Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser Series Book 5) by Meghan Ciana Doidge Page A

entire building was much, much more difficult.
    I understood instinctively that if I hadn’t held Scarlett’s and Gran’s hands and breathed in their magic while I channeled the power of my blood, I might have been pulled away myself. I understood how I could have opened my eyes but never really come back to myself. Maybe leaving too much behind in the magic of the blood wards … maybe creating a thirst I could never quench.
    I was shaking as I visualized all the woven magic coating the interior and exterior of the bakery and the apartment, coaxing and pulling it to gather at the center of the roof directly above us. I fell to my knees as I drew that gathered magic around and down to the base of the building to meet me in the witches’ circle.
    Scarlett gasped as the magic filled the circle and danced between our clasped hands and outstretched arms. She and Gran remained standing as I anchored this called magic into the ground beneath us. This would now be the heart center of the wards. The next Adept who wanted to destroy the protection surrounding the bakery and the apartment would have to be here, standing before the portal, to access the core of the magic. And if they’d already gotten this far inside, I imagined we’d already be lying dead or dying at their feet.
    “Nothing of magic enters without my permission,” I informed the core of the spell dancing in the circle before me. “No thing, spell, or weapon. No Adept. Except we three, and Kandy, Kett, and Warner.”
    “So much magic,” Scarlett murmured.
    “And the portal?” Gran asked.
    “I don’t think I can ward against the portal. I don’t think anyone can ward a portal of the treasure keeper’s construction, except maybe another guardian. It’s a secret, though.”
    Gran looked pointedly at Scarlett. “Is it a secret?”
    Scarlett nodded stiffly. “It is.”
    “You haven’t mentioned it to Yazi?”
    “I just said I hadn’t.”
    “I could try …” Utilizing the magic in the circle another time was a tantalizing idea. I’d be happy to do it again. And again.
    Gran squeezed my hand. “It’s done, Jade. Let it go.”
    For a moment, I didn’t want to. I wanted to watch the magic dance all twinkly blue in the circle before me. I felt powerful and whole here. In control, in command.
    “It’s done as you asked, Jade,” Gran said. “Let it go.”
    I nodded. But before I fully released it, I channeled some of the protection I’d created into my depleted necklace. Then the magic settled into the ground until only a soft, circular glow remained, hovering a few inches above the dirt. As I watched, that glow slowly faded. And it was done.
    I waited for the blood magic to cause an urge toward murder and mayhem to arise in me, but I just felt weary. And more mentally than bodily.
    Gran harrumphed, but she seemed pleased enough as she disengaged her hand from mine to begin snuffing out candles.
    Scarlett turned my hand over in hers to look at the half-healed cut marring my palm. It appeared that even half-dragons took extra time to heal from multiple cuts in the same spot. Though the severity of the cut might also have something to do with the magic of my jade blade, which was wickedly sharp.
    I was seriously glad Shailaja hadn’t gotten her hands on my knife. My necklace had been bad enough. Though the crazy dragon seemed slightly more stable in her more mature form than she had as an unhinged preschooler, I still didn’t want to be the one who’d handed her a deadly weapon.
    Scarlett lifted my hand to her mouth and placed a soft kiss on my palm. Her magic brushed against my skin and a healing spell tingled along the edges of my wound.
    “Gran needs to sleep,” I said. Scarlett’s magic — from holding the protection circle against a dragon and shadow leeches — was also depleted.
    Scarlett nodded. “I’ll take her upstairs. Then I’ll come help you clean.”
    “I’ll be fine,” I said, not a hundred percent sure I wasn’t still