of the Madonna. "If you're here much longer, I won't have to!" he whispered furiously.
"Let's just get the damn thing and we can both leave," I said reasonably.
"In case it has somehow slipped your notice, this was a trap!"
"Damn it, you can't trust anybody anymore!" The elderly French mage we'd visited in his sweet little country cottage had seemed so reliable, with his Old World charm and his kind eyes—and his lousy map that had sent us on the treasure hunt from hell. It wasn't fair; the bad guys weren't supposed to look like someone's grandfather. "And Manassier seemed so—"
"If the next word out of your mouth is ‘nice, I will make your life hell when we get back. Pure hell."
I didn't bother to dignify that with a response. Pritkin was just…Pritkin. At some point I'd learned to mostly roll with it. I'd often wondered if he gave the Circle half as much trouble before he broke with them over his decision to support me. If so, you'd think they'd have thanked me for taking him off their hands. Maybe they planned to send a nice bouquet to the funeral.
"Look, all we know for sure is that some mages got here ahead of us. Maybe we all decided to burgle the place on the same night." I didn't really believe it—they'd attacked us almost as soon as we'd arrived and we hadn't even found anything. But I hated to give up on our best lead yet. And leaving Pritkin to pursue it alone wasn't an option. He had all the self-preservation instincts of a bug near a shiny windshield.
A strong hand clenched my arm. "Ow!" I pointed out.
"Give me the damn map!"
"Not a chance."
"Hey!" I looked up to see the younger ghost staring at us. "In case you missed it, people are trying to kill you."
"People are always trying to kill me," I said irritably.
"The only way you're dying tonight is if I kill you," Pritkin informed me.
"I've been in relationships like that," the ghost sympathized.
"We're not in a relationship," I muttered.
"Sheer bloody-minded—what?" Pritkin broke off his rant, which I hadn't been listening to anyway, to look around wildly. "What's happening?"
"You mean you let him talk to you like that and you aren't even getting any? Man, what a rip-off."
"Nothing. Just a couple of spirits," I said, shooting ghost #2 a look.
"Hey, standing right here."
"And," his counterpart chimed in, "I resent that ‘just' comment. We're the two most active spirits in this entire—"
"Active?" A hand moved down my arm, the touch both gentle and rough, calloused from holding guns and doing push-ups and snapping people's necks. "Don't even think about it," I told Pritkin, then turned my attention back to the ghost. "How active?"
The older ghost preened slightly. "We see everything that goes on around here. The things I could tell—"
"So, if there were hidden passageways, you'd know?" I asked, as Pritkin found my wrist. A moment later, the map was snatched out of my hand. "Still not leaving," I told him.
"Oh. You're after the thing, aren't you?" the younger ghost asked.
I decided not to wrestle Pritkin for the map, which wouldn't be dignified. It also wouldn't work. "What thing?"
"The thing with the thing." He waved a negligent hand. I was starting to suspect that if you died stoned, your ghost stayed that way.
"Could you be a little more specific?" Before he could answer, there was a strange sound from outside, a dim, high-pitched whine. I felt a hand on my back, viciously shoving me to the ground. Then Pritkin was on top of me, crushing me into a fetal position while things exploded and rained fire all around us.
Red and violet spots danced behind my tightly clenched lids for several long moments. There were minute tremors in the ground, like the aftershocks of an earthquake, and my skin prickled with leftover energy. When I cautiously opened my eyes, I saw starlight seeping in from a gaping hole in the roof and clouds of disintegrated stone in the air.
Pritkin was on his feet again, firing at the mages, who fired back, gunshots echoing off the high, close-packed monuments like firecrackers. Most of the time I thought he was a little too quick to opt for the shoot-it-and-hope-it-dies solution. Other times, like when someone was trying to make a colander out of my head, it seemed okay.
"Over there," the younger ghost offered, pointing to the right. "Come on." He slouched off, ignoring a nearby snaky pathway in favor of a shortcut