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“Most of us don’t take taxis,” she assured me, still poking at the air.
“What do you take?”
“A portal from town.”
“Then why didn’t we do that?”
That got me a look I didn’t understand from black-rimmed eyes. “Because none of them would recognize you. They’re spelled to keep out unknowns. It’s a security thing, like changing the location on a regular basis.”
“Changing?” I frowned.
Portals had to be licensed out the wazoo, and the license had to include the location, from fixed point A to fixed point B, because allowing people to just appear anywhere they wanted would make law enforcement impossible. And that was even more true since the war. Unless . . .
“Saffy, we are talking about legal portals, right?”
“‘Legal’ by whose definition?”
“Saffy—”
That won me another look. “If you’re going to rep the whole magical community, you have to understand that the world doesn’t revolve around the Silver Circle,” she told me. “No matter what they think!”
“I know that; that’s why we’re here.”
“You think you know, but you were born into a world the Circle controls—”
“I was born into a world the vampires control,” I corrected her, because I hadn’t been one of the clairvoyants identified early and popped into the Pythian Court for training. Instead, a greedy mob boss of a vampire had co-opted me into his shabby little court and used my gift as a way to make him more of the money he craved.
It hadn’t been a fun life for a kid.
Of course, it hadn’t been
a fun life for anyone else, either.
Tony was a dick.
“That’s rather like an agnostic saying they were born into a secular family when they live in the United States,” Hilde said, because she’d never met an argument she didn’t like. “Perhaps their parents didn’t take them to church, but the culture of Christianity pervaded their upbringing whether they realized it or not. Everything from the holidays they celebrate to the curse words they use revolves around the Judeo-Christian religions.”
“I’m not sure I get the point,” I told her. I also wasn’t sure we’d come to the right place, and sweat was starting to drip down my back.
“The point,” she told me, “is that the Circle won their war with the covens centuries ago and have been able to shape the overall magical culture ever since. And while I’m sure the effect was less pervasive at a vampire’s court, if it had to do with magic, it was likely still done the Circle’s way.”
Saffy nodded angrily. “They did their best to erase coven practices, like they tried to erase the covens themselves. But it didn’t work!”
“I know that—”
She cut me off. “No, you think you know. Now you really do.”
And before I could ask what she meant, reality bent around us, the desert colors all slurred together, and the heat was replaced by a wash of cool air, deep and dark and mountain-chilled.
Maybe because we were suddenly standing in what looked a lot like the inside of a mountain. A huge, hollowed-out one, leaving a sprawling, cave-like area with dark, reddish brown walls rising up to a massive dome far overhead, like a mighty stone cathedral. It should have been impressive; it should have been breathtaking.
But my breath was already being stolen by something else.
“What . . . is this?” I asked, spinning slowly around.
I was looking in all directions, because we’d just materialized inside a huge circle of portals.
Some were on the ground nearby, thrum thrum thrumming hard enough to make my whole body shake. Others hovered in midair or overhead, forming a spotted dome half the size of a football field and multiple stories high. One through which people—and things, and things that might be people—were hurrying, and sometimes flying, at an alarming rate.
