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My eyes didn’t have time to adjust, but my other senses picked up on random clues at each stop: the pungent smell of rotting seaweed and the call of seagulls; the scent of manure and the bleat of sheep; the heat of some enclosed space and the stench of spilled wine. We’d just arrived at the last one, with afterimages still dancing in front of my eyes, when there was another crack and a brilliant flash of red and Mircea stepped out of nothing.
Pritkin swore and a fireball appeared in the air in front of us. I yelled, Mircea dodged and the fireball exploded—against the orb, which had been its target all along. For some reason, I expected the gold ball to shatter like glass, but it was made of sterner stuff. When the flames cleared, it looked exactly the same. Pritkin had used the moment of the explosion to tear open another ley line, this one yellow. It pulsed like a small sun right above our heads, and I could feel the pull of it, even as Mircea grabbed for us.
He got a hand on Pritkin, but the heavy folds of the cape made it hard to tell where the mage’s body was, and instead of an arm, he wrapped a fist around a handful of black cloth. The cape tore away as Pritkin made a flying lunge for the orb, scooping it up right as we were sucked into a golden void.
After a brief, tumultuous ride, a slap of wind hit my face and we dropped onto a surface that oozed wet
ly around my shoes. I leaned against something that felt like stone, my eyes refusing to focus on anything except leaping shadows, my lungs threatening to rebel against the sharpness of the night air. It was like jumping in the deep end of the pool when it’s not quite warm enough to swim, and the shock is all you can feel until you break the surface, gasping.
When I could focus again, all I saw in place of that jumping stream of vivid color was a world of black, stretching out around me in every direction like Pritkin’s missing cloak. But I could hear him gasping somewhere nearby, sounding about as frazzled as I felt. And I remembered Mircea saying that extended travel isn’t recommended without some kind of advanced shield. Maybe that’s why we’d stopped; maybe all the jumping around before he stole the orb had exhausted Pritkin. Too bad I was in no shape to capitalize on it.
I hung on to the frigid rock until it slowly came into focus. It was part of a stone and wood fence bordering an empty field, with nothing to see in the distance but charcoal smudges that might have been trees. Gray streamers of mist curled up from the wet ground, twisting around our ankles clammily, as Pritkin fumbled in his clothes for something. At his feet, the orb shone dimly through a veil of caked-on grime, having been treated to a mud bath when we landed.
It looked like I was on my own.
I sized this new Pritkin up as my heartbeat cautiously returned to normal. There were no fashionable knee pants, embroidered waistcoats or powdered wigs in evidence. He was dressed simply in a white shirt with long, full sleeves that, despite the weather, had been rolled up to show muscled forearms, and slim gray trousers that wouldn’t have looked that out of place two hundred years later. Of course, they were crisscrossed with a load of armaments, differing from his usual stash only in the lack of automated weapons.
The only jarring note was the sweep of gold-red hair. For some reason, I couldn’t seem to stop staring at it. I kept wanting to think of him as the man I knew, the one I occasionally called friend, but the hair wouldn’t let me. I glared at it resentfully, trying to come to grips with the rapid way my world had shifted. I’d already mourned our friendship, already dealt with his betrayal. Only to have to reevaluate him all over again, to start to trust—just to find out that I’d been right the first time.
It didn’t matter if Pritkin had the Codex now or not. He’d written the damn thing. He’d known the spell to lift the geis all along, and just hadn’t given it to me. And there was no way to excuse that. He didn’t need to blow his cover. He could have pretended to find it in one of those old tomes; he could have pretended to rediscover it; he could have done a lot of things rather than stand by and watch Mircea die. But he’d said it himself: vampires were little better than demons in his book.
And the only good demon was a dead one.
I tamped down a surge of pure rage. I couldn’t afford to explode now. If I didn’t get that spell, Pritkin won and Mircea died. And neither of those was acceptable.
I was still glaring at him when he suddenly grabbed me by both arms. “The map! What did you do with it?”
“What map?”
He gave me a hard shake, which didn’t help me think any better, if that was the intention. “The map to the location of the Codex!”
“I thought we were bidding on the Codex itself. Are you telling me they didn’t have it?”
“They did not wish to bring it to the auction, in case someone tried to make off with it,” he said, looking me over as though he thought I might have shoved the map down my cleavage. As if there was room for a napkin down there. “If you do not wish to suffer the indignity of a reveal spell, I suggest you give it to me now.”
“I don’t have it! And what indignity?”
Pritkin passed a hand over me, not touching, just hovering a few inches from the now inert silk. The dress glowed again briefly, but apparently it was out of gas because nothing happened. Nothing except that it suddenly became transparent—along with everything else I was wearing.
“What the hell?!” I jumped behind the fence post, which along with the poor light, was enough to act as pretty good cover. It didn’t make me feel much better. “What kind of a lunatic are you?”
Pritkin didn’t answer, although his jaw clenched a little more tightly. “Give me my property and I will reverse the spell.”
“I told you already! I don’t have it!”
With another brief hand wave and a muttered word, the fence post went transparent, too. I shrieked and went running down a line of wooden rails to the next stone post, Pritkin mirroring my actions on the other side. We stopped, facing each other, with the post between us. “Don’t you dare!” I said, when he raised a hand.
“Then give me what I want!”
“Go to Hell!”
“I just came back,” he snarled, and the post disappeared. Before I could run again, he jumped over the fence and a strong hand latched onto the back of my neck. I struggled, but I couldn’t move, and I finally stopped.
I felt him drop his hand and step back. He must have knocked the mud off the orb, because its light suddenly danced on the glasslike rocks in front of me. The transparent stone and the orb light startled a small creature that had made a burrow under the post, sending it scurrying away into the dark.
I could feel Pritkin’s gaze, ruthless and uncompromising and focused as it ran over the back of my body, like a phantom touch. I wanted to shift again so badly I could taste it, but even if it had been possible, where would I go? I needed the Codex, and Pritkin had it. At least he’d better have it, or I was going to kill him. Slowly.
“Turn around,” he said after a moment.
