Claimed by Shadow Page 0,70

could stretch out on the cot without having to lie through part of his body. "Did you see Casanova?" I croaked. I had commandeered one of Mac's beers to help my dry throat, and almost succeeded in making myself sick again when the alcohol hit my stomach. I hastily put it down.

"Yeah, but Chavez is AWOL. Maybe he's lying low until the mages vacate Dante's, I don't know. But Casanova said he'd lock up the stuff whenever he gets there." I nodded. It was as good as I could have hoped for. If Chavez had been smart enough to dodge the invasion of his workplace, the items he was carrying should be safe.

"Are you gonna do it?" Billy asked, shuffling the deck of cards. He never lifts things unless forced or showing off, but I was too sick to be impressed.

"Do what?" I lay back on the cot, trying to convince my stomach that there was nothing left to throw up. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I'd shifted in time before and never felt like this when I returned.

"Fix the ward.”

I blinked wearily at him. I'd almost forgotten about that. My pentagram would have come in really handy with Dmitri, and it had proved capable of traveling through time with me before. Unfortunately, I couldn't risk fixing it. "Yeah, and I'd owe the power a favor, too.”

"Seems like it owes you a couple, if you ask me. You've been running its errands. It's not like you wanted to go anywhere.”

"But I don't know if it looks at things like that.”

Billy blew smoke from an insubstantial cigarette, making a ring that floated up almost to the ceiling before disappearing. I asked him once why he could smoke ghostly cigarettes but couldn't drink ghostly booze, which would save me some embarrassing incidents and a lot of his whining. He'd said that whatever was with you, as in touching your body or within a few feet of it, when you died could materialize with you. It was all part of your energy, of course-so Billy was essentially smoking himself-but it was apparently satisfying on some level. Too bad he hadn't had a whiskey flask tucked away when he took his burlap swimming lesson.

"Why are we talking about this power like it's a person?" he asked thoughtfully. "You sound like it has a tally sheet and is marking down every favor so it can demand that you pay up one of these days. What if that's not true? Maybe it's a force of nature, like gravity. Only instead of keeping everything glued down, it responds to problems with the timeline by sending a repair person to fix it.”

I shook my head. His theory was surprisingly logical, but some part of me knew that whatever I was dealing with was conscious, not a mindless force. It knew I didn't like being on its repair crew. It just didn't care. "I don't think so.”

"Okay, let me make sure I understand this." Billy dealt out a hand of cards consisting of two black aces, a pair of black eights and the king of spades. It's called the Dead Man's Hand in poker because, according to legend, that's what Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot in the back. Hickok died in 1876, almost two decades after my dealer, but Billy knew his poker lore-and how to be obnoxious with it. "You're going to refuse to fix the ward even though you've got more people after you than I can count and you're going into Faerie, where trespassers are usually killed on sight? Just so you don't maybe owe a possibly nonsentient power a favor, which it might not even bother to collect?”

I was too tired to glare at him. "I don't know.”

"Oh, well, I'm glad you've at least thought it out.”

"Why are you nagging me about this?”

"Because, turtledove, in case you've forgotten, we made a deal. I've kept my end and I expect you to keep yours- which you can't do if you're dead. Okay, yeah, you don't like being bossed around. Who does? But, newsflash, being dead is a lot worse. Have Mac reattach the damn ward. If you don't need it, great, you don't owe anybody anything. But if you do, it'll be there, and when the smoke clears, so will you.”

"Uh-huh," I said testily, giving up on the idea of getting any sleep with Billy around. "And what if it flares when it isn't a lífe-and-death situation? I