My lockpick, did it still have enough juice to open six sets of handcuffs? My hand ached from the blood magic I’d used. Blood magic was dangerous, which was why it was banned by the Compact. Three times in one day was the limit, and even then, it could kill the user.
I drew the lockpick and strode up to the first woman. Her eyes widened. “I’m getting all of you out of here. Now.” I managed to say it with confidence. Now, if I only felt that.
I closed my eyes, concentrating. “Open the locks,” I whispered in ancient Greek, the lockpick cold and motionless in my hand. Smoke tickled my throat. I ran and closed the door. Idiot! I snarled at myself. I’d gotten myself and these women into this fix. I should have looked for keys on Burt, only he had immolated, thanks to my blood-magic fueled binding spell making him combust.
The lockpick suddenly trembled. An electrical tingle ran up my arm. A chorus of clicks echoed in the room, followed by clattering of metal on cement as the handcuffs fell to the floor.
“What just happened?” One of the women shook her head. The six of them looked about a thousand years old, but I guessed they were in their late teens or early twenties. “Handcuffs just don’t unlock themselves, do they?”
“We got lucky,” I said. “Come on, we need to leave, now!” I led them through the back door, down a short hall and through another door which opened into the store room. The place was littered with bodies. My stomach rose. I’d caused this. But, what choice had I had?
One of the women kicked a corpse. Two more spat at the bodies. “You deserve to be dead,” another woman snarled.
I shook myself. “Let’s go.”
I led them up the stairs and toward the back door, then skidded to a stop. Brimstone, I swore silently. This was a night club. There were people here. People who would die. I’d have those people’s lives on me, too.
That’s when I saw Nancy, in her black coat and knitted cap, white hair in a long pony tail, standing with a group of pinched-faced R.U.N.E. agents in business suits by the back door.
Heaven help me, I wanted to give her a hug, but I settled for a quip. “About time you showed up,” I said. “I freed the women the front office says weren’t here.”
Nancy glared at me. I grinned back at her, relief flooding me. The freed women piled up behind me, looking at Nancy and the grim-faced suits in wonder. “Are you FBI?” A woman asked.
One of the suits was a woman with a helmet hairdo, who looked about forty-five. She flashed a badge at them. “That’s right, Agent Barker.” Helmet hairdo nodded at another suit, a man. “Agent Tyler will help you out.” He led the women outside.
Helmet hairdo strode up to me. “Very funny. What else?”
“There’s a fire downstairs.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m guess that’s your doing?”
I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant while my heart still raced like a cheap sedan’s engine being floored. “I took care of our target.” I nodded at the door to downstairs. “A fire did get started in the process.”
The other business suit, a man, gave me a sour look. “You mean you started a blaze in the process.”
I nodded. “I already said that. I’m sure you have a water spirit or two on hand,” I pointed out, trying to keep things light.
“Amusing,” helmet hairdo replied. You could cut her sarcasm with a knife.
Her partner drew a titanium and blue-steel summoning rod from his coat. It was obviously dragon forged. The rod thrummed as he held it.
“The fire’s downstairs.” I liked to be helpful when I could.
His sour look grew sourer. “We ought to charge you for this,” he said. “Have to call in a few favors to use this. These manifestations aren’t easy to summon, you know.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Excuse me for taking out a criminal ogre.”
He ignored me and began a summoning ritual, gesturing with the rod.
“There are ways to do it without starting a blaze,” helmet hair said. “You realize we have to call in more favors with our local contact, to avoid getting the fire department and local police involved. That would be an even bigger mess to clean up.” She noticed my wound. “What happened to your hand?”
I shrugged. “Wounded in the fight with the ogre. He had a nasty machete.”
Another suit slapped a heal patch on my hand. I winced for a second as the magical band aid went to work.
More R.U.N.E. personnel arrived, including burners in their gray suits and thin sunglasses. Their job was to burn out any memories, so that ordinaries who might have witnessed arcane shenanigans wouldn’t realize that the supernatural was real. You only needed to call in the burners when things had really gotten out of hand. Okay, so maybe things had a little this time. But, hey, I had taken care of the ogre and whorl-kin before the clubbers had wised up.
A wet whoosh sounded and a person-sized waterspout popped into existence, a fine mist making us blink furiously. The water spirit spun down the stairs toward the billowing smoke.
Clubbers wandered in from the front—a man with a silk shirt and two women in slinky dresses hanging on his arms.
“You shouldn’t be here,” helmet hairdo told them.
“I smelled smoke,” the guy said.
The burners went up to the trio, waved their wands. Translucent memory snakes emerged from the burners’ sleeves and coiled around the three.
Their eyes widened for an instant, then their expressions went blank.
I looked away. I never had the stomach to watch burners at work.
The whole time Nancy watched me with a granite-eyed gaze
