“It’s something that was taught to me by a member of a Serbian Romany tribe. They are traditionally made from small meteorites or, alternately, lightning-struck stones, and are highly charged with power that is used for divination purposes. Anyone can make a tongue stone, but since it’s made by burying it and urinating on it”—I gave Jim a sharp look as its ears perked up—“I’ll use the magical equivalent.”
“Mage pee? Ew,” Jim said, snuffling my hand as I passed my hand over the stone, drawing a pattern in the air.
“I’ve never actually seen a mage work,” Aisling whispered to May. “I thought they did spoken spells, not wards.”
“There are elements of both in mage work,” I said, trying to find the place in my mind from which the magic flowed. I knew if I could just find it, I’d be able to cast the spell, but it seemed to be obscured by Baltic’s dragon fire. I’d just have to use that instead.
“From the farthest star, to the deepest earth, stone borne of lightning, to me you will speak.” I held the stone over my head, drawing on the fire to imbue the stone with the power of divination. “Lightning-borne, wrought in fire, plunged in water, buried in earth. The elements combine in thee; reveal your true nature now!”
There was an instantaneous flash of blue-white light, thankfully silent. I lowered my hand, aware almost immediately that something had gone wrong.
“Er . . .” Aisling pursed her lips.
“That doesn’t look right,” May agreed.
I stared in surprise at the small brown and white rabbit that sat equally astonished on the palm of my hand. “Well, crap.”
“A bunny!” Cyrene said happily, taking it from me.
Jim shouldered me aside to get to her. “You mean dinner! Yum.”
“You even think about it and you’re going to the Akasha,” Aisling warned.
“It’s not real,” Jim objected. “It’s really a rock. Right, Soldy?”
I went over the spell again, trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. “No, it was all correct. That should have done it,” I said, shaking my head. “The tongue stone spell isn’t anything at all like a polymorph spell. It should have worked. Why aren’t you a stone?” I asked the rabbit.
It twitched its nose at me, then leaped from Cyrene’s arms to scurry off into the night.
“You guys are no fun at all,” Jim grumbled, watching it leave with much sadness.
“I think it’s probably safe to say that your magic is still affected,” May said, hesitating before she continued. “Perhaps we should do this another time, when it’s been restored?”
“I don’t know when I’m going to have another opportunity,” Aisling said. “Drake doesn’t like leaving the babies for long, and with all due respect to Gabriel, he won’t entertain the subject of letting Thala go. I’m afraid that for Jim and me at least, it’s going to have to be tonight.”
“It’ll be all right,” I said after some thought. “I think the problem is that I had to use Baltic’s fire, and not my happy place. That no doubt caused the spell to go a bit wonky.”
“Your happy place? Is that anything like a door in your head that you open to see things differently?” Aisling asked.
“Not really. It’s the place in my mind where my magic comes from. It’s calm there, and filled with light, and I use that light to make things happen. The problem is that I haven’t been able to find it since I came out of that last fugue, but I’m sure that’s because of everything that’s happened. Dr. Kostich used to tell us apprentices that we might occasionally lose track of our happy place, but we never lost it for long.”
“I don’t know about anyone else, but I would give good money to see Dr. Kostich say the words ‘find your happy place’ to someone,” Jim said.
May laughed. “Me, too.”
“You’re sure your magic is up to this?” Aisling asked me. “If not, we can sacrifice Jim or something in order to get the same effect.”
“Hey! Ixnay on the acrificesay!”
“It’ll be fine,” I reassured her, not feeling quite as confident. A lot was riding on my ability to break down the various protective spells that were no doubt covering all entrances to the house.
“Right.” She consulted her watch. “We’re almost at the zero hour. Everyone ready?”
There was a murmur of assent.
“I hope I get to use my Taser,” Cyrene whispered to me as we followed May, who as the official shadow walker, took the lead to watch for any stray guards we hadn’t pinpointed earlier. “I’ve been dying to try it out, but Kostya is just completely unreasonable and won’t let me use it on one of his people.”
