Chapter 8
I hugged porcelain in
the bathroom for the next half hour. Once the power receded, I was
wiped out and had a headache so severe I was nauseous. With my
usual luck, Mac decided to check on me right after I returned and
found me green and shaking. He left to round up a snack, apparently
on the assumption that my problem was low blood sugar. If
only.
Billy moved over so I
could stretch out on the cot without having to lie through part of
his body. “Did you see Casanova?” I croaked. I had commandeered one
of Mac’s beers to help my dry throat, and almost succeeded in
making myself sick again when the alcohol hit my stomach. I hastily
put it down.
“Yeah, but Chavez is
AWOL. Maybe he’s lying low until the mages vacate Dante’s, I don’t
know. But Casanova said he’d lock up the stuff whenever he gets
there.” I nodded. It was as good as I could have hoped for. If
Chavez had been smart enough to dodge the invasion of his
workplace, the items he was carrying should be safe.
“Are you gonna do
it?” Billy asked, shuffling the deck of cards. He never lifts
things unless forced or showing off, but I was too sick to be
impressed.
“Do what?” I lay back
on the cot, trying to convince my stomach that there was nothing
left to throw up. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I’d
shifted in time before and never felt like this when I
returned.
“Fix the
ward.”
I blinked blearily at
him. I’d almost forgotten about that. My pentagram would have come
in really handy with Dmitri, and it had proved capable of traveling
through time with me before. Unfortunately, I couldn’t risk fixing
it. “Yeah, and I’d owe the power a favor, too.”
“Seems like it owes
you a couple, if you ask me. You’ve been running its errands. It’s
not like you wanted to go anywhere. ”
“But I don’t know if
it looks at things like that.”
Billy blew smoke from
an insubstantial cigarette, making a ring that floated up almost to
the ceiling before disappearing. I asked him once why he could
smoke ghostly cigarettes but couldn’t drink ghostly booze, which
would save me some embarrassing incidents and a lot of his whining.
He’d said that whatever was with you, as in touching your body or
within a few feet of it, when you died could materialize with you.
It was all part of your energy, of course—so Billy was essentially
smoking himself—but it was apparently satisfying on some level. Too
bad he hadn’t had a whiskey flask tucked away when he took his
burlap swimming lesson.
“Why are we talking
about this power like it’s a person?” he asked thoughtfully. “You
sound like it has a tally sheet and is marking down every favor so
it can demand that you pay up one of these days. What if that’s not
true? Maybe it’s a force of nature, like gravity. Only instead of
keeping everything glued down, it responds to problems with the
timeline by sending a repair person to fix it.”
I shook my head. His
theory was surprisingly logical, but some part of me knew that
whatever I was dealing with was conscious, not a mindless force. It
knew I didn’t like being on its repair crew. It just didn’t care.
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, let me make
sure I understand this.” Billy dealt out a hand of cards consisting
of two black aces, a pair of black eights and the king of spades.
It’s called the Dead Man’s Hand in poker because, according to
legend, that’s what Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot
in the back. Hickok died in 1876, almost two decades after my
dealer, but Billy knew his poker lore—and how to be obnoxious with
it. “You’re going to refuse to fix the ward even though you’ve got
more people after you than I can count and you’re going into Faerie, where trespassers are
usually killed on sight? Just so you don’t maybe owe a possibly
nonsentient power a favor, which it might not even bother to
collect?”
I was too tired to
glare at him. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, well, I’m glad
you’ve at least thought it out.”
“Why are you nagging
me about this?”
“Because, turtledove,
in case you’ve forgotten, we made a deal. I’ve kept my end and I
expect you to keep yours—which you can’t do if you’re dead. Okay,
yeah, you don’t like being bossed around. Who does? But, newsflash,
being dead is a lot worse. Have Mac reattach the damn ward. If you
don’t need it, great, you don’t owe anybody anything. But if you
do, it’ll be there, and when the smoke clears, so will
you.”
“Uh-huh,” I said
testily, giving up on the idea of getting any sleep with Billy
around. “And what if it flares when it isn’t a life-and-death
situation? I don’t have control over what the power perceives as a
threat. If it’s fueling the ward, it’ll be in charge, and it’s
already tried to trick me . . .” I trailed off because Billy hadn’t
been there when I’d assaulted Pritkin, and I didn’t want to be
teased about it. Luckily, either he didn’t notice or he let it
go.
