Tempt the Stars

Chapter Twenty-four

That went over about as well as I’d thought it would. The Valkyrie blew up, the others started trying to talk her down, and then the fourth member of their party burst onto the scene again and things really got hot. I was tired and wanted my beer, so I started for the kitchen, only to be intercepted by Marco coming out of the living room.

I hadn’t heard him leave, but then, that wasn’t unusual. Vampires make little cat feet sound loud. “Hey, where did you put my—” I started, only to stop at the look on his face.

It was enough, but if I’d had any doubts, Caleb was right behind him.

“You need to see this,” he told me grimly.

I was moving before he got all the words out.

Jules wasn’t in the bedroom anymore. The living room sofa had been pushed against a wall, leaving a large cleared spot in front of the balcony doors. He was lying in it, on top of a sheet that must have been used to carry him in here.

I didn’t have to ask why they’d wanted the sheet.

“What’s wrong with him?” I whispered, feeling Caleb come up behind me.

“I don’t know.”

I whirled. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Look at him!” I gestured at Jules, who was all but unrecognizable. His beautiful blond hair was the same, just curling a little in the damp from the shower. But as for the rest . .

“I think I’m going to be sick,” one of the vamps said, and sounded like he meant it.

“You’ve seen wounds before,” Marco snapped.

“That’s not a wound. That’s . . . the opposite of a wound.”

And he wasn’t wrong. Instead of fissures opening up in Jules’ body, like a knife or a bullet would have caused, he was . . . closing up. I didn’t know what was going on inside him, but his face looked like a mask before anyone cut any holes in it. His ears were all but gone, melted back into his head. His nose and mouth were mere indentations in the paleness of his skin, which looked like it might have lost its pores, it was so unearthly smooth. And his eyes . .

I shuddered and grabbed Marco’s sleeve.

If Jules had been human, he’d have been dead by now, deprived of oxygen at the very least, since he no longer had openings to breathe through. And that was assuming worse changes weren’t going on inside. But he wasn’t human. Which was probably why that sightless face suddenly moved. And slowly, so very slowly, turned.

To look at me.

I stepped back a pace, staring at the grape-shaped lumps of flesh where eyes should have been, before telling myself to get a grip. He wasn’t looking at me. He couldn’t know I was here. It was random—

“It wasn’t some shoplifting spell they ran into,” Caleb said roughly. “It was one of the special orders Augustine has been doing for the Corps.”

“Special orders?”

“Weapons, essentially.”

I looked up at him. “Augustine designs dresses.”

“And you’ve seen some of the mods he’s put on your gowns. Think that’s standard?”

I tried to process that for a second; then I pushed it away. I didn’t care about explanations right now. “Just call him!”

“I already did. But he can’t help us. The spell wasn’t finished and he doesn’t have a counter for it yet.”

“He doesn’t have—” I stared at him. “Then why the hell did he leave it lying around?”

“He didn’t. It was in his private workroom, which was locked and warded and where no one has permission to go. And he was supposed to be the first one back tomorrow—”

I shook my head violently. I didn’t care. “Caleb! Just reverse it!”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you; I can’t.”

“You—then what happens?” I demanded, gesturing at Jules.

Caleb’s massive arms crossed. “You can try a necromancer, but the whole point of a war spell is that it be debilitating. If it was easy to undo, it wouldn’t help us.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I just stared at Jules, and it felt like the bottom of my stomach fell out. I’d told him he would be okay. I’d told him it was no big deal. I’d told him—

There was a commotion behind me, and I turned to see the Valkyrie pushing her way through the ring of vampires. She walked over to Jules and bent down for a better look. She remained expressionless, but her lips all but disappeared.

“Nasty bit of work,” she said, looking at Jasmine, who was kneeling on his other side.

Jasmine had been reaching out, as if she’d planned to touch him, but her hand stopped just short. “That is one word for it,” she said softly.

“Can you break it?” I rasped.

