Bitten in Two (13 page)

You want to know why?”

“Um—”

“Because at their core they’re the same. I’m making my way to the source now. And when I get there?” He paused, his amulet swinging hypnotical y, his eyes glittering like I should prepare for hefty news. “I’l be a Bard.” I sat back. “Dude. There hasn’t been a Bard roaming since…” I thought back. What had my History professor since…” I thought back. What had my History professor said? “I dunno, 1715?”

“Olfric the Hand was the last Bard, and he was murdered by Calico Jack Rackham and his pirate crew in 1718.” We both looked over our shoulders at the mention of pirates, who had strongholds in North Africa guarded, so it was said, by badass magic and wicked beasts. They’d never been a national security threat, so we hadn’t dealt with them directly. But we’d heard horror stories, and I sure as hel didn’t want to take any of them on. Especial y when they’d made it part of their code to exterminate the Bardish from the face of the earth.

I whispered, “Why would you want to be a Bard?”

“As a warlock I’m at the top of my game. Musical y I’m final y pul ing it together.” He lowered his voice.

“Sometimes when I’m playing, I think I can hear the universe singing back to me.” He made a pil ar of his fists on the table and rested his chin on them. Staring at the grouping of purple candles at its center he said, “That’s real y why I’m here. Because I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“What?”

He turned his head, letting his cheek rest on his hand. I watched his dark lashes sweep against his cheeks as he closed his eyes, wincing against the admission. “Nobody ever stood up to me before. For obvious reasons. I mean, we destroyed a fucking house.”

I nodded. “I was just thinking that we should probably be banned from property that has any value. At al .” Tiny smile that dropped right off his lips as he said,

“You were right. I needed to stop whining and start working.” He sat up and glared. “I stil think I’d have been a better man if I’d been born black.” His eyes softened. “But that’s probably because the only people who showed any kindness to me when I was a kid were a Jamaican named Tel er Keene and Skinny Day, who was African American.” I nodded. “Where’d you grow up?”

He looked through the curtain-framed opening to the sparkling blue of the fountain, then up to the ornate metalworked balconies. “Louisiana. First in a Catholic home for orphans. Then I spent a couple of years in juvie.” He glanced at me. “I may have been a kil er even longer than you.”

What do you say to that? Especial y when the guy revealing al these intimate details once tried to col apse a roof on your head?

“Why are you tel ing me this?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I’ve got a pretty thick skul . Skinny always said I was so hardheaded that I could drive nails with my eyebrows. But I’m not fool enough to turn my back on the few people brave enough to throw an honest opinion under my feet.” Again with the smile. “Especial y when it comes with the offer of a new instrument.”

“Never let it be said that I’m above bribery.” He swung his legs onto the couch, crossing them in front of him so he could face me as he spoke. “Cassandra said Vayl’s got a pretty serious problem.” My bottom lip started to tremble, so I bit it. “Yeah. About that. We haven’t been able to discover what could’ve caused it.”

He nodded. “During my flight I thought about al the dead ends you’ve been trying to make into highways. And then I realized there was one road you hadn’t considered.” He draped an arm across the couch’s metal backrest.

“Maybe this is a curse.”

I shook my head. “Curses are personal. My understanding is that you need the victim’s hair and clothing, stuff like that, to pul it off.” Sterling said, “That’s true. They’re also al about timing, meaning they can only be cast in special circumstances.

For instance, has Vayl been in New Orleans in the past three months?”

“No.”

“Has he kil ed an innocent or cursed someone else recently?”

“No to both.”

“Has he—”

“Wait a minute! Wait, wait, wait…” I rubbed my forehead, trying to pul a scene I’d wanted to forget forever back into focus. “About two weeks ago we were in Scotland. My mom escaped from hel to—wel , it doesn’t real y matter what she wanted with me. But before the dogs dragged her back down, Vayl whispered something in her ear that real y flipped her out. And then Satan’s Enforcer”—
who’s trapped in my head right now, but I’m
sure as hell not admitting that to you
—“he said, ‘So it shal be.’ And he took her away. Does that sound like it might’ve been a curse to you?”

