AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Over here.”
The voice was surprisingly calm. Or maybe my ears, which were still ringing from the howling, weren’t able to discern subtleties. Like my legs didn’t seem to be able to walk a straight line anymore. Not that they could have anyway with the slip-’n-slide going on under my feet. And my knees. And my butt as I stumbled and fell and recovered and then hit a particularly nasty patch of leaves and slid the rest of the way to the bottom.
Where Pritkin was kneeling in the muck, in the middle of a space with slightly fewer trees. The thicker cover around the sides formed a natural wall, which the misty drizzle would have faded to the same wet gray as everything else, if not for the otherworldly light show going on. But he seemed perfectly whole and unbothered.
At least he did until he looked up at me. And frowned. “What are you doing here?”
“I . . . what?” I asked unevenly, because the clearing was still spinning. And because that had been a damned stupid question.
“You were told to wait for the signal.”
“You were screaming!”
“Which is usually a sign to stay away,” he said, frown intensifying. “It also wasn’t me.”
“Then who—”
“Not who. What,” he said, and tried to hand me something.
Since it strongly resembled a slime-covered snake, I shied back. “What the—”
“Didn’t that vampire you lived with ever take you to a toy store?”
I stared. “What?”
“For a special occasion, a birthday . . . ?”
“Tony believed in getting presents, not giving them,” I said, bending to peer at the creepy thing he held. It was long and black and lifeless, and still looked like either a short snake or a long slug. “Are you telling me that’s a toy?”
“Was. The enchantment’s played out.”
Thank God.
“You mean that wasn’t some kind of battle spell?” I demanded, gesturing around indignantly, and almost falling over in the process. Okay, that was getting old. “And what the hell’s wrong with me?”
“A prank,” Pritkin said, lips quirking in his version of a smile. “The magical equivalent of a whoopee cushion. But instead of embarrassment, the visual component of the spell causes havoc with the optic nerves. It’s best not to look at it.”
Now he told me.
“Careful. There’s likely more of them,” he said as I started to take a step.
“How do you know?”
“They wouldn’t be much use as an alarm, otherwise.” He held up a finger with a slender cord draped over the top. He gave a gentle tug, and a long line of it rose from the muck, with a “snake” dangling down every six feet. It looked like a banner for an Addams Family birthday, with all the balloons predeflated.
“An alarm—okay, that’s just stupid,” I pointed out.
A blond eyebrow rose. “If it looks stupid but it works . . . then it’s not stupid.” He indicated a small silver thing near the top of the nearest snake. “Removing the cap sets them off. Luckily, I stepped on this one instead of tripping over the line and pulling out all the caps at once. That much noise would wake the dead.”
“Wake the—oh, crap,” I said, staring around.
“It’s not a bad system,” he commented,
carefully laying the slimy thing back in the gunk. “Crude, but effective, and uses too little magic to be easily detectable. Of course, it presupposes an intruder would come through here. But given the thickness of the trees on either side, that’s not too much of a stretch.” He looked at me with narrowed green eyes. “The question is, why does someone with a demon army need a child’s plaything for security?”
“That’s a good question,” I agreed, and tried to grab him.
But he was already on his feet and backing out of range. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me what’s going on?”
