“I said, like this?” he repeated, looking down at himself with distaste.
“The price for my mother’s help with the demon council was that I never return. If we want help, we have to make sure they think I’m not here again, but still.”
“That explains the glamourie. But why am I wearing only a blanket?”
He had it wrapped around him toga-style, or maybe venerable senator–style, because the frat party vibe didn’t go so well with the expression on his face. Or Pritkin’s face, because that was who had been with me the first time I was here, and I couldn’t very well show up with a new partner. Pritkin’s features could handle anything from annoyance all the way up to incandescent rage, but pinched disapproval . . . not so much.
But my parents didn’t know that.
“It’s complicated,” I said. “But this is the only way.”
“And you think your mother is going to fall for this?” he asked, adjusting the blanket’s folds over one shoulder.
“No. Which is why we’re not talking to her.”
A light winked out in an upstairs window, leaving the little courtyard dark and silent. Except for our footsteps, as we scurried for the kitchen door. It was unlocked, of course, because we were on the estate of a psychotic vampire with a bunch of trigger-happy family members. Locks were superfluous.
Not that there were any vamps in sight. No one was, except for Daisy, slumped over the table like a very odd drunk. Or, to be more precise, like the “body” my father had constructed for her was currently empty.
Dad had developed a takeoff of the golem spell, giving his ghosts a corporeal form so they could serve as bodyguards for him and Mom. Only instead of clay, Dad’s golems appeared to have been made out of whatever junk he’d had lying around. And a bucket, which Daisy had made into a slightly lopsided head, because he hadn’t thought to give her one.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t been sure I’d gotten the day right; fine-tuning exactly when I showed up in time had never been my strong suit. And the maybe quarter bottle of potion Jonas had found in his
nightstand hadn’t helped nearly as much as it should have.
“I’ll go first, and check it out,” I said, and for once, he didn’t argue. Maybe because he was busy. Staring in consternation at the makeup Daisy had, somewhat inexpertly, applied to the bucket.
I crossed the kitchen to a door I hadn’t been through last time, where an odd-looking glow was leaking in to splash the tiles.
And found a living room filled to the brim with . . . stuff.
It was on tables and shelves and stuck in corners. It spilled out of boxes and was piled high in baskets. It had taken over the sofa and replaced the books that had once occupied built-ins on either side of the fireplace. It was everywhere. And it was glowing.
Liquid light splashed wood-paneled walls, most of which was somewhere along the blue spectrum. Which wasn’t too surprising considering that, in magical terms, blue and green were the colors of milder spells—or in this case, spells with the equivalent of run-down batteries. Everywhere I looked were old wards, decaying amulets, dried-up potions, and shield charms that weren’t shielding anything anymore.
It was a room full of magical junk.
Well, mostly. A few items looked like they might still have some oomph. A couple boxes were bobbing up and down, as the power levels in crumbling levitation charms ebbed and flowed. Half of a small end table was flickering in and out of sight, and an odd sort of duel was going on between an EverFlame and an extinguisher spell. But for the most part, they just gently glowed, splashing the walls with wavering, underwater light.
“Don’t touch anything!” Roger’s voice came from behind a bunch of boxes. “Some things are at the iffy stage right now.”
Yeah, I thought, watching a bug zapper on a box near the window. It was painstakingly burning out all the pictures of bees on a kitschy set of floral curtains. It turned what looked like a tiny feeler on me as I edged around the pile, but I guess I didn’t look sufficiently insectlike, so I sidled by unscathed.
And found Roger, sitting at a desk, working on something that required a magnifying glass on a stand to see. He looked up, the light glinting off glasses perched low on his nose. They were magnifying, too.
Either that or he had the world’s biggest pimple on his left cheek.
His hair had flopped into his eyes, and he peered at me through the strands, like it was hard to see outside the circle of light. “Oh, good,” he said, after a second. “I thought it was that officious mage.”
“Not quite.”
“Hmm.” He sounded disapproving. “I’ve been told I’m not allowed to ask questions. But if I was, I’d wonder where that vampire you were tearing around London with is.”
“Mircea,” I said, my lips a little numb.
Roger nodded. “He may be dead, but he’s still a better catch.”
“It’s not like that,” I said, glancing at what he was making. It didn’t look like much of anything, just a few scraps of metal. “Pritkin and I aren’t . . . I mean, we don’t—”