they sizzled and popped, cooking the flesh between them and the bone. As I watched, one molten welt obscured the small indentation over his breast where my bullet had gone in and kept going. I stared at him in paralyzed shock. From the shape of the marks, it was pretty obvious that my ward had flared to life.
That was ironic, considering that Tony must have been the one to have it worked into my skin in the first place. I'd always thought he'd been gypped: its original pentagram shape had stretched as I grew older, and all I'd ended up with was an ugly tattoo that covered half my back and part of my left shoulder. But although it wasn't a very good-looking design anymore, it seemed to work pretty well. However, the vamp who attacked me wasn't a master—that surge of energy had come from somewhere behind us—and how my ward would fair against one of the big boys was an open question. I was pretty impressed that it had done this much; the only time it had flared up before, it hadn't put on nearly as much of a show. It had only burnt the would-be mugger's arm, singeing him enough that I was able to get away. Of course, then it had been a human trying to rip my head off. Maybe it became stronger depending on the strength of the one it was fighting? I had a bad feeling I was going to find out.
I know something about wards, since Tony always kept two wardsmiths on staff to maintain the fortress of magical protections around his home and businesses. I'd learned from them that there are three main categories: perimeter wards, energy wards and protection wards. Perimeter wards are what Tony uses as camouflage when he's up to something illegal—in other words, constantly. Energy wards are more complex: at their best, they are better than Prozac at relieving stress and helping people work through emotional problems. At their worst, which is the way Tony usually used them, they could allow him to influence important business negotiations. Everyone within the perimeter of the wards would start to feel very mellow and would suddenly decide that cutthroat tactics were too much trouble when they could simply do whatever Tony wanted. There are two types of protection wards: personal shields and guards. Eugenie instructed me in the first type when I was a kid. Without them, I could even sense the ghosts of ghosts—the thin energy trails stretching back in time like glowing lines on a map, telling me that once, maybe hundreds of years ago, a spirit had passed by. The older I got, the more distracted I became by the impressions, maybe because Tony's old mansion was sandwiched between an Indian burial ground and a colonial cemetery. Eugenie had finally tired of my mind wandering during lessons and gave me the tools to shield against them. She taught me to sense my energy field, what some people call an aura, then use my power to build a hedge around it for protection. Eventually, my shields became automatic, filtering out anything except active spirits in the here and now.
But shields are only as powerful as the person building them, since they usually draw on personal power, and most aren't enough to thwart a major spiritual or physical attack. That's where guards come in. Crafted by a group of magic users, they are designed to protect a person, object or location from harm. They can be set to fend off danger, usually by turning the evil intent back on its sender or, in cases like mine, ensuring that anyone touching me with harm in mind ends up screaming in agony.
These types of wards are big business in the supernatural community. Tony once paid a wardsmith a small fortune to craft a special perimeter-protection combo for a convoy of ships carrying some highly illegal substances. He was supposed to make them look like old garbage scowls to any observers—not the sort of thing the authorities enjoy searching too thoroughly. But the smith was young and careless, and the wards failed right as the ships were heading into port—almost in front of a Coast Guard patrol. Tony lost the cargo and the wardsmith lost his life. I had been too young when my ward was done to remember the experience, but whoever had crafted it knew what he or she was doing. Tony must have paid a pretty penny for it,