around Soul’s chain and forced myself to stand. Pain ricocheted through my body like a musket ball made of lightning, shattering and cutting and burning. I scuffed out the circle, not that magics had risen when I closed it. In fact, I was pretty sure it had all been for show. But the Mercy Blade was all about show, and I had . . . I had acquired his help. Under my own terms. Leo had taught me well.
“When do we leave?” he asked me.
“I have a gobag to pack. Say, fifteen minutes?”
“Yes.” He looked me up and down. “Do you remember how to fly?” His tone said he doubted it.
“I do.”
“Remove your clothing and meet me at the deck outside your sleeping quarters. We will rescue your little witch, save your buried witches, and heal your illness. Then you will give me the keys to the world.”
Keys to the world? I didn’t like the sound of that, but there was nothing I could do about it. “Fine.”
Gee vanished, like a magician’s trick, poof. I looked at Alex, who was still leaning against the wall, his face wearing a half grin, as if I had gotten away with pirate’s plunder. Brute was sitting at his side with a grindy clinging to his fur. “He’ll kill you when he finds out you don’t have a rift.”
“I have a rift. I can take him straight to it.”
Alex’s face went through a series of emotions. “No shit?”
“None at all.”
“Daaaang.”
I gave him a half grin. “I know, right? So we have one problem. Big Evan has the magical device that can track EJ. He said he could modify it to be used by anyone. If he already did that, then I need to pick it up, so I need you to find out if he succeeded in the modification, then arrange a rendezvous point, and convince him to stand on top of one of the vehicles with his hand in the air, holding up his marble, and let me pluck it out of his hand. In Anzu form. And my control isn’t very good.”
“So you might claw his arm off?”
“I hope not. But I’m not placing any bets. Now help me to my room so I can pack and strip and jump off the railing outside my second-story window.”
“Do I get to watch?”
It was an ongoing complaint that he had almost never seen me shift. “No. You do not get to watch me shift. But I’ll let you watch me leap out the window.”
“Almost as good.”
Alex stood slightly in front of me and I placed a hand on his shoulder as he led the way to the elevator. “Going up. Lingerie, undergarments, and naked bird ladies on two.”
CHAPTER 19
Beast Is Inside Stupid Anzu Bird
The team and my clan were still miles away when I settled to the floor of my bedroom with the draperies thrown back and the French doors open wide to the icy, dull day. I was naked and shivering, and my skin was tinged slightly bluish, the way flesh looks when it’s oxygen deprived. Or dead.
I pulled the special gobag over my head, situating it to lie beside the doubled gold chain and the gold nugget and the mountain lion tooth. Adjusted the strap for a larger neck. Inside the gobag were a pair of sweats, lightweight shoes, my cell phone (which had a call open to Alex), and a few weapons: a nine-millimeter, two extra mags loaded with silver-lead rounds, one vamp-killer, the arcenciel scale, and six stakes—three ash wood, three sterling. I added three packages of jerky strips and two protein bars. The gobag was heavier than usual, but I needed all the stuff in it, and as far as vamp-killing gear went, I was traveling light.
Vamp-killing. It’s what I did, or had done, prior to taking the gig as Leo’s Enforcer. I was a rogue-vamp hunter. And no way was I leaving home again without the tools of my trade, even if I was flying. I had done this before and it had sucked, but that didn’t matter. I had a job to do and not much time to do it in.
Wrapped safely in a length of bubble wrap and my sweats, tucked into the gobag, was the crystal holding mermaid-Soul. And the Glob. Just in case. Yeah. Just in case.
I dragged the comforter from the bed, over my shoulders, gripped the feather I had taken from a dead Anzu, closed my eyes, and calmed my breathing. Eventually,