Free Magic Kingdom (Dragon Born Alexandria Book 3) by Ella Summers

it.”
    The severed piece of tail was wiggling, the choppy twitches growing faster with every passing second. Magic tore through the square with the crack of splitting fabric, accompanied by a blinding flash of white light. And then there were two giant worms. The agent who’d cut the creature stared up at them in shock and dropped his sword.
    Past the two worms, the third Monster Cleanup team was chasing a flock of gargoyles that was flying toward the old town hall. The agents had managed to blow a few pieces off of the stone creatures. One of the gargoyles was flying with half a wing missing. Two of them had only one arm. Even as they ran, the agents never stopped bombarding the aerial beasts with magic. It didn’t slow them down. Nothing short of a missing head would put them down. Beheading was the center stone of monster hunting. It basically killed anything.
    Too bad it didn’t work on ghosts.
    The otherworldly beings covered the front face of the new town hall like a veil of translucent white gauze. A chorus of whispering voices floated up from the river of ghostly souls. Alex and Logan stopped in front of the building. Tall, mighty, and massive, its spire columns and enormous clock tower made it even more of a Gothic castle than the house they were renting. A few ghosts skimmed the surface of the building, weaving in and out of flower-topped balconies and hopping up the stone levels of the clock tower to dance between the bells and life-sized figures. A familiar residual magic singed the air.
    “The thief is here.” Alex breathed in the repulsive magic. “Or at least was here.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes. Unless there is more than one person with the same weird magic I’d never felt before this night, then our cloaked thief has struck again.”
    Logan’s eyes surveyed the building with professional detachment. “You know what this means,” he said. “The melted building and this are related.”
    “Yes. Thank you, Captain Obvious.” She winked at him.
    He pointed at a pair of doors. They’d been blasted—or torn—off their hinges. Alex followed the trail of burning magic. It led her up a few stairs to a side door that had melted into a lumpy pile of solidified goo. She stepped over the goo to enter the building.
    Inside, black scorch marks streaked the interior. A few of the walls looked like hardened rice pudding, but unlike at the previous scene, they were all still standing. Toppled tables and chairs covered the stone floor.
    “Someone put up resistance,” Logan said.
    “Guards?”
    “Perhaps.” He brushed his hand across the curdled surface of the wall. “The thief used his green fire. It must take a sustained burst to melt the concrete. These walls are only scarred, not melted.” He turned in place, scanning the room.
    “Looking for something?”
    “Yes.” He walked up to a desk, reached under it, and pulled out a safe box. “This.”
    Alex looked at the big metal box, which he was holding one-handed. Her gaze slid up the box to the hard, coiled muscle of his arm.
    “Like what you see, darling?” A smug smirk tugged at his lower lip.
    “Yeah, that’s a quality safe.”
    His eyes hardened and he set the safe down on the table.
    “And someone burned a hole through it.” She sniffed the safe box. Nothing. No magic. Damn. “Our thief, I bet.” She looked across the room, but there weren’t any piles of burning ashes or warped metal on the floor. “He didn’t try to hide what he’d stolen by destroying all the other valuables here.”
    “Because he didn’t have time.” Logan pointed at a hand protruding from a stack of toppled chairs. “I believe he’s from the security team. Or one member of it anyway. He’s dead. There are four more of them buried in all of that.” He indicated the piles of toppled, broken furniture. “Also dead.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I can smell them,” he replied. “But not hear their hearts beating.”
    “You’re sure?” She looked at