Reap the Wind (36 page)

“You gave us a place to stay when the kids and I would have been out on the street. You got me a pardon from Marsden, to keep him from locking me up. I think I can forgo the salary for a while,” she said dryly.

“Then you’re on board?”

“On board as what? Chief babysitter? ’Cause I can do that, but—”

“No. I was thinking more like chief . . . coordinator. You can hire the babysitters and the tutors and whatever else we need. You can help me find a place for the court. You can help, well . . . coordinate things.”

I couldn’t be any more specific than that, since I didn’t even know what we needed. I hadn’t ever really thought about a court, not of my own. The one here in London had always been Agnes’ in my head, and somehow, the fact that it was mine now just hadn’t registered. Probably because the idea scared me to death.

But it scared me a little less with Tami around.

She glanced at Rhea. “You okay with that? I wouldn’t be stepping on any toes?”

Rhea shook her head. “No toes. Or . . . or anything else. That actually sounds . . .” She took a deep breath, and I could almost see some of the weight falling off her shoulders. “That sounds wonderful,” she said honestly.

“Well, I guess I could give it a shot,” Tami told me, but distractedly. Like she was already making a mental to-do list.

“And the safe?” I asked, because it looked the same to me, with the pale, almost invisible barrier still glowing faintly in front of the door.

“No.” Tami turned her attention to it. “Doesn’t feel like I’ve drained it at all.”

“Drained it?” Rhea said. “Is that what you’re trying to do?”

I nodded. “Tami’s a magical null. If she’s not actively repressing her abilities, wards come down when she walks in a room.”

“It was how I used to raid the Circle’s damned internment camps,” she told Rhea. “Hard to keep out somebody who can just walk in through the front door.”

“Yet this one
is
keeping you out,” I said, starting to get worried. I’d seen Tami drain bigger wards faster plenty of times.

She sighed. “Yeah, we may have a problem.”

“What sort of problem?”

“You know how a null works, right?” she asked.

I nodded, but Rhea shook her head.

“Our magic is inverted,” Tami told her. “Instead of projecting out, it pulls in. Specifically, it pulls in other magic in an area and destroys it. It’s like we have a big, black hole somewhere inside, just sucking all the magic in. But unlike a black hole, we do have a limit—we do get full.”

Rhea nodded.

I wondered where Tami was going with this.

“So, most of the time, it’s not a problem,” she said, looking balefully at the safe. “For a strong null, the limit is really, really high. A talisman, like the ones they use to power most wards, can usually be drained in a couple of minutes.”

“But you’ve already been at it that long,” I pointed out.

She nodded. “Yeah. And if I’m right, I could stay here all day, till I was full and running over, and it wouldn’t matter. That thing’s not coming down.”

“Why not? It’s just a ward—”

“A ward hooked into the ley line system.”

“What?”

Tami nodded. “And the ley lines aren’t some supernatural battery, like a talisman. They’re more like . . . a direct link to the world’s electrical system. To big rivers of metaphysical energy that just keep coming and coming and coming. I can’t absorb that. No one can.”

I stared at the little safe. “But . . . but if people can hook a ward directly into a ley line, why use talismans
at all
?”

She shrugged. “’Cause the lines don’t run everywhere. Plus it’s expensive. Cutting into a line is dangerous work, and it don’t come cheap. Someone must’ve paid a fortune for all the wards around this place. But if you really, really want to make sure that nothing and nobody gets in, that’s how you do it.”

“Then I can’t age through the wards, either?” I asked, because that had been option number two.

“Sorry.”

And that probably meant Marlowe’s were done the same way. Not to mention whatever snares and traps he’d laid out for unsuspecting burglars, all of which were probably lethal. No wonder the damned acolytes hadn’t found any Tears yet!

Of course, neither had I.

“Damn it! There must be a way!”

“If you have the pass code to the wards,” Tami agreed. “Otherwise, you need a way to bring them down, and then a safecracker to get you in. Or you’re going to be here a very long time.”

