“Sarah,” I said. “It will only be for a moment. Only until David can help us.”
Neko had already understood my intention. He was practically dancing inside the cage, holding out his hands, welcoming Sarah and me. Still, the sphinx hesitated on the threshold.
We heard the commotion upstairs at the same time—the mansion’s beautiful oaken door being torn off its hinges.
“Now!” I shouted, pushing Sarah toward Neko and tumbling after her. I slammed the cage door behind me, working its massive silver padlock with fingers that suddenly felt like sausages. I dropped the key onto the floor of the cage, but Sarah pounced on it and shoved it deep in a pocket.
The basement door was filled with shadow, and then four bodies catapulted down the stairs. I leaped back, stumbling until I felt a solid wall behind me. Neko was on my left, his shoulders hunched, his eyes shooting darts. Sarah was on my right.
And then there was one of those flashes of darkness, a momentary, magical glitch when the world ceased to exist. Everything surged back into being, though, louder than before, brighter than before. And David stood before me.
“What the devil —” he started to ask.
I’d first heard the curse years before, when David questioned my first spell, the one that had awakened Neko. Under other circumstances, I might have laughed, might have told him he was channeling Mr. Rochester, play-acting at Mr. Darcy.
This was no time for levity, though. No time for amusing literary references. “We came for books,” I said. “But we awakened a welcoming party.”
David had already whirled to face the front of the cage. His feet were spread, hip-width apart. His arms hung easily at his sides; his fingers clenched and unclenched.
I realized that he had tugged on jeans in the foggy moments after he received my summons, and he’d shoved his arms into the sleeves of a flannel shirt. A dusting of pine chips clung to the fabric. David had spent at least part of his day cutting wood—a sure sign that he was frustrated, most likely with me.
No time to resolve that now.
As David swore softly, a quartet of vampires snaked in front of the cage. Three of them were male—broad-chested, long-limbed. Their fangs were fully extended, and they tossed their heads, snarling in frustration at the silver barrier that kept them from their prey.
The fourth vampire, though, was different. She was exquisitely dressed in a hunter green suit, the type of outfit that practically required her to be accessorized with three-inch pumps and a briefcase. Her hair was ice blond, and I figured she had to have light blue eyes to complete the picture. She was too far away, though, for me to be sure.
“Clarice!” Sarah said beside me. Paradoxically, the actual presence of the vampires seemed to have steadied her, to have given her more confidence.
David edged to the side so that he could watch our attackers at the same time that he spoke to us. He drew a deep breath, clearly ready to issue orders, to take charge.
Something about Sarah’s stance, though, made me raise a hand to still my warder. The sphinx had brought us here for a reason—to recover the books, yes, but also to work out something from her past. I had watched her steel herself to enter this house, to face her terror of the basement. If there was any way that she could save us on her own, that she could be responsible for our escape… Even as my heart raced, I longed for something that would help Sarah to exorcise her personal demons.
And my stilling David seemed to help. Sarah stood straighter and pointed a finger at the composed woman vampire. “Clarice Martin is Maurice Richardson’s attorney,” she announced.
“Wonderful,” I lied.
I could picture it now—a good lawyer could get us charged with all sorts of crimes. Breaking and entering. Grand larceny. Probably a lot of vampire-based things that I couldn’t even begin to name. I was going to spend months involved in a trial, in a court system that I hadn’t even heard of a week before. I was going to be found guilty, and sent off to prison, to spend my days surrounded by supernatural criminals. I was never going to see Melissa again, or my grandmother, or my mother, or anyone else who was important to me.
Or maybe not. Maybe I’d just be drained by one of the vampires that was slavering in front of the cage.
Clarice Martin seemed intent on making that one specific threat a reality. She made a perfect turn on her professional heels and crossed to one of the workbenches. For a heartbeat, I thought that she was going to pick up one of the books, that she was going to destroy part of the Old Library. I was wrong, though. She had something far more dangerous in mind.
