A Bond for the Breaking

Book 3: Magical Trinket Mystery

by Victoria Laurie

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Mystery; Supernatural suspense

Synopsis

There’s no rest for the gifted! The 200-year-old former debutante turned magic-wielding mystic of Washington D.C. returns to drive fast cars, recover magic trinkets, investigate murders . . . and fall in love in this spellbinding, USA Today bestselling series by the New York Times bestselling author of the Ghost Hunter Mysteries.

If murder can have a silver lining, it’s 200-year-old Dovey’s blossoming romance with handsome FBI agent Grant “Gib” Barlow. The two have become smitten since solving their first case together. But when a fellow agent at Gib’s Bureau office who is suspected of being a mystic disappears, Dovey can’t help but wonder . . . is Elric, her boss, jealous former lover, and world’s most powerful mystic, responsible?

Then three murders occur with seemingly no common MO—until the medical examiner discovers that hidden on each body is a small piece of paper with the victim’s full name written in elaborate script. To Dovey’s eye, the script sparkles with a magical luminescence. She connects more dots when she hears about a binding gone terribly wrong within Elric’s territory.

Respected mystic Veda Akkineni recently cast a binding spell on an unbound named Fitch, then enslaved him, forcing him to churn out magical trinkets at a brutal pace. Desperate to escape, yet bound from murdering Veda directly, Fitch has imbued a limited-edition Montblanc pen with the power to compel others to do the deed—whenever it’s used to spell out a person’s full name. But testing it has created a small army of indiscriminately murderous serial killers . . .

To stop the madness, Dovey and Gib must find Fitch and confiscate the pen. But when Fitch decides to end Dovey’s meddling by writing out her name, it’s her own eternal life Dovey will be fighting for . . .

Release date: November 24, 2026

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Climbing in the third-story window of a very old home in the middle of the night isn’t my favorite pastime, but tonight I was on a mission. A very important mission. At least as important as any mission my boss (and former lover), Elric Ostergaard, could assign me. And lately, Elric had been assigning me more missions than I could count.

For the past several months, Elric had kept me unreasonably busy, chasing after this trinket and that unbound. There were so many sudden thefts of magical objects by nonmystics that I was now convinced he’d been doing it on purpose. Elric appeared to be giving away trinkets like Oprah gave away cars.

It was annoying.

Why would my boss endeavor to do something so ridiculous, you ask? To punish me, of course. You see I’d dared to end our nearly two-hundred-year-old romance after I’d fallen for another man. And an unbound man at that.

How dare I.

In my defense, for years and long before I’d begun to have feelings for someone else, Elric had been having his own love affair with a woman who’d not only secretly worked to undermine his entire empire but also attempted to murder me in the process. That fact, apparently, wasn’t even considered when Elric decided to make my job a living hell.

The double standard was infuriating.

“Dovey Van Dalen,” said a deep baritone voice from the interior of the room I was climbing into.

Puffing away a few strands of hair from my vision, I looked to see my dear friend Arlo pushing himself to his feet from the chair he’d been occupying, then begin to lumber toward me.

I held out my hand and waited for his assistance. Straddling a windowsill isn’t my best look.

“Evening, Arlo.”

He reached me and helped me the rest of the way inside.

After dusting myself off, I motioned over my shoulder toward the window and said, “You really should put a door there.”

“If I put a door there, more mystics would want to use it.”

“And more mystics would pay for your services, my friend.”

“I do well enough,” he sniffed. “What brings you to my sill, Dovey?”

I glanced around the room, which was crowded with so many bits of treasure that the heft of it was causing three enormous wooden tables, lining the walls, to droop. Behind the tables were bookshelves stocked with even more small objects infused with magical energy waiting to be either picked up by their owners, repaired, or sold on the open mystic market.

“I need a trinket,” I told Arlo in answer to his question.

“For what purpose?”

I ran my fingers through the long locks of my hair, pulling them away from my face and securing them with a simple spell I uttered quickly before answering his next question. “I’ve made a new … friend.”

“Yes, I heard you’d taken up with someone else after Elric cast you aside.”

I stiffened and had to force myself to relax. Elric hadn’t so much cast me aside as we’d both come to a mutual understanding, but the thousand-plus-year-old egomaniac who was now firmly in my “ex” column, needed everyone to believe he’d dumped me.