I found Rico in the kitchen when we got back, doing the breakfast dishes. He had his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up, showing off muscular forearms. His dark brown hair was disheveled, the neck of his shirt was open, showing a V of taut bronze skin, and a smear of soap suds decorated his cheek. He looked like every woman’s dream, and I caught Rhea staring.

Rico did, too, and dropped her a wink.

Rhea did not appear to know what to do with that. Maybe because the only men at the Pythian Court had been about eighty. And because the initiates did not appear to have learned normal social skills. Like they’d been trained to be stoic and serene, but not how to interact with regular guys.

Or not-so-regular ones.

Rhea finally solved the problem by awkwardly winking back, which caused Rico to burst out laughing.

“I need a favor,” I told him, and nodded at her. The silence spell clicked shut around us.

“My dream come true,” Rico told me, still grinning at an increasingly flustered Rhea.

“I need a safe cracked. Do you know someone who can do it?”

Those liquid eyes slid to me. “What kind of safe?”

And some days, I loved vamps. No question about what was inside; no debates about possible legality. Just
what kind is it?

I pulled my cell phone out of my jeans and showed him a photo. “That kind.”

A request to commit a felony didn’t even rate a blink. “Does it have to be operational after?” he asked, taking the phone from me.

“I don’t care if you rip it out of the damned wall.”

An eyebrow went up. “What about wards?”

I glanced at Rhea. “The wards . . . aren’t going to be a problem,” she said, a little breathlessly.

“Not a problem? Then this is a human’s safe?”

She looked at me.

I sighed and came out with it. “No, but the house it’s in is about to blow up, so the wards will be offline.”

A second eyebrow joined the first. “Sounds intriguing.”

“It will be okay,” Rhea said, as if she was trying to convince herself as much as him. “No one should be in the room at the time—”

“If the house is about to blow up, that would seem prudent,” he said gently.

“—but to be on the safe side—”

“Was that a pun?” he teased.

Rhea looked confused some more.

“Rico,” I said impatiently. “Do you know anyone who can do it?”

“Yes, me.”

I hesitated. “You did get the part about safecracking in Armageddon, right?”

He just looked at me.

Okay. His call. “There is one other thing.”

His look turned politely curious.

I bit my lip, trying to figure out how to phrase this without saying
you’re a weird vampire
.

But he was. He did dishes, which master vampires definitely Did. Not. Do. He liked guns, which a lot of vamps disdained as being unnecessary and too human. And he had given me the impression in the short time I’d known him that he didn’t care much for rules, even vampire sorts of rules.

Which was good, because I was about to ask him to break one—a big one.

“I’d just as soon Mircea didn’t know about this,” I finally said.

Rico frowned.

“You know, not right away,” I added quickly, because of course he’d tell the boss sooner or later. I just preferred it to be later.

A lot later.

Like after I had Pritkin back and had time to be yelled at.

Not that Mircea would yell; it wasn’t his style. But he would certainly make his displeasure known. Which was okay; I could deal with that. What I couldn’t deal with was his trying to stop me, because he was damned sneaky and he might well succeed and I didn’t have time for this!

Rico frowned some more. “We’re not his men,” he told me. “We’re your men. He sent us to help you.”

“And to report on me.”

“He hasn’t asked me to do that.”

“He doesn’t need to. There’s plenty of others—”

“—and I wouldn’t even if he did.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

He leaned one elbow on the counter, going into a graceful slouch. “I am a senior master, Cassie. I do as I like.”

“That’s not how the vamp world works.”

“Isn’t it? I am emancipated. The blood bond no longer holds me.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I like it here.”

“No one likes it here.” The guys called this place Australia. As in, they’d been exiled from the main court in Washington State and sent to a land down under, full of heat and craziness and frequent danger. It wasn’t anyone’s favorite posting.

But Rico didn’t seem to see it like that. “I do. I found court life to be very pleasant and very pretty. And very dull. Everything is too perfect there, too controlled.” He smiled. “I like things messy.”

“Then you came to the right place.”

