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And then Rufus suddenly stopped with the magical mayhem and threw up a shield. One that bloomed with angry colors a second later, along with scrabbling, burning vamps. Because somebody hadn’t waited for their allies to get out of the way before lobbing an attack.
“Mages!” someone yelled; it might have even been me. I wasn’t sure because, while the shield had saved our asses, it also acted like a kettledrum, trapping the sound of all those spells inside. To the point that I thought my head might burst.
Rufus did something to tone the sound down, enough that I could hear Ray yelling at me. “Call Marlowe!”
“I can’t call Marlowe!”
“You have to—we’re getting slaughtered here!”
“And half the city will go with us if they set those weapons off! Some pissed-off trolls probably won’t do it, because they’ll think they can take them—”
“Probably because they can!”
“—but Marlowe’s men show up, and it’s over!”
“It’s over anyway if we’re stuck behind this shield!”
He had a point.
I fished out my phone and called somebody, but it wasn’t Marlowe.
“Roberto?” I yelled, barely able to hear myself.
“Dory.” The thick, rounded Italian syllables always made it sound like he was eating. Of course, he usually was. “You got Stan’s truck? He keeps bugging me. Pretty soon, I gotta bug you. Know what I’m sayin’?”
“I’ll get around to it! I’m partying with my boys over at Oceanid right now—”
“That place closed down.”
“They said that’s what they told you! I said they’d better pay you your percentage, ’cause this is your turf—everybody knows that! But they’re laughing over here—”
“Laughing?”
“—about this being your territory! Said they’re taking over—”
“I got a deal with Geminus!” The wolf growl was starting to eclipse the mellow Italian vowels.
“But Geminus is dead, and they say you’ve run things long enough! They got a little troll problem at the moment, but as soon as it’s over, they’re coming for you—”
“They’re coming for me? I’m coming for them!”
“Better get here fast, then! And remember, the trolls are on your side!”
I hung up.
Ray just looked at me. “You think inviting a crazy were gang boss is gonna help?”
“Can it hurt?”
“Yeah! Like when he figures out that you set him up to—” Ray broke off and stared at something behind me. “Shit.”
“Shit? What’s shit?” And then I followed his gaze. “Shit!”
Because Curly hadn’t gone to the john, after all. I could just make him out, through the psychedelic shield, standing on the third-floor balcony across from us with something in his hands. It looked like some sort of controller, small and black and—yeah. It was controlling things, all right.
Or maybe it was a total coincidence that one of the big, round doorways suddenly opened up like the floodgates had lifted—or like a portal had reversed—to gush water down onto the frenzied crowd. Satins were drenched, silks were ruined, and people went slip-sliding for the doors, those who hadn’t already been headed that way because of the massive brawl going on.
“I knew he was too willing to come along!” Ray raged. “He planned this!”