Sterling had started to straighten up and sit forward halfway through my story. He nodded and said, “When someone lays down a curse, they leave themselves vulnerable to the same kind of attack. It’s not a wide window. In fact, it starts to close right away, and by the time the moon changes again they’re safe. But if an enemy can attack that person within the month, they can do massive damage.”

I stared at the candles. Was it just my imagination, or had they begun to melt in the heat of my gaze? “The only person who knew about that curse before today was the Enforcer. Brude. Who, we just discovered on our last mission, has ties with the Sol of the Valencian Weres. Have you heard of him?”

“Just through office memos. His name’s Roldan, right?”

“Yeah, but he’s not just some superalpha who’s in the mood to throw his weight around. He’s so old that he met Vayl for the first time
during the same era his mind is
currently stuck in
.” I looked up at Sterling. “Do you believe in coincidences?”

“Not when they click like a seat belt. How does Roldan feel about Vayl?”

“A week ago I’d have said he was just some creeper who’d backed a bunch of fanatical gnomes that were trying to gut NASA. I never knew about Vayl’s history with him until the end of the mission. And even then I’d have guessed Roldan was only after what he got when we were able to stop the Australian gnomes—you know, a major reputation boost among the moon-changers. But now I’d guess he’s probably hating like a reality-show reject, and it’s al to do with this ward Vayl had in the late 1700s named Helena.” Sterling raised a finger. “We also know he kil ed Ethan Mreck.”

Ethan had been one of us, a Were assassin assigned to infiltrate Roldan’s pack. News of his death had reached us shortly before Pete was kil ed. Sterling must’ve been thinking along the same lines because he went on. “Pete’s kil er was clawed too.”

I shivered, almost like I could feel the tips of those razor-sharp spikes brush against my neck. “That’s enough for me. You want to know what I think?”

Sterling’s eyes had begun to blaze. “Hit me.”

“I’m glad you don’t mean that literal y. There’s this guy named Yousef—never mind.” I took a deep breath. “I think Roldan was moving to fil the power void that was left when we took out the Raptor and Floraidh Halsey lost her coven.

He kil ed Ethan and Pete in a largely successful bid to bring down our department, which was the biggest threat to his safety. Take us out, he hamstrings his worst enemies. In addition, somewhere along the way, he learned that Vayl was working for Pete. I don’t know how or when. The chronology doesn’t real y matter. The point is that he’s chronology doesn’t real y matter. The point is that he’s created this perfectly geometric plan, which probably has him bouncing like a kid on a trampoline, where he gains power over al Weres by taking his revenge on Vayl.” Sterling shoved his plate away from the edge of the table so he could tap at its top, almost as if he was playing the notes of a song as he spoke. “But this kind of curse? It’s mondo magic. Only a few people can pul off the kind of mind-fuck Vayl’s experiencing right now.”

“Meaning?”

“I’d bet big money that Roldan’s hired himself a mage. I can’t give you a name. They keep their identities closer to their chests than poker cards. But if you get close enough to him, you’l be able to sense him.”

I jumped off the couch. If the mage felt anything like Sterling, my hair would probably fly straight off the nape of my neck the second I hit his neighborhood. “Let’s go get him.”

He raised a hand. “I’m not wasting my energy looking for a guy who’s probably guarded his home better than a super-max prison.”

“So how are we going to find him?”

Sterling flicked his hand like I’d just presented him with a simple math problem. “He’l be where the crowds are thickest.”

Right. A parasitic pickpocket, feeding off mass energy so nobody in particular would notice what he was stealing.

Sterling had probably done it hundreds of times himself. I said, “That’l be the Djemaa el Fna after dark. It’s rol ing with people.”