I frowned at the sting of Arlo’s words but arguing about it would only bring me trouble, so I ignored the slight and got to the point.

“My friend is newly minted, Arlo, and he’s struggling to master his powers.”

“Is this the unbound FBI agent you were working with last year? The one I enchanted the watch for?”

“Yes. His name is Grant—but everyone calls him Gib. Anyway, Gib has been tangentially bound—”

“Tangentially bound?”

The older mystic was eyeing me quizzically. I fully understood. I’d formerly believed that the only way to become a mystic was to be bound by a spell cast by another mystic—somewhat like how the mythical vampire created other vampires but with far less bloodshed. Usually.

“The case I was working on when I came to you about the watch was one that involved Pandora’s Promise. Remember?”

“Ah, yes. That terrible old relic. I heard you blew it to smithereens.”

“I had no choice,” I insisted. Because I hadn’t. “Anyway, Gib had been under the spell of the Promise at the moment I destroyed it, and all that magic had to go somewhere.”

Arlo’s bushy white eyebrows arched in surprise. “I’ve heard of this phenomenon! In Europe they call these trinket-bound mystics mystique légers, or just légers for the men and légères for the women. They’re quite rare. Perhaps only twenty-five to thirty in existence, and most of them eventually find a willing mystic to fully bind them, but a few settle into a peaceful existence with their limited magic and added longevity.”

“Interesting. Gib has chosen to remain officially unbound. For now.”

“Given that he’s gained your favor, that’s a somewhat dangerous predicament for him then.”

I nodded. Arlo understood.

If Gib’s magical powers remained limited, he would be considered weak within the mystic community. My past romantic relationship with Elric made me a target, and anyone close to me was equally fair game. Having full mystic powers, I was confident I could defend myself against most attackers, but Gib had no real power to draw on. He could now form an orbital ball of his essence without much trouble, but the orb he created was only ever palm size and couldn’t do much besides zip its way into a low-level trinket. Awakening the enchantment of anything more powerful than a level six seemed too much for him, and even beyond that he could cast only the simplest of spells.

But he did have a talent that we were all excited about. Gib had learned how to send his essence into a trinket from a few feet away and activate it. He didn’t need to touch the trinket to get it to awaken, and that was a very rare gift indeed, even among the most powerful of our kind.

Normally, a trinket needs to be in close contact with some part of our body. And sending an orb of our essence out from ourselves in a sort of grenade of power is something most mystics master as a form of either offense or defense. Gib wasn’t capable of launching energy grenades, but he could send his essence away from himself and have it enter a trinket to activate it. He could even awaken a trinket that someone else was holding. A remarkable gift indeed.

This talent of his was thrilling but it also terrified me, because I knew that any enemy of mine—and I had many—would become even more of a threat if they learned that the man I was seeing was able to hijack the magic of another mystic’s trinkets.

What worried me even more was that if someone like Elric or another powerful mystic discovered Gib’s talent and that he wasn’t fully bound they’d cast him in a spell that would bring him under the command of his binder.

As someone who’s been under the somewhat strict command of my binder for nearly two hundred years, I can tell you from experience it’s no picnic.

“There’s more to it, though, Arlo,” I said to my friend, knowing that I needed to trust him if I was to help Gib.

“Such as?”

“He’s a castor.”

Arlo’s bushy eyebrows arched in surprise. “A castor. You mean he can wake up a trinket without touching it?”

“Yes, from several feet away.”

Arlo studied me, his brows still arched. “Remarkable. What’s the farthest distance he can cast?”

“He’s being mentored by Dex Valerius. Dex told me three weeks ago that Gib was able to wake up a level three trinket from six feet away.”

“Dexter Valerius is this man’s mentor?”

The alarm on Arlo’s face worried me. “He is. Why does that trouble you?”

Arlo crossed his arms, his expression converting to amused. “Dovey Van Dalen, you sweet summer child. Valerius mentoring a léger who can cast from several feet away is perhaps not the wisest pairing.”

“Why?”

I couldn’t see the problem. In the past several months, Dex had been a wonderful mentor to Gib. He’d been patient, his approach had been measured, and he’d never pushed Gib past his limits, not to mention the fact that Dex and Gib had now formed a strong friendship.

