can't get back? What if I get stuck? Come up with something else." I hadn't enjoyed being Louis-César and I definitely didn't want to find out what the inside of a dark-magic user felt like.
"I don't think you'll get stuck. He's a mage. Once you get in, you ain't gonna have much time before he forces you out. But you won't need that long. If you can distract him for a couple minutes, I'm betting our three heroes can deal with the vamps."
"Three against twenty? Don't you think that's being a little optimistic?"
"You just don't wanna do this."
"Damn straight."
"You got a better idea?"
I swallowed thickly. There had to be an alternative. The Senate had sent three powerful operatives merely to drag me back from Dante's, so they wanted me pretty badly. When we didn't come back and nobody reported in, they were sure to send reinforcements, but there was no way to tell how long that would take. "How far away is sunrise? Maybe we can hold Tony's guys off until they have to duck for cover. Louis-César should be able to handle a little sun, and I know Tomas can."
Billy Joe laughed, but it didn't sound happy. "Sure, and you think our mage is gonna last that long?"
I glanced at Pritkin and couldn't argue the point. His eyes were bulging and several blood vessels must have popped, because it looked like he was crying red tears. But I was in no position to help him. I'd seen a lot of magic worked through the years, but I'd just performed the only bit I knew, and Billy Joe couldn't replace that kind of energy loss twice. But if I didn't do something soon, my trip to get revenge on Jimmy might end up costing three lives.
"Okay." I gulped some air. "Do it."
I couldn't see Billy Joe when he was inside me, but I could feel his emotions better than I could read his face, and he was skeptical. "You sure? 'Cause I don't wanna have to hear about this for eternity if you end up a spirit permanently. I know you. You'd haunt me."
"I thought you said that won't happen!"
"I said it probably won't. I'm new at this."
"Like you asked me, have you got another plan? Because if not—" That was as far as I got before Billy Joe crashed into me like a linebacker tackling a quarterback. He kept pushing until I would have called the whole thing off, done anything, said anything, to stop that awful pressure, except I couldn't move. It was like getting trapped between a steamroller and the side of a mountain; there was nowhere to go. A second after I decided I was going to die if the pressure didn't stop, I was suddenly flying free. It was a major relief, but the nice, floaty feeling lasted only about a second before I slammed into something that felt like a brick wall. It hurt so badly that I would have thought every bone in my body was broken, except that it suddenly dawned on me that I didn't have a body.
I heard a laugh echo around me. "Oh, no, little ghost. I already told you. You won't trick me again so easily. Go home to your mistress before I send you somewhere you won't like."
I realized what the wall was; it represented the mage's wards, and they were a lot more formidable than I'd expected. But I couldn't follow his advice. I didn't know how to get back without Billy Joe's help, so I had to go forward. Getting through those wards was matter of life and death, literally.
You can shield with anything as long as it has meaning for you: rock, metal, water, even air. It's simply a way of visualizing and manipulating your power. Eugenie had shielded with mist, which I'd thought was weird, but it seemed to work for her. The mage's wards were strong, but of a fairly normal type: like me, he imagined a wall, only his was wood and mine has always been fire. When I concentrated, I was able to see a fortress of huge trees, like California redwoods, stretching up so high that their tops were lost to sight. In reality, of course, they didn't have «tops»; I knew that wherever I went along his ward line, I would see this same, impenetrable wall.
I looked back to where I had «landed» and saw that an imprint of my body had been burned into the logs, splintering