She studied the pegboard above the bench, taking her time to select a hacksaw. Then, she dug around on the disorderly surface, shifting a pair of leather-bound books, a trio of scrolls. I couldn’t imagine what she was searching for—until she straightened with a frozen smile.
Gloves. Leather work gloves. Leather work gloves that would protect her hands, as she sawed her way through the silver lock that was keeping the four of us safe.
“Sarah?” I asked in a shaky voice. “Any ideas?”
She shook her head—a tight, silent admission of her inability to act.
“Can you get us any backup? From Mr. Morton? Or the sphinx guy?”
She licked her lips as Clarice crossed to the cage. The vampire gripped the silver lock in her gloved left hand and made a few practice cuts with the saw, carving out the faint beginnings of a channel to hasten her work. “James knows,” Sarah whispered. “He’s on his way, with Chris. But they aren’t warders. They can’t just appear.”
I imagined them speeding through the midnight streets of D.C. We locals had joked for years that it was impossible to get a moving violation in the District—parking tickets were the only thing the police cared about.
I really, really didn’t want to prove that witticism wrong now.
The three vampire goons pressed close behind Clarice, growling like dogs scenting a fresh kill. The hacksaw jumped, and Clarice swore before re-applying the tool.
David stepped forward. “Enough,” he said. “Jane, I’ll take you and Neko first.”
I had relied on his warder’s power of teleportation before, the previous Halloween, when I had thought that vampires were nothing more than a story to scare over-sugared children. I knew what would happen—I would set my fingers on David’s extended palm. He would do … something, and the world would disappear. I would have no body, no mind, no way of using any of my senses. I would simply cease to be. And then, I would be present again, in the safety of my cottage, or David’s home, or some other place that he deemed distant enough from Clarice Martin and her attack squad.
Before I could grip David’s forearm, Clarice issued a tight instruction to her hired muscle. “Back! You can’t get in until I cut the lock. Get the books together. We’ll take them to a safe place when we’re done here.”
“No!” Sarah cried.
The trio of vampires howled as they glided to the workbench. They started to pile the books high, ignoring the delicate bindings. A papyrus scroll fell to the floor, twisting beneath the creatures’ feet.
Sarah cried out at the desecration, taking three full steps toward the center of the room. She might have gone further if Clarice had not looked up from her handiwork, had not doubled the speed of her sawing.
David reached out for me. “Now,” he said, command transparent in his tone.
Sarah glanced at me. “Go,” she said. “But I’m staying. I can’t let them take the collection.”
David grabbed my wrist. “Jane, you can’t help her. You can’t keep all those books safe.”
“We can’t leave her!”
David’s fingers tightened enough to make me gasp. “Jane, now!”
“You can’t make me!” With a vicious twist, I tugged free. Stumbling back, I rubbed at my wrist.
We glared at each other. This wasn’t just about vampires. It wasn’t about the threat of Clarice, with her hacksaw. It wasn’t about the slavering goons who were stac
king more books.
It was about me, and him, and who we were when we were together. It was about my fear of being controlled by him—by anyone. It was about his fear of losing me. It was about my refusal to move into David’s house. It was about my insistence on being a consultant, a freelancer, a woman with no visible means of support, rather than work with him toward a common goal, a common good, the school for witches that had seemed so right when we first came up with the idea.
It was about who we were, and what we were, and whether we could ever be those things together.
I took a shuddering breath. “Please. David. There has to be another way. Something else that we can do.”
He thought about grabbing me and forcing me into the nothingness. I saw his intention, read it in his eyes, in the grim line of his jaw.
But then he yielded. He spread his fingers wide, in acknowledgement of defeat. He took a single step back.
And he said, “You can do it. You have the knowledge and the strength. You only need the will.”
He gestured toward my tiger’s eye bracelet. Even as I followed the path of his fingers, I understood what he meant. I scrambled to take off the stones. I screamed for Neko to pass me his, for Sarah to hand hers over, and I tumbled all of the bracelets onto the limestone floor.