I slid her a quick look, but said nothing other than that if everything went as we planned, we wouldn’t need the Taser.
May waved us forward. We skulked along the edges of the eerie hedges, my unease not at all lessened by proximity with the hulking black shapes, but the thought of Cyrene at my back with a primed Taser gave me enough peace of mind to get past them to the side of the huge stone house. At the far corner of the house, the shadow of a man could be seen, no doubt one of the guards waiting to be relieved.
“This is interesting,” Aisling said softly as she paused next to a window.
“What is?” I asked.
“That’s a bane.” She pointed at the window, sketching out a shape. “I assumed Drake wouldn’t use them since the dragons need to get in and out of the house daily. But if he ordered up banes on all the entrances . . .”
“We’re up excrement creek without a flotation device, not to mention a paddle,” Jim finished. “You aren’t thinking of using me for that bane, are you, Ash? Sweetie? Honey? Baby? You wouldn’t do that, would you? ’Cause I just got my coat looking the way I like, and if you go and make me break that bane, it’ll destroy my fabulous form, and—”
“And you won’t stop bitching about that for months. Yes, we know,” Aisling interrupted, patting the demon dog on its head. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to break the bane. Those are three-demon jobbies, and we just don’t have the time. Whoops. Incoming!”
We ran for the creepy hedge as the staticky sound of a walkie-talkie moved toward the dragon at the corner of the house.
“We should have about three minutes while they chitchat,” Aisling whispered.
“This way.” May melted into the darkness, with us following in a line. We went around the side to the back of the house, thick with shadows since the moon was behind clouds.
“No bane on this one,” Aisling said softly. “This is it, ladies.”
May and Cyrene held penlights as Aisling, muttering to herself, rolled up her sleeves and wrestled with the ward that had been drawn on the window to keep people from using it. After some words I felt were best ignored, she finally stood back, panting. “OK. Your turn, Ysolde. I can’t do anything with the malediction, so it’s all yours.”
“What’s a malediction?” Cyrene asked her twin as I reached out with both hands to touch the powerful spell woven into the surface of the window.
“It’s like a bane, but uses dark magic as its source of power,” May answered.
“But Ysolde doesn’t have dark powers, does she? Why can she break it?”
“I can’t,” I said, trying to calm my mind and focus my attention on the feel of the malediction. “But arcane magic has much power against dark magic, and it can be used to break down dark spells. I think I have it, but just for safety’s sake, everyone should probably stand back.”
“Two minutes, thirty seconds,” May said, glancing at her watch.
All three women moved backward into the deep shadows, leaving Jim standing next to me.
I glanced down at it.
“Never seen a malediction broken,” it answered my unasked question. “Besides, it’s not like you can turn me into a rabbit. I’m a demon. We don’t polymorph easily.”
It had a point. I closed my eyes, the feel of the malediction making my fingertips numb as I searched for the spot in my mind that woul
d let me draw power from everything around me.
It wasn’t there.
“One minute, forty seconds,” May’s voice reached me from the blackness. “You should probably hurry, Ysolde.”
I shook out my hands, refocusing my attention. I could do this. I tried to hold a picture in my mind of the arcane magic, glowing bluish white, of the sensation of joy that manipulating it gave me. I tried to remember what it felt like to cast a spell and watch it succeed, but none of that helped me find the place in my mind that I so desperately sought.
“Dammit.”
“One minute.”
“Problems, Soldy?” Jim asked, nudging my hands.
“No.” I bit my lip as I hesitated, but the feeling of the dragons around me decided me. “Here we go.”
I placed my fingers back on the malediction, pulling hard on Baltic’s fire, which always seemed to slumber within me. It roared to life, filling me with its power, racing down my veins until it sparked along my skin. I held the malediction for a second, then unleashed the full force of my magic upon it.
Golden light flashed before me, then reflected off the window and bounced away, dazzling my eyes in the process.
