Claimed by Shadow Page 0,77
are all kinds of metaphysical keep off signs everywhere, starting about a mile out, that make norms very uncomfortable.
The starlight had turned the landscape into something like the moon's surface-all mysterious dark craters and endless silver sand. MAGIC itself was dark and quiet, with all the external lights off and no movement among the buildings. It looked like whatever was happening tonight was taking place underground.
I collapsed onto a relatively rock-free piece of sand while Mac and Pritkin debated approaches. The hike had been a bitch. I'd stumbled through the growing darkness, stubbing my toe about every fourth step and falling on my face twice. The coat kept getting tangled around my legs and made me feel like I was carrying another person on my back. I'd been too busy lately for regular gym visits and it showed. Running for my life was obviously not giving me enough exercise.
"Is he in there?" Billy asked, hovering a few feet off the sand.
I hugged the coat around me, grateful for its thickness now that the desert had started to cool off. "I don't know.”
"Want me to check it out?”
"No." If Mircea was there, I didn't want to know. With luck, we'd escape into Faerie before he figured out that I'd been crazy enough to drop by.
"Is your ghost here?" Pritkin interrupted to ask. He surprised me by being cautious for once-maybe the idea of breaking into MAGIC scared even him. He had Mac describe his guard friends to Billy, who agreed to go see whether anyone had changed the duty roster unexpectedly. He streamed off across the sand, quickly becoming invisible against the night. In the meantime, we waited.
Once upon a time, when I was a child reading fairy tales, I'd ached to have my own adventures. Not that I'd wanted to be some drippy heroine languishing in a tower, awaiting rescue. No, I'd wanted to be the knight, charging into battle against overwhelming odds, or the plucky country lass who gets taken on as the apprentice to a great wizard. As I got older, I'd found out the hard way that adventures are rarely anything like the books say. Half the time you're scared out of your mind, and the rest you're bored and your feet hurt. I was beginning to believe that maybe I wasn't the adventurous type.
Billy returned after half an hour with news. The guards fit the descriptions Mac had given him and, lucky for us, there was a major uproar in the vamp area. "It's like a circus, Cass-everybody's there. The rest of the place is practically deserted!”
"Well?" Pritkin was looking impatient. "What does he say?”
"It's okay-the right guys are on duty." Billy, I noticed, was looking way too pleased about something. Maybe it was just relief that our job might be easier than we'd thought, but I doubted it. I knew his expressions almost as well as I knew my own, and he was practically ecstatic. "Okay, out with it.”
Billy grinned and twirled his hat around an index finger. For some reason the finger was less substantial at the moment than the hat, so it looked like his headgear was doing a giddy little jig all on its own. "It's too perfect," he crowed, his grin threatening to split his face. "Talk about a good omen!”
"What are you talking about?”
"Is something wrong?" Pritkin demanded. Billy and I both ignored him.
"I know your birthday doesn't start for a couple more hours, Cass, but you're getting your present early.”
"Billy! Just tell me already.”
He laughed delightedly, to the point that it barely missed being a cackle. "It's that bastard Tomas. He was captured early yesterday morning. I think they're trying to decide what would be the most painful way to execute him. That's why everyone's crowded into the vamp section-they want to see the show." Billy threw his hat up into the air jubilantly. "I wouldn't mind taking a peek myself, if we had time.”
The only thing that saved me from falling was that I was already sitting down. Tomas was about to be executed and might already be under torture? I sat blinking at Billy as my brain tried to comprehend it, and whatever showed on my face he didn't like. His grin faded and he started shaking his head violently.
"No. No way are you doing this! He deserves this, Cass, you know he does. He betrayed you-hell, he almost got you killed! For once, fate is taking a problem off our hands gratis. Let's smile, say thank