Chapter 10

Argondian and Nelson went to update the others, including the oft-spoken of but never seen Vaccaro in Edinburgh, but sent Simon to help me with trying to track down Violet.

A couple hours later, we gave up.

"She must be in the Never-never," Simon concluded. I wasn't sure if he really thought that, or simply had to believe it, as there could be no other possible reason his tracking spells failed.

"Probably," I said from the bed, where I'd laid down to rest while he gave it a try. My own spells hadn't worked, but that simply could have been because I wasn't very good with them. I'd practiced over the years, but the real expert was my friend Olivia back in Chicago.

I sighed, wondering what she was up to. I'd left in such a frantic hurry that I hadn't contacted her. I was suppose to join her and Manu, her yoga instructor slash boyfriend slash annoying former college football stud, for a night out that evening. But I doubted I'd be home in time. Maybe Q had left word that I wouldn't make it.

I was also worried about my roommate, who was supposedly on his way. It'd been almost twelve hours since he'd call Anya, saying that he'd received my message and would join us on Chios. We'd left the name of the first town as a place to find us, and we figured he would call Anya back on her satellite phone if we weren't there.

But all the magic the wizards had been slinging around back at the cottage had fried the phone. I'd called and left another voicemail when we'd reached the inn, but then I'd realized that Q didn't have a satellite phone. His wouldn't be of any more use than my own flip-phone.

Anya said something about him maybe having a GSM phone, which would work. I had no clue; once the things had stopped reliably working around me, I'd given up on keeping track of what technology was what.

"If you're done playing with that ring, how about we settle our wager?" Anya said from beside me. Her head was at the foot of the bed, where she'd been watching Simon's latest attempt.

"Uh, maybe later," the young wizard said, a blush creeping into his cheeks. He absently ran a hand through his long hair, clearly nervous around the beautiful succubus.

"Fine," the punky vampire said, rolling onto her back and hanging her head upside down off the end of the bed. I smirked, noticing that her white leather jacket was halfway unzipped. The position she was in was going to be showing Nelson a tantalizing amount of skin from his position on the floor. "Until you settle up, you have to pay interest."

"How's that?" he asked, making an obvious attempt at looking anywhere but Anya's fingers, which were idly tracing along the argent tattoos on her silky smooth skin.

"Tell me about those magic weapons," she said. I perked up at that. I'd been wondering about those myself.

"You mean what I used against Somboon?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Well, it's complicated, but they're basically made of material from the Never-never," he explained.

"How's that?" Anya asked. I noted that she had started using both hands to trace the tattoos, and that the jacket had somehow unzipped further.

I also noted that I'd noted that, and tried to avert my own gaze.

"Well, I take it you've seen Ghostbusters?" he asked. I hoped he never asked that in front of Q. When Anya nodded, he continued. "They talk about ectoplasm. It's basically like that. The material that makes up the Never-never is solid over there. But once you bring it over, it collapses into goo, unless some magical force keeps its shape."

"So, you're what? Summoning that stuff over to make the weapons?"

"Yes and no," he replied. "I have vats I use to keep it viable in the real world. I normally carry some with me in small bladders, but since I figured I might be getting into some fights, I brought the backpack to store more."

That explained the hard-shell bag he'd worn. I pictured containers of slime inside.

"I've got tubes that run down my coat sleeves," he continued. "They feed the ectoplasm to my hands, where my will gives them shape."

"So can you make anything you want?" The jacket was completely unzipped now, and was beginning to slide to either side of her chest. Not that I was keeping track.

"Um, pretty much," Simon said, looking out the window.

"They didn't hold up very well, though," Anya said, her tone disappointed.

"Well, that's only because of—" he started, before coughing and looking away again when he saw what Anya was now circling with her fingertips. "Because of the warden's blade."

"Why's that?" Anya asked, her voice full of innocence. Like she didn't know exactly what she was doing to the poor guy.

