We reached the sixth floor, Lucas and Leander both breathing a little more raggedly than usual. My own breath came deep and slow, the mark on my shoulder pulsing softly with Power, I wasn't winded in the least.
"One thing;" Lucas wheezed. He smelled like copper, dried blood, and the dry throat-stinging tang of a stasis cabinet, under a screen of male effort and stale sweat. "Try not to scare her, Valentine."
"I'll do my best." My left hand tightened on my sword. "Why anyone's scared of me when you're around…" Good gods above, I'm actually bantering with Lucas Villalobos. Christer Hell must be frozen over by now.
Amazingly, he gave a whistling, wheezing laugh as he pushed the heavy fire door open. I saw a glimmer down at the end of the hall-shields, powerful subtle shields. "I'm a reasonable man, Valentine. You ain't."
Not reasonable, or not a man? I feel pretty damn reasonable, considering my best friend was just murdered and the man I love won't give me a straight answer when it comes to the Prince of Hell and why I'm suddenly such a high-priced chip in this goddamn game. "I'm reasonable," I muttered darkly. "Considering everything that's going on, I'm pretty damn reasonable." My throat was dry, my voice soft and seductive in the dark despite or maybe because of my damaged trachea.
"Hear, hear." Leander bumped into me, maybe his human eyes couldn't pierce the dark like mine could. He still smelled like sand and the thick langorously-spiced coffee of Cairo Giza under the cloak of dying cells that meant human.
I wondered why the smell sent such a frisson of distaste up my back. I liked him, didn't I? And Lucas's dry stasis-cabinet scent was no better.
"Shut up, deadhead," Lucas snarled. He seemed to have no trouble navigating over the debris in the hall-soymalt bottles, empty takeout cartons, rancid clothing, other shapeless bits of stuff. "I do the talkin' here."
"Leave him alone." My own tone vvas flat and bored. "He knows enough to keep his mouth shut when dealing with an edgy Magi." Although how dangerous a Magi who chooses to live in a dump like this is, I won't venture to guess.
Villalobos didn't dignify that with an answer. We reached the end of the hall, apartment 6A; he knocked once, twisted the knob, and pushed the door wide.
Well, that's interesting. I watched the shimmering layers of Power shunt aside from his aura, magickal energy refusing to touch him. It was something I'd noticed about Lucas, he didn't use Power himself, but it couldn't be used against him either. An impasse, and food for thought… if I could figure out what to think about it.
A breath of kyphii-scented air puffed out, caressed the hall. I followed Lucas, stepping nervously through a cascading sheet of energy that parted to let me through before flushing a deep beautiful rose-spangled gold as whoever inhabited this place felt the Power flux change around me. Female. Magi. Not too young, but not old. I took a deep breath, all the way down to the bottom of my lungs, tasting the air as if I was on a bounty. Leander followed, sweeping the door shut behind him, and we found ourselves in a hardwood-floored entryway, smelling mellowly of beeswax, kyphii, and Power.
Anubis et'her ka, she's powerful, whoever she is. The shields were carefully done, a subtle taint of demon spice threading through them telling me she was an active, demon-dealing Magi.
Like «Shaman», «Magi» is a catch-all term for a wide range of variously-talented psions. A Magi might or might not know what to do with a demon when it pops up, depending on their study-and depending on the demon. Magi have been trafficking with Hell since before the Awakening, but before that great collective human leap forward in psionic and magickal Power, their methods had been spotty and uneven at best. Still, when the Awakening happened, the Magi were the only ones who had an idea of how to train psionic talent, or a framework for making Power behave. Nowadays all psions are Magi-trained in memory Power-handling, and theory of magick, but that doesn't make us all Magi.
I knew how to call up an imp and constrain it in a circle now; I knew how to consecrate tools to be used in closing an etheric portal into Hell and send a Low Flight demon back. I even knew a few more things about demon anatomy than I had before. But demon-dealing Magi are secretive in the extreme, committing information about their successful experiments in breaking the walls between our world and Hell to only one apprentice at a time and writing their shadowjournals-the equivalent of a Skinlin's mastersheets or a Ceremonial's grimoire-in codes that could take months to break. Even if they work with circles, they don't share many of their private secrets, and I couldn't lay my hands on the great books of magick the accepted circles had access to. Another impasse, this one frustrating in the extreme because I needed to know more about what I was. What Japhrimel had made me.
The inside of the apartment was a surprise. It held no trace of clutter or poverty; the floor was polished hardwood and the walls painted varying shades of rose, pale pink, and white. Lucas led us into a living room decorated with an altar draped in silver cloth and sporting a three-foot-tall statue of Ganej the Magnificent, the elephant god. There was a restrained fainting-couch done in rose velvet and a V'ucelia print on the wall, an original if my eyes didn't fool me, and the windows were cloaked with heavy silken drapes.
Ganej. The Remover of Obstacles. Odd, but an effective choice now that I think about it. What better way to break the barriers between here and Hell than with the help of a god who surmounts barricades? The statue was an antique, creamy marble veined with gold, and thrumming with Power. So this Magi took her god seriously, as seriously as I took mine.
I cautiously decided to reserve judgment.
There was a click from the doorway opposite the one we'd come in through, and my sword left the sheath in a singing blur as I stepped instinctively in front of Leander. After all, I knew I could take more damage.
The Magi, a slim caramel-skinned woman with long dark-brown hair and a pair of wide gray eyes, stared at us. She held a very nice 9 mm Glockstryke projectile gun in her right hand, her stance braced and professional. She was pretty in an unremarkable way that wasn't helped along by the design of her tat, which wasn't flowing or graceful; she'd chosen an angular Varjas design, like a Ceremonial. It didn't do a thing for her face, being too thick-lined and sharp. But her aura flamed with Power; she was strong for a human.
Gods, did I just think that? I'm human too. I am. "Drop the gun, girl. Or I'II make you eat it." My voice stroked the drapes, made the walls groan.
"Fuck me with a hover," she breathed, her gray eyes flicking from Lucas to me, settling on me, and widening. The gun dipped slightly, ended up pointing at the floor. She wore jeans and a pretty blue wide-sleeved, square-necked shirt embroidered with Canon runes around the collar and cuffs. "This is your client, Villalobos?" The high edge of fear colored her voice, and a rill of excitement slid down my back. Her aura jittered slightly, her dread coloring the air like wine.
It wasn't quite as drunkening as Polyamour the sexwitch's fear, but it was still pleasant. Because Carlyle's terror was tinted with the edge of attraction, a promise that filled the air like the smell of anything fragrant and good, and comprehension flowered in those wide-spaced, rainy-gray eyes.
She knew something. A Magi that knew something, and owed Lucas a favor.
My sword slid back into the sheath, clicked home. "That's right." My pulse pounded in my throat. "I'm his latest employer. And I think we have some things to talk about, Magi."