TWENTY-EIGHT
I didn’t know if I hoped that Carlos was home or that he wasn’t. The street through what had once been a cemetery seemed as dark as ever and possibly more haunted. The ghost mist seemed to hum now, and it glowed in lambent colors as the voices of the grid muttered in my head. The névoacria crept across the landscape, flanking me like an honor guard, flickering in and out of existence as we went on.
I passed through Carlos’s hellish garden and found him glowering at me from the open darkness of the front doorway. He waved me in without a word.
I passed him and stopped in the living room, shuddering a little as the heat and cold radiating from the magic circle below brushed over my bones and added its voice to the chorus in my mind. I still had the broken Lâmina carefully wrapped up in my pocket, and the circle seemed to reach for it and want it. Perhaps it was drawn to the blade because it was similar to something that was part of the circle’s creator, or maybe it was just the nature of Carlos and his magic to want dark things.
“Did you have any idea Gwen was a devious mastermind?” I asked as Carlos entered the room.
He raised an eyebrow. “You met Cameron at his sister’s home, then.”
“Don’t act like that wasn’t what you intended.”
“I left that to Cameron. He has an interesting friendship with Edward’s other renovated error. Perhaps near-starvation made her sharper—she was certainly unremarkable when she walked in the daylight.”
I gave him a narrow stare. “You’re going to just love her plan. You get to publicly pick and lose a fight with Cam over who has Edward’s best interests—and those of the city’s vampires—at heart. Cam gets to be Prince of the City, with Gwen behind the throne, and you get to help me foul up Wygan’s plans and kill him before he replaces the Guardian Beast. All in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, depending on how fast the Pharaohn and his henchmen react to the rumors Cam, Gwen, and Sarah are busy spreading right now.”
“I’m impressed. Cameron exceeds my hopes for him.”
“He seemed to think you were a little disappointed that he isn’t much of a necromancer.”
Carlos snorted. “Only initially. Edward had an excellent eye for potential—it’s too bad that he’s usually only wasted, perverted, or destroyed it. He brought Cameron and Gwen into our community, and they have both proved to have exceptional depths no one yet recognizes.”
“No one but you.”
He made a half nod of acknowledgment, keeping his hands clasped low in front of himself and his stance as solid as a tor. He reminded me of a bouncer or a bodyguard when he stood that way, but the only thing he was guarding was himself. In the ghostlight, with the illumination of the grid’s whispering in my head, I could see that the black weight of his magic and his past pressed him hard onto the earth. “They’ll do well together.”
“Cam and Gwen? Maybe. But only if the rest of this works. You’ll have to pick the fight in a way that makes it clear to Wygan that you’re not on Edward’s side, while not putting Cameron there either.”
“I understand the situation,” he replied. “You will have to witness it yourself.”
I shook my head. “No one said anything about my being involved in any vampire dominance games.”
“A witness, Blaine. You are the neutral party everyone trusts. They know you’ve helped all of us and have no personal stake in who rules. I’ll make it easy. Trust me: I have learned how to lose in all the centuries of my existence. You’ll have no difficulty with that. It is this other that may challenge you.”
“This,” I said, pulling the silk-wrapped bundle from my pocket.
Carlos swayed a half-inch away from the iron knife in its black shroud. The buzzing and chattering in my head swelled to a dizzying volume. I could not help bringing my free hand to my face to wipe the sudden cold sweat that broke over me.
“I wish it didn’t have to be now,” I muttered. I was afraid of what might happen, of how close I would have to come to the grid and whether I could stay separate—I won’t pretend I wasn’t. The emptiness and inhumanity of it repelled me, but the overwhelming power pulled like gravity. And I was tired, perhaps too weak to resist. . . .
Carlos raised his left hand and touched my shoulder with a single finger, as if he saw something on my jacket. The light pressure of that one finger reverberated through me as if through a timpani. I clenched my teeth until it passed. Then I looked at him through narrowed eyes.
He seemed to have expected my reaction, but he didn’t show any satisfaction in it. “I know, but it must be now. You’re shattering, coming close to the edge of the web itself. That is the moment the Pharaohn will act. We must act first. If you die without his control to hold you in place, all this may drain away and you will be useless.”
I pushed my suddenly damp hair off my forehead and glared at him. “I wish people wouldn’t keep talking about my dying like it’s no big deal. It’s a big one to me.”
Carlos laughed at my grousing tone. My temperature fell again as the sleet sound of it swept through me. “If you die before I do, I shall miss you, Blaine.”
“Like a favorite lab rat, maybe.”
He didn’t respond to that. He just looked past me to the cellar door. “Let us be about it, then. Before you grow too weary. I trust you have everything you need?”
“I think so.” Knife, ball, bad attitude, and all, I thought. Oh goody: magical surgery for amateurs. The idea made me sick. The act would probably be worse.
I followed him once more down to the basement. This time I knew enough to keep well to the edge of the room and watch where I put my feet. The foundation stones left ashen marks on my clothes as I passed. Carlos moved to the circle without hesitation, snatching something off one of his workbenches as he passed and crossing over the singing red and black lines with no qualm—but it was his circle and still unclosed. I doubted it would be so friendly to me. He stopped in the center of the open space within the glowing arcs and swirls.
“How do you intend to shield this action from the Pharaohn’s knowledge?” he asked.
“In part that’s why Cameron and the others are starting their whisper campaign—to give the other side something else to pay attention to tonight. But I did find my back door and if it works as my father says, we’ll do it there.”
Carlos looked wary. “This back door . . .”
“It leads to a sort of maze inside the Grey. The doors are one-way unless you have the key. Dru Cristoffer made it, if that’s any recommendation.”
Carlos looked intrigued and much less worried. “Recently?”
“No.”
“And I’ve never heard of it. Clever of her.”
“Given the way she hid it, I’m sure keeping anyone from hearing of it was exactly what she had in mind.”
“Did you meet her?”
The question was too casual. Knowing the twisted way Carlos’s mind tended to run, I wanted to say “no,” but I was sure I couldn’t lie to him in this room. Instead I said nothing at all while the noises of the grid clattered in my head. In a moment he cut his glance aside and the sound eased.
“Step into the circle, there,” he directed, pointing to a place on the floor where the design was thinner and darker. “Bring all you need. Once the circle—”
“Yes, I know how a magic circle works,” I interrupted him, irritable and rubbed raw by the constant hot and cold sensation across my nerves, fed by the babbling voices in my head and the growing draw of passionless silence. I put down my bag, grabbed the ball from it, checked my pockets for the key, and transferred the knife from my jacket to my hand. I thought that should be everything. As an afterthought, I turned off my cell phone—it just seemed like a bad idea to have it go off while I was trying this—and left the jacket behind with my purse. It was cold in the cellar workroom, but the ease of movement would be more important than warmth. Besides, no amount of clothing had ever negated the chill of the Grey.