But if she'd been using her power, I would have felt it. Which meant she was resorting only to her natural feminine wiles to try and seduce the young wizard.

"Warden swords are specially made," he explained, idly turning the rings on his gloves. It turned out each finger of the half-gloves had rings and wires built in, each carved with different magical symbols. The reason he was able to cast spells so quickly without command words was because those rings allowed him to create any combination of magical workings on the fly.

"Each is crafted for the individual warden," he explained of the swords. "A ton of spells go into them, making sure they can cut through any enchantment. Wards, shields, and even some enchanted armors. Magical constructs, like my weapons, and golems and such. The sword's will cut through all of them."

"Is that why my blade shattered?" Anya asked, suddenly paying attention.

"Probably," he confirmed. "Most standard weapons can't hold up against warden blades." He shot a look my way. "Which is why the others were interested in your spear."

Nelson had said something about that when we were walking back inside. Moretti had expressed an interest in studying my spear, but I told them it'd have to wait. I wasn't letting it out of my sight while there were hundreds of zombies running around. I've seen those movies.

"Woody has all the fun toys," Anya said, lifting her head to send me a scorching hot look, her eyes flashing silver. As I didn't rise to the bait, she dropped her head again. I noticed her eyes were back to their normal gray as she did. "So where can I get one of these warden blades?"

"You can't," Simon said. I assumed Anya pouted, because he quickly stammered out, "I mean, no one can. Only one person could make them, but she can't anymore."

"So the newbies are out of luck?" Anya guessed.

"Yeah. Anyone that became a warden in the last few years doesn't have one."

"Moretti has one," I commended. "But I noticed Argondian didn't."

"Argondian has been on the Council for ages, but wasn't a full warden until after the war started," he explained. "Before that, he was simply a regional commander in an area that didn't see much action. He never bothered to come in long enough for one to be made."

"Maybe I'll take Moretti's sword," Anya mused. I wasn't sure she was joking, but Simon laughed.

"Actually, his isn't officially a warden sword," he said. "He comes from a line of wizards, and they've got their own forging process. Very similar to the warden swords; almost indistinguishable, really."

"Then why don't the wardens have his family make them?"

"Uh, well…" Simon said, suddenly sounding uncomfortable. "The Moretti's aren't… I guess you could say they're not in very good standing with the Council."

"But Sergio is?" Anya asked with a snort. "If half the things I heard about him back in New York are true, I can't see how his family could be any worse."

"Serg takes some getting used to," Simon admitted. "He's been through a lot. But even if the stories you've heard were only half as bad as reality, he'd still be ten times better than his family."

Anya made a doubtful noise, but didn't directly contradict the wizard. I'd never heard of Moretti before our trip. Anya hadn't mentioned much about life back in New York, and I had my own resident Wizard to avoid.

The punky vampire sat up and turned to me, meaning she turned all of her wiles in my direction at once. It was somewhat distracting. "Do you think you can get me some enchanted swords when we get back to Chicago?"

"You're from Chicago?" Simon asked excitedly, his eyes widening. "Do you know H—"

"Stop."

"What?"

"Don't say the name," I said in all seriousness.

"Why not?" Simon asked, looking confused.

"Names have power," I told the wizard that should know better. "If you say his name, you might summon him. And then our situation would get decidedly worse."

"How do you figure?" he asked, from some reason thinking I was joking. "I've heard the older wardens don't like him, but the younger guard kind of look up to him."

"I wouldn't recommend that," I said, hoping he'd drop the subject. But apparently we'd stumbled onto an interesting topic.

"What's so bad about him?"

"Did you hear he started the war you guys are in?" I asked incredulously, as if that weren't enough.

"Yeah, but for a good reason," Simon said.

"Is there ever a good reason to go to war?" I asked, really just mouthing off.

"Would you go to war for Anya?" he countered, sounding defensive of his idol.

Anya laughed. "Me? No. Violet, maybe."

I shot her a scowl, but it didn't phase her in the slightest.