Clarice was bearing down hard with the saw blade. She was more than halfway through the hasp. I knew that vampires were stronger than humans; she’d be able to snap it in less than a minute.
The marauders sensed their imminent victory as well. They abandoned their destruction of the books to gather close by the cage door.
Neko pressed himself into my side. “All right,” he said, as if we were discussing nothing more exciting than using Meyer lemons instead of the usual limes in an extra-large batch of mojitos. “Offer up your mind. Your voice. Your heart.”
I made the appropriate motions, feeling my energy center, my thoughts focus. Neko’s presence beside me was like a vast well of power, a pool that I could draw from at will. I closed my eyes, relying on my familiar and my warder to keep me safe as I recalled the words of one of the simplest spells I had ever worked.
Candle light, candle bright
Wick kindle, bring sight.
As I spoke the rhyme, I pointed to the pile of tiger’s eye. The stones weren’t candles, of course. But the tawny spheres were laden with the power of fire, with the stored force of sunlight. The fine striations called to mind a candle’s wick, each bar a tiny length of fiber that could catch fire, that could carry it upward, outward.
I drew on Neko, channeling his mysterious force, the energy that was designed solely to bolster mine, to complement my working. I poured magic into the tiger’s eye, allowing it to bounce between the spheres, to reflect, to grow.
Fire burst from the stones, so bright that I had to look away. It was more than just fire, though, more than one of the four basic elements. I had fissioned the tiger’s eye, brought it back to its magical building blocks. I had reduced the stones to their astral bases, to simple earth and sun.
And that sunlight flared into the basement, filling the room with the full force of golden noon.
The vampires howled in anguish. I blinked furiously, trying to clear my vision, but a cascade of blue-white spots kept me from seeing clearly. There were bodies on the stone floor, writhing like salted slugs. Their screams echoed off the ceiling, and I stared in horror as their exposed faces and hands grew crimson with sunburn, blistered, charred. Like a chemical reaction, the burning grew faster, smothering all noise. Their bodies were consumed; their clothes sparked to flame.
And then they were gone. Nothing more than plumes of ash, baked into the stone floor.
I licked my lips, suddenly conscious of a raging thirst. My stomach turned as I stared at the vampires’ remains. They had been real, vital creatures a minute before, and now they were reduced to almost nothing. Dust—like the spheres of tiger’s eye that had crumbled into a golden powder.
As if to confirm the rightness of my actions, David folded me into his arms. His embrace drew off my trembling. His steady power flowed into me, and only then did I realize how close I was to collapsing. I felt his lips brush against my hair.
Sarah staggered forward, her face taut with urgency. “Go!” she said. “Before James and Chris get here!”
I roused myself enough to say, “We can’t leave you!”
“I’ll be fine,” she insisted. “But they’ll be furious. I’m not sure I can protect you.”
David took the decision out of my shaking hands. I felt him reach for Neko, and we slipped into nothingness together.
CHAPTER 8
SARAH
I WASTED A few heartbeats, gaping at the empty space where Jane had stood with her warder and her familiar. Even though I had ordered them to leave, even though I needed them gone so that I could concentrate on the inevitable fight to come, I was still astonished that they had disappeared into the proverbial thin air.
I felt no guilt that I had lied to them. I had said that I feared James’s wrath, Chris’s rage. But I would give nearly anything for those two men to arrive.
No, I had said whatever was necessary to clear the basement, because I knew Clarice Martin would return to destroy the books.
Clarice.
While Jane, David, and Neko had been concentrating on the tiger’s eye bracelets, on the nexus of the spell, I had been watching the vampires. I had seen Clarice shy away the instant that Jane began to speak. I had seen the vampire dart up the stairs, using her superhuman speed to get well out of range of the deadly sunlight Jane summoned.