They glanced at each other, and then at something behind me. I turned to see a rustle in the ring of vampires near the lounge, and then several jumped aside suddenly, possibly to avoid whacks from the stick the third little witch was using to clear herself a path.

“Why are you all so big?” she groused. “You’re vampires. Size doesn’t matter. Why do they never turn normal-sized men?”

Fred, who was standing across from me, started to say something, but then shut up. Maybe because she’d finally pushed through the forest of designer-clad legs and stopped by Jules. Who she proceeded to poke with her stick.

“What are you—”

“Hush,” she told me, and swatted my hand.

The poking recommenced. And then she nodded. “Thought so. Clever boy. He’s perverted a brownie spell, inverted it to harm rather than help.”

“Fey magic,” the Valkyrie explained, seeing my expression. “That’s why the Circle pays Augustine to help them. He’s part fey.”

“Fey?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Couldn’t you tell?”

I thought back to the ethereal creature I knew, tall, blond, and yes, elfin. It was sort of obvious, now that someone pointed it out.

“You’ve seen his gowns,” Jasmine added. “No Arcane magic made those.”

“It has better uses,” Caleb muttered.

The Valkyrie sighed. “Yes, tell us again how much superior your magic is. But I don’t see you solving the problem.”

“I don’t see you doing it, either.”

“At least we could identify it.”

“Identifying isn’t reversing.”

“We aren’t finished yet.”

“The covens have been finished for years,” he snapped.

And got whacked on the shin for his trouble.

“Slipped,” the tiny witch said, unrepentant.

Caleb cursed. “If you want to keep him alive—or as much as these things ever are—keep him away from them!” he told me.

Yeah. Only she was right; they’d known almost at once what they were dealing with. He hadn’t.

“Can you remove it?” I asked the witches again.

Which led to another round of eye contact, but no one said anything. Until the small one piped up again. “I’m willing to have a go,” she said cheerfully.

The other two looked less enthused. But finally, they nodded. “It would be in a city,” Jasmine sighed.

“Why does that matter?” I asked—stupidly. Because it wasn’t like I was going to understand the answer.

“It doesn’t,” Caleb said, sounding disgusted. “Magic is magic.”

“We use a reserve of power to augment our own,” Jasmine said, ignoring him. “As you do with the Pythian power. But ours is generated by the earth itself, the song of the sky, the land, the seas—”

“Bullshit!” Caleb said. “You’re messing about with wild magic, and it’s going to get you killed!”

Jasmine rolled her eyes. “You use talismans, do you not? They also gather the magic the earth gives off.”

“Slowly, carefully, safely. What we do is like using electricity. You play around with lightning!”

“That’s an exaggeration, as you well—”

“How many of your people have been fried, trying to channel wild magic?” Caleb demanded.

“And how many of yours have poisoned themselves playing about with alchemy?” the Valkyrie interjected. “Magic is inherently dangerous—”

“Not if you know what you’re doing!”

“Ah, and there’s the rub, isn’t it?” she said, sneering. “Just because you can’t do it—”

“Can’t—” Caleb flushed. “We choose not to use something dangerously unstable and innately unreliable—”

“So unreliable we fought you to a standstill—”

“So unreliable you were all but destroyed!”

“After you betrayed us! Broke your promises and turned your back on honor—”

“As if a coven witch would know anything of honor!” Caleb spat.

And won himself another whack from the little witch’s stick.

For a moment, everyone just glared at one another.

“I’m not sure I understand what you plan to do,” I told Jasmine, who seemed to be keeping her cool better than the others.

“Druid is a combination of human magic—pre-Circle— and fey,” she explained. “The combination allows us to borrow directly from the earth’s natural well of power to augment our own, instead of using talismans to slowly gather it up. Being on earth requires altering the spells somewhat, which is why it is considered a distinct system from that of the fey. But it works quite well, I assure you.”

“And that’s different from what the Circle does?”

The three witches exchanged glances again.

