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“I can’t hear him,” he said obscurely, an expression of pure bliss passing over his face. Then his eyes closed and his head fell back, connecting sharply with the tile floor.
My heart almost stopped and I frantically felt for a pulse, which of course I didn’t find. The fact that I’d even tried said something about my mental state. It looked like he’d fainted or was in a trance, but I couldn’t be sure. Tony had once been involved in a clandestine and highly illegal feud with another master. One of our vamps lost an arm and was halfway gutted in the miniwar. When he was brought back to us I’d assumed he was dead, but Eugenie said he was in a healing trance. He’d stayed unmoving and immobile for several weeks, until one night he suddenly sat up, asking whether we’d won. I hoped Tomas was only in a trance, but there was little I could do for him either way. Vamps healed themselves or they didn’t—there weren’t a lot of medical or magical remedies that worked on their systems. The problem was to keep him safe long enough for him to have a chance to recover.
I glanced at Pritkin. “Why isn’t Marlowe tied up or something? ”
“Because we may need him,” was the grim reply.
“Do you know who he is?” I demanded.
“Better than you.” He tore his eyes away from Billy, who was now rocking back and forth, staring sightlessly at the wall, and turned the full force of his stare on me. He wasn’t angry—that, at least, I’d almost come to expect, and it wouldn’t have worried me. But this was different. He was pared down somehow, his eyes so intense that they looked like two lasers. It was the face of a predator when its own life is threatened—deadly, serious and completely focused.
“Let me explain the situation,” he said, and even his words were faster and more clipped than before, as if every second counted. “We have arrived in Faerie, but not in the unobtrusive way I had planned. Most of our magic will not work, and we have a finite amount of nonmagical weapons. One of our company is gravely ill and two others are mentally suspect. To make matters worse, that dragon was the guardian of the portal, and having failed to defeat us itself, it has gone after reinforcements. If the Fey do not already know we’re here, they soon will. And we cannot go back though the portal for obvious reasons.”
“Will the Senate come after us?” I asked, uncertain that I wanted an answer.
Pritkin gave a short bark of a laugh. It didn’t sound amused. “Oh, no, at least not until they can appeal for passes. To cross into Faerie without them is to risk a death sentence. As we have done.”
“He means that we’re all in this together,” Marlowe added. “I, too, am without a pass, and the Fey are famous for not listening to excuses. If I’m caught, I could be killed.” He smiled at me. “So I won’t be caught, and shall endeavor to see you are not, either.”
Mac snorted. “The fact is, we’re all safer together. Nobody would last a day in Faerie alone right now.”
Marlowe shrugged. “That, too. And, as my first comradely gesture, may I suggest that we leave this area as soon as may be? We have very little time to lose.”
Pritkin had pulled Billy up by the wrists and now he slapped him, hard. “He’s right. If the Fey find us, they will either kill us on sight or ransom us back to the Circle or Senate. ” After the second slap, Billy tried to hit him back, but Pritkin blocked his arm, then twisted it cruelly behind his back before pushing him at me. “Gain control of your servant, ” he said briefly. “I will deal with mine. Then we move.”
I spent the next few minutes getting my ward checked out by Mac while I tried to reassure a very freaked-out Billy Joe. “Why are you so upset?” I asked, when he had calmed down enough to listen. “You have a body,” I pinched him lightly on the arm and he flinched, the big baby. “Isn’t that what you always wanted?” He certainly seemed to have a good time whenever he was borrowing mine.
Billy still looked stunned, although some color had started to return to his cheeks. Without warning, he leaned over and kissed me hard on the lips. I jerked away and slapped him, and shock made it harder than I’d intended, but he just laughed. His hazel eyes were bright with unshed tears as he gingerly felt his stinging cheek, but his expression was euphoric. “It’s true; it’s really true,” he said in awe; then his eyes grew wide and he abruptly started rooting through Mac’s backpack. He came out with one of the beers, clutching it like he’d found a treasure made of pure gold. It was unopened, and he scrabbled at it, trying to get the bottle cap off with his bare hands.
“You don’t get it, Cass,” he said, his eyes almost feverish. “Sure, I babysit your body from time to time, but nothing’s really real, you know? Like there’s a film over everything, and I only ever touch that, taste that.” He gave a yell of frustration and tried to smash the bottle on the table, but it was padded and the glass bounced off.
Obviously, he was not going to be coherent until he’d had a drink. “Give that to me,” I said impatiently, and he handed it over, but his eyes never left the dark brown bottle. I opened it on the metal underside of the cot and he snatched it out of my hand, gulping half the contents at one time.
“Oh, my God,” he said reverently, falling to his knees. “Oh Jaysus.”
I was about to tell him to stop the melodrama when Mac interrupted with a report. “There’s nothing wrong with your ward, so it must be the geis. They tend to complicate things, with the more powerful spells causing the most interference. And the dúthracht is about the strongest there is.”
“But my ward worked before, and the spell was cast when I was eleven,” I protested.
“That could have been why you got away with it, because you were too young for the geis to be active. This particular ward is designed to fit over your aura like a glove does a hand, but it needs a stable field to keep a proper grip. An active geis is interpreted as a serious threat, and your natural defenses go into constant turmoil, trying to reject the invader. But, by doing so, they make it impossible for your artificial protection to do its job.”
Light dawned. “That’s why Pritkin was freaking out at Miranda. He knew if she didn’t remove the geis, he couldn’t get that tattoo.”
I was immediately sorry I’d said anything, since Mac demanded the whole story and seemed to find the idea of a small, female gargoyle getting the best of Pritkin hysterically funny. I finally managed to get him back on track, but he didn’t tell me anything I wanted to hear. “It’s like trying to put a glove on a small, squirming child, Cassie—which is why kids usually get mittens. It’s too damn much trouble to get them dressed otherwise.” Mac sounded like he knew, and I briefly wondered whether he had a family. Possibly there were people who would mourn him if Pritkin got him killed.
“So you can’t fix it?”
“I’m sorry, Cassie. Get rid of the geis, and I can have it running in no time. Otherwise—”
“I’m screwed.”
“It looks that way.”
As if in comment on the way my day was going, Billy took that moment to throw up beer all over the floor in front of my sneakers. I snatched my feet back just in time. “Billy! What is the matter with you?”
He groaned and sat up. “Stomach cramps,” he gasped. I sighed and went to get him a glass of water.
“Sip it,” I warned. “You have a brand-new stomach. Nobody gives babies beer, so I guess you don’t get any, either.” I took the bottle away, and he groaned louder.
