by Karen Chance
I didn’t know how she could tell what section was what, as I didn’t see any dividers. But she didn’t seem to have a problem, pulling out a dainty white glove and putting it on, before flipping quickly through the pages. And then continuing to flip through them. And then continuing . . .
“Is there a problem?” I finally asked.
She frowned. “I apologize, Lady. It should be right here.” She flipped back to the front, to where there was a hand lettered contents page. “Number one-ninety-one, as I thought.”
I waited while she flipped back again, a knot of unease forming in my stomach. Stop it, I told myself. You’re just being paranoid.
Which was true, as it was basically my default these days, but it didn’t mean that I was wrong.Definitely didn’t, I thought, a moment later, when she flipped over one-eighty-eight, one-eight-nine, and one-ninety. And then—
“I don’t understand,” Emma said, staring at the blank page in front of her, where a very familiar energy was playing over the now missing words. “I don’t understand at all.”
I do, I thought, and shifted.
~~~
The line at the coffee shop was longer today, and the crowd in the big open square was thicker. It looked like more war mages had arrived to bulk up the army before the imminent invasion. A lot more.
Which made sense considering that the invasion was of Faerie.
It wasn’t anybody’s idea of a good time, but we didn’t have a choice. The supernatural world was at war, and our enemies had taken refuge in the lands of the fey. To be more precise, they were bunking with the Svarestri, who normally detested humans, but who were making an exception in this case. Because their coalition was trying to bring back the old gods the Svarestri worshipped, and which they were convinced were going to hand them the world—maybe even two of them.
Anyway, the spearpoint of the invasion was the vamp army, because Earth magic didn’t work too well in Faerie, but vampire bodies functioned the same anywhere. Especially demon possessed vampire bodies, which were like vamps on steroids. But the Circle had insisted on sending in an army of its own as well, I wasn’t sure why.
Maybe they didn’t trust the vamps.
That would be about par for the course, I thought cynically.
And it looked like other magical societies agreed with them, because it wasn’t just Circle members in the square today. There were a group of mages I didn’t recognize in colorful robes with huge hyenas at their sides. And golden tats on their ebony skin that were almost mesmerizing, since they changed patterns constantly.
They were lounging out front of a café, their pets at their sides, drawing a lot of interested glances. Especially when one of the hyenas rose to its feet, with the wide, gold and jeweled collar it wore releasing a flood of silken material. And then the ‘it’ became a ‘she’, changing in an instant from a sleek beast into a beautiful woman, who sat at the table with the other mages like nothing unusual had happened.
The line moved forward, and I shuffled a few feet ahead, looking away from the square because I needed to think, and that was hard enough without distractions. I’d just spent the last two hours going backward in time, trying to get ahead of the spell on that book. And failing every time, because no matter how far back I went, it stayed the same: blank.
And it always would.
I knew that, because I recognized the spell on it. It was either the same or very similar to one that the demon high council had recently used on Pritkin. He and the demon lords had since made up—sort of—but at one time they’d viewed him as a major threat. Enough of one to knock his soul backward in time, sending it speeding toward the moment of his birth. If it had completed its journey before I’d reached him, it would have literally erased him from existence.
Just like someone had done to page one-ninety-one.
Because that spell had completed, destroying its focus in every time period, leaving literally nothing behind. Someone had really wanted Nodo D’Amore erased from history. Enough to invade the library to place the spell, and then to burn it to down to hide what they’d done? Because that was kind of how it looked.
What I couldn’t figure out was why.
Yeah, most copies of Lover’s Knot had been destroyed centuries ago, since it had some unfortunate side effects. The big one being that it bound two people together on a metaphysical level, to the point that, magically speaking, they were one person. Meaning that, if one died, they both did.
It was one reason I was so pissed at Mircea about that little detour into Faerie. He hadn’t just been risking his own life. He’d been risking mine.
