it because she’d felt the same massive energy surge that I had. She grabbed her kid and threw herself to the side, just as the burst hit.
And all but destroyed the front of the shop, ward and all, splintering the windows and slinging a wash of glittering glass and burning wood through the air.
Straight at me.
And at Augustine, who I hadn’t noticed come up behind me until we were both blown backward off our feet. And through several racks of what had been expensive clothes and were now burning tatters. And into a decorative column.
Which we bounced off and hit the floor, face-first, about the time that the shield he’d thrown around us failed.
I looked up through a haze of blood and saw him raising a similarly messy face with a snarl. The half-fey designer had always looked a little girlie to me. The perfect hair, the too-pale skin, the flamboyant clothes had just never registered as dangerous.
I was revising my opinion.
Until he suddenly turned tail and ran for the back, disappearing through a curtain.
And, okay, I thought. Maybe I’d been right the first time. But I didn’t have time to worry about it.
Because someone else was calling my name.
And this time it wasn’t a spell.
Chapter Six
“Cassie Palmer?” The new voice wasn’t the harsh, almost metallic tones of the locator spell. Instead, it was quiet, calm, amused. “Is that really you?”
I got back to my feet, pushing shattered glass away from my bare soles. And picked my way across a minefield to the burning hole that had once been the front of the shop. And looked out.
And saw a man in war mage gear standing on the other side of the concourse, holding a knife to the throat of the terrified girl he’d positioned in front of him.
She wasn’t the unfortunate reporter from Witch’s Companion.
I knew that because I knew her.
She was my acolyte, Rhea.
She stared at me and I stared back. Her long white gown was pristine and freshly pressed, and her waist-length dark hair was just a little mussed. She looked like she should have been attending a Victorian-era lawn party, not standing stiff and careful and slightly off balance because she was having to pull back from the knife to keep it from eating into her throat.
I’d been in that position myself recently. Only, unlike Rhea, I’d been pretty sure the guy in question wasn’t going to kill me. Yet it had still been terrifying.
Rhea looked like she was about to throw up.
The war mage smiled.
The smile should have been attractive. He was, with blue eyes bright enough that I could see them from here, and dark brown hair worn stylishly long, just enough to touch the collar of a modern dress shirt. It looked a little odd under all the hardware.
Like the smile, which would have looked creepy on a corpse.
“Can I say,” he said, looking me over as well, “you’re not exactly what I expected?”
“I get that a lot.”
“I apologize for the rudeness of our introduction, but some of my associates are a little . . . keyed up. We thought we’d have a fight to reach you, but instead—” He waved his free hand in the air, to indicate the now missing announcement.
“Must be your lucky day.”
He smiled some more.
I turned my gaze back to Rhea, who was looking green, but also like she was starting to get it together. And she might, because she frequently surprised me. A member of Agnes’ old court, Rhea had been the only one, other than the kids, not to take the bait the gods were offering and go power-mad.