Because Bergman only jutted his jaw like that when he’d decided to do something extreme. Usual y those decisions resulted in rad new inventions that made people like me squeal with delight. I suspected this didn’t qualify as one of those times.
As I began to calculate our chances of successful y intervening in a Vampere/mage battle, I knew I didn’t have time to go proactive on Bergman’s ass. Vayl’s predicament and my race against death took priority. So I told myself,
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Entering the Djemaa el Fna at night is like joining a huge party. The noise sucks you in. Not just crowd murmur but laughter and shouts and everywhere the music promising entertainment, fascination, maybe a great hookup that could turn into something more permanent down the line.
And then the smel s. My stomach rumbled, reminding me I’d missed supper and possibly lunch as wel . Because Morocco’s most famous square held culinary delights that could’ve kept me munching for months. We passed stal s lit by strings of bare lightbulbs where white-shirted men gril ed kebabs stacked with lamb and fresh veggies for customers lined up three and four deep. Other restaurants displayed long buffets offering fresh figs, shrimp, chicken, olives, and sausages. At their edges smal wooden tables and benches fil ed with chattering natives and gawking tourists were tended by white-uniformed waiters who knew so wel how to dance among the crowds that they never bumped a shoulder or dropped a dish. Al of it had my mouth watering so badly I actual y had to lick my lips and swal ow.
I might have seemed to be wandering, awestruck, among the food vendors and street performers. But by now I was used to the silk-costumed musicians playing upbeat tunes on instruments ranging from handmade drums to three-stringed guembri. Even the pyramids of red-shirted acrobats barely distracted me. Because Cirilai had stirred when we’d entered the square, the exact kind of clue I’d hoped Vayl would provide. Unfortunately the feeling was so vague I had to force my hit-and-split nature to sit stil and listen. It felt like another step back, to the time when he’d tried to train me to track vampires, starting with him. But I counted it as progress. Because it led me to a middle-aged man who looked like al the moisture had been sucked from his skin sometime in the last decade.
He wore a forest-green jel aba over tan work pants and a white dress shirt. He sat inside a circle of people pressed against one another like mosh-pitters doing a practice run.
And he smel ed of unwashed soul. His audience zeroed in with a fascination born as much of his parasitic pul as his craft, the tools of which surrounded him. A faded rug under his knees. A flute held in one gnarled, brown hand. A round container the color of a canvas sail that reminded me of Granny May’s old hatboxes, only it was half the height.
Because the creature inside didn’t need much of a ceiling.
It uncoiled slowly as the man set the roof of its mobile home aside, his head already swaying in a rhythm the shiny black cobra found riveting.
“Who is it?” Sterling asked me, noting the attention I was paying to the snake charmer.
A slope-shouldered guy with a thick brown mustache overheard him and said, in German-accented English,
“That’s Ahmed. You should stay for the whole show. I can assure you it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.”
Proximity gave our crew’s backup Sensitive the chance to sniff him out. A sharp nod confirmed my suspicions. “He’s the mage,” I said, using our Party Line to get my point across quick. “Vayl found him too, but he’s clearly gone now and I don’t see any signs of violence. Be alert.” Ahmed slowly brought the flute to his lips, dancing it to the music in the same way he wanted the cobra to respond.
It stared at him through pupils so opaque they seemed to hide the secrets to hel as it slid out of the box onto the sole-smoothed bricks of the square. I had to admit the song was sort of hypnotic. Or maybe it was Ahmed’s sinuous dance, al done through movements of his torso and head, which the serpent fol owed with intense fascination.
Even while I watched the cobra recoil its lower half and raise its head nearly a foot off the ground I knew Vayl wouldn’t have bolted. Something more than his fear of snakes had changed his plans, and we had to find out what.
So I backed away from Ahmed’s inner circle, nodding for Cole and Kyphas to join me. Cole paused long enough to drop a bil into Ahmed’s bowl, which he held at the corners and only unfolded at the last minute. Like the ones Miles had given each of us, it contained a tracking device that would al ow us to find Ahmed again even if he spent it, because the receptors rubbed onto the fingers of the next person who handled the bil .
Bergman and Sterling, standing at each of my shoulders, pretended they hadn’t seen the drop as they backed away with me. But they couldn’t hold on to the casual front when Ahmed’s cobra began to levitate. The crowd gasped, moving with us as the snake swayed in midair, now truly dancing with its master.
“Hey, mister, you take a picture with Ahmed, the snake charmer?” someone asked Bergman. I glanced to my right at a deeply tanned man wearing western clothes. His twelve-year-old son nodded encouragingly at us as his pop said, “Only thirty euros. Great deal for once-in-a-lifetime souvenir!” The photo peddler peered at Miles from the corners of his eyes, which were nearly hidden behind a mass of dark brown hair. I stared at his cal oused hand, already open as if Bergman couldn’t possibly consider denying him the outrageous fee, then I looked to Cole for verification.
Barely a nod that he’d also scented wolf howling behind the man’s shadowed eyes, and something even more foreign sliding under his son’s skin. Ahmed had al ies after al . And one of them wasn’t even supposed to exist.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I’l say this about my crew. We figured out quickly how to communicate without making a sound. Within seconds eyebrows, hand signals, and a couple of mouthed words had confirmed our worst suspicions.
Roldan hadn’t just hired a mage to curse Vayl. He’d sent part of his own pack to guard the Wielder in case we figured out what was going on and tried to reverse the spel .