“Dex works with Esmé Bellarose, correct?”

“Yes. He’s her lieutenant.”

“She’s an exceptional thief, so I hear.”

“Also true. Which is why Elric has her on his payroll.”

“Which makes Dex a thief too, no?”

It was my turn to study the mystic in front of me. “Can you please cut to the chase, Arlo? I don’t see the problem, so unless I’m missing something big—”

“Oh, something big may indeed go missing.”

I was growing frustrated. What was with all this inuendo. “I’m honestly not understanding the point you’re trying to make.”

“If a thief could activate a trinket from a safe distance away, said thief could safely bypass any protective spells wrapped around the trinket, thereby also bypassing any physical harm from the protective spells, which would ignite the moment he attempted to awaken it.”

The lightbulb in my head lit up with understanding. “It’d be like stealing the jewels without fear of setting off any booby-traps.”

“Exactly.”

Alarm rippled down my spine. Had Dex been grooming Gib for just such a situation?

After considering that, however, I dismissed it. “Gib is FBI. It goes against everything in his nature to steal. He’d never participate in such a scheme.”

“There are ways to trick a soul, Dovey. The right spell could easily be concocted.”

I frowned. I’d have to have a talk with Dex as soon as possible. If he had any such schemes in mind, I had to find a way to dissuade him from using Gib to further his thieving goals. It’d put Gib in far too much danger, and if he discovered that he was being used, he’d lose the only new friend—besides me and my best friend, Ursula—that he had in the mystic world.

“Ursula!” I exclaimed.

“Ursula?”

I shook my head, my thoughts momentarily hijacked by the realization that I had the solution at hand. “Ursula and Dex are a thing. She’ll talk some sense into him and convince him not to use Gib that way.”

“Bonne chance, young dove,” Arlo said amiably, and I could see that he meant it, which only reminded me why I genuinely liked the old mystic.

“Thank you. And, now that we have that settled, I need a trinket for Gib. Something useful that can help protect him.”

“The watch has absorbed a death curse?”

“Yes. One was cast at him several months ago, and it was destroyed.”

“But it saved his life,” he said, obviously pleased with himself.

I grimaced. “Almost. The force of the curse sent Gib into a headstone that cracked the back of his skull. If another mystic hadn’t had a healing trinket on hand, he wouldn’t have survived.”

“Ahh, the curse of the mystique légers. …”

“Curse? What curse?”

“Your lover is a mystic light, Dovey. He’ll live three to five times longer than any unbound, and he’ll never catch a cold or cancer, but he’ll be slower to heal and more fragile than the rest of us. Flesh wounds on a léger heal quickly and efficiently, but anything graver, like a deep wound to an internal organ, and he’d be at risk of bleeding out before his body could heal itself.”

“We can bleed out too, though, Arlo. I mean, didn’t the Bow of Anubis fell many of our warriors during the Mystic Wars?”

“Yes, but to the point of your example, arrows from the Bow of Anubis were enchanted to find the hearts of their targets. Mortal wounds for us are either a major trauma to the heart or deep in the brain. Our bodies can recover from most other wounds as long as the trauma to our bodies isn’t absolutely overwhelming.”

“Like the overwhelming trauma of the Crushing Curse?” I asked. The Crushing Curse was Elric’s trademark way of dispatching mystics who displeased or betrayed him.

“Exactly like that,” he confirmed.

Arlo then turned to the collection on the tables and shelves. “You’ll need something powerful,” he mused as he observed the cache of trinkets. “At least a level five.”

“Agreed.”

I watched him from the center of the room while he toured the tables and shelves, his finger tapping his bottom lip as he looked over the trinkets.

He stopped abruptly when he’d nearly completed the circle. “Here,” he said, lifting what looked like a small jewelry box. After bringing it to me, he lifted the lid and inside were two gold and emerald cuff links.

“Cuff links?”

A smile lit up Arlo’s face. “Not quite,” he said. Lifting one of the baubles out of the box, he flicked something at the back and a small hook appeared.

“Oh! Button covers!”

“Precisely. Far easier to manage than cuff links, and lighter too.”

“What do they do?”

“First, they can work independently. You only need one, and both have enough juice in them to last quite a while.”