“Okay, you’re taking
a risk, wagering a few chips that this thing won’t be able to trick
you. But that’s a lot better than gambling your life on not needing
the ward and then finding out you were wrong. Take it from someone
who knows, Cass—never bet when you can’t afford to
lose.”
We were interrupted
by Mac returning laden with the four fast-food groups—salt, grease,
sugar and caffeine—in the form of fries, burgers and extra large,
sweetened coffees. I forced myself to eat, as it was the fastest
way to regain some energy, despite feeling queasy. Halfway through
the meal I told Mac that I’d decided to have the ward reactivated.
Billy gave me a thumbs-up and I grimaced at him. The only thing
more annoying than Billy when he’s wrong is Billy when he gets
something right. I’d hear about this one for a long
time.
When Pritkin
returned, I’d just finished dressing after Mac’s adjustment. The
ward remained lopsided because fixing aesthetics could wait. Mac
said he thought that the power transfer had gone well, but I was
skeptical. I couldn’t feel anything—not a single spark or twinge.
Of course, I usually didn’t unless there was a threat, but I would
have liked some sign that it was back at work. It didn’t look like
I was going to get one, though. I guessed I’d have to wait until
someone tried to kill me to find out whether Mac was as skilled as
he claimed. The way my life was going lately, that shouldn’t be
long.
“We need to go,”
Pritkin said without preamble. He tossed something over my head and
it caught on my ear. I pulled it off and saw that I was holding
some kind of charm—actually several charms—on a sturdy red cord.
The little cloth pouch contained either verbena or a really ripe
gym sock—they smell about the same—but I wasn’t sure about the
significance of the others.
“Rowan wood cross,”
Billy identified, “set with amber and coral—all three said to ward
off Fey attacks. The pentagram is probably iron,” he added,
squinting at it despite the fact that that couldn’t possibly help
his eyesight. “It looks like he’s serious about this crazy
expedition. I’m beginning to think he’s as nuts as you
are.”
Pritkin had pulled
another, matching necklace out of the bulging pack on his back. It
would have made him look like Santa Claus, except that I doubt the
jolly old elf ever looked that grim. He threw it to Mac and
scowled. “The Circle’s closing in.”
“As expected,” Mac
said lightly. He stood and brushed off some crumbs. We’d been
talking about wards before Pritkin showed up, mainly because Mac
had wanted to distract me from focusing on what he was doing to my
star. He grinned at me now and held out his right leg. “Here’s one
I didn’t have time to tell you about,” he said, pointing to a
small, square patch of empty skin below his knee.
“I don’t get
it.”
Mac just grinned
bigger and took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. He
spread it out on the cot and I identified it as a map of Las Vegas
and its surroundings. It was old and yellowed, except for patches
of bright red inked onto different areas. It reminded me of a
subway map, except that, of course, Vegas doesn’t have
one.
“There,” Pritkin
said, pointing out an area close to MAGIC’s canyon.
Mac nodded. “No
worries.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Ever see The Wizard of Oz?”
“Uh, yeah.
Why?”
“You might want to
hold on to something,” was the only reply I got before what felt
like a giant earthquake hit the shop. I clutched the cot, which was
bolted down, while Pritkin looped a foot around the table and held
on with both hands. Only Mac looked unperturbed, ignoring the
spinning, tilting and bucking room to trace a finger along a line
on the map from the city to the desert. A few seconds after he
finished, the building gave a last thudding shudder and was still.
A few pieces of paper wafted down from where they’d been tossed
near the ceiling, but otherwise, it was like nothing had ever
happened.
“What was
that?!”
“See for yourself.”
Mac waved a hand at the front of the shop, and after regaining my
rubbery legs, I walked into the front room. Instead of the asphalt
street and busy hamburger restaurant that had constituted the view
out of the front window, there was only a bare expanse of desert,
without so much as a cactus to break up the monotony.
“I think she needs a
backup,” Mac was saying as he came through the
curtain.
“She has those damn
knives.”
“They’re
unreliable—they came off a dark mage and their loyalty is in
question. They serve her now because it suits their purpose, but
later?” Mac shook his head. “I don’t like it. Not to mention that
we don’t even know if they’ll work there.”
“You reactivated her
ward; that should be sufficient,” Pritkin replied, dragging his
sack out of the back room and starting to unload it on the counter.
“She is more than strong enough already.”