“So we know
where
he’l be.” But Sterling didn’t seem satisfied. He ran a hand through his hair, pul ing it back far enough to reveal an earring that hung halfway to his shoulder. Shaped like a boat oar, it was inscribed with runes that made me feel a little sick when I stared too long. I concentrated on his straight black eyebrows as he said,

“But I’m not positive I’m right. No mage could have pul ed off the curse without using some of Vayl’s personal things. I looked it up. He’d need something from the year he wanted to stick Vayl’s mind in. Something with his blood on it.

Something related to a habit he’d had in—what year was it?”

“1777,” I said.

“Okay, so let’s say he drank a glass of port every night before he went to bed in 1777. The mage would need a bottle of port of the same brand Vayl liked. How would he have gotten hold of something like that?” I shook my head. “It couldn’t have been from his house.

Bergman designed his security system so nobody’s broken in. And he would’ve mentioned stuff going missing from our hotel.”

“What about other places Vayl’s lived?”

I thought about it. I knew he’d spent his early days as a Rogue, wandering Europe and parts of Asia. Then he’d settled into a Trust in Greece before moving to America.

With his kind of power and pul , Roldan could’ve easily stolen, or even bought, a few of Vayl’s old possessions. In fact, as soon as he’d found out Vayl had left the country in 1777, he could’ve robbed him blind, stomped his valuables to bits, and then thought,
But I’m keeping this box of foul
little cigars just to remind me of how I got one over on the
bastard.

“It’s conceivable,” I said.

Sterling nodded. “So let’s assume it’s a curse and move forward from there.”

“Then we’re hunting a mage tonight?”

“Shit, yeah.”

I was suddenly ravenous. Tearing into the bread on my plate, I tucked both my feet under my legs and munched happily, wondering what kind of preparations Sterling would need to make for our showdown tonight. I was hoping for an explosion. Somehow I felt that only splattage would make up for what I’d been through the past few days.

Sterling leaned toward me, his hair sweeping forward like an axe to cut the air for him. He shoved it back as he smiled, blinking sleepily as he gave me a good long look.

“What?” I asked through a wad of half-chewed carbs.

He rol ed his head toward the door that led to the lounge. “Someone’s coming. I’ve got a little ward up that he’s making tingle in al the right places. Tel him I’m available.”

“I thought you had a girlfriend.”

He shrugged a shoulder, his look tel ing me his tastes in love were about as flexible as his spel range.

I said, “My guys are straight, Sterling. Although maybe I could hook you up with this dude I just met named Yousef.

You never know what he might be interested in.” We turned our heads as Sterling’s lost love interest strol ed into the courtyard. He wore his black widow T-shirt, military-green Bermudas, and neon-pink flip-flops. Which he cal ed thongs, because that was the word for them in Australia, where he’d bought them. But mostly because he thought it was hilarious. And he carried a briefcase. It clashed with the outfit so badly that if they were people they’d have been throwing rocks at each other, but somehow Cole managed to pul it off.

He also looked remarkably refreshed for a guy who’d just spent the night boffing a demon. I waited for the spurt of anger. Jealousy. Whatever. Nothing happened. Which was when I realized I trusted my buddy to make the right choice in the end. And if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter, because I was stil going to kil her.

In fact, the idea cheered me up so much that I ran to meet him halfway. “Cole! You’l never guess what I just found out!” He looked curiously over my shoulder at Sterling a couple of times as I told him about the mage and the curse.

“That dude needs to go poof,” he pronounced when I was done.

“That’s just what
I
was thinking!”

“Then we’re set. Who’s your buddy?”

“Oh. That’s Sterling.”

Cole ducked a little. “The warlock?” he whispered.

“Wow. I don’t know whether to ask for an autograph or go buy a talisman.” When I raised my eyebrows he added,

“The analysts say he’s moody.”

“Oh. Wel , he hasn’t tried to hex any of his partners since—” I stopped. Hid a wince. “I’m sure you’l be fine.” I introduced them. Cole, at least, knew enough not to shake Sterling’s hand. He gave the warlock a lazy sort of salute and sat opposite him inside the gazebo, laying his briefcase on the table.