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“Then how did I get here?” I demanded.
“My best guess is that you’re some Pythia’s newly appointed heir on a joyride, testing out the power,” she said, stopping beside the black hole of the doorway. “Ooh, look. I can travel through time. Isn’t that cool?” she mimicked.
“I’m not joyriding! And I don’t find being shot at and almost blown up cool!”
“I did the same thing myself a few times when young and stupid,” she said, ignoring me. “And almost got killed. Take some advice: go home.”
“Not until we talk,” I said flatly. “And we can’t do that here. The explosion was loud enough to wake the dead. Someone is probably on their way to investigate right now!”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” she said, slipping off little champagne-colored heels. “These cellars date back to the eleventh century. And when they built something back then, they intended it to last. The walls are seven feet thick.”
I felt the muscles along my spine start to relax just as a barrel came bouncing at us out of the dark. Agnes slammed the door and scrambled back while I ducked behind another support column. I’d barely made it when a second explosion deafened me and a hail of former door parts exploded through the room, impaling everything in sight.
A jagged piece of iron from one of the hinges hit the floor beside me, burying itself into the stone an inch from my right foot. I jerked back and stared at it wide-eyed. “Why is it that everywhere I go, someone is shooting at me?” I demanded hysterically.
“Your winning personality?” Agnes offered. “And if you don’t like it, you could always, oh, I don’t know, leave?”
“I’m not going anywhere!”
Agnes didn’t respond. I looked around the column to see her cautiously approaching what had been the door. Burning shards framed the opening in fire, and streamers of noxious fumes were swirling slowly outward. It looked like a portal to hell, but she nonetheless squatted to one side, peering into the darkness within.
“Who is the Guild?” I whispered, joining her despite my better judgment.
“An order of mages who play around with very dangerous spells. Unfortunately for us, once in a while they don’t manage to blow themselves up.”
“And that’s a problem because . . . ?”
“Because they’re time travelers.”
She started forward, and I grabbed her arm. “Wait. You’re going in there?”
“That’s the job.”
“The job sucks!”
“You’re telling me.” She threw off my hand and slipped echo across the threshold, her stocking-clad feet silent on the old stones.
“Agnes!” I hissed it after her, but there was no response. I stared into the dark for half a second, cursing softly, and then followed.
I’d closed the lantern’s little door, but it must have gotten dented in the fall, and the sides didn’t meet all the way. Thin beams of sepia light leaked out, gilding the stones around us and turning our shadows into hulking monsters. I stared into the darkness crowding the rest of the room and tried not to think about sharpshooters and easy targets.
When the attack came, the only warning was a flicker of red in the gloom. Agnes aimed for it, but before she could pull the trigger, a bloody snake of lightning flashed across the room and struck her shoulder. She spun around and collapsed against me with a choked cry.
I dropped the lantern and grabbed her and my gun. But I only managed to get a couple of shots off before her fingers closed over my wrist. “Not in here.”
I didn’t argue since I didn’t have anything to use as a target anyway. I dragged her out of the puddle of light into the shadow of a nearby support column. She peered around the side, but unless her eyesight was a hell of a lot better than mine, she didn’t see anything. I listened, but there was no sound except her ragged breathing.
“Maybe I hit him,” I whispered.
“I’m not that lucky.”
Her voice sounded strained, and something gleamed wetly on the shoulder of her dress. “You’re hurt.”
“My own damn fault.” She peeled violet-printed chiffon away from a nasty-looking burn. “I loaned my ward to my heir for a training exercise right before she eloped with some loser. Naturally, she didn’t bother to give it back first.”
I bit my lip and didn’t reply. The ward in question was a pentagram-shaped tattoo the size of a saucer that currently sat between my shoulder blades. It didn’t guard against human weapons, but was pretty amazing when fending off magical assaults. My mother, who had been Agnes’ heir before wisely running for the hills, had passed it on to me. But somehow I didn’t think this was a great time to bring that up.
“Do you usually wear high heels to chase armed men around?” I asked instead.