He nodded. “The day I arrived, I was attacked by mages, almost blown up, and came very close to being eaten alive by a dragon.”

“And you
liked
that?”

“I wasn’t bored.”

Okaaay.

“And Mircea?”

“I find I like the idea of knowing something the master does not.”

“Me, too.” I looked around to see Fred’s head poking in through the shutters that separated the kitchen from the lounge, eating an apple. He must have been kneeling on one of the bar stools so he could spy on us. I scowled at him.

“Where did you come from?”

“My mother always said I came from heaven—”

“Fred!”

“—although others have occasionally expressed a different point of view.”

“How did you do that?”

“Do what?” He munched at me. “Oh, the silence thing?” He shrugged. “It’s a muffling spell, not a shield. And I get curious when the splashy splashy suddenly stops.”

“Get less curious!”

“I won’t have to be, ’cause I’ll be along.”

“You’re
not
going.”

“Of course I am.”

“And why should I let you?”

“’Cause you’re smart? You’re gonna need someone to watch your back, and Rico can’t do that and crack the safe at the same time.”

“Who says I can’t?” Rico looked offended.

“I do. Anyway, you’ll need an alibi. I’ll tell everyone we’re going shopping.”

I frowned at him. “I never go shopping.”

“Well, you ought to. Your closet is full of ball gowns and ratty old T-shirts. You need normal clothes.”

“I need my head examined.”

“Don’t we all? So, when are we leaving?”

•   •   •

I staggered a little and went down to one knee. But said knee hit polished marble instead of kitchen tile, so I was pretty sure we’d made it. I breathed a sigh of relief.

And then I threw up.

“Cassie!” Fred grabbed me, which didn’t help, because I was already down. But then Rhea held my hair back, which did. And Rico took up a position in front of us, gun out, looking grim, giving me time to get it together.

Damn, I knew I shouldn’t have tried shifting four. Four
sucked
. But all four were needed: Rico to crack the safe, Fred to watch his back while he did it, me in my usual role as taxi-through-time, and Rhea . . .

Rhea to give me a boost so I could get us all back, because I was bottomed out.

I wiped the arm of my shirt across my lips and looked up.

We were in a dark corner of the ballroom of the palatial house in London that until recently had housed the Pythian Court. It still housed them, actually, because I’d brought us back to just before everything went kablooie. Not because I was a glutton for punishment, but because the asshole acolytes who were about to blow this place sky high had thoughtfully turned off the wards first.

But since the reason the wards were down was the three or four dozen dark mages on the premises, I didn’t think crawling around in the open was a great idea.

“Come on,” I told them, and staggered to my feet.

We hurried across the open floor, past the French doors that had been replaced after Mircea and I helped obliterate them sometime back in the eighties. We stayed out of line of sight to the main hall, where another me was about to flash in with a trio of badass witches. And ended up beside the wall where Agnes had once been frozen by a goddess in disguise.

For a moment, all I saw was gothic wood paneling, the kind that looked like it belonged in a country gentleman’s library rather than a ballroom. But it was there for a reason. Because when Rhea turned a wooden rosette, a narrow section of wall slid back, revealing a slender hidden staircase.

“Mages on the second floor,” I reminded them softly as we left the first behind.

“So why aren’t we on the third?” Fred whispered. “Or better yet,
inside the room
? Why are we taking the scenic route?”

“Because I don’t want to materialize in a room full of dark mages?”

“Why would they be there? Why would
anyone
be there? This place is about to go up like a firework!”

“Because that’s the way my life works,” I hissed, as Rico cautiously pushed open the paneling on Agnes’ hall.

And just as quickly pulled back in.

“What?” I asked, moving to the front so I could see.
“Crap.”

“What is it?” Fred demanded.

“Some of those mages who aren’t supposed to be here.”

“What?” He poked his head under my arm, so he could get an eye to the crack in the door. And saw the same thing I did—two guys lounging around, smoking. Like this whole place wasn’t about to be.

“What in the hell are they doing there?”