Mac didn’t say
anything, but he quietly reached up to his left shoulder and
grabbed something that had been concealed by the gently waving
leaves. He put a finger to his lips and glanced at Pritkin, who was
lining up a collection of weapons on the counter. If he thought we
were going to carry all of those, I hoped he’d brought a
cart.
Mac reached for my
arm and I looked down to see a gleaming gold charm in the shape of
a cat being held to my elbow. As soon as it touched bare skin, it
morphed into a sleek black panther with narrowed orange eyes. I
recognized them as the ones that had been peering at me malignantly
earlier, and they didn’t look much happier now. The kitty didn’t
seem pleased to have lost Mac’s generous camouflage, and after a
brief glance around, it ran up my arm and disappeared beneath my
shirt.
I could feel it
almost like it was a real cat, with warm fur and little claws that
pricked my skin. It was weird and it tickled and I didn’t like it
one bit. “What the—”
“Come on, Cassie, you
need to finish lunch,” Mac said, pushing me ahead of him through
the curtain.
“What the
hell is going on?” I hissed once we
were in the back. Mac shushed me and made a weird gesture in the
air.
“Silence shield,” he
explained. “John has better hearing without enhancements than most
do with them.”
“Mac, if you don’t
explain what—”
“I just gave you that
other ward you wanted. Sheba will take good care of you. Top of the
line, she is.”
Ms. Top of the Line
was crawling around on my stomach, occasionally stopping to lick
me, and it was creeping me out. “Mac! Get this thing off
me!”
He chuckled. “Can’t.
That kind can only be transferred once a day. Sorry.”
He didn’t look sorry,
and I had no way of knowing whether he was telling the truth. I
frankly doubted it. “Mac!”
“You may need her,
Cassie,” he said more soberly. “You let me reactivate your ward,
but it’s like John said: your power may not work in Faerie, and if
it does it could be sporadic. If the energy isn’t flowing to fuel
it, your ward won’t function. Sheba’s going to tag along to make
sure you have some protection even if your main ward fails—think of
her as a slightly temperamental backup. There aren’t many wards
that’ll work in Faerie, but that one will. I bought it off the Fey
who enchanted it. And I wouldn’t be much of a gentleman to let you
go off defenseless, now, would I?”
“But I’m not going
alone.” Sheba had now climbed around to my back and was doing
something with her claws that was less than pleasant. I reached
around to get her to stop and got swatted at by a small paw for my
trouble. Fortunately, the next minute she curled up in a warm ball
at the base of my spine and went to sleep. If I concentrated, I
could hear her purr contentedly.
“You’re assuming
we’ll all get past the guards. But it won’t be as simple as just
walking in tonight.”
“You said you know
them.”
“I do, but they know
me, too. I used to be John’s partner before I retired. He’s a
wanted man now, after that exhibition you two put on this morning,
so my walking in there out of the blue and making small talk is
going to look strange. The idea is that I create a diversion and
you two run into the portal while the guards are busy with me. But
there’s no saying it’ll work. Even if it does, you and John are
going to be on your own after the guards apprehend
me.”
I squirmed
uncomfortably, both because Sheba’s lazily twitching tail was
ticklish, and because of Mac’s easy nonchalance about defying the
Circle. “What’ll happen when they catch you?”
He shrugged. “Likely
nothing. It won’t be a slap on the wrist and Bob’s your uncle, I’m
back on the streets. But I know a trick or two. With a little luck,
I should be able to convince them that John put me under a
compulsion spell and forced me to help.”
“And if you’re not
lucky?”
Mac grinned and
patted me on the shoulder. “That’s why we’re going tonight. My old
mates may not be happy to see me, but neither is likely to kill me.
I pulled their nuts out of the fire a time or two—they owe
me.”
“But the
Circle—”
“You let me worry
about them,” he said as Pritkin stuck a suspicious face through the
curtain.
“What’s going on?” I
saw him mouth before Mac dissolved the shield around us with an
unobtrusive flick of his wrist.
“Finishing clogging
our arteries,” Mac said cheerfully. “I’d ask you to join us, but I
know you’ve stretched your rules once today.” He winked at me.
“Never let John be in charge of the food, Cassie. He’ll poison you
with wheatgrass and prune juice.”
“It’s better than the
kind of thing you call food,” Pritkin said, but he disappeared back
out front as if satisfied.