But, normally, that wasn’t how it worked; in fact, it was the opposite problem that had relegated Lover’s Knot to the garbage pile of history.
The spell had been used in some of the old vampire wars, to give master vamps the power of a mage, making them even more deadly than they already were. But the opposite side figured that out and started targeting the magic users that the vamps were linked to, which were much easier kills. After one too many masters was lost when his mage lover died, the spell was discontinued and the copies of it destroyed.
Except for that one, apparently.
Some loud whoops broke out behind me, making me flinch and look around. I spied a group of new recruits, none of whom looked to be over sixteen, taking pot shots at the wall of rotating heads. Their spells dispersed the magic momentarily, making the most wanted list into their own personal shooting gallery.
But their fun didn’t last. A blue light started flashing from no discernable source, splashing the bricks and the boys’ suddenly worried faces. And then a couple of pissed-off looking war mages showed up to crack some skulls.
That ended the game, but one of the boys had been holding onto a final spell and accidentally released it, earning him a cuff around the ears and exploding Jonathan’s head. And causing me to remember that brief, weird vision I’d had of him, as seen through a cat’s eyes. What had he been doing in that library?
From what I understood, Jonathan was pretty high up in the Black Circle, the evil counterpart to the Silver who were allied with our enemies in the war. He was like a general or something, their specialist on weird, old and forgotten spells, and a mastermind of creative attacks in the war. So, what had he been doing on a raid? Didn’t they usually use flunkies for that?
Yet he had been there. Maybe because the spell used on Pritkin wasn’t one that just anybody could lay. The entity that had hexed him was head of the Demon High Council himself, a hugely powerful being known as Adra. I wasn’t even sure that a regular mage could cast it, but if anyone could, it was Jonathan.
You learned a lot in something like nine hundred years.
I was nearing the counter with all the gorgeous pastries, but today, I couldn’t focus on them. Because none of this made sense. It looked like a leader in the opposition had invaded the Circle’s HQ in order to utterly destroy all records of a dangerous spell, then torched the library to hide his interest in it. And maybe even killed a perfectly innocent librarian because she was in charge of that section, and might have read it?
Goddamnit, I thought, suddenly furious. Had Emma died for that? And why? It wasn’t like there weren’t more ways for someone to get that spell!
Mircea had stumbled across it because a couturier had found it in an old grimoire and didn’t realize what he had. There were probably other copies littered around, too, that had been missed in the purge. Not to mention that Pritkin had known it off the top of his head, because he collected old spells.
There were other mages who did the same thing, and who might also have copies squirreled away. They might not cast it, considering how much trouble it could get them in, but they likely knew it. Hell, there might even be other vamps who did, since those long-ago wars weren’t so long ago for them.
So what had been the freaking point?
I didn’t know. I just knew that a good woman was dead and a library was toast all for a spell I was cur
rently wearing.
Motherfucker.
Chapter Ten
I shifted to Pritkin’s room with my haul, not wanting to brave the gruesome corridor again. And found myself in a hole. Literally.
The recent attack had collapsed some of the main housing areas of HQ, and until they were repaired, everyone was having to make do. That meant rows of cots in the gyms, library and even cafeterias at night, which were doubling as makeshift dorms for new recruits. Even senior staff were having to rough it, which was why Pritkin’s current digs looked like a hobbit hole.
One of the low-rent variety, I thought, dropping my bag and looking for a place to put down the tray I’d borrowed from the café.
I’d bought a sixteen-ounce espresso double shot for Pritkin, whose body metabolized caffeine almost instantly, requiring him to consume mass quantities to even feel it, and a regular cup of joe for me. I’d also gone a little crazy on the display case, having ended up with a couple deli meat sandwiches, a salad, a large soup, a quarter pizza, two eclairs and a cream puff of epic proportions. That last one was mine, a reward for a less-than-fun morning, or it would be if I could find anywhere to set it down!