Now, because I knew what to look for, I could make out three distinct plumes of ash on the floor. Three, not four. And I was not surprised to hear creaking floorboards in the kitchen above me, footsteps that moved faster than any human could have traveled.
I drew a deep breath and prepared to face Clarice Martin on my own. At least the humans were removed from the equation. I could never have faced down an enraged vampire if I had innocents to protect in the midst of the battle. That imbalance had been the thing that had struck fear in me after I broke the tripwire. That was why I had been so afraid, worried for Jane, for Neko.
But I should be able to confront Clarice on my own. After all, that was part of my sphinx nature. I had been bred to serve vampires, but also to control them, to restrain their thirst for blood and for revenge.
As adrenaline thrummed through my body, I tried to ignore the fact that I had not mastered my role as sphinx. Chris had barely let me glimpse the powers that could be mine, the secrets of my birthright. That didn’t matter. It couldn’t. My instincts had saved Jane and the others, and now my ingrained nature would just have to save me.
Clarice took her time descending the stairs. She gazed at the stacks of books on the workbench, at the precious materials that were the root of the night’s battle.
While upstairs, she had absorbed her fangs. Her suit was untouched by her earlier frenzy; it still draped with perfect grace. Her hair swayed like a frozen waterfall, flawless. The outsized leather gloves that covered her hands were the only sign that she had tried to kill me minutes before.
I watched her take in the empty cage behind me, along with the ashy smears on the flagstone floor. Her pale eyes kindled as she said, “Feeder bitch.”
“I didn’t bring those vampires here!” My voice was higher than I would have liked.
With grim determination, Clarice collected the saw from the stone floor. “We had to protect what is ours. You were stealing the books from us.”
“From you? They belong to the Eastern Empire!”
She resumed cutting into the lock, spitting out one word for each push with the saw. “The. Empire. Gave. Them. To. Us.”
My coral ring throbbed on my finger. Coral for purification. For truth. Clarice Martin believed that she was telling me the truth. Richardson must have told her that he had acquired all of those resources lawfully. That she needed to protect them while he
was locked in the Eastern Empire’s holding cells.
“Clarice, listen to me. Those books belong in the Old Library. They’re part of the courthouse collection. Richardson borrowed some of them legitimately, but he took far more than he admitted to us. He stole them.”
She looked up from the hasp. I could see the break in the silver where the saw had cut; I thought I might be able to snap it apart with my own weak, mortal wrists. “You’re only saying that because he’s not here to defend himself. You’re the reason he’s locked up.”
“He’s locked up because he tried to kill me!”
In response, Clarice shifted her jaws, snapping her fangs back into place. She might as well have shouted her disdain—for me, for Judge DuBois’s courtroom, for the entire Eastern Empire.
Vampires were allowed to kill humans, she was saying. Death was in their supernatural nature.
But Clarice’s toothy statement was empty defiance. I was no mere human. I was a sphinx, bound to vampires since the ancient days of Egypt. My people had served as priests to the founder of the entire blood-drinking race, to the goddess Sekhmet, the incarnation of war.
Clarice could not drink from me without suffering consequences.
To remind her of my status, I raised my wrist, showing her the hematite bracelet James had given me eight months before. Hematite, to represent the magnetism between my people and the vampires. And I repeated, “He’s locked up because he tried to kill me. And you have nearly committed the same offense tonight. Retract your fangs, Clarice. Return to your sanctum. I’ll take the books to the Old Library, and this entire matter will be forgotten.”
For a moment, I thought I had gotten through to her. I thought she understood, that she recognized how we were both beholden to higher powers.
But then, her gaze shifted to the strewn ash on the floor outside the cage. Her face smoothed to alabaster. “They cannot be forgotten.”
“They hunted prey. The prey won.”
There were rules for this. Tradition. Vampires could not perpetuate grudges against humans who got the better of friends, of relatives. If that sort of vengeance were permitted, no amount of night courts, of secret proceedings, of cinnamon water and Enfolding could ever be enough to keep supernatural creatures hidden from the human world.
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