I ate a little more
of my burger, but the grease had started to congeal, and anyway,
I’d lost my appetite. I was tired of other people getting hurt
because of me, and falling into the Circle’s hands definitely came
under that category. Maybe people did owe Mac a few favors, but
would it be enough? What if they tortured him to find out what he
knew about me? I wouldn’t put it past them, old soldier or no. I
felt sick again, a combination of the type of food I’d consumed,
nerves and worry. Mac didn’t seem to have that problem, and
ultimately finished off my burger himself.
I wandered back out
front to find that Pritkin was loaded for bear. The mass of weapons
was gone, but he didn’t appear any more weighed down than usual. I
realized why when I saw him clipping some very unusual charms to a
link bracelet. “Iron,” he explained as he fastened it around his
wrist. “It saps Fey energy, tears through their defenses like
silver does to a were.”
“I didn’t peg you for
the jewelry type,” I said, although I’d pretty much figured out
what he’d done. Not even a homicidal mage wears a charm bracelet
with tiny machine guns, rifles and what looked suspiciously like a
grenade launcher dangling from it. The latter was especially
telling, since he’d pulled a life-size model out of his sack
earlier.
“I shrank them,” he
said impatiently. “It’s the only way to carry that much weight for
any distance.”
“I thought you said
our stuff doesn’t work there?”
“I said our magic may
not work properly, if at all. This”—Pritkin tapped the Colt on his
belt—“isn’t magic. And it’s loaded with iron bullets. Speaking of
which, here.” He gave me a long coat that almost matched his own.
“Put that on.”
I took it from his
outstretched hand and almost collapsed to the floor. It felt like
it was lead lined. After a minute, I realized that was pretty much
the truth. The added weight came from boxes and boxes of bullets of
every conceivable caliber that had been stuffed into the coat’s
many pockets.
“You have got to be
kidding,” I said, dropping the thing on the floor. It landed with
an audible thud. “I won’t be able to run in that! I doubt I could
walk in it!”
“You won’t be
running.” Pritkin picked it up and stuffed it back in my arms. “We
would never outrun the Fey on their own turf, so we won’t try. If
we come across any and they’re hostile—”
“And they will be,”
Mac put in, emerging from behind the curtain. He had a small
backpack into which he put the contents of my duffle and, with a
wink, a couple of beers.
“Then we stand our
ground and fight,” Pritkin finished. “Running is a waste of time
and would play into their hands if it separated us. No matter how
grim a battle seems, don’t panic.”
“Of course not. I’ll
stand my ground while they mow me down.” I was struggling into the
hot leather and feeling cranky.
Pritkin checked his
shotgun and, for the first time since our incident, he met my eyes.
“If you’re with me, you won’t die,” he said. He sounded so certain
that, for half a second, I believed him.
I swallowed and broke
eye contact. “Why can’t you shrink my stuff, too?”
“Because I am not
entirely certain that the reverse spell will work in Faerie, so I
am carrying both shrunken backup weapons and regular-sized
primaries. Your ammunition is for the primaries.”
I was busy trying to
sort through my emotions, which ranged from pissed off to
terrified, so it wasn’t until we stepped outside that I remembered
our wild ride. Freakish though it had been, it actually ranked
pretty far down the list of weird things that had happened to me
lately. “How did we get here?” I asked Mac.
“I took a short cut,”
he said, pulling a wide-brimmed hat over his bald head. He turned
around and tapped the blank square that decorated his knee. I
stared at the very odd sight of a tattoo parlor sitting all alone
in the middle of the desert, just before I was treated to the even
odder one of it folding in on itself and winking out of sight
entirely. Mac grunted and examined his leg, where a miniature
version of the front of the shop, complete with bright neon sign
reading MAG INK, had appeared. It fit perfectly into the bare spot
I’d seen earlier.
The little sign on
the tattoo flashed on and off just like the real thing. After a
second, I realized that it was the real thing. “We’ve spent the
whole afternoon inside one of your wards?” I asked
incredulously.
“Right in one,” Mac
said. “My shop goes wherever I do.”
“What do you do? Pick
out an empty lot and then, bam! New
retail location?”
He grinned.
“Something like that.”
“What about zoning?
What about pedestrians walking by and all of a sudden, there’s a
building? What about the cops?”
“What about them?
Norms can’t see it, Cassie, any more than they can one of the
tattoos.” He took my arm companionably. “You’ve got to realize that
the so-called magic you’ve seen all your life is only the tip of
the iceberg. Those sad bastards the vamps use for warding and such
are the bottom of the barrel. If they had any real talent, whatever
issues got them disavowed would have been overlooked or they’d have
been chastised and put back to work. Or, if it was something truly
heinous, they’d have run off and joined the Dark—only even they
won’t take screwups. The type that ends up working for vamps are
those with only enough magic to qualify as menaces—to themselves
and everyone else. They couldn’t do a complex spell if their lives
depended on it. You stick with us, and you’ll see some real
magic.”