“Theirs is based on ancient alchemy,” Jasmine said slowly. “What we call hard magic, something that can be put into a test tube and experimented on. The Circle always wants something they can see and taste and touch, something they can control. The wilder, more flexible, more intuitive magic of nature eludes and confuses them. They cannot master it because they do not feel it.”

“You see?” Caleb asked me. “This is exactly the sort of mumbo-jumbo you can expect from the covens. I can give you formulas, show you precisely how a potion or ward or spell works—and how to reverse it. And if Augustine was using the Arcane, he could, too—and we wouldn’t be in this mess!”

“The Arcane is Circle magic?” I asked, for clarification. I’d heard the term before, but I wanted to be sure I understood what they meant. It was my responsibility to Jules to be sure.

The witches exchanged another look. Even Caleb appeared a little taken aback. And then he got whacked again.

“Witch!” he snarled. “If you hit me with that thing one more time—”

“Don’t you take that tone with me,” she told him. “And you deserve a good whipping. Why is the Pythia asking a question like that?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“You see? She doesn’t even—” The little witch made another jab, but Caleb danced back out of the way.

To my surprise, though, he wasn’t glaring at her. If anything, he looked a little shamefaced. “That wasn’t my call.”

“Then whose call was it?”

“She was brought up by the vampires. And the one she lived with didn’t want her trained.”

“At all?” the Valkyrie demanded, looking incredulous.

Caleb didn’t say anything. But the truth was kind of obvious.

Jasmine just sat there, looking appalled. But the Valkyrie couldn’t seem to quite grasp the concept. “You’ve received nothing?” she demanded.

“He’s exaggerating,” the little witch told her. “He has to be.”

And then someone pinched the hell out of me.

I jumped and twisted around, but no one was close enough. Not that that meant anything with vampires, who could move like the wind. But I didn’t think the ones by the door were too interested in pranking me. They hadn’t taken their horrified eyes off Jules.

And then somebody did it again, and I damned well knew they hadn’t moved that time. And anyway, it had been from behind me. And then from the left and the right and—

“Ow!” I said, whipping my head back and forth. “What the—”

“Cut it out,” Caleb growled, but not at me. He was looking at the tiny witch, and unlike his previous threat, his voice had gone flat, and his eyes were cold and blank. I’d seen that look on Pritkin’s face a time or two, and it scared me a lot more than a few pinches.

“Caleb—” I said, reaching out.

“She doesn’t have shields!” The tiny witch was beside herself.

“You don’t, do you?” Jasmine asked, wonderingly. “You battled a Spartoi . . . unprotected?”

I didn’t respond, because Caleb was starting to worry me. “Just relax,” I told him as the pinching stopped.

“A war mage’s first duty is to protect the Pythia,” he said softly, his hand on the potion belt at his waist. A lot of the younger mages didn’t use one, preferring spelled bullets that could go farther and hit more accurately. But like Pritkin, Caleb preferred to double up on his weaponry, and he used both.

And I did not want to find out what the vial he was currently fingering did.

“It’s okay. It didn’t hurt,” I lied. Because I was going to be polka-dotted tomorrow.

“Assault is assault—”

“Oh, please!” the Valkyrie said. She looked at me. “Our apologies. But you can hardly blame us. The fact that the Pythia—the person on whom all our lives may depend—cannot even do a simple protection spell—” She threw up her hands. “It’s enough to shock anyone!”

“Shock isn’t the word I’d use,” the tiny witch muttered, bending to look at my arm. And then waving a hand and muttering something—

Which she didn’t get a chance to finish, because she was suddenly across the room, pinned to the wall. Jasmine was likewise out of commission, on the floor and trapped by the massive boot on her chest. And the Valkyrie and Caleb were facing off, he with the vial in the hand that wasn’t outstretched, restraining her companion, and she with what looked alarmingly like a wand denting the skin of his throat.

“She’s not the only one needs to work on her protection spells,” she hissed.

“Go for it,” he told her tightly. “And we’ll see who needs protection.”