“Um . . . Ysolde?” Aisling’s voice sounded strained as I blinked rapidly, trying to clear the stars from my vision. “I think we have a problem.”
“What? Not another rabbit?” I squinted at the window, expecting to see it changed into a furry little rodent.
“Gloriosky!” Cyrene gasped. “Is that . . . is that . . .”
“Yes, it’s me,” Jim said, its voice filled with resignation.
I spun around and felt my jaw sag as I beheld a brawny dark-haired, dark-eyed man. A naked brawny man. “Jim?”
The man put his hands on his hips, his lips twisting sourly. “I can’t tell you how much I hate human form!”
Chapter Six
“I’ve never been so mortified in all my life, and that includes the first time I was kicked out of the Court of Divine Blood for trying to get busy with the Sovereign’s favorite collie, and that little misunderstanding with a male boggart who thought I was into bondage. Change me back!”
Aisling whapped the demon on its butt as May and I peered from the darkened room we’d climbed into, through the slightly opened door, to a lit hallway. “Hush, Jim! We’ll deal with your situation once we have Thala out of here.”
“Order me to change again! Maybe the first time didn’t take because you weren’t bossy enough, not that I believed I’d ever have a reason to say that, but still, Abaddon might have frozen over or something equally unbelievable.”
“I think you look quite handsome, Jim,” Cyrene told him. “And you have a really nice butt.”
“Man, I just knew this was going to happen! Last time I got forced into human form, there were chicks all over me,” Jim grumbled as it adjusted the sweater I’d given it, and Aisling’s jacket, both of which it had tied around its waist as sort of a makeshift loincloth. “How am I going to suck Cecile’s ears when I’m in this form, huh? Huh?”
“Jim, I know you’re upset—” Aisling started to say, but fell silent at a gesture from May, who hurriedly closed the door, counting under her breath.
“Guards?” Cyrene asked almost inaudibly.
“Two of them,” May answered, her ear pressed to the door. “You’re sure Drake said Thala was on the third floor?”
“Positive,” Aisling answered, jerking when a sudden buzzing started about her person. “Sorry! I thought I turned my phone off. Thank god I left it on vibrate. . . . Oh, no. It’s Drake. I’m going to have to take this, ladies. Jim, go with them and be helpful. Yes, that’s an order. Drake? Hi. What’s up?” Aisling moved off to stand near the window.
“Let’s go,” May said after peeking through the door. “We have less than a minute before the shift change is over.”
We left Aisling speaking softly to her dragon and hurried up thickly carpeted stairs until we reached the third floor. We hovered uncomfortably on the landing while May slipped into the shadow world to reconnoiter, returning almost immediately to urge us forward. “We’re out of time. We’ve got to make this quick.”
“I’m setting my Taser to stun,” Cyrene said, fussing with her gadget as she followed behind us. We hustled down a vacant hallway, stopping in front of a door that bore obvious wards.
“We need Aisling,” May said, eyeing them. “Unless you can do something with them, Ysolde?”
I glanced at Jim, who glared back at me, its arms crossed over its bare chest. “Er . . . I think that might not be as helpful as we’d all hope. I can go back and get . . . Never mind, here she comes.”
Aisling all but ran down the hallway to us, her face pale. “Did you find her?”
“She’s here, but there are wards, and Ysolde is understandably hesitant to try to undo them,” May answered. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything. We’ve got to get her out of here, right now. Drake found out I was gone, and it was a short hop from that to what we’re doing. He had his jet turn around while they were over the Channel. He’s furious, and no doubt calling up all the dragons in the area to rout us out and safeguard Thala.” While she spoke, she worked on the wards, finally giving up to simply force her arm through them to open the door. In the dimly lit room sat a woman in an armchair, holding a book and looking up as Aisling, grunting and swearing, pushed herself through the wards into the room.
“Hi. You’re Thala, right? I’m Aisling Grey. We’re here to get you out, but we need to be quick because Drake knows what’s going down.”