Pritkin stopped and
took something out of his pocket. “Good idea,” he commented, and a
second before he did it, I knew what was going to happen. It wasn’t
a Seeing, just my kind of luck. The idiot was going to cast the
mystery rune.
I hit the dirt and
tried to drag Mac down with me, but my feet got tangled in the hem
of the heavy coat and I had to let go of him to break my fall. I
scraped my palms on rock-hard dirt, and the pain and subsequent
struggle to free myself from the leather distracted me for a few
seconds. There was a flash of light and a popping noise, like a
very large champagne cork. When I looked up again, Pritkin and Mac
were gone.
Although I could see
a good distance in every direction, there wasn’t so much as a shred
of cloth or a footprint to show that they’d been there. I felt
around with my senses, but there were no unusual vibrations. That
was almost as strange as the disappearance—a major magical object
had just been set off, yet there wasn’t so much as a metaphysical
ripple for miles. The only thing I could pick up was the slight
buzz of MAGIC’s wards off to the northwest.
I didn’t understand
it. If the rune had killed Pritkin and Mac—even if it had vaporized
their bodies—I should be able to see their spirits. And, so far, I
couldn’t. After walking a large circle around where the mages had
vanished and coming up with nothing, I turned my attention to my
own position. It wasn’t good.
I was miles from
Vegas with no food, water or transportation. Worse, the only nearby
source of those things was MAGIC, where half the people hunting me
currently resided. Breaking in by myself would have been daunting,
even if Billy had been there to help. But he, like the mages, was
currently a no-show. That thought started me worrying that perhaps
the rune could destroy ghosts, too, and that was why I couldn’t see
Pritkin or Mac’s spirits. I shied away from that concept quickly
when I began to shake. Billy was a royal pain, but he’d been with
me through some pretty crazy times. It was hard to think about
being truly alone, without a single person I could claim as an
ally—not even a dead one.
The only good news
was that I was wearing enough ammunition to wage a small war.
Unfortunately, I’d have to drive off my enemies by throwing it at
them, because I didn’t have a gun. Pritkin hadn’t offered to share,
and my own Smith & Wesson was in my purse, which Mac had
stuffed into the backpack—a backpack he had been
holding.
I was watching a
gorgeous desert sunset with rising panic when I noticed something
small and dark in the sky. It was only a tiny spec highlighted by
the rays of the setting sun, but it was getting bigger fast. I
barely had time enough to think that Mac had been right, it did
remind me of Oz, before the thing grew so huge that it blotted out
what was left of the sun. I hit the ground, huddling inside the
thick coat while my brain flashed on an image of me lying under
Dorothy’s farmhouse, with only my dead legs sticking out. Too bad
I’d lost the shoes from Dante’s; they’d have been
perfect.
My inner monologue
began to babble as something huge hit the ground nearby with a
bone-shaking thud. A hail of rocks and dirt rained down on me, and
my brain lost it. It was hysterically insisting that getting
crushed to death wouldn’t be fair—I was only a slightly bitchy
clairvoyant, not a wicked witch—when the dirt storm finally
passed.
I peered out from
inside the coat, but there were no Munchkins or yellow brick roads
in sight. Yet there was a house. It took my dust-filled eyes a few
seconds to realize that the structure sitting so incongruously on
the desert sand wasn’t a rogue Kansas farmhouse but an urban tattoo
parlor, with its neon sign flashing as cheerfully as Mac’s
grin.
I was lying in the
dirt, shaking, when the door burst open and Pritkin and Mac ran
out. They looked pretty forbidding, but then Mac caught sight of
me, gave a whoop and sped over to pick me up and spin me around in
a circle, lead-lined coat and all. “Cassie! Are you all right? You
had us so—”
“Where the hell did
you two go?” I was sobbing and half
hysterical, so relieved that I felt weak and simultaneously as mad
as hell. I hit him in the chest and, although I doubt it hurt much,
his eagle screeched and pecked viciously at my hand. I shrieked and
tore away, ending up back in the dirt. I had just been attacked by
a painted bird that was not now and never had been real. Despite my
afternoon crash course on advanced wards, it didn’t seem possible,
but it was hard to argue with evidence that hurt that much. Then
Sheba woke up and things went from bad to worse.