There weren’t a lot of options. The bed was, of course, unmade, as Pritkin was the least tidy military type I’d ever seen, I guessed because he came to it late. The rough, rounded, stone-and-dirt walls boasted no shelves, probably because they weren’t strong enough to hold anything, and even the door had only a single hook on the back, where a war mage coat was currently residing.
It wasn’t Pritkin’s. His was across the room, flung over a chair, since he didn’t need it inside the formidable wards of HQ. It raised a sleeve in a faint wave at me, which was probably just the layers and layers of spells that had been put on it through the years responding to a presence in the room. But I grinned at it anyway. I liked to think that it was happy to see me.
The other coat must be Caleb’s, I decided. He’d been harping for weeks about the new, properly spelled piece of outerwear that Pritkin owed him, as a replacement for one we’d accidentally destroyed. It looked like he was finally going to get his wish.
Other than that, there was a chest, which I knew contained weapons, and a makeshift potion bench made out of an old dresser, which contained more of the same, only in liquid form. I eyed it worriedly. I didn’t want anything exploding on my cream puff.
The chair it was, then.
“Sorry,” I told the friendly coat. “Gonna have to move you.”
The tray went down onto the messy bed for a moment and I picked up the coat. And turned toward the door, intending to see if two magical items could cohabit for long enough for me to properly arrange the room. I never found out.
I did, however, find out what happens when a spelled blade meets a spelled coat: namely nothing. Except to shock the shit out of the woman holding the coat, because she hadn’t expected a flying sword to suddenly slash at her out of nowhere. Or to have it do it again!
But the coat caught it the second time, too, although I was gonna have another bruise, because the blade had just slammed into the arm that I’d raised to protect my head. But it hadn’t torn through the leather, and I didn’t think it had broken anything. The coat had absorbed the force of the momentum in a way that normal garments just didn’t.
Not that that was going to help me much, because the damned sword was still coming!
Until the coat leapt out of my arms and threw itself on the magical levitating blade, which was a new one for me. But then Pritkin had some interesting spells. And a coat that was smarter than I was, because that wasn’t just a blade.
I blinked, having assumed that I’d done something to trigger one of his weapons, because his arsenal did levitate. All war mages’ did, allowing one guy to perform the job of a platoon, with a bevy of knives, guns and potion bombs all attacking at the same time that he did. But that’s not what this was.
Shit, I thought, as the coat determinedly wrapped itself around the figure of a man.
Or, at least, it tried. But war mage coats only hit about mid-calf, meaning that the coat wasn’t big enough to fully engulf my attacker, who appeared to be tall. Like really tall. Like NBA star or fey warrior tall, and I knew which one was more likely to be attacking me.
Shit!
And then whoever it was tore through the coat, because I guessed the charms weren’t as strong from the inside, the blade hacking it to pieces in less time than it takes to say. But the ruined garment had bought me a few seconds, and had also given me a target. And these days, that was enough.
I sent a time spell shooting ahead of me, which should have aged my attacker into powder, or at least destroyed his invisibility spell. But I must have missed—the guy, at least. His blade, on the other hand, shattered to pieces when he lunged for me again and hit the chair instead, because I’d just added hundreds of years to its age. And had shifted out of the way immediately thereafter, over by Pritkin’s potion table.
I didn’t know what all of the bottles I started throwing at my attacker contained, but Pritkin didn’t make too many benign concoctions. But the fey must have popped out some sort of shield, because nothing got through. What the potions did, do, however, was to splatter all over said shield, giving me an exact location.
And allowing me to hit him with two spells at once: a slowdown and a hamster wheel.
The former was a much easier form of a time stoppage, one that didn’t drain all my strength while reducing even fey speed to a fraction of the norm. The latter I was especially proud of, having just mastered it after being beaten on for a week by my taskmaster of a trainer. It essentially caused a miniature time loop, trapping the subject in place—or to be more accurate, in time. Forcing him to relive a short loop over and over, until the spell gave out or I released him.