The woman, of medium height with coppery brown hair, stood up slowly, confusion fading from her face at Drake’s name. “Did Baltic send you?” she asked.
“Er . . . not really. I’m afraid we don’t have time for you to collect your things. I’m also afraid I’m going to have to shove you through the wards, and it may pinch a little. I wish I could make this easier for you, but needs must and all that.”
“Understatement of the year,” Jim said with yet another pointed look at me.
“I said I was sorry,” I told it quietly. “I don’t know what happened to change you, but I’m really, really sorry, all right?”
While I was apologizing, Aisling pushed Thala through the wards, the latter’s face distorting wildly as the ward fought to keep her from passing. But Aisling isn’t a Guardian savant for nothing, and after only a few painful moments, she and Thala emerged from the grip of the ward, both of them panting as they collected themselves.
“Thank—” As Thala turned to thank Aisling, her gaze fell on me. Her eyes widened in shock for a few seconds, before filling with a fury unlike anything I’d ever seen. “Ysolde!” she hissed.
I took a step back at such blatant hostility. “Hello. I’m afraid I don’t remember if we’ve met before.”
“You live? How? You were beheaded! How did you survive that?” She grabbed my arm in a painful grip, shaking it as she spoke.
I jerked my arm back, rubbing the bruises she left. “I didn’t. I was resurrected.”
Her anger seemed to grow. “Who resurrected you!” she almost screamed.
Immediately both Aisling and May hushed her, glancing nervously down the hallway.
“This can wait. We have to get out of here. Now,” May said authoritatively. “We’ll go out the way we came.”
“I’m not going anywhere with her,” Thala said, her face suffused with color. I thought for a moment she was going to spit at me.
“She’s the one who arranged for your release,” Aisling pointed out.
“Why are you so angry with me? Did we know each other?” I asked, confused and hurt by her reaction to me. “Is it something to do with Baltic?”
“We really don’t have time for this,” May said, her head cocked to catch noises from the stairwell. “I hear more voices than I should. We need to move now.”
“This way,” Aisling said, pointing toward the hall behind Thala.
She crossed her arms
and sent me a look that said in no uncertain terms that she’d have liked to see me beheaded again. “No. I will not leave with her.”
“I don’t understand why—” I started to say when Cyrene, with a roll of her eyes, reached out and shoved her Taser on the back of Thala’s neck, causing the woman to jerk a few times before dropping to the ground, her eyes rolled back in her head.
“I love this thing,” Cyrene commented with great satisfaction as she examined the results of her handiwork. “I’m going to carry it with me everywhere!”
“Thanks, Cy,” May said, hurrying back to us. “Let’s get her out of here.”
“Why is she so pissed at me?” I asked, moving to her legs. “What did I do to her?”
“No clue, but we don’t have time to work it out now.” Aisling started to help me with her legs, then stood up. “It would take too long for us to carry her that way. Jim, so long as you’re in human form, you can carry her.”
“Me!” Jim squawked. “I’m a Newfie, not a pack mule!”
“You’re also stronger than any of us, and we’ll move faster if you sling Thala over your shoulder and carry her. Now get cracking! We have to get out of here before Drake lands at the nearest airport.”
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—nothing good ever comes of human form,” Jim complained as it bent over to pick up the unconscious woman.
“Goddess!” Cyrene squeaked, flinching and covering her eyes.
May shuddered and slipped into the shadow world.
I spun around so that my back was to the gruesome sight. “Aisling, much as I appreciate you helping, next time, can you make sure Jim is wearing at least a pair of underpants before it does that?”
“Sorry,” she said, grimacing in sympathy.
“Hey! Not havin’ fun here, either!” Jim grunted as it stood up, Thala flopping on its shoulder. “I think I just ruptured a spleen or two.”
“I’ll see how many of them there are,” May said, her voice muffled and distant from the shadow world.
“Let’s just hope that not too many of them have had time to arrive,” Aisling said as we moved down the hallway.