I felt the unwelcome
fur ball stretch along my lower back and, when Mac bent over to
help me up, she flowed along my torso and down my arm. I looked in
surprise at the line of bright red that suddenly appeared on his
forearm. Despite the size of her paw, the gash it left behind was
three inches long and deep enough to need stitches. Even worse, I
had no idea how to call Sheba off.
Pritkin jerked me
away from his friend and sent me staggering, releasing his hold
quickly before Sheba could get her claws into him. His lips were
thin with anger. “Stop it, both of you! Before you activate the
wards for real and tear each other apart!”
I looked down at my
hand, which now sported a painful two-inch gash, and gulped in
enough air to say, “For real?” How much worse did they get? I don’t
know what else I might have said, but I glimpsed Billy over
Pritkin’s shoulder and temporarily forgot everything else. I
pointed a trembling finger at him. “Where were you? It’s almost
dark and MAGIC is right over there!”
“Calm down, Cass—it’s
okay. Everything’s fine, but you need to get a grip or your new pet
is going to do some serious damage.”
“My ward didn’t
flare.” I stared at Mac, who was busy healing his wound. Lucky
him—I’d wear mine for a while. Yet, although it was Mac who was
bleeding, it was Pritkin who was glowering at me. That was so
unfair it was breath-taking, considering that all of this was his
damn fault.
“That doesn’t
necessarily mean anything,” Mac said. “It’s a bit more advanced
than those. It’s designed to sense intent, and I didn’t mean you
any harm.” He had managed to stop the blood flow, but a raw red
weal remained behind to mark his skin, leaving a gap in the leaves
that they brushed against but couldn’t cross. “I’m sorry, Cassie—I
shouldn’t have grabbed you. But when you disappeared we—well, we
didn’t know what had happened.”
So they’d thought I
was dead, too. Mac’s confession that he, at least, had been worried
helped me calm down—that and the fact that I wasn’t about to face
an ambush alone. “I’ve been right here,” I told him shakily. “You
two are the ones who disappeared. Where did you go?”
“You were aware that
we were gone?” Pritkin asked with a frown. He glanced at Mac. “We
were wrong, then.”
“Not necessarily.”
Mac looked at me keenly. “Maybe time displacements don’t affect her
like the rest of us. That could be why she didn’t come along for
the ride even though she was as close to you as I
was.”
“You went somewhere
in time?” What, could anybody do it anymore?
“We think that
thing”—Mac gestured at the rune Pritkin still held in his fist—“is
a do-over.”
“A
what?”
“It carries the
caster back in time about twenty minutes. So if you get in a tight
spot, you cast it and have a chance to redeem a
mistake.”
I sent Pritkin a
less-than-friendly glance. “Something that might have been very
useful where we’re going.”
“I’m sure it will
be,” he commented, tucking it out of sight inside his
coat.
I would have reminded
him that the rune was mine, except that he would almost certainly
have replied that I’d just stolen it first. I glanced at Billy and
nodded slightly toward the mage. He floated over while I started an
argument to distract Pritkin. “Well, it’s useless now, at least for
a month.”
“We could not risk
employing it without first learning what it does,” Pritkin
insisted, his eyebrows drawing together in their usual expression.
“If it has not been used in as long as we think, it should be
possible to cast it again soon.”
“But you don’t know
that,” I pointed out angrily. “You can leave rechargeable batteries
plugged in as long as you want, but they only hold one charge.
Maybe the rune works the same way.”
“Permit me to think
that I know a little more about magical artifacts than you,”
Pritkin replied with disdain as Billy slipped an
insubstantial-looking hand into his pocket. A few seconds later, my
rune floated out as if levitated. It made its way to me and I
surreptitiously pocketed it. “I am reasonably certain it will
work,” the mage added. “Now, if you have finished having hysterics,
we should be going.”
I said nothing but
retrieved the backpack from Mac and took out my gun. It was fully
loaded, but I checked it anyway. Pritkin’s lips thinned out even
more as he watched; pretty soon he wasn’t going to have any at all.
He obviously didn’t like the idea of my carrying a weapon—maybe he
was afraid I’d shoot him in the back—but he refrained from
comment.
He struck out across
the desert and I followed. Mac and Billy Joe trailed after us as
soon as the mage again absorbed his mobile business. Not a word was
said for half an hour, until the dim outline of MAGIC spread below
us.