"Seriously, what else has he done?" Simon pressed. "I've heard a lot of good things. About how he's helped people."

"Let's see," I said, pretending to think for a minute. "When I was seventeen, I was arrested for setting fire to a house that resulted in a death. The arrest made the local papers, which threatened the jobs of both my parents. If not for two naked people running down the street swearing a wizard did it, I'd have been in prison, and my parents would have been out of work."

"So?" Simon said.

"So guess who started the fire?"

"You know that for sure?" he asked doubtfully.

I nodded. "I saw him at a distance. I only found out who he was much later."

"Oh."

"That's not it, thought," I assured him. "When I first moved to Chicago to got to school, I lived at my uncle's art studio. After he died, Guess Who shows up at his funeral, and harasses some kids my uncle used to help? One of which died within the next day or so, another went missing, and the other two… well, nobody knows what happened to them. They've been seen around town, but they're not normal anymore."

"You don't know—"

I started ticking off fingers in a countdown. "After I got a job working for the Chicago Fire Prevention Bureau, I was tapped as someone 'in the know' when it comes to magic. They tasked me with explaining away fires that aren't explainable by mundane means. I had to make things look natural, no matter how unnatural or supernatural they might have been."

"That doesn't sound bad," Simon said with a shrug.

"It wasn't, right up until Guess Who burned down an abandoned school, and I got caught planting evidence by a local fire house captain that wasn't 'in the know'."

"Ouch."

I sat back against the headboard. "Which cost me my job, and landed me with more arson charges, which I only barely avoided going to trial over."

"But didn't that also get you the settlement that bought your house?" Anya interjected.

I shot another scowl at her. "Who's side are you on?"

Both eyebrows rose in surprise. "Yours. Definitely yours."

"Better be," I growled. "Now, where was I? Right. Inexplicable jobs I've had to explain over the years where he's been seen: a fire in a hotel storage room; reports of fiery lights flitting about a random tornado that touched down in the middle of town; smoke bombs without bombs at a convention center where people had started dying; a mundane car-bombing and apartment fire, which I didn't actually have to investigate, but I thought I'd include since Guess Who was present for both—"

"Alright," Simon said, raising his hands defensively.

"A building with the side sheered off like sheet cake."

"Yea— wait, what?"

"What looked to be a major lightning strike inside the train station."

"Okay."

"The Shedd Museum disaster, which was similar to the sheet-cake building incident. Both involved inexplicable lightsaber-like burns the size of basketballs."

"Now you're cheating," Anya said, quirking an eyebrow. As if anyone would notice that over the fact that her jacket was still unzipped. "No-one saw him there."

"He was there," I assured her. "I know people who know. And those last three were all on top of one another, which meant I was working overtime to cover his ass. On top of having to clean up an old mess he'd left in my hometown."

Anya rolled her eyes.

"Fine, I get it," Simon finally said. "Bad things happen around him. But that's mostly because he puts himself out there to help others. Those bad things would have still happened if he weren't around."

I gave him a disappointed look. "I help people too; but you don't see me burning buildings down."

"Ah," Anya said, raising a finger in protest.

I rolled my eyes. "Olivia's apartment excluded. And that was just a hall fire."

"And weren't you telling me about those purple fires burning warehouses down?" she inquired.

"That wasn't me, that was the other guy."

"Violet said you burned a ring in your mom's police station—"

"That's different," I argued.

"And I've heard about the dragon."

"The dragon?" Simon asked breathlessly, watching our back and forth.

"It was a little dragon," I told him dismissively. "Little d. I've been told that makes a difference."

"Isn't that the understatement of the century," Anya said with a smirk.

"Hush you," I said, just as there was a knock at the door. A second later it opened, and Argondian invited himself in.

"I wanted to see—" is as far as he got before he saw Anya in her somewhat undressed state.

"Oh, lord," she said, quickly zipping up as the old wizard clasped his hands together and looked up to mouth a silent prayer.

