them.”
The elevator let out into a spacious office that looked a lot like a boudoir. There were mirrors and fat chaises everywhere, and a bar almost as big as the one downstairs lined one wall. A good-looking secretary, who was probably going to be recruited by the incubi if he hadn't been already, tried to offer us refreshments, but Casanova waved him off.
We barreled through a set of doors to a plush inner office.
Casanova ignored the huge four-poster bed sitting incongruously in the corner and the two scantily clad women reclining on it. He stepped through a multicolored modernist painting that covered most of one wall and I followed, ignoring the scowls the girls sent my way. On the other side was a narrow room that was bare except for a table, a chair and a large mirror hanging on the wall. He waved a hand over the mirror's surface and it shimmered like a mirage in the desert. I figured out that this was his way of checking on his employees.
I'd seen similar devices before. Tony had never been able to use security cameras, since anything run on electricity doesn't do well around powerful wards and his Philadelphia stronghold had bristled with them. I'd had to learn about his surveillance equipment in order to elude it when up to things I preferred him not to know about, like stealing his personal files and setting him up with the Feds. Not that that had worked out too well, but at least I hadn't been caught during the preparations. I'd discovered that any reflective surface could be spelled to act as a monitor linked to other shiny exteriors within a certain radius. Considering the number of mirrors and all the polished marble around the place, Casanova could probably check on anything within the spa.
He muttered a word, and an image of the bar appeared. I wondered about the distortion until I realized that he was using the large Chinese gong behind the bar as his spy hole. It was convex, so the image was, too, along with being tinted faintly bronze. I saw the backs of three people whom I identified as war mages by the amount of hardware they were wearing. I didn't see Pritkin and was slightly worried that Enyo had eaten him.
She certainly looked capable of it. The vague old woman had been replaced by a blood-covered savage whose head brushed the edge of the fringed lanterns that swung from the central chandelier. Her hair was still gray, but the body had gotten a definite upgrade and she now had a full compliment of teeth and eyes. The former were longer and sharper than a vamp's and the latter were yellow and slitted like a cat's. She looked pissed off, maybe because she was encased in a magical web, courtesy of the mages. She slashed at it with four-inch-long talons and it ripped like paper, but before she could move, the slender cords reknitted themselves, holding her fast.
It looked to me like a standoff, and I wondered why her sisters, who were still lounging at the bar, didn't intervene. I'd barely had the thought before Pemphredo glanced up at the gong. Since it was her turn with the eye, she was able to wink at me before cutting loose.
I remembered that, when I'd looked up some information on the sisters after they dropped in, Pemphredo had been called 'the master of alarming surprises.' I hadn't been sure what that meant, but since the three had been given the task of protecting the Gorgons, I assumed they each had some kind of warlike talent. Considering what had happened to Medusa, though, it didn't seem like they'd been too effective.
As if she'd heard me, Pemphredo suddenly turned her gaze on the nearest mage, a delicate Asian woman, who didn't even have time to scream before the heavy lacquered chandelier came crashing down on her head. Pieces of splintered wood went flying everywhere, and the woman disappeared under a pile of red silk lanterns. It seemed the gals had been practicing.
The mage managed to crawl out from under the fixture a few seconds later, looking battered and bloody, but still breathing. She was in no condition to rejoin the fight, though, and her companions were having trouble holding Enyo on their own. She was tearing through the net almost faster than they could reform it, and it was starting to look like a question of who would tire first. I couldn't tell whether she was getting weary, but even with their backs to me, the mages looked strained, with their raised arms visibly shaking.
'We have a problem,' Casanova said.
'Duh.' I watched as Pemphredo glanced at one of the other mages, who promptly shot himself in the foot. Deino was sipping beer and trying to flirt with the new bartender, who had crouched behind the bar with his arms over his head. Casanova was probably going to get requests for combat pay after today. I decided that I could live without learning what her special talent was.
'No. I mean we
I sighed. 'Hello, Pritkin.”
'Call off your harpies or this will be a very short conversation.”
I sighed again. Pritkin has that effect on me. 'They aren't harpies. They're the Graeae, ancient Greek demigoddesses. Or something.”
Pritkin sneered. It was what he did best, other than for killing things. 'Trust you to side with the monsters. Call them off.' An edge of anger threaded through his words, threatening to grow into something more substantial soon.
'I can't.' It was the truth, but I wasn't surprised that he didn't believe me. I couldn't recall Pritkin ever believing anything I said; it kind of made me wonder why he bothered talking to me at all. Of course, conversation probably wasn't foremost on his list. It'd be somewhere after dragging me back to the Silver Circle, throwing me in a really deep dungeon and losing the key.
I discovered that a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun sounds very loud when cocked in a small room.
'Do as he says, Cassie,' Casanova chimed in. 'I like this body as it is. If it acquires a large hole, I will be very annoyed.”
'Yeah, and that's really what's worrying us.' The comment came from the ghost who had just drifted through the wall. Casanova swatted in his direction as you might a pesky fly, but missed him. 'I thought incubi were supposed to be charming,' Billy said, wafting out of the way.
Casanova couldn't see Billy, but his demon senses could obviously hear him. His handsome forehead acquired an annoyed wrinkle, but he didn't deign to respond. I was glad about that, since it meant that Pritkin couldn't be sure that Billy was there.
Billy Joe is what remains of an Irish-American gambler with a love for loose women, dirty limericks and cheating at cards. Because of that last item, he cashed in his chips for the final time at the ripe old age of twenty- nine. A couple of cowboys hadn't liked his faint Irish accent, his ruffled shirt or the fact that the saloon girls were paying him a lot of attention. But the real kicker had come when he won too many hands at cards and they caught him with an ace up his sleeve. Billy was soon thereafter introduced to the inside of a croaker sack, which in turn made the acquaintance of the bottom of the Mississippi.
That should have ended a colorful, if abbreviated, life.
But a few weeks earlier Billy had won a variety of favors off a visiting countess-at least he claimed she'd had a title- one of which was an ugly ruby necklace that doubled as a talisman. It soaked up magical energy from the natural world and transmitted it to its owner, or in this case, to its owner's ghost. Billy's spirit had come to reside in the necklace, which gathered dust in an antique shop until I happened along looking for a present for my notoriously picky governess. I've been able to see ghosts all my life, but even I was surprised by my gift with purchase.
We'd soon discovered that not only was I the first person in years who could see him, I was also the only one of the necklace's owners who could donate energy in excess of the subsistence it provided. With regular donations from me, Billy was able to become much more active. In exchange, I got his help with my various problems. At least in theory.
He caught my look and shrugged. 'This place has too many entrances. I couldn't watch them all.' He glanced behind the mage. 'He's got his helper with him.”
He was looking at what appeared to be a man-sized clay statue. I had mistaken it for one the first time I'd seen it, but it was actually a golem. Rabbis versed in kabbalah magic were supposed to have invented them, but these days they were popular among the war mages as assistants-maybe because it's hard to hurt something with no internal organs.
I reviewed possible strategies, but none of my usual defenses seemed like a good idea. The lopsided pentagram tattooed on my back is actually a ward that can stop most magical attacks. It was crafted by the Silver Circle itself and I had seen it do some fairly amazing things, but I didn't know if it would stop a nonmagical assault of that caliber. This didn't seem like the best time to test it.
I also had a bracelet made of little interlocking daggers that seemed to dislike Pritkin even more than I did. It