The complex is
designed to look like a working ranch, just in case any norms with
a little talent wander by and manage to see through the perimeter
wards. But it’s centered in a canyon with high sides, far away from
any tourist facilities, so that isn’t likely. Not to mention that
there are all kinds of metaphysical KEEP OFF signs everywhere,
starting about a mile out, that make norms very
uncomfortable.
The starlight had
turned the landscape into something like the moon’s surface—all
mysterious dark craters and endless silver sand. MAGIC itself was
dark and quiet, with all the external lights off and no movement
among the buildings. It looked like whatever was happening tonight
was taking place underground.
I collapsed onto a
relatively rock-free piece of sand while Mac and Pritkin debated
approaches. The hike had been a bitch. I’d stumbled through the
growing darkness, stubbing my toe about every fourth step and
falling on my face twice. The coat kept getting tangled around my
legs and made me feel like I was carrying another person on my
back. I’d been too busy lately for regular gym visits and it
showed. Running for my life was obviously not giving me enough
exercise.
“Is he in there?”
Billy asked, hovering a few feet off the sand.
I hugged the coat
around me, grateful for its thickness now that the desert had
started to cool off. “I don’t know.”
“Want me to check it
out?”
“No.” If Mircea was
there, I didn’t want to know. With luck, we’d escape into Faerie
before he figured out that I’d been crazy enough to drop
by.
“Is your ghost here?”
Pritkin interrupted to ask. He surprised me by being cautious for
once—maybe the idea of breaking into MAGIC scared even him. He had
Mac describe his guard friends to Billy, who agreed to go see
whether anyone had changed the duty roster unexpectedly. He
streamed off across the sand, quickly becoming invisible against
the night. In the meantime, we waited.
Once upon a time,
when I was a child reading fairy tales, I’d ached to have my own
adventures. Not that I’d wanted to be some drippy heroine
languishing in a tower, awaiting rescue. No, I’d wanted to be the
knight, charging into battle against overwhelming odds, or the
plucky country lass who gets taken on as the apprentice to a great
wizard. As I got older, I’d found out the hard way that adventures
are rarely anything like the books say. Half the time you’re scared
out of your mind, and the rest you’re bored and your feet hurt. I
was beginning to believe that maybe I wasn’t the adventurous
type.
Billy returned after
half an hour with news. The guards fit the descriptions Mac had
given him and, lucky for us, there was a major uproar in the vamp
area. “It’s like a circus, Cass—everybody’s there. The rest of the
place is practically deserted!”
“Well?” Pritkin was
looking impatient. “What does he say?”
“It’s okay—the right
guys are on duty.” Billy, I noticed, was looking way too pleased
about something. Maybe it was just relief that our job might be
easier than we’d thought, but I doubted it. I knew his expressions
almost as well as I knew my own, and he was practically ecstatic.
“Okay, out with it.”
Billy grinned and
twirled his hat around an index finger. For some reason the finger
was less substantial at the moment than the hat, so it looked like
his headgear was doing a giddy little jig all on its own. “It’s too
perfect,” he crowed, his grin threatening to split his face. “Talk
about a good omen!”
“What are you talking
about?”
“Is something wrong?”
Pritkin demanded. Billy and I both ignored him.
“I know your birthday
doesn’t start for a couple more hours, Cass, but you’re getting
your present early.”
“Billy! Just tell me
already.”
He laughed
delightedly, to the point that it barely missed being a cackle.
“It’s that bastard Tomas. He was captured early yesterday morning.
I think they’re trying to decide what would be the most painful way
to execute him. That’s why everyone’s crowded into the vamp
section—they want to see the show.” Billy threw his hat up into the
air jubilantly. “I wouldn’t mind taking a peek myself, if we had
time.”
The only thing that
saved me from falling was that I was already sitting down. Tomas
was about to be executed and might already be under torture? I sat
blinking at Billy as my brain tried to comprehend it, and whatever
showed on my face he didn’t like. His grin faded and he started
shaking his head violently.
“No. No way are you
doing this! He deserves this, Cass, you know he does. He betrayed
you—hell, he almost got you killed! For once, fate is taking a
problem off our hands gratis. Let’s smile, say thank you and stay
the hell out of it!”
My face felt numb. I
wondered vaguely whether that was due to the night breeze or to
horror. I was betting on horror. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” Billy
flickered like a candle flame in his agitation. “It’s easy. We walk
into MAGIC’s nice, quiet halls, make our way to the portal and pass
through. That’s it, that’s all. No biggie.”