"No luck with the spells," Simon said quickly, his blush returning as he worried at being caught. Not that he'd been doing anything, but Argondian would probably be telling everyone about the orgy he'd walked in on.

Nelson walked up behind the old wizard, having missed Anya's show. "We were able to confirm that there were no more graveyard desecrations after dawn. But their initial count of a dozen might have been low."

"Still no clue on where they could be hiding?" Simon asked.

"Not that we've been able to find," Nelson confirmed after looking to Argondian, who had his eyes clenched shut and a huge grin on his face. The bald wizard started to ask him what's wrong, but Argondian blindly waved him down. "I'm burning it into my long term memory."

"Something's gonna burn," Anya growled softly.

"Anyway…" Nelson said, clearly confused by what was going on. "I'm going to go hunt down Penny to see if she learned anything from the local faeries."

"Make sure she brings Sal back," I told him. The little guy had jumped up when the girl said she was going to find a secluded garden to see if she could commune with the sprites and dew-drops. Although I suspected he just wanted to try and snack on her multi-wooded wizard staff.

"If she didn't, are we counting on Rose?" Simon asked.

"Unfortunately," Nelson confirmed, looking down at his time piece. It was some wizard contraption, a combination of sundial and geared mechanism. I was confused about how he expected a sundial to work inside, but as it shone with its own light that apparently stayed oriented with the sun…

Wizards.

"We've got a few more hours until nightfall," he finished, looking up.

"Well, let's all be ready," I said. "How about we meet downstairs about thirty minutes before dusk?"

The others all nodded, and Simon helped Nelson push Argondian out of the room. He seemed to be reliving the scene he'd fabricated in his head.

As soon as the other were out, Anya's jacket was off, and a wave of lust washed over me. Since she didn't usually use her power on me like that, I wondered if she was trying to keep me distracted.

"Let's make sure we're both as ready as possible for tonight," she said as she crawled across the bed toward me.

And for a moment, I was able to ignore the worry eating at my gut.

Thirty minutes before dusk, I made my way outside to smoke a cigarette. All of my things were in the duffel bag beside the bench I sat on. I had my enchanted glasses on, with the lenses dimmed with the sunglass spell. I was trying to hold onto the calm that Anya had brought on with her power, but it was already slipping away.

While I waited, a moderately ugly man sat down beside me on the bench, his own duffel bag falling to the sidewalk with an audible clink.

"Smoke?" I offered, holding out what was left of my box. I'd gone through almost an entire pack since that morning, which was unusual for me. But I was under a little pressure, so that was understandable.

The man snorted in disgust at the proffered cigarettes. "I'll be lucky if I can get the stench out of my nostrils as it is," he rasped out.

I put the snakewood box away, and looked over at the goblin named Qilluhrang.

Like all goblins, Q suffered from an acute disorder of physical features. He had all the right parts, but none of it was what you'd call symmetrical.

He was better to look at than most — according to him; I still hadn't met any other goblins — which put him on the ugly end of human. And that was when he was using his glamour to pass himself off as such.

Normally the goblin's skin was a greenish shade of white that reminded one of spoilt milk and gangrene. His eyes were slightly differing shades of red, both of which glowed with an inhuman light. His ears were long and bat-like, one drooping lower than the other, and his hair was a mix of earthy colors, strung out into thin strands that looked like a really bad toupee. The only thing that you could say was even was his musculature; he had the lean form of an agile warrior bred to killing over countless generations.

With the glamour, his skin was almost white, and his eyes were almost brown. His hair looked thicker, but he put a Blackhawks ball cap over it anyway. He was dressed for battle, wearing his own Balaur leather pants. His pair was the more natural brown color of the dragon hide, rather than my expertly tailored black pair. He carried the matching jacket over one arm, and was sporting a Zombieland t-shirt.

"Anya broke one of her swords," I told him, to which he snorted in derision. "She wants some enchanted blades."

"And I told you before," he hissed out softly. "If we have our friend make them for her, her entire family is going to want them."