“That doesn’t tell me what they do, Arlo.”

With a mischievous smile he lifted one of the button covers up to eye level, and in the next moment, he vanished.

I blinked. “Arlo?”

There was no response.

I swiveled my gaze all around the room, but there was simply no sign of the mystic. “Arlo?”

Impatient, I crossed my arms thinking I’d wait him out, but after a few minutes, I’d had enough and was about to demand he appear when from the ground floor the sound of the doorbell chimed.

It was a loud sound, like a church bell, and it startled me, but Arlo still didn’t appear.

I tapped my foot, staying stubbornly in the center of the room, and then the doorbell chimed twice more in a row.

“This is ridiculous,” I groused.

Exiting the door of the workroom I moved into the hallway, flipped on the overhead light, and headed downstairs. The doorbell was now ringing incessantly, which was unnerving, to say the least.

“I’m coming!”

In the front foyer, however, I paused. I had no idea who would come to Arlo’s home in the middle of the night, but one thing was clear: The caller hadn’t used the proper entrance from which to call on the old mystic. Everyone who knew Arlo knew to use a magic spell to create an invisible staircase and climb up to the third floor, then through the window.

I wrung my hands together, anxious about the obvious urgency of the caller at the door. “Who’s there?”

There was no reply, but a few seconds later, the doorbell chimed again.

Tiptoeing up to the door I looked through the peephole and standing on the front step was Arlo, holding my beloved pet hedgehog, Bits.

I pulled the door open quickly and Arlo began to laugh like he’d just played the funniest prank. “Gotcha!” he said, then held up Bits, who seemed to be grinning and in on the joke.

I put a hand on my hip, not amused. “Ha. Ha. You got me.”

My flat tone only made Arlo chuckle harder. Finally straightening up, he handed Bits to me and said, “You shouldn’t leave Bitty in the car, Dovey. He’s always welcome in my workshop.”

“He was sleeping when we arrived. I didn’t want to wake him.”

For emphasis, Bits yawned and curled into a ball in the crook of my arm.

Pointing to Arlo’s fisted hand, which, I assumed, was still clutching the button cover, I said, “Those are teleportation trinkets?”

In answer he breezed past me and headed toward the stairs, speaking to me over his shoulder. “Not quite. They’re used for defense, obviously, but they also come in quite handy if one needs to make a hasty exit. If awakened, the trinkets will make the wearer completely invisible—both in sight and sound. Which is why you didn’t seem to see or hear me walk right past you, out of the workshop, down the stairs, and out to your car. All of my movements were masked for as long as the cover held my essence!”

I followed Arlo up the stairs to the first landing, where he turned and began to ascend the second set of stairs. “They’re a masking trinket.”

“Precisely.”

I tried to adopt a poker face, because if Arlo saw how excited I was by the prospect of acquiring a masking trinket for Gib, he might demand a higher price than I could afford.

When we reached his workshop on the third floor again, I moved toward my handbag, which I’d left on one of the worktables, ready to begin the negotiations. “How much?”

“What’re you willing to spend?”

I reached into my handbag and extracted an intricately carved wooden box. “I have something here that I think you’ll value far more than I would.”

I’d gotten the idea to trade the trinket when I’d discovered Arlo at the National Gallery of Art a week earlier. He hadn’t noticed that I was also there—or if he had, he hadn’t acknowledged my presence. The museum had offered a midnight tour of the works of Van Gogh, and as I’d once met the artist, I wanted to go and pay him tribute.

I’d seen Arlo in the room where Starry Night was being displayed, and it moved me when I realized he’d been weeping over the beauty of the painting.

Lifting the hinged lid of the box I held it out for him. Inside the velvet-lined case was a paintbrush. At first glance, it looked like nothing special, but when given a bit of essence, it allowed the mystic to mimic the style of any artist they admired. One could literally paint a new Van Gogh, Picasso, Renoir, or Klimt with the brush, or replicate an existing work down to the brushstroke.

Arlo eagerly took the box from me. “Is this what I think it is?”

I nodded, because I assumed its purpose was self-evident. “A replicator.”

