“Yes, exactly.” She nodded. “You’re important, and have powers, and these dragons who’ve waylaid Maura will be in awe of you. You are the ideal person to help us.”
“I don’t quite see how, but of course I’ll be happy to be of any use I can.”
“And you will be rewarded, naturally. Father will lift the interdiction, and you will help keep poor Maura from doing something she would spend the rest of her life regretting.”
Dr. Kostich reentered the room, his eyes snapping with irritation as he glared at his daughter. “I specifically forbade you to mention that subject to strangers, Violet.”
“Tully isn’t a stranger, Father,” she said with a stubborn look that matched his own.
“She is no longer one of us. I do not recognize her as a mage,” he argued.
I sighed. Why was nothing in my life ever easy?
“I don’t care if she’s a demon lord!” Violet said, getting up and marching over to her father, her hands on her hips. “She’s said she would help us with Maura, and that’s all that matters. But she won’t do that if you don’t lift the interdict!”
“I have no intention of doing anything of the kind, and we do not need her help!” he snarled back at her.
The argument went on for another twenty minutes before Dr. Kostich, saying extremely rude things about his daughter in Latin, snapped a very testy “I will not lift the interdict. To do so now would be the sheerest folly. But I will agree that if she can help with Maura, I will remove the interdict then. And I do this only because Maura is foolish enough to get involved with dragons! I hope that will serve as a lesson to you both!”
“I need to be able to perform magic if I’m supposed to put the fear of god into a bunch of outlaw dragons,” I pointed out.
“Yes, she does. As entertaining as it sounds to turn things to bananas, I don’t see that the bad dragons are going to have a whole lot of respect for that.”
He ground his teeth for a moment. “I will not lift the interdict.”
My hopes were dashed on the rocks of despair.
“However, I will temporarily bestow upon her the Grace of the Magi. That should allow her to perform such magic as is necessary to free Maura from the hold of the ouroboros tribe.”
He made an intricate gesture over my head, bathing me in a blue light that skimmed along the surface of my skin until it disappeared with a residual tingle. I took a deep breath, aware of a warm sensation that seemed to wrap around me. “Without intending to sound ungrateful, I’d rather have the interdict lifted.”
His eyebrows bristled at me. I had the feeling I was just seconds away from total annihilation.
“Er . . . that is to say, thank you. I’m sure your blessing will help. Violet, if you would please give me all the information you have about Maura and these unknown dragons, I’ll add her to the list of things I must take care of.”
Dr. Kostich, still muttering, shot me a look that for ten seconds held me frozen in time, my heart stopped, the air locked into my unmoving lungs, my blood slowing until it lay limply in my veins. He released me just as he left the room.
I sank into a chair, raising a shaky hand to my throat. “I really hate it when he does that.”
“Stop your heart? He does it just for effect, but I’ve told him many times that he doesn’t have to be quite so extreme to get his point across.” Violet sat down at an elegant antique writing desk and made a few quick notes. “Last I heard, Maura was in Germany. Here’s the address I have for her, but I will warn you that she’s fairly resistant to being helped. She claims she can handle the situation, but things have gone from bad to worse, and I think it’s long past the time when she can hope to escape without the direst of repercussions.”
I took the sheet she handed me, wondering if Baltic would know about this group of dragons. “What are they doing that puts your daughter in such dangerous circumstances?”
Violet stood, clearly ending the conversation. “They attacked Suffrage House, and stole several items of immeasurable value from the L’au-dela vaults.”
“They stole from the headquarters of the Otherworld?” I shook my head. “How is that possible? I thought the security there was impossible to break.”
“That’s exactly what Father wants to know.” She looked down at her hands for a second before leveling a steadfast gaze at me. “He’s had to put out a price on all their heads, Maura’s included. But that’s not the worst.”
“I’m fairly certain I don’t want to know what could be worse, but go ahead—I’m braced.” I got slowly to my feet.
“The artifacts they stole are theurgical in nature.” She waited a moment for that to sink in before nodding. “Yes. Clearly they intend on challenging the powers of the L’au-dela itself, and we both know how that’s likely to turn out. Save my daughter, Tully. Save Maura from what will surely be her destruction, and Father will lift the interdiction. I will see to it that you can name your reward, as well.”
A vision of the light sword danced in my mind. I straightened my shoulders and gathered up my things. “I’ll call you when I have some news.”
“Tully . . .” She bit her lip. “Maura believes she is stronger than she really is.”
I gave her hand a squeeze. “Don’t lose heart. I may not be much of a mage, but dragons are very hard to kill, and with your father’s blessing, I’m confident that I’ll be able to get Maura back to you without too much trouble.”
Don’t you hate it when your words have a way of haunting you?
Chapter Five
“This is so Mission: Impossible! It’s just like the old days when I helped you out, Mayling!”
The expression on May’s face was completely missed by her oblivious twin. “Er . . . yes. Aisling, what do you see?”
“Two guards along the south side, just as Drake said there would be.” Aisling lowered the night vision goggles and lifted her wrist to press a button on her watch. “The new shift should be coming in another fifteen minutes.”
“Are you sure this is the time to be doing this?” I frowned into the darkness. The house loomed up as an inky shape against an only slightly lighter sky. Fantastically shaped blobs of darkness lay scattered between us and the house, giving the eerie sensation that the house was guarded by more than just a handful of dragons. I eyed one of the shapes, convinced I had seen it move, but I knew it must just be a trick of the dim moonlight. They are only yew hedges, I told myself. They just happen to look like mangled, unspeakably frightening beings. “The new guards will be wide-awake, won’t they? They’ll have a better chance of seeing us than tired guards.”
“True, but the shift change gives us a couple of minutes when the guards’ attention is on each other, rather than the house,” Aisling pointed out. “That’s the best time to make our move.”
“Don’t worry, babe, we’ve done this before,” Jim said, snuffling my leg. “When Ash and May broke into the vault at Suffrage House, they did it right at a shift change, too. Worked like a charm.”
“I don’t mean to make trouble, but I’m a bit worried about my magic. It was never very reliable, and I haven’t had a chance to try it out since Dr. Kostich gave me the Grace of the Magi. I used to suppose things went wrong because I lacked the skills to control the magic, but now I gather that’s because I’m not supposed to be able to use magic at all due to the dragon inside me. Did that shrub just move?”
The three women turned to look where I pointed.
“I don’t think so. Do shrubs move on their own?” Cyrene asked doubtfully.
“No, of course they don’t,” May said calmly.
“Not normally, but what if those aren’t ordinary shrubs?” I asked, watching one of the dark blobs with suspicion. “What if Drake did something to them?”
“Man, someone’s going to give me the heebie-jeebies if she doesn’t stop with all the inanimate-objects-moving-on-their-own bit,” Jim muttered.