Karen Chance: Inked

Caleb tried again, this time with a spell strong enough to raise goose bumps on my skin. But the tattoo was still a tattoo, its colors glowing warm and jewel-bright against my stomach. “It must be a talisman,” he informed me.

“So what? My owl’s a talisman.”

“Your owl is part talisman. It gathers energy from the natural world or pulls it from a built-in reservoir to avoid draining you every time you use it. But there are rare wards that are pure talismans—that don’t draw from your own magic at all. It looks like that’s what we have here.”

“That still doesn’t explain how we get it off!” I said, brushing at it uselessly. I could feel the raised outline against my fingertips, but there was nothing to grab hold of. Just skin and ink.

“That could be a problem,” Caleb said, helping me to my feet. “Talismans like that are illegal because they’re made by draining the magic of a living creature into the tat. It gives them a large reservoir, but sometimes characteristics of the creature are passed on as well. Tats like that have their own minds, in a way.”

“So you’re saying it’ll turn loose when it wants to?”

“Or when it runs out of power.”

“And that will be when?”

He smiled like a man who didn’t have a dangerous magical weapon stuck under his belly button. “No way to know.” He picked my jeans up off the floor and tucked the numb stick in the pocket. “I’d keep this, if I were you. The effect wears off after a while.”

Great. I grabbed my jeans and assessed the damage. On the plus side, the stinging pain in my backside was no longer noticeable, thanks to the numb stick’s deadening qualities. On the negative, the knee that had been hit didn’t seem to be working too well, and threatened to give way whenever I put any weight on it.

And then a flash went off, almost blinding me. “Jamie!”

“Now we’ll talk about those pictures,” he chuckled, clicking the door shut.

I threw my clothes back on and barreled through the door. “You conniving little bastard! Fork over that camera right now or I swear—”

“Mage de Croissets! What precisely is going on here?”

I stopped, jeans unzipped and shirt askew, blinking away afterimages. Shit. The boss never came down here. It was practically the only advantage to working in the dungeon. And now it didn’t have even that much going for it.

My eyes slowly adjusted to show me the wavy silver hair, high forehead and sour expression I’d feared. Richard Hargrove, better known as Dick to his friends or The Dick to the rest of us, had been brought out of retirement after the war started. He was old-school, demanding things spit-polished and perfect, like his excruciatingly correct posture. It made his too-thin form, which as usual was encased in a dark-colored three-piece suit, look even more skeletal than it was. I didn’t like the guy, but I kept wishing he’d eat a sandwich.

“Well?” The barked word surprised me, and these days, that wasn’t good. The piece of contraband we’d been working on before the ward went nuts flew off the examining table and through the air—straight at the source of the disturbance.

Hargrove ducked as the five-foot-long metal staff tore through the air just over his head. It went on to shatter a reinforced glass door, obliterate a computer, take a bite out of a wall and lodge like a quivering spear in one of the steel-plated elevator doors. That would have ended it, except that this was a wizard’s staff, which apparently still had some juice left in it. It melted a chunk of the door into a sizzling silver mess.

And then it exploded.

The remainder of the glass door protected us from some of the pieces of flying metal, and the shield Hargrove threw up while still on one knee absorbed the rest. I would have helped him, but it was all I could do to rein in the waves of magic thrumming under my skin, begging for a spell, an aim, a target. I concentrated on not gasping as the now-familiar vise clenched around my gut. It felt like all of my organs were twisting together, as if they were trying to wring themselves out. I’d have clawed at my flesh to straighten them out, if that hadn’t been a completely crazy idea.

As it was, my fingers clenched over the circle of radiating lines just below my third rib. It looked like a stylized sun a little larger than the pad of my thumb, but the ugly silver scar was a blank in my memory. They say you never hear the one that kills you. But you don’t hear the one that knocks you cold for three days, either.

Or the one that leaves you a magical cripple.

“Watch it,” Caleb murmured as the boss turned toward us, his shield riddled with glass and metal, like a porcupine with fully extended quills.

“Are you under some semblance of control?” Hargrove demanded icily.

I nodded and his shields fell, causing the trapped pieces to drop to the floor with a clatter. Jamie ran to gather up the remains of the staff, while Caleb helped the boss back to his feet. I didn’t budge. Hargrove had caught me on his glare like a bug on a pin, his expression somewhere between murderous and mortified. I didn’t understand that last part, until I belatedly noticed the man standing off to one side, out of the line of fire. No, not a man, I realized, as the spicy, musky scent of Clan hit me.

“It’s good to see you again, Lia.”

“Mr. Arnou,” I said awkwardly.

“Sebastian, please.” He paused, glancing at Hargrove’s furious expression. “We are family, after all.”

Well, crap.

“You might have mentioned that you were related to the werewolf king!” Hargrove whispered viciously, as we trudged up eight flights.

I glanced up the stairs, to where the individual in question was being regaled with some story by Jamie. Despite his recent brush with disaster, Sebastian Arnou appeared unruffled. He reminded me of my mother, who had been so comfortable in human form that it had been almost impossible to believe that she was anything else. Only the occasional scent of something rare and wild gave it away, or a too fluid movement when surprised.

Or watching her morph into a 150-pound wolf, of course.

Not that I’d ever seen Arnou’s leader in wolf form, or caught off guard, either. And today was no exception. He was wearing a crisp tan suit that set off his short dark hair and vivid blue eyes. His shoes were Prada, his watch was Piaget and his demeanor was set on pleasant. It was difficult to imagine anyone who looked less like the slavering beast of legend.

“His title is bardric,” I explained. “The Weres don’t actually have a—” I stopped at the blistering look Hargrove sent me. “And he’s more of an acquaintance, really.”

Hargrove threw a sound shield around us with an impatient gesture; I guess he knew about Were hearing. “He said you were family!”

“It wasn’t meant literally. I recently did a favor for his clan and they, um, sort of adopted me. It’s an honorary thing.”

Hargrove didn’t look satisfied. “Then perhaps you can explain why he insisted on seeing you after the incident this morning?”

“What incident?”

“A Were, or what was left of one, was fished out of a ditch along Highway 91 by one of our patrols. They saw several men dragging it out of a drainage tunnel, and when they went to investigate, the men ran off, leaving the corpse behind. Of course we informed the Clan Council. I assumed they would send someone for the body, but imagine my surprise when the Arnou himself showed up to take possession! And demanded to see you and Kempster.”

“Jamie?” I’d assumed I was in for it, but I’d wondered why Hargrove had ordered him upstairs, too.

“And he wants the most current map we have of Tartarus. But he won’t say why.”