Power Game Read online

  I checked my watch. Not flashing. My cane was resting quietly in the bedroom where I’d left it. If there was a conjuring in progress, one or both would have alerted me by now. There were exceptions to that rule, of course…

  Oh screw it, I thought and rushed to get ready.

  I was heading for the door, trench coat clinking with spell implements and potions, when Tabitha let out a noisy yawn. Crap, I’d almost forgotten about her. She smacked her mouth and looked over at me with puffy eyes.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “About as crappy as the taste your potion left in my mouth.”

  A mild hangover was one aftereffect of the elixir.

  “But you slept all right?” I asked.

  “I suppose,” she allowed with a sigh. “But nothing’s changed. I’m just going to spend another pointless day of my pointless life in the same apartment on the same pointless cushion.” She peered around blandly.

  I can’t leave her here by herself.

  I dragged a hand through my hair and gripped my neck, not believing what I was about to do. In the closet, I found what I was looking for on a hook behind my winter coats. Tabitha caught me approaching her, one of my hands behind my back.

  I pounced.

  “Ow!” she cried. “What in the hell are you doing?”

  I’d already slipped the harness over one front paw, and now I struggled as she pulled the other paw to her chest. But I finally got it through, jerking my hand back before she could bite it. With an uttered invocation, I cinched the harness, which just fit around her girth, and secured the fasteners.

  “You’re coming with me,” I said, picking up the leash from the floor.

  She hissed and spit before words came out. “Take this infernal thing off me!”

  I’d bought the harness at a pet shop in our second year together. I thought it would be a safe way to take Tabitha outdoors for some exercise, but she’d never shown any interest. Five years and thirty pounds later, she looked like an orange pom-pom someone had bound in the middle. Under different circumstances, watching her try to retract her head through the harness would have been comical.

  “Until I can get ahold of a vet, I’m not leaving you here alone.”

  She stopped struggling long enough to glare at me. “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. Now c’mon.”

  When I gave the leash a gentle tug, Tabitha changed tactics and made herself dead weight. There wasn’t time for this. I spoke an invocation, and a shield of light crackled around her. The energy made her hair stand on end.

  “You can either come under your own power, or I’m carrying you.”

  As a quasi-demonic being, she reacted poorly to my brand of magic, and I knew that. As I started to lift her, she pinned her ears back and scratched furiously at the inside of the orb, sending a cascade of sparks tumbling down around her hind feet. It was the most I’d seen her exert herself in years. Within moments, she was exhausted.

  “Fine,” she moaned miserably. “Set me down.”

  I placed her on the floor and dissolved the shield. Her hair settled as she got her footing. She took a few staggering steps toward the door, stopped suddenly, and looped the leash around her neck.

  “What the—?” I cast a pulse that knocked the noose free.

  Tabitha winced and shook her paw. “Won’t even allow a girl a dignified end.”

  “There’s nothing dignified about self-strangulation,” I said irritably. Plus, the way she had attempted it would have been physically impossible. I kept that to myself for fear it would motivate her to prove me wrong.

  “If you really loved me, you’d let me go,” she said.

  “And if you really loved me, you’d let me help you.”

  “Sure, use my drug-addled words from last night against me.” She glanced around the apartment. I could feel the clock ticking on the conjuring as I tried to anticipate Tabitha’s next move. Was I going to have to carry her?

  But she surprised me by rising and sauntering toward the door.

  “Can’t be much worse out there than it is in here,” she muttered.

  It could be a lot worse, actually. But I kept that to myself too.

  Fifteen minutes later, a cab dropped us off in front of the Centre Hotel in Midtown. I forced myself to walk at Tabitha’s pace, which was only slightly faster than glacial. Though I was tempted, dragging her would have been a mistake. That she was walking at all, not to mention still tolerating being harnessed, was a small miracle.

  “And who are you supposed to be?” the doorman asked when we arrived at the large glass doors.

  “I’m sorry?” I said.

  “The coat? The cat?”

  Tabitha and I looked at each other. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  The bald man gave me a sly grin as he opened the door. “Sure you don’t. Registration won’t start till nine, but it’ll be in the lobby there.”

  Tabitha followed me inside, and I immediately began looking for the elevators.

  “What was that all about?” she asked in annoyance.

  I started to tell her I had no idea when I noticed a handful of people in the lobby in costumes. A couple of convincing female zombies milled around near a party of drunken pirates. I spotted the elevators just as a door dinged open and a guy in full military gear with a blue wolf mask strolled out.

  “I think someone missed the memo that Halloween was last month,” I muttered.

  I was coaxing Tabitha toward the elevators when a hand fell on my shoulder. I spun to find a middle-aged man dressed head to toe as Captain America. If not for the healthy bulge above his belt, he might have pulled it off.

  He broke into a huge smile. “Ha-haa! I love it!”

  “Love what?” I snapped.

  “John Constantine, right?”

  I played dumb as I kept walking. “Who?”

  He hustled to keep up, the shield strapped to his arm pumping back and forth. “C’mon, man. Snarky wizard in a trench coat?” His smile faltered as he looked down at Tabitha. “I don’t remember him having a fat cat, though.”

