Dead Man's Deal The Asylum Tales - By Jocelynn Drake Page 0,32

tapped the energy floating around in the air. It only took a couple of seconds and a brief wave of my hand to summon the silencing spell that was becoming a regular part of my repertoire recently. For someone who had chosen to break away from the Towers, I was frequently in the midst of things that would most interest them.

“Don’t move,” I said, flopping back down on the couch. “I created only a small bubble—attracts less attention. No one can hear you.”

Robert looked at me a bit skeptically. “I didn’t see you do anything but wave your hand in the air.”

“The best spells are the subtle ones. Now talk.”

A smile peeked out for a second. “I still can’t believe you’re a warlock. My brother . . .”

“My brother, the warlock. Scourge of all that is good and just in the world. Yeah, yeah,” I said a bit irritably. When I lived in the Towers, I was told that I was being reborn into godhood. When I moved back among the “mortals,” I became the bane of their existence. Such a fall back to earth tends to bruise the ego. “Now, what does Reave have you transporting?”

Robert’s smile faded. “I don’t know how he acquired this information, but Reave knows the exact location of all the Towers.”

My heart stopped and then started again, pounding away like a madman on crack. I lurched to my feet, wanting to put some distance between my brother and his words as if I was expecting a bolt of lightning to strike him, but I remained rooted to the spot. I couldn’t move outside of the spell without disrupting it and I definitely needed to do a little venting that wouldn’t be overheard.

The first of the Ivory Towers was built before the Great War, but the warlocks and witches forced everyone after the war to work on building others—one on every continent plus a secret eighth so that they could tighten their hold on all the peoples of the world. As each Tower was finished, the memory of everyone was altered and powerful spells were placed over the Towers to hide them. No one but the warlocks and witches knew where they were, and I believed it to be for the best. If you couldn’t find them, then you couldn’t start shit that was going to get everyone killed.

Reave was going to get us all killed.

“What the hell is he thinking?” I yelled.

“Maybe that he’s tired of being under their thumb,” Robert snapped.

“We all are!” I shouted simply because I couldn’t stop shouting. I dropped back down onto the couch and put my head into my hands, trying to learn to breathe again. When I spoke, my voice was low but not particularly calm. “I don’t want to know what he’s planning. That’s the least of our problems. If they find out he’s got that information, they will come down off the Towers and kill us all.” I glared at my brother. “You don’t know them like I do. If they suspect anyone has that information, they won’t bother to hunt down you or Reave. They will destroy the entire city, every living creature, to make sure the information has been silenced.”

Robert tried to smile. His mouth moved in the right direction, but it was strained, while his eyes flickered with fear. “Then I guess you better come up with something good.”

“Has he told you yet? Do you know the locations?”

“Just one. He said it was insurance so that you wouldn’t try to ‘rescue me.’ He also said that if you tried to erase the location from my memory, he’d kill me.” Robert didn’t look particularly disturbed by the threat, probably because he knew that I would do everything within my power to protect him.

My teeth were clenched so tightly that my jaw had begun to throb. I was going to kill Reave. I wasn’t a killer, but this dark elf was driving me to it. My brother might not have wanted out, but he needed out because Reave was shortening his life substantially by putting him in the path of the Towers.

“I need time to think and prepare.” The words were stiff and hard when I spoke. “When are you scheduled to make your delivery?”

“I get the information in three days. You’ll have one day to tattoo them on me—”

“What?”

“Reave is giving me the locations as coordinates. I can’t memorize seven sets of exact coordinates and he doesn’t want paper or digital copies traveling.