“Yes biggie.” I stood
up, wobbling a little, and Pritkin caught my arm. As usual he
wasn’t gentle, but this time that was a plus. I barely kept my
balance even with his iron grip. “Very much biggie.”
“What are you talking
about? What’s going on?” Pritkin was talking, but I barely heard
him. All I could hear was Tomas’ voice raised in agony, all I could
see was him tied down like an animal, waiting for
Jack.
If I closed my eyes,
I could see a different scene. It was Tomas in the kitchen of our
Atlanta apartment, frowning in puzzlement at the stove. It hadn’t
cooked the brownies he’d intended as breakfast for me, possibly
because he hadn’t known to turn the thing on. He’d been wearing one
of my aprons, the one that said DOES NOT COOK WELL WITH OTHERS,
over the smiley face pajama bottoms I’d bought to keep him from
sleeping in the altogether. We’d had separate bedrooms, but just
the thought of Tomas down the hall wearing only his skin had been
keeping me up nights. I’d explained how the range operated and we’d
eaten the whole pan of brownies before I went off to work,
resulting in a sugar buzz that lasted most of the day.
That was the first
time I’d let myself begin to hope that he might become a permanent
fixture in my life. He’d already been my best friend for six of the
happiest months I’d ever known. Against all odds, I’d actually
started to create a more or less normal existence. I’d liked my
sunny apartment, my wonderfully predictable job at a travel agency
and my gorgeous roommate. Tomas had been a dream come
true—handsome, considerate, strong, yet vulnerable enough to make
me want to take care of him.
I should have
remembered the old phrase about something that looks too good to be
true, but I’d been too busy enjoying the gift fate had dropped in
my lap. What followed had proven that the gift had been more of a
curse, and the normal life only a mirage. All those rosy dreams had
come crashing down around my head, leaving scars that hadn’t even
scabbed over, much less healed. I realized with a jolt that the
brownie incident had been only a few weeks ago. That seemed
impossible; it had to have been at least a decade.
Pritkin was shaking
me, but I barely noticed. I opened my eyes, but it was Jack’s pale
face and crazed expression I saw. The Consul’s favorite torturer
loved his work, and he was very, very good at it. He’d probably had
plenty of firsthand instruction from Augusta. I’d seen him in
action on one very memorable occasion, and no way could I leave
Tomas in his hands. No matter what he’d done; no matter how furious
I was with him. There was no freaking way.
It looked like I got
to be the knight on the white horse after all. Only never in my
wildest dreams had I planned on the odds being quite this bad.
There was such a thing as a heroic challenge and then there was
suicide, and I had no doubt into which category this fit. If Tomas’
death was being made into a public show, most of MAGIC would be
there: vamps, mages, weres, maybe even a few Fey. And somehow we
not only had to get past them and snatch him from under the
Consul’s nose; we also had to battle our way to the portal
afterward. It was worse than a nightmare. It was
insane.
“We have a problem,”
I told Pritkin, choking back an absurd urge to giggle at the
understatement.
His eyes narrowed to
pale slits. “What problem?” Since he forced the words past clenched
teeth, it looked like he’d already figured out that he was going to
hate this. That was good; it saved time.
“Billy says the halls
are almost empty because every-one’s in the vampire area. They’re
executing someone tonight, and it’s drawn quite a
crowd.”
“Executing who?”
Pritkin’s icy green eyes stared into mine and I smiled weakly,
remembering the last time he and Tomas met. To say that they
weren’t pals was missing the mark a bit. People don’t generally try
to behead their friends.
“Um, well, actually .
. .” I sighed. “It’s Tomas.”
I couldn’t keep
myself from wincing slightly, but Pritkin barely reacted, other
than to look slightly relieved. “Good. Then this should be simpler
than I’d anticipated.” He noticed my expression and his frown
returned. “Why does this constitute a problem?”
I swallowed. I’d have
preferred a little more time to lead up to it, like a year or two,
but I couldn’t afford to stall. Every second that passed was
dangerous for Tomas. Jack liked to play with his victims before
finishing them off, and no one would be happy with a short show.
But it had been dark for well over an hour. Jack could do a lot of
damage in that time.
I looked at Pritkin
and worked up a smile. It didn’t seem to help, and I gave it up.
“Because we, uh, sort of have to rescue him.”