  “You’re one to talk, pork chop,” Tabitha muttered.

  Captain America didn’t hear her, though. His eyebrows were working furiously as he tried to peg my costume. “Dresden, then? But his cat’s gray.”

  “Look, I’ve gotta go.”

  Even Tabitha seemed in a hurry to get away from him.

  Panting, Captain America began to lose ground. “Slim?” he called after me. “Verus?”

  I made it to the elevator, tugging Tabitha in after me, just as the door slid closed. I hit the B button for the basement level. “What’s with these people?” I breathed as the elevator started to descend. “It’s like you can’t cast spells in a long coat unless you’re trying to cop someone’s brand.”

  “They’re mortals,” Tabitha said, as if that explained everything.

  The elevator slowed to a stop, and the door opened. I’d filled Tabitha in on our way here, but the fact was, I had no idea what we were walking into. The air around us hardened as I invoked a shield.

  Time to put my game face on.

  “Keep your eyes open for a room B-6,” I said.

  By the concrete walls and black wheel marks up and down the corridor, it looked like we’d arrived on a storage level. I listened, but all I could hear was the mechanics of the elevators at our backs. My watch and cane had yet to alert me to any conjurings. Thinking trap again, I sniffed the air for the sickly-sweet scent of demon before realizing I had a living, breathing detector sitting on her haunches beside me.

  “Hey, can you tell if any demons are in the area?” I whispered.

  “So is that all I’m good for now?”

  “You were the one who said you wanted purpose.”

  “A demon-sniffer wasn’t what I had in mind.”

  I shook my head. “You know what? Forget it.”

  “Well, if you’re going to go full bitch…” T
abitha raised her nose to the air and gave a weak sniff. “How do you want me to indicate a positive? Fall to my forearms and start whining like an idiot dog?”

  “Or you could just tell me.”

  “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “No demons.”

  That was a lot of words to get to a negative reading, but I wasn’t going to belabor the point. “All right, it looks like B-6 is down this way.” I started to lead before stopping. Holding her leash wasn’t going to work. “Can you sit still a minute?”

  “What are you doing?”

  I unhooked the leash from her harness, threaded it through a loop on the side of my trench coat and then through the handle before fastening it again. “Just needed to free up my hands,” I said, separating my cane into sword and staff.

  “Afraid I’m going to run away?”

  “Among other things.”

  “Well, I’m not. I haven’t the ambition this morning.”

  I peeked back at her, not sure whether that suggested an improvement or worsening of her condition. “Well, if you get tired, give me a little warning,” I said. The last thing I needed was for her to decide to become dead weight again, especially mid fight—or flight. That would give new meaning to the expression the old ball and chain, which was exactly what this was starting to feel like.

  Tabitha breathed something I didn’t pick up, but she kept pace behind me.

  Room B-6 was closed and locked. I pressed my ear to the door but couldn’t hear anything above the faint chuff and vibration of the heating system. Aiming my cane at the lock, I spoke an invocation. In the next moment, I was being slammed into the rear wall of the corridor. My shield absorbed the brunt of the shock, but the force left me stunned. I sat where I’d landed, blinking until my surroundings returned to focus.

  Tabitha looked at me blandly, the leash to her harness sufficiently long that she hadn’t gone along for the ride.

  “Did you not see the ward?” she asked.

  I trained my focus on the door. She was right. The ward was subtle but there.

  “A heads-up would’ve been nice,” I muttered, pushing myself to my feet. I focused on the ward. What kind of magic had constructed it, I couldn’t say. Conventional? Demon? Fae? Whatever the case, it suggested the anonymous caller hadn’t been putting me on. “Anything else you’d like to tell me?”

  “You’re going to need to neutralize it,” Tabitha said.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Pulling in my breath, I explored toward the ward with my magic. It was basic, though—no additional traps. It wasn’t even especially strong. I’d just happened to blunder right into it. I rubbed my right elbow. If this ever got back to Gretchen, she’d have a field day. Fortunately, Tabitha was even more put off by her than I was.

  “Disfare,” I said, pushing power into the Word.

  The soft lines of the ward wavered and came apart in a burst of foreign energy. I checked to ensure there was no more subtle magic at work before hitting the lock with another force invocation. This time, the door flew open.

  In the center of the room, a pair of lizard-like creatures rose from their haunches. Smoke curled from their flaring nostrils.

  Wonderful, I thought. Fire breathers.

  13

  “Stay behind me,” I said to Tabitha.

  “Don’t worry,” she replied.

  The lizards regarded me with cocked heads. They looked like Komodos, only nastier. Here and there, blossoms of black singe marks adorned the walls. The creatures had indeed been conjured—from where, I wasn’t sure yet, but they were standing in a pair of complex casting circles on the floor, and I could feel a distinct current of nether energy around them. So why in the hell hadn’t the Order’s wards alerted me?

  The lizards stepped from their circles and belched in tandem. Twin waves of fire broke around my shield.

  “Hot, hot!” Tabitha cried.

  With a Word, I enclosed Lizard One in a light shield while thrusting my sword toward the other. The force invocation flipped it onto its back. I stepped on its squirming throat and drove my blade through its chest.