He lifted the brush from the box and held it between his thumb, index finger, and middle finger, feeling the balance and weight of it. The giddy twinkle in his eye told me I’d hit the mark in the offering. “I accept,” he said, now clutching the brush to his chest while offering me a formal bow.

I clapped happily. “I’m so glad you’re pleased, my friend.”

Arlo nodded, then moved to the box with the other button cover, placed its twin back in its slot, and closed the lid. Then he pivoted and held the trinkets out to me. “Keep these safe, Dovey. Teach your lover a comeback spell and tell him to wear at least one button cover at all times when he’s in public. And don’t tell another living mystic that he’s a castor or that he’s a léger. No one should know outside of those who already do. For his safety and for yours.”

“I will, Arlo. And thank you.”

The mystic bowed formally once again, and I could see that the offering of the paintbrush had moved him, which made me supremely happy.

Arlo was an albino and spent most of his life cooped up in a space magically bound to prevent any natural light from reaching his skin or his eyes. It would be good for him to paint a landscape in the fashion of Van Gogh, Monet, or Bonheur.

I kissed him on the cheek and began to move to the window.

“Dovey,” he called. I looked over my shoulder and he pointed to the doorway leading to the hallway and the stairs. “Tonight, you should leave the easy way.”

I smiled and sauntered past him, still carrying Bits in the crook of my arm, knowing I’d made an elder mystic happy. It was the highlight of my night.

By the time Bits and I were on our way back home, it was going on two a.m. I could feel my lids drooping so I turned the volume up on the radio and began to sing along. Bits, who’d been snuggled inside my handbag, did his teleportation trick and jettisoned himself home lest he have to spend one more minute in the car with doe-ray-meeeee.

Whatever. As long as he put himself to bed and didn’t raid the pantry, I was fine with the snub.

As I pulled into the driveway, my heart sank when I noticed that Gib’s Range Rover wasn’t at the curb. I’d told him I’d be working quite late this evening, and I’d been hoping to tiptoe into the bedroom and curl up against him under the covers as we’d been unable to spend much quality time together of late, but he must’ve chosen to stay at his place.

I parked Luna—the name I’d given to my Porsche 718 Cayman—in the garage located behind the house I’d owned for well over a hundred years in Georgetown, just outside of D.C., and headed toward the back door. Jiggling my key ring, hunting for my house key, I wasn’t paying much attention to where I was walking, which is why I came to an abrupt and fully alarmed stop when I bumped right into a muscled, rock-solid chest attached to a 6-foot-3-inch frame.

“Tortelduif,” he whispered.

I stepped back a pace and lifted my gaze, doing my best to hide my alarm. “Elric?”

He smiled in that way that he used to smile at me, back when we were an item. Back when I thought he truly loved me. Back before I learned of his betrayal.

“Did I frighten you?”

He asked me that so casually, as if he were merely asking about the weather.

My reaction to the question, however, was anything but casual. A tingling along my throat let me know that my binding spell was activated, and I could no more lie to him about my feelings than I could swallow the ocean. “Yes,” I told him bluntly.

One of his brows arched ever so slightly, but he seemed more amused than anything. “How is my old friend, the trinket magician?”

I pushed a strand of hair out of my eyes. “Arlo is well.”

I wasn’t at all surprised that Elric knew where I’d been tonight. He’d kept close tabs on me for 181 years—so why quit now?

“Repair or replacement?” he asked.

“Neither. I offered him a trade.”

“The artist’s brush you kept after recovering one of my trinkets?”

I felt myself stiffen. Elric had sent me after an unbound who’d stolen a magical harmonica from one of the mystics who worked for HQ. When played, the harmonica put any soul within hearing distance into a temporary trance, allowing a thief to relieve them of any or all their prized possessions. I’d had to wear earplugs that were their own trinket, allowing not a sound to register in my eardrums while the unbound and I had tussled for the harmonica. I’d finally wrestled it away from him, and after playing a few notes, I’d put him into a trance, which had allowed me to survey his storage unit full of stolen property.

I’m not sure what mystic he’d stolen the paintbrush from, but the only item Elric had tasked me with retrieving was the harmonica, which, by the rules set forth in my employment contract, meant that I could keep any other trinkets discovered among the thief’s possessions.

“He seemed quite pleased by it,” I told Elric. “You know how much Arlo loves art.”

