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“I assume he planned to flee with my mother and me, since refusing Tony isn’t considered healthy, but he never got the chance. And Tony felt that the betrayal, as he viewed it, deserved more than a mere assassination. So he paid a mage to construct a magical snare, which he used to trap my father’s ghost after he rigged my parents’ car to explode. He’s been using it as a paperweight ever since.”
Mac’s hands had gone very still on my back. I glanced behind me to see him staring at me blankly. “You aren’t serious . . . are you?”
I turned back around. “Yeah. From what I understand, it’s only about the size of a golf ball, so it could be anywhere. Tony has three houses and more than a dozen businesses, and those are just the ones I know about. I don’t feel like searching through them all so I thought I’d let him tell me where it is.” I actually assumed he had it with him. It would be Tony’s style to carry his trophies along even when fleeing for his life.
Mac was just standing there, his hands on my shoulders. He looked stunned for some reason. “Haven’t you ever been tempted?” he finally asked.
“Tempted to do what?”
“You’re Pythia. You could go back, change what happened. ” He moved so he could see my eyes. “You could save your family, Cassie.”
I sighed. Sure I could. “You don’t know Tony. Besides, I thought the idea was for me to help guard the timeline, not to interfere with it myself. I could end up changing something vital and possibly make things even worse.” Make that probably, with my luck.
His gaze sharpened. “But, technically, you could do it.”
“Yeah, I could keep my parents from getting in the car that Tony rigged to explode, but if I did, my life would have been completely different, along with who knows how many other people’s. And, knowing Tony, he’d have managed to kill them some other way,” I smiled grimly. “He’s persistent like that.”
Mac regarded me searchingly, to the point of making me uncomfortable. “Most people would view the power as a great opportunity to advance themselves,” he finally said. “It could bring you, well, almost anything you wanted. Wealth, influence—”
I gave him exasperated eyes. “The only thing I want is a nice, uncomplicated life. With no one trying to kill me, manipulate me or betray me.” And where, if I messed up on the job, I didn’t get anyone killed. “Somehow, I don’t think the Pythia gig is going to help me with that!” I was tired of the inquisition and I wanted to get dressed. “Are you done?”
“Oh, right,” Mac replaced his instruments in a small case and looked politely away so I could get dressed. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
“The good.” Why not try something different for a change?
“I think I can fix it.”
I blinked at him in surprise. I’d been expecting to hear that there was nothing he could do and that I’d have to go into Faerie with no protection. “Really? That’s great!”
“Do you know anything about how your ward works?”
I shook my head. “Not a lot. My mother somehow transferred it to me, but I don’t even remember it. I was only four when she died. For years, I thought it was a regular ward that Tony had put on me as an added safeguard.”
Mac looked almost offended. “Regular ward! No, I guarantee you’ll never see another of the like. It’s hundreds of years old and priceless, one of the Circle’s real treasures.”
“It’s a tattoo, Mac, not a work of art.”
“In fact, it’s both.” He stretched out his right arm and pointed to a small brown and orange hawk near the bend in his elbow. “Watch.” He muttered something, then took hold of the loose skin in the crease of his arm and pulled. A second later a small, metallic bird glimmered on his palm, its wings outstretched in flight like the one on his arm. It took me a moment to realize that it was the one on his arm, or rather, the one that had been there. Now there was only a bare, bird-shaped patch of skin. I picked up the small metal object. The feathers and detail were gone. It looked and felt like solid gold. For a moment I suspected sleight of hand or some trick, but after letting me examine it, he put it back in place and I watched it dissolve into his skin.
“What is that?”
“A red-tailed hawk. It increases the power of observation. Doesn’t help the eyesight, but if you want to notice more about your surroundings and retain the knowledge, you can’t do better.”
Something was bothering me. “The books out front said that there’s a limit to how many tattoos anyone can support, even the strongest mage, because each one takes some of your magic to maintain itself, and even more when it’s used.” I looked him over, almost dizzy with the number of squirming images all over his body. “How can you wear so many?”
He grinned. “I’m not a super-mage, Cassie, if that’s what you’re asking. There are two types of tattoos. The ones I etch directly into someone’s aura feed partially off his magic, so of course there’s a limit to
how many anyone can support. But ones like my hawk or your pentagram draw their power from outside sources, so there is no limit to those. Except, of course, to your ability to afford them. The enchantment process for even a small one can take months—I shudder to think what went into your ward.”
“So you’re an advertisement for what’s available?” Personally, I’d have made people flip through the books outside rather than turn myself into a walking billboard.
“In my case, it isn’t a choice. To other people these are enhancements—to compensate for some part of their magic that isn’t as strong as they’d like or to add power in an often-used area. But to me they’re necessities, unless I want to retire from our world entirely.” He saw my confusion and smiled slightly. “I had a run-in a few years back with a spell that ate through my shields and attacked my aura. The physical wounds I sustained in that fight healed, but the ones in my metaphysical skin were permanent. That’s why I didn’t realize you were under a geis until you told me. With my own aura so damaged, I have to concentrate to read other people’s.”
I stared at him, horrified at what he’d so casually revealed. It wasn’t only what had happened to Mac that freaked me out, but the knowledge that there were spells that could actually do something like that. The more I learned about the mages, the scarier they got.
“But with the wards, you’re okay, right?” I kept my attention on his face so I wouldn’t focus on my own aura, to reassure myself it was intact and undamaged. Under the circumstances, it would have been tacky.
Mac seemed to understand where my thoughts were going anyway. He waved a hand in the air and my bright red and orange flames suddenly sparkled between us like a cheerful fire on a cold night. “My wards compensate to a degree, Cassie, but they’ll never again be like this—a seamless, perfect blanket of protection. Most people couldn’t get past my defenses, but war mages aren’t most people. Sooner or later one of the dark ones would have found the chinks in my man-made armor, the places where the wards don’t overlap perfectly. I was removed from active duty as soon as anyone realized what had happened, and told I couldn’t take the field again.” He saw my expression and grinned. “It’s not all bad. I’m in much less danger these days!”