“Having a smoke.”

“Having—that’s just stupid.”

“Not if the acolytes failed to mention that this place was about to go up in flames,” Rico whispered.

“They wouldn’t do that,” Fred said, sounding shocked. “Would they?”

“You don’t know them.” That was Rhea, her usually gentle face suffused by something that looked like hate. “The adepts, they’re . . . They didn’t care. Two dozen children, and they didn’t
care
.”

“It’s safe to say they didn’t care how many mages made it out of here, either,” I told Fred.

“No offense,” he whispered. “But your acolytes are
dicks
.”

No argument there. But they weren’t the problem right now, their stooges were, and how to get around them. And we didn’t have a lot of time.

And then we had less.

A familiar sound came from below. A sound like a door opening in some paneling. And then boot heels started hitting stairs, a lot of them. Like maybe someone had seen us come in and got a few buddies together to check it out.

“Damn,” Fred said.

Yeah, that about summed it up. I looked back the other way, but it was worse than before, since the smokers had been joined by a guy dragging a sheet made into a bag. A bag that clanked with what, at a guess, was every valuable he could find.

“They’re plundering her,” Rhea whispered, quivering because she was so furious.

“I can take them,” Rico told me, dark eyes level.

And yeah, he probably could. But I didn’t know for certain that these men didn’t make it out of here. And while I wouldn’t waste any tears on a bunch of child killers, I was risking the time line enough as it was.

“I could shift us inside,” I said reluctantly, as the approaching boots hit the second floor.

“You sure?”

No. Furniture could have changed position, more of their friends could still be in there, a thousand things could go wrong. Like me not having the power to shift us back out, which wouldn’t be fun.

But then, neither was this.

And then it got worse.

“Hey!” came from the stairs behind us. “Hey, up—”

“Here” went unsaid, because Rico’s knife was buried in the speaker’s throat.

Shit!

“Check it out,” a voice growled from below, and the stairs started to shake under multiple boot heels.

And then we were stumbling out into the hallway, because the odds were better here, although the mages hadn’t moved. And they still didn’t, even to look up, when four strangers emerged from a wall just down the hall. The panel slid shut behind us, and then I noticed Fred, staring intently at the men bent over their bags.

“Got it?” Rico whispered.

“Think so,” Fred muttered.

“Be sure.”

“You be sure,” Fred snarled in a whisper. “Three’s damned hard!”

“Not if they’re distracted,” Rico pointed out. And a second later, one of the mages turned around and slugged the guy next to him.

“What the hell?” His buddy looked up, a silver candelabra in one hand and his bulging cheek in the other.

“That’s mine!” the first mage said, grabbing the candlestick.

“Get your own. I found this!”

“And I want it.”

“What you want is a fat lip to match that head,” the second guy said. “And you’re going to get it if you don’t let go.”

“Fuck you” was the elegant reply.

Which is why mage number one had his nose bashed in a second later.

“Hurry, before they start flinging spells,” Rico said, and started pulling us toward the scrabbling duo.

“They’re going to see us!” Rhea said, pulling back.

“They won’t see anything.”

She looked at me, and I nodded. I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but I could guess. All vamps could do suggestions, but based on recent experiences, I was assuming Mircea’s bunch were better than most. Which meant that Fred could probably make them swear the sky was red if he wanted to.

At least for a while. But it looked like maybe that kind of thing was hard, because he was already sweating. And considering that vamps don’t, that wasn’t a great sign.

“Let’s go,” I told her, and we started down the hall, just as someone began scrabbling at the paneling behind us.

“Don’t. Run,” Fred said tightly, pulling Rhea back as she darted ahead.

“Why not?” She looked around, eyes huge.

“Because people notice you when you run.”

“And they won’t notice if we
walk right by them
?”

“No.”

And they didn’t, being too focused on each other to pay us any attention.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t true of the ones who burst out of the hidden stairwell behind us a moment later. “There!” somebody said, and a spell shot over our heads, missing us only because Rico jerked us down at the same second.