Or until he broke free, I thought, because the bastard tore out of it five seconds later, which is all a fuck ton of magic had bought me!
Damn it, I knew I should have thrown a full-on time stoppage! But that kind of thing was debilitating. Meaning that, if it didn’t work—and the fey were resistant to the Pythian power, as this one had just demonstrated—I’d be a sitting duck. Which I basically was now, anyway, because he’d dropped his potion-splashed shields and now I couldn’t see him again!
But I could see the door being wrenched open, and slamming into the wall as someone tore out of the room. For a second, I was grateful, if confused. Until I remembered: this wasn’t my room.
Son of a bitch!
I ran into the corridor, frantically looking both ways. But there was nothing to see—no shit, Cassie! Except for a small, ferret-faced guy in a lab coat hurrying this way, his nose buried in a clip board.
I grabbed him and shook him. “Where is training bay one?”
That was where Pritkin was supposed to be until his class ended. And unless I was a lot luckier than usual, that was where the would-be assassin was headed. But Lab Coat didn’t seem to understand the question.
“W-what?” He looked at me out of startled brown eyes.
“Training bay one! Where is it?”
“Er, down that way.” He pointed to the left, and I took off, only to turn back around almost at once. Because a fey was a hell of a lot faster than I was. And I couldn’t do a spatial shift somewhere I’d never been! “Phone?”
“What?”
“Phone! Phone! Do you have a—”
A phone was thrust in my face. I started down the corridor with it, frantically punching in Pritkin’s number. Only to find out that it didn’t work!
“It doesn’t work,” the small man said, keeping pace with me, probably because I was stealing his phone. “The main wards are online.”
Crap! I’d forgotten: wards, at least the big boys, didn’t play well with electronics, not to mention that we were underground. “I need to get in touch with Mage Pritkin,” I told the man. “There’s an assassin in here!”
“Oh, that’s impossible,” he assured me. “Our wards ar
e the best that—”
I slammed him up against the wall. “There’s an assassin! He’s after Mage Pritkin! Tell me how to stop him, or I swear to God—”
I stopped, but not because the startled-looking man had said anything useful—or anything at all. But because an alarm had begun blaring nearby, loud enough to hurt. And to clench my heart, because my God, he couldn’t have reached Pritkin that fast—could he?
“What is that?” I demanded, as another bright blue light started splashing the rough walls of the corridor like a police flasher.
“T-the wards, like I said,” the little man stuttered. “They’re quite sensitive and react p-poorly to violence.”
“News to me! Something almost gutted me in Mage Pritkin’s rooms!”
“Well, it doesn’t work in quarters,” he said, looking shocked. “That would be an invasion of privacy.”
I took a breath, and thought about sending him, summer clothes and all, to the Artic. I thought hard. “What do they do outside of quarters?” I gritted out.
“Er, that,” he said, pointing vaguely at the light. “If the disturbance is bad enough, they seal off access.”
“Access to what?”
“Everything. They shut the place down.”
I stared at him for a second. And then I threw him at the other wall. “Fight me!”
“What?”
“Stop talking and fight me!” I screamed, but he wouldn’t. He just stood there, staring, until I ran back into Pritkin’s room and grabbed an armful of weapons off the bench. And then came back out to find him in the same place, as if he’d been frozen there, only I hadn’t.
“Fight me!” I yelled, and threw a potion bomb.
I didn’t hit him; I wasn’t even aiming at him. But as soon as the bomb exploded against the ground, sending a tongue of green flame licking the ceiling, he screamed bloody murder and took off like a scared rabbit. And was almost as fast as one.
I ran after him, throwing things at the walls and ceiling and floor. Sometimes they hit across the corridor from him, sometimes just ahead, sending the panicked man ping ponging between them, screeching all the while. And, just as he’d said, the wards didn’t like that.