Shadow Phantoms - H.P. Mallory Page 0,47

to Elmington. And if anyone found out, I would be undone. I was already enough of a lightning rod for unwanted attention: with my dad on the board, my powers stalling, and my tendency to lock horns with professors, I had enough eyes on me to last a lifetime. I didn’t also need to be the crazy girl who talked to ghosts after class.

“Nope,” I said again, this time to myself. “Nothing new at all—how’s the luck elixir going?”

She said something about pickled toadstools. I tried to listen, but all I heard was the voice of the dead prophet.

What sort of beast would waste their time coming after me? I thought.

This time, no one answered. Rowan mentioned something about an industrial herb dehydrator she found on Craigslist, and the question floated off into the mist.

ELEVEN

DUINE

My mask chafed irritatingly at my face as I entered the Circular Hall of the Masked Magistrates. Frankly, I hated having to wear the damn thing; secret identities always seemed faintly ridiculous to me. Besides, I was proud of who I was.

The idea behind the masks was that they allowed everyone to speak freely, without fear of retribution. I had no fear of retribution, and if anyone said anything I didn’t like, then I wanted to know who they were. Which was, presumably, why others felt the masks essential. It was nice to be feared, but the mask remained an irritation.

The table in the hall was circular, like the hall itself. Everyone was equal at a round table, just like at the court of King Arthur—though that was a name I didn’t need to be reminded of right now, after the debacle at Tintagel. The problem with the concept was that everyone was decidedly not equal. Take away the damn masks and every face could have been ranked in order of importance. It would have been a very bold person, indeed, who did not put me at the head of the table.

The time would come—and in the not too distant future—when the Masked Magistrates would become an irrelevance. For now, they represented the last vestige of the inclusivity and equality of the Underworld, the last place where the magic races sat down and tried to work together—even if we had to be incognito to do so.

Things had deteriorated, and the field was clear for someone to try and unite the races again under one flag. Under my rule, this Underworld 2.0 would be less equal—Mages at the top, everyone else at the bottom—but it would still be inclusive. I would insist upon it. In fact, if anyone tried to excuse themselves, they would be forced to join, kicking and screaming if necessary. Such are the sacrifices we make for the sake of inclusivity.

“By virtue of ballot, I shall be chairing this evening,” said one mask, sitting in the red chair. “I welcome you all to this meeting of the Masked Magistrates. I remind all those present to refrain from identifying themselves or their species. We are all equal here, we are all anonymous here.”

The room was insulated with magic that disallowed any of us to recognize the others. Therefore, a voice we might otherwise know well would not strike any notes of recognition within our minds. Well, this rule applied to the others, though it did not apply to me. I had spent the better part of a week searching for the antidote to such magic and had found it. Thus, I recognized any and all voices in the room. And there was one, in particular, I hoped to hear.

“Hear, hear,” we all chorused back dumbly, sounding like an AA meeting; ‘Hi, my name is Duine, it’s been two days since I last killed someone’. Such would actually be an improvement on what really happened at these meetings.

So why was I here?

Because, while the time would come when the King’s Alliance replaced this ludicrous spectacle, that day had not yet arrived and these idiots could help me.

The meeting began and I listened in deep boredom as administrative details were discussed with a frustrating vagueness, because to specify the needs of any one Magistrate would be as good as identifying to which faction they belonged.

I tried to amuse myself by guessing who was who. It seemed likely that I would know at least some of these people. One voice I was sure I would recognize was that of Sinjin Sinclair, Master Vampire, who was supposed to be here as leader of the Vampire Coalition (a name I