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Continue Lucy and Lina’s (and Teddy’s!) story in Shaded Mage: Book 1 of the Prism Mage series
About Jen B. Green
Jen B. Green has lived in five countries on four continents with her three sons, two daughters, and one great guy. She reads anything that stays still long enough, plays piano, and bakes everything sweet.
After earning her Ph.D. in psychology, Jen tried writing a novel for Nanowrimo and was hooked! Her days are spent traveling the world, teaching undergraduate psychology, and wrangling her growing homemade army, but her nights are for writing Urban Fantasy with magic, snark, and sometimes mushrooms.
Frustrated Justice
BY Heather G. Harris
Frustrated Justice by Heather G. Harris
Stacy is the only cross-over cop in Chester, making every magical case hers. So when a body is found, so pulverised it couldn’t have been done by a Common – one without magic or knowledge of the Other, she must solve the case with the help of a magical bird.
Chapter One
It was a testament to my self-control that I didn’t blast the idiot in front of me through the wall. He swayed where he stood, three sheets to the wind, while the woman behind him tried to make herself as small as possible. She had burn marks around her wrists.
Everything about them riled me.
‘I fucking hate cops,’ the drunk fire elemental snarled as he hacked and spat at my feet. Luckily the glob missed my shoe, otherwise the last shards of my self-control would have disappeared and he would have been sailing through a pile of bricks. That sort of thing called for paperwork, though, and visualising the forms was enough for me to rein in my magic.
My remarkable self-restraint continued as I shoved down the urge to say that the hatred was mutual. ‘Regardless of your feelings towards me,’ I said calmly, ‘you need to step aside.’ I looked at the terrified woman behind him. ‘Ma’am? Are you okay?’
She cringed visibly and didn’t make eye contact. ‘You’re making it worse,’ she whimpered. As she turned away, I saw burns on the left side of her face. Outrage roared through me.
I gathered the magic within me and let my intention grow and swell. I was either going to use my magic to blast the abusive fire elemental off his feet or to protect myself and my partner from the blast of fire that he was surely gathering. I would prefer the latter – the paperwork was easier for self-defence.
I waited a beat and, sure enough, the asshole held up his hands to gather a fireball. I let it grow, making sure to angle my bodycam towards it.
‘Sir,’ I spoke clearly, ‘lower your flames or action will be taken against you. You are posing a threat to me, my colleague and civilians. If you do not bank the flames, I will bank you.’ I grimaced internally; it was not my coolest threat but it would be enough to absolve me for what was coming.
Unlike the Common police force, the Connection actively encourages forceful behaviour in dangerous situations. The Connection is the magical equivalent of the police force and government rolled into one; as long as you speak your warning out loud, there is no such thing as ‘excessive’ force. That’s part of the problem with the organisation but right now, squaring up to this asshole, I was less bothered by protocol than usual.
‘Ma’am,’ my greener-than-green partner muttered. ‘What should I do?’
‘Air shield,’ I barked. Christ, what did they teach at the academy these days?
In case he wasn’t quick enough, I expanded my intention to include him. As the fireball left the elemental’s fingers, I released the magic coiled within me with a casual flick of a finger. Most wizards prefer to use words as their release mechanism, but the academy trains us to release non-verbally as often as we can; that way we give our opponent no indication of our next move. And I have more moves than most.
In addition to being a level-five wizard with exemplary control of the IR – the intention and release – I’m also a subterfuge wizard, also known as a sub-wizard. I keep that on the down low; as the name suggests, it doesn’t always make me the most popular wizard in town. For some reason, people hate that you can sneak into their minds like a ninja. No one likes the idea that someone else can fuck with your thoughts. My parents worked hard to instil a strict moral code in me, so I don’t do that – but I could if I really wanted to. If I was so inclined, I could make the prick in front of me forget his own name, but the camera was on and I had those pesky morals so I didn’t.
I let the flames hit the shield of air I’d built. The heat was broiling but it rolled around and away from Detective Channing and me. When the drunk elemental lifted his hands for another pass, I could have slipped into his mind and made him lower them but doing that in front of witnesses was a sure way to reveal myself as a sub-wizard.
So I blasted him through the wall instead.
It looked like I’d be doing that damned paperwork after all. Son of a bitch.
I signed the last of the forms, checked them all carefully then filed them in the folder marked ‘For the eyes of Chief Superintendent Thackeray only’. The note was superfluous because the witches had painted an invisible privacy rune on the file so no one but myself or the CS could open it, let alone read it.
Thackeray couldn’t afford to be outed as a wizard any more than I could. The Other realm, a secret subset of society that is made of magic, needed to stay hidden. The real world wasn’t ready for dryads, dragons or vampyrs. Unfortunately, the popularity of social media was making the Connection’s job even harder. We had staff everywhere trying to keep a lid on the atomic bomb of our existence.
Channing cleared his throat and put his hands behind his back. ‘I froze,’ he muttered miserably.
I looked up at him briefly. ‘You did,’ I confirmed brusquely. At the slight wilting of his shoulders, I relented. ‘But you did the right thing – you checked in with me. The academy is all well and good but a real-life situation is different to practising the theory. You’ll get used to it.’
‘I won’t let you down again.’ He stood to attention.
