. Oh, my.

  The mother of all smiles began to spread across my face, and my chest expanded beyond reason, all giddiness and glee. My first Artifact Hunter find. Mine.

  I reached in
side the drawer but hesitated before touching the ball. The sleeping potion that got the guy on the floor had to be related to this artifact. Would there be another if I took it out of the drawer? But the smell wasn’t as strong here as by the door. No, it was more likely the guy on the floor had triggered some kind of trap, possibly related to the broken ward on the door, and scared someone might find the artifact on his person, had hidden it before collapsing. Which would make the artifact his, not mine. But then, I assured myself, all artifacts had been someone else’s before being rediscovered.

  I would return it if need be, of course, but for now, there was no point in destroying my Artifact Hunter fantasy. With this in mind, I took the ball out of the drawer.

  It was beautiful—a smooth, light-gray sphere warm to the touch with a series of green lines forming patterns on its surface. Not etched, but part of the material. It didn’t feel like metal or stone, but something more vital, like heavy polished wood.

  “What shall I call you?” I purred in a low voice, rotating the ball while tracing the patterns. All Fae artifacts deserved a name. The grander the name, the more dangerous the artifact, the more stories would be written about it. Not to worry, though, nobody was dumb enough to name a Worldender or Extinctionpleaser.

  Having Fae blood in me, no matter how distilled, meant I could activate his ball if I wished to do so.

  I didn’t. Whatever this thing did—release some kind of power, become some kind of weapon, be a conduit for other types of magic—it would claim a toll. With all Fae magical things, you’d better make damn sure you knew exactly what you were giving up before paying it.