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Pritkin could piss a person off in record speed at the best of times, which these weren’t. I felt my temper rising. “And why not?”
A muscle leapt in my cheek. I hadn’t known it could do that. “Because djinn are demons! They lure the foolish into a pact by dangling wishes in front of them, and as soon as anyone takes the bait, they have him! They can do anything to him they want, any amount of harm, as long as they fulfill the technical requirements of the wish!”
“Just ask Parsons,” Marsden agreed. “Only we can’t, of course.”
I glanced at devil dog, which had abandoned the puddle of mangled chew bone and was now lazily scratching. “The salesman promised that Daikoku isn’t a djinn.”
“And salesmen’s promises are never exaggerated!” Pritkin’s voice dripped sarcasm.
“We survived, didn’t we?”
“We would have in any case. Caleb—”
“Was going to take me in!”
“I could have talked him ’round, had you given me—”
“Oh, don’t even! We were surrounded. They’d pulled guns on us!”
“Guns no one chose to fire! They were attempting to capture you, not to kill you!”
“And you know this how?”
Pritkin slammed a hand down on the table hard enough to spill my tea. “Because you’re still alive!”
The low-grade headache I’d had for what felt like a hundred years was back with a vengeance. “Being captured by the Circle might be a death sentence for me,” I reminded him grimly.
“She might have a point, John,” Marsden spoke up. He’d been looking back and forth between us, like a fan at a tennis match. “That’s why I summoned you, actually.”
“Summoned?” The word didn’t make sense. “You summon ghosts or demons.”
“And Pythias.” He flopped a little chain out of his shirt. It had a small gold charm on it.
“Come again?”
“An old trick,” he told me, pushing the plate of cookies at Pritkin, who ignored it. “The holders of your office have a habit of being elsewhere at crucial moments—or should I say, elsewhen? In any case, the Circle had this constructed some centuries ago as a way of recalling the Pythias in times of emergency. Once activated, it will bring you to us the next time you try to shift.”
I stared at the wicked little thing in horror. “But if you could do that—why didn’t the Circle recall me ages ago to stand trial?”
“Because I’m a foolish old man who misplaced it—along with a few other things—after I was forced out of office,” he replied innocently.
“You kept me from shifting!”
“No. The charm merely brought you back when you tried it.”
“You almost got us killed!”
“Nonsense. John was with you. And I didn’t know I was going to be attacked the very moment you arrived, did I?”
I paused, having to rearrange my thoughts somewhat. I’d just assumed the mages had been after me. Everyone else was. “But they attacked us!”
“Doubtless thinking you were my allies.”
“But . . . who were they?”
“I don’t know most of them,” Marsden said. “But their leader was an ex-war mage named Jenkins. He was disavowed for financial fiddling some years ago. He became an assassin-for-hire afterward—a very successful one, by all accounts. But we could never catch him.”
“The man I pursued,” Pritkin said shortly. So Adidas had had a name.
