didn't want to use it. Power wasn't free, especially in such large amounts. I'd been around magic users enough to know that if you borrow power, eventually you get a bill. I didn't like not knowing what that bill might be, or who might be sending it.
"Why are the knights attacking us?" I asked, hoping for another solution-any other. "We haven't done anything!" Maybe I was misreading the situation, and the casino's defenses were actually trying to take out the mages for us. In that case, all we needed to do was get out of the way.
Pritkin quickly destroyed that hope. "Andrew and Stephan triggered the automatic defenses by drawing arms inside the casino. I didn't respond, so we should have been safe, but they came too close. The defenses have confused us with the aggressors, and now we're all targets. Shift us now!”
I didn't have time to explain my views on my new power, because I had to dodge a spear thrown by a knight down the corridor. I jumped aside just before it slammed into the floor where I'd been standing, sending bits of painted concrete flying up at me. I felt liquid slide down my left cheek and raised a shaking hand to it. My fingertips came back painted red, but my ward never so much as twinged. I stared incredulously at my blood-smeared hand. So much for supernatural protection.
"Do it!" Pritkin yelled.
"I can't!" I would break my resolution, but only if I was sure that the only alternative was death. If anyone sent me a bill for London, I could reasonably argue that I had been getting myself out of the mess I'd been dragged into against my will. I'd have no such excuse for calling the power now, and I didn't intend to end up owing somebody my life if I could avoid it. That sort of debt in magical terms can be a very bad thing.
Pritkin might have argued, but the charred knights were quickly regaining their feet. He sent his animated arsenal into the crowd, the wildly weaving knives giving the knights some new targets. I added my daggers to the mix, just in time to take out a mace spinning straight at Pritkin's skull. He hadn't noticed it because he was using the sword to block a pike that had been about to run him through from the other direction. The last opportunity I'd had to see Pritkin fight, he'd looked like he was enjoying himself. His face showed no such emotion this time. Of course, the dangling ear might have had something to do with that.
I looked around for a way out, but there didn't appear to be any. The back stairs were surrounded by a minefield of broken glass, not that it was a huge obstacle. My bare feet wouldn't have enjoyed it, but if Pritkin could lift that huge sword, he could probably haul me across. But I doubted he could manage that while also fighting off the line of knights between us and that part of the hall. The same was true for the door to the kitchen. It was blocked by a fallen suit of armor, which was being dismembered by one of my gaseous knives, and the thing's three companions, which were still on their feet.
"Are there hidden stairs?" Pritkin asked in a calm voice that sounded really out of place at the moment. "They should have difficulty navigating them.”
"How should I know?" I looked around frantically, but my attention was monopolized by a knight brandishing a wicked-looking two-headed axe. Alphonse, who collected weapons of all kinds, had an identical item on his safe-room wall. It had looked menacing enough just hanging there; it was a lot worse now that it was almost close enough to take off Pritkin's head-or mine.
"Check the tapestries!" Pritkin ordered, darting forward to take a swing at the armor's knees. "There might be a hidden door!" His blade took off one of our attacker's legs, causing it to topple over. But it kept coming, dragging itself forward by its arms and using the remaining leg to push. Even more disconcerting, its severed limb wiggled along the ground behind it, trying to catch up to the main event. To stop one of these things, we'd have to completely dismember it, and there were too many of them and too few of us for that to be practical. We'd be in pieces long before they would.
I yanked the nearest curtain aside, but nothing