The other spell on my readout—Ensnare—was something I sometimes used to hunt in the forest. The beast control departments would offer a good bounty for turning in animal carcasses with even minor mana-based transformations. Their cores were extracted and then absorbed or sold on the cultivation markets. This was a legal ’gray area,’ but the government was looking at legalizing the practice. Whenever the state made anything legal, it wasn’t to make things safer—they just wanted their share via exorbitant taxes. The most potent animals could even allow a cultivator to learn a new spell, although such beasts were exceedingly rare.

Well, I wouldn’t be running into any enhanced beasts tonight, I thought. The only magical creature I’d be running into was Astrid, the beastkin I had a date with. I could chill.

Smiling, I kept my eye on the road as I plugged my cell phone into my car’s audio dock. The readout of available albums flickered onto the screen. I tapped Paranoid by Black Sabbath, and the album started with War Pigs.

Back in the 70s, cultivation wasn’t as widely used by humans as it was now, but musicians were at the forefront of its practice. When they recorded their music, they were able to enhance their chi by smoking vast amounts of weed, and it resulted in their tracks having certain effects on listeners. War Pigs was infused with a minor relaxant charm, so listening to the track was like taking a big draw of a fat joint.

Some music—like Hendrix, or some of the later Beatles’ stuff—would be positively dangerous to try to drive to, but Sabbath kept it cool.

As the massive guitar riff filled the small car, I grinned. My muscles relaxed, and my mind eased. When Ozzie’s voice hit me, I rolled down my windows and breathed in that sweet forest-scented air.

This was going to be a good night. I could feel it in my bones.

Chapter 2

As I bumped my way down the narrowing forest track, the surrounding trees grew taller and more tightly packed. I was halfway through War Pigs when, with a sudden screech, the stereo system became a horrible mess of feedback and white noise.

“Shit!” I yelled, slapping the control panel to kill the volume.

The stereo squealed, then grumbled and growled, then screeched again like some kind of banshee.

I’d been enjoying the music, but the white noise wasn’t entirely unexpected. This wood was a magical hotspot, and magical hotspots often messed with car stereos. The vast majority of these hotspots weren’t dangerous—they were just a result of someone expending a lot of chi in the area recently.

“Weird,” I muttered as the stereo went silent and the purr of the car’s engine replaced the screaming feedback and static.