Maybe because one of them had a blowgun.
“Well, fuck,” Rosier said as a dart caught him in the neck. He face-planted onto the bed. The door slammed.
I looked at it for a moment, then at my passed-out companion. And then I sighed and pulled the pillow back over my head.
Chapter Two
“There’s always option two,” Rosier said, sometime later.
At least, that was what I thought he’d said. But whatever knockout drug they’d given him was making his tongue loll, and it was kind of hard to tell. I looked up, but he just lay there and drooled at me. I waited for a minute, then went back to fiddling with the metal around my wrist.
It wasn’t part of the handcuffs.
I’d given up on those. They were solid steel and probably overlaid with spells to make them extra hard to pick, given experience. Not that it mattered; I wasn’t Houdini.
Of course, I wasn’t a dark mage, either, but I didn’t have a lot to work with here.
Tiny silver daggers, like links in an especially deadly chain, slid under my fingertips. I assumed Gertie had relieved me of my only weapon when I got here, but it didn’t matter. I’d tried to get rid of the little bracelet a hundred times myself, after finding out that it had once belonged to a dark mage. But every time I took it off, it was back in place moments later, spit-shined and gleaming, to the point that I could swear it was smirking at me.
It kind of looked like that now, winking smugly in the light of a nearby lamp, like it knew what I was thinking. On a positive note, it could throw out little ghostly knives that looked about as substantial as mist but cut like well-oiled steel. On the negative, I didn’t always control what they cut.
Or who.
“Did you hear me?” Rosier demanded.
I looked up again. I’d rolled him onto his back and tucked the too-cheerful coverlet around him, because his tunic kept riding up and I’d had enough trauma for one day. As a result, he now resembled a colicky baby with wild tufts of blond hair sticking out everywhere.
Huh. I guess part of it was genetic, I thought, and patted one down. “I heard you.”
“Well?”
“Well what? You’re the one who said no.”
“What?” The colicky look intensified. “When did I say that?”
I frowned at him. “A few minutes ago. You said no shifting—”
“Shifting wasn’t option two—”
“Of course it was. Mug the guards, option one. Shift into the hells, option two—”
“That was your option two! I never—”
“That was my option one,” I corrected. “This is option two.”
I held up my wrist, and his eyes focused on it. Or tried to. But then I guess they managed, because they widened alarmingly. “That’s dark magic!” said the demon lord.
“Dark magic that just might get us out of here.”
“Dark magic doesn’t get people out of trouble,” he said, struggling with the blanket. “It gets them into it!”
“The mages who use it seem to do okay.”
“Yes, until they get addicted to the magic they steal from everyone they can get their hands on, and end up little better than junkies! And start doing progressively crazier things to get more of it—”
“I’m not talking about mainlining the stuff,” I said—to myself, because Rosier wasn’t listening.
“—summoning my people, trying to trap them—think of it,” he said, green eyes blazing, “beings thousands of years old enslaved to a group of idiots so hopped up on their latest fix they can’t see straight! Until we find a way free and eat their faces!”
“Okay, I get that you don’t like it—”
“I loathe it! All demons do. If you’re smart, so will you!” he added, panting a little because the blanket was being stubborn. But he finally managed to get the arm that wasn’t chained to the bed free and flailed it around.
I moved back so he didn’t accidentally clock me. “Then I assume you have a better idea?”
“Of course!” he said unhelpfully, and the flailing arm flailed some more. Until it landed on my leg. And then just stayed there, the hand clenching.
It took me a moment, because the other hand was clenched, too, on the edge of the bed, probably so he wouldn’t fall off. And because he was still mostly wrapped in the quilt, like a cherry-covered burrito. And because he was scruffy and smelly and crazed-looking—
And pawing at my thigh.
“Eww!” I jumped back, all the way to the headboard.
“It’s the only way,” he insisted.
“Like hell it’s the only way!”
“I’m an incubuth. I can lend you thome energy—” he said, around the foot I had smushed in his face.
“I have energy!”
“You have the Pythian power but can’t access it. I can help—”
“Stop touching me!”
“—by increasing your personal strength—”
“I’m warning you!”
“—so you can shift uth out of here. Damn it, girl!” Rosier glared at me through a gap between my toes. “This isn’t exthactly fun for me, either!”
“Then cut it out!”
“I’m not . . . going to die . . . because of you! Now help me—”
“Oh, I’ll help you,” I growled, and kicked him.
He reared back, holding his nose and looking outraged. “You bith!” he screamed. “You coldhearted bith!”
And then he grabbed me.
But he was still handcuffed to the bed, which limited his range, and wrapped in the blanket, which limited his motion, and apparently, he hadn’t been trained in hand-to-hand combat by his son.
I had.
“Coldhearted? Coldhearted?” I got him in a headlock. “You’re the most coldhearted, conniving, evil son of a bitch I have ever—”
“Get off me!”
“—known in my life—”
“If you kill me, who is going to help you get Emrys back?” he wheezed.
“I’m not going to kill you! I’m going to make you wish you were dead!”
“Trust me. Working with you, I already do!”
The door slammed open. We looked up. I expected more grumpy mages, probably pissed that we were making so much noise
That wasn’t who I saw.
“Oh, fuck that!” Rosier screeched, and disappeared, just as a cadre of the demon council’s personal guard flooded into the room.
And since he was still cuffed to the bed, it went with him.
But I didn’t.
I hit the floor face-first, hard enough to see stars, not understanding how I’d been left behind. Until I saw the cut chain dangling off my wrist. And the ghostly knives gleefully zipping around the room, stabbing everything in sight. And the glass breaking, and the mages shielding, and the council’s guards hunkering down in their armor—
And then the lights went out.
It took me a second to realize that Rosier was back. And that it was lucky I’d still been sprawled on the floor, because the bed was, too. I hit my head on the underside anyway, which was on casters, so it was just high enough to accommodate a pissed-off Pythia. And then another one was yelling: “Forget the demon! Get the girl!”
But the council’s guards didn’t take orders from anyone except the council. And a second later my chin hit the floor again, when half a dozen supernatural soldiers leapt onto the bed on top of me. And then went flying back off, because war mages do, in fact, follow the Pythia’s orders.
Well, you know, most Pythias.
And then all hell broke loose.
There were suddenly bodies flying and hitting the floor and shaking the bed, and there went my chin again. And instead of stars I was starting to see more like whole galaxies. But not so much that I failed to notice the frantic, manacled hand waving at the end of the bed.
I grabbed it, and was jerked out and up. I had a split second to see Gertie herself blending in with the wallpaper, a bunch of war mages battling some faceless demon guards, and a confused, very young-looking version of my predecessor, Agnes. Oh, look, I thought fuzzily.