“I do.” He motioned to the door and added, “May we talk, Tortelduif?”

It wasn’t lost on me that Elric kept slinging around the endearment he’d called me for 180 years … right up until we broke up. He hadn’t used the moniker once in the past ten months, so he must want something from me other than another trinket retrieval assignment.

“Of course,” I said, turning to the door with my key out. “Please come in.”

Before I could even reach my hand forward to insert it into the lock, the knob twisted, and the door opened. My breath caught at the idea that Elric could so easily bypass my wards. I’d changed them since he and I had severed our romantic relationship, and I wondered if this little demonstration was perhaps a reminder to me of his immense power.

For the moment, however, I was more curious about why Elric was here than about what risk he might pose to my home’s privacy and security.

Leading the way inside, I walked to the kitchen counter, set down my handbag, and looked over toward the pantry to see if Bits might be rooting around in the new box of Cheerios I’d bought for him. He was nowhere in sight, so he’d probably tucked himself into the snuggle on my bedside table upstairs.

“Wine?” I asked.

Elric moved around my white marbled counter to take a seat on one of the barstools. “Please.”

I went to the wine rack and selected the driest Bordeaux blend I had, which I knew would appeal to his palate.

After pouring out two glasses, with the one I offered to Elric having a decidedly heavier pour, I stood opposite him and waited for an explanation to his sudden appearance at my door.

He sniffed the wine and swirled it several times before taking a drink, after which he pronounced it, “Nice.”

I smiled and took my own sip. A dry Bordeaux is not my preference—I enjoy a more full-bodied cabernet, but Elric wasn’t someone to be treated with anything but the greatest deference and I wasn’t about to push my preferences onto whatever this little tête-à-tête was about.

“The reason I’ve come,” he began, “has to do with the reception I’ll be throwing tomorrow evening for Veda Akkineni.”

My eyes widened. “Veda Akkineni? Of the Kekatija Dynasty?”

The hint of a smile played on Elric’s lips. “Yes.”

I knew he held a bit of pride that I remembered the history lessons he’d lectured me on a century earlier. The Kekatija Dynasty was a powerful Telugu kingdom that ruled in the eastern Deccan region of India from the twelfth to the fourteenth century.

I’d never met Veda, but I knew of her the way that I knew of all the mystics spared from the Pharo’s forces after his kingdom fell to the group of allies who now call themselves “the Seven.” The Seven currently rule the mystic world, and over the last five hundred years they’ve divided that world into territories that cover all six of the rulable continents. There’s the Court of Hideyo in Asia, the Court of Radcliff in Oceania, the Court of Vostov in Europe, the Court of Mostafa in Africa, the Court of Vala in South America, and the Court of Dobromila-Ostergaard in North America.

The last I’d heard, Veda was a resident of Radcliff’s court. She’d originally been taken in after the Mystic Wars by Mostafa, but he was the head of a court that saw constant squabbling among the mystics who lived there, and he’d grown weary of troublemakers like Veda.

Immediately after the Mystic Wars ended with the Pharo’s death, Veda was mostly stripped of her powers—although, how that had happened I wasn’t quite sure—but she was still a powerful enough mystic to hold some value. Mostafa had traded her to the Court of Radcliff in the late nineteenth century, but more rumors suggested Veda and Radcliff weren’t getting along well, either.

“Isn’t Veda still with Radcliff?” I asked.

Elric nodded. “She’s looking to make a change.”

“You’d like her to come here.”

“I would.”

“And Radcliff will release her from her fealty to him?”

“He’s already done it.”

“Doesn’t that give you pause, Elric?”

He swirled his wine and a smile played at his lips. I didn’t like it. The expression made him look almost reptilian. “No, Dovey. It does not. Veda is controllable the same way any less powerful mystic is controllable. If she misbehaves, I will take away her toys.”

I didn’t quite know what that meant, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

“You know Veda and Petra will be at each other’s throats, right?” Elric’s wife, Petra, was a frighteningly jealous mystic, and I’d heard that Veda had a similar personality.

He smirked. “That’s part of the appeal.”

I laughed, which surprised me. I didn’t think I’d laughed in Elric’s company for nearly a year.

It might’ve surprised Elric too, because he looked up at me with kind eyes fo. . .