"I'd rather deal with telling Lara Raith no than burying a friend."

The goblin simply grumbled at that. I took another drag, and then told him everything he'd missed.

By the time I was done, the others had all come out, and were standing a short distance away. It was clear they were curious about who I was speaking to, but didn't want to interfere. I took Q over, and introduced him to the others.

Moretti just glared at me. "Do you have any normal acquaintances?"

"I'm going to kill him," Anya whispered softly to Q through a smile. The goblin simply studied the wizard, his eyes lingering on the glove and sleeve covering his steel arm.

"Q's a friend, and good in a fight," I told the wizard. "He's also friends with Violet, and doesn't want anything to happen to her."

"Nice to meet you," Penny said, offering Q her hand. He looked at it for a long moment, and then surprised me by shaking it. "Likewise," he rasped out, perhaps sounding the politest I'd heard in a while.

"What'd you find out from the locals?" I asked her. The others hadn't reported back after we'd parted. Sal was still sitting on Penny's shoulder, chewing on what looked like a eucalyptus leaf. I wasn't going to ask. He's always been good with the ladies, and is usually eating out of the palm of their hands within minutes.

"Nothing and everything," she replied, sounding disappointed. "I didn't speak with anyone."

"Really?" I asked, surprised. Argondian had said she was in tight with the little folk.

"Unfortunately," she replied. "But that tells me something as well. The only times they won't speak with me is when they're scared."

"So Salvago has driven the local Fae into hiding?" Anya asked.

"Indeed," Rose replied, eliciting a startled gasp from everyone as she appeared beside me.

Even Q's eyebrows ticked up a notch as he noted the similarities between her and Violet. Looking at her again, I wasn't sure how I'd ever thought they were alike. There was something about her that was just different. Not wrong, or bad. Just different from the nymph I knew.

Different Shades make Different Lampades, the voice of her torch said inside my head, clearly understanding what I was thinking despite not being in contact. I had to hope it was because of the power Rose had given me to translate Greek, and not a sign that I was going mad.

"Wow," I said, looking at the nymph in surprise. "I thought it only said the one thing."

"It is always chatty," she replied with a frown. "But not usually with others."

"Uh, what?" Simon said, just as confused as the others.

"And it's punny," I added. The torch had turned it into a rhyme, even if that wasn't the correct pronunciation.

Hell, the inanimate object had a personality.

"Do not encourage it," Rose said with a scowl. "It is not used to others hearing it."

"Is Violet's as punny as—"

"We have no time to waste," the Lampad said, cutting me off. "They have already begun."

"But the sun's only just begun to set," I said, looking to the horizon.

"The shadows have fallen upon the far side of the mountains," she replied.

"Shit," I said, cursing as the group turned to the east.

The mountains that made up the central landscape of the island loomed in the distance, their peaks bright under the setting sun. But on the far side, the mountain's mass would have already shrouded much of the landscape in darkness. Had I thought of that, we could have traveled there, and Rose could have met us that much faster.

And Salvago wouldn't have had extra time to cull the graves.

"Can you take us to where they are?" I asked quickly. The others all tensed, realizing that battle was imminent.

"I can take you to where they have been," she said.

"Do you know where they're going?" Argondian asked, his tone thankfully serious.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I believe they have discovered that I led you to them earlier. Violet now shields them and herself from my light."

"Then how did you know they were acting?" Nelson asked.

"His profanity grows," the Lampad growled, a furious light shining within her sanguine eyes. "He has discovered the hypnotic effects of the torch. The people of Nagos are praying to old gods and new in the chaos of his actions."

"Wait, the hypnotic what?" Anya asked, looking to me. I shook my head.

"Men cannot look upon the light of our torches; it drives them mad," Rose explained quickly. "You are spared by my will. But rather than leading them to madness, the torch can entrance them."

I didn't follow. "So they're luring spirits now?"

"No," the nymph said tersely. "They are luring humans. He has begun to enslave living souls."