  “Disfare!” I called.

  The lizard shook before erupting in gouts of fire.

  I turned back to Lizard One, whose clawed feet were struggling against its confinement. Another burst of flames erupted from its mouth only to hit the inside of the shield I’d manifested and engulf its scaly black body. The creature was apparently immune to its own heat.

  I pushed more power into the confining shield, reducing it until the compressive forces overwhelmed the energy holding the lizard together. The creature broke apart in flames that were quickly snuffed out.

  I released the shield and dropped the smoking residue to the floor. When I opened my wizard’s senses, I detected no active magic—only the spent energy that had given the lizards form. As quickly as it had begun, it was over.

  “Are you all right?” I asked Tabitha.

  “Overheating, but I’ll survive.” She walked up to my side with her tongue out and surveyed the room. “What were those monstrosities?”

  “Are you sure they weren’t demonic?”

  “What? You don’t trust my nose?”

  “Arianna warned me about a demon breach, and those weren’t your typical nether creatures.” I pictured the bug-like forms I was more accustomed to putting down. That right there told me I wasn’t dealing with an amateur. But then I thought of Nathan, who’d somehow managed to conjure a fire demon with a mail-order spell book.

  “Well, they weren’t from my realm,” Tabitha said defensively.

  I paused my thoughts for a moment to see if my magic had anything to say. If it did, though, it wasn’t loud enough for me to hear. I took my phone from my pocket, accessed the camera feature, and snapped a picture of the casting circles. Though familiar in some respects, they were very foreign in others.

  I sent a copy of the image to Claudius.

  Tabitha twitched her tail impatiently. “Can we go home now?”

  “No,” I said, scanning the room again. I was looking for anything I might be able to cast from to track the conjurer. I wasn’t going to chance a reveal spell on the circles themselves. Who knew what kinds of traps the symbols hid. But my scan of the rest of the room turned up no obvious evidence.

  “Now can we go home?” Tabitha whined.

  “No,” I repeated.

  “Why not?”

  “For one, there’s someone in the hotel casting magic that I strongly suspect isn’t in the service of good. And two, finding that person is supposed to help us find Sefu—ideally before the demons do.”

  Tabitha moaned.

  “What?”

  “I’ve seen the way you work. If this were a book, you’d run around like an insufferable fool for three-quarters of the thing, enduring one beating after another, before your showdown with the big, scary monster. Which you barely manage to overcome. And you think I want to be a party to that nonsense?”

  “It’s not going to be like that.”

  “How do you know?”

  The honest answer was I didn’t. I had an unknown conjurer who had summoned from an unknown place for unknown reasons. But I was thinking about what Arianna had said last night about my team.

  Utilize their diverse perceptions.

  I flipped my phone open again.

  “Who are you calling?” Tabitha asked.

  “Some friends.”

  “And I’m supposed to, what, stay tethered to you like a babbling toddler?”

  “I’m going to need everyone on deck,” I said, pointing at her. “And that includes you.”

  “Fuck,” she moaned.

  With Vega’s help, I was able to secure a small conference room in the hotel for our team meeting. She was the first to arrive, decked out in her professional attire: black suit and blouse, detective badge glinting at her belt beside her holstered sidearm. I’d filled her in on the events over the phone. Vega had had some info for me too. Ap
parently, the Centre Hotel was the site of a full-blown sci-fi/fantasy convention, which explained the costumes.

  Epic Con, it was called. Yeah, I rolled my eyes hard on that one too.

  I’d heard about it in the past, but only peripherally. Founded in 1998, Epic Con had just been starting to compete with its peers in the con world before the Crash put it out of business. An attempt to revive it two years before had lost the organizers money. But with major sponsors agreeing to subsidize ticket prices and hotel rooms this year, they decided to give it another go. Attendance was expected to exceed ten thousand, which was a major win in this day and age. And with the hotel and several nearby booked solid for the weekend, it was considered a score for the city as well.

  I rose to meet Vega, who was unshouldering an NYPD duffel bag onto the table.

  “Thanks for coming right away,” I said.

  We shared a quick kiss. From her chair, Tabitha made a noise of disgust.

  Vega flashed my cat a fake smile. “Nice to see you too.”

  “She’s not super excited about being here,” I whispered.

  “Really,” Vega deadpanned.

  “Hey, how did it go last night?”

  “Fine.” I picked up the subtle tension in Vega’s voice. “Quiet.”

  “And Tony?”

  “Still sleeping. I decided to have him stay inside at my brothers’ instead of going to school.”

  “Probably a good idea,” I admitted. “I’ll try to get up there to reinforce the wards.”

  I thought about Arnaud, still at large, before my mind turned to the card Malachi had given me the night before. Though I was carrying the card in my shirt pocket, I still hadn’t told Vega about our meeting. A few spoken syllables, a brand-new bonding sigil on my hand, and she wouldn’t have to worry about her son ever again.

  Watching her concerned eyes now, it was tempting as hell.

  “I made a few calls on the way here,” she said. “We tried to ID your anonymous caller, but they’re on a burner phone.”

  “Figures,” I said. “Would have been too easy.”