“Don’t tempt me, mage! After the hash the Circle has made of this, I might be doing us all a favor!”

“By restarting a civil war?” someone asked, from over by the door.

I looked up to find Jonas standing there, his magnificent mane an electrified halo about his head, crackling like a storm was blowing in. But his voice had been mild, and his touch was gentle as he helped the little witch off the wall. Or tried to.

“I can manage,” she grumbled, hopping down as spry as someone my age. Although I didn’t think I’d be as calm as she was under the circumstances. Hell, I hadn’t moved, and I still wasn’t calm.

“Did you call him?” I demanded, looking at Caleb. Who was starting to sweat. But he didn’t drop the pose, even when his boss came up along one side. And gently pushed his subordinate’s boot off Jasmine.

She was up in a liquid move worthy of a vamp, her beautiful face distorted. But she didn’t do anything. She backed off, looking at the Valkyrie, who was still threatening Caleb.

For a moment, nobody moved.

Jonas cleared his throat. “No,” he told me. “He did not.”

It was mild, but Caleb swallowed.

“I came to see you. I had planned to in any case, but then that hotel manager called Central, demanding that someone come out to, er, de-chicken his security force?”

The Valkyrie’s lips twitched.

I blinked, because I’d expected to hear a sermon about the battle on the drag. Had been expecting it since I got up, actually, only nobody had mentioned it. Which was a little weird, come to think of it.

But I sure wasn’t going to be the first to bring it up.

“I thought that would just wear off,” I said instead.

“Yes, well, that’s what we told him. But it lasts rather longer on humans, you know, and he was insistent. And after calling up here . . ” He raised an eyebrow, his eyes going around the group.

“Caleb came at my request,” I told him, “to reverse a hex. And the coven leaders are . . . uh. Helping him.”

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t look like he bought it, although the Valkyrie did lower her wand thing. I still didn’t get a good look at it; it disappeared inside her coat faster than a cell phone in the hand of a teenager. Which didn’t make me feel better, since she could obviously take it out again just as quick.

Caleb, on the other hand, looked visibly relieved.

At least until the little witch came back over, looking like she was spoiling for a fight. But despite the wall incident, he wasn’t the target. “Jonas Marsden! Just the man.”

“Beatrice,” he said, sighing.

“I want to know what you think you’re doing, letting this girl go untrained!”

“We are training her,” Jonas said patiently. “But there are priorities—”

“Priorities? Like allowing her to go about completely defenseless?”

“She is hardly that. She has guards, as you can see. And wards. And normally a trusted member of my force is assigned to her, as well—”

“None of which kept us from breaking in here—”

“Yes, well, your skill set is somewhat greater than the norm—”

“—or taking the lobby apart! Where the girl was messing about, completely alone, and completely defenseless—”

“She isn’t as defenseless as she appears, as I believe you discovered. And in any case, what would you have me do? Lock her up?”

“I would have you show some sense! You should have called us in, long before this. Old rivalries are well

and good, but when lives are on the line—”

“You think I would deliberately endanger—”

“I think you have endangered—”

I stopped listening. I wasn’t interested in hearing a bunch of people debate my education or lack thereof. Again. I wasn’t interested in hearing them talk at all.

I was interested in Jules.

“Can you remove the hex or not?” I demanded.

The little witch had been glaring at Jonas. Now she turned the glare on me. For a second, before her eyes softened. “Yes, yes. Well, probably,” she hedged. “But it’s hardly worth the effort—”

“Not worth the effort?” I stared at her.

The room grew suddenly quiet.

“She didn’t mean it like that,” Jasmine said, looking at me with pity in her beautiful eyes.

“Then how exactly did she mean it?”

“You must understand, the spell has already done most of the damage that it was designed to do. Removing it now will prevent more, yes, but . . ”

“But what?”

“But it cannot reverse that which has already been done,” she told me softly. “I am sorry, lady. I do not know of anything that can.”