Curse the Dawn (37 page)

I’d been around war mages enough by now to know that the crazy always came out, sooner or later. Nice to know Marsden was getting it on the table early. I glanced at the phone on the wall. “I need to make a call,” I told him.

“You want to find out what happened to the children,” Pritkin guessed.

“What happened is that I thought I could protect them, when proximity to me is probably what drew the Circle’s attention to them in the first place! I wouldn’t even put it past them to have kidnapped the kids in the hopes that I’d come after them.”

“Possibly. But that doesn’t mean they would have been ignored otherwise. They are dangerous—especially in a time of war, when they could possibly be recruited for the other side.”

“They’re not evil!”

“I never said they were. But they do have a grudge against the Circle, something that could be exploited.”

“And the wards are online in any case,” Marsden added. “I am afraid they interfere with telephone service.”

“Your friend hid the children for years,” Pritkin reminded me. “She can manage for a while on her own.”

“She hid them before she was a target for the Circle,” I reminded him right back.

“They’ll be fine,” he repeated, reaching for my mug. “If you aren’t going to drink that—”

I snatched away my potentially lethal coffee. “You’ve had enough. You’re going to make me sick!”

“I wouldn’t have to work very hard. We’re increasing the number of training sessions when we get back—you’re in worse shape than I thought.”

“At least I’m not an addict.”

“Neither am I.”

“Really.” I held up a hand. It kept trembling unless I really concentrated. “How long has it been since your last caffeine fix?”

“Considering the day I’ve had? Far too long,” he muttered, slowly resting his—my—head on his arms.

He did look bad. The wardrobe-in-one was having a rough day. Apparently, it didn’t have a setting for demon fighting, or maybe it was just broken. It kept shifting to different shapes and patterns, all of which were muddy and wrinkled and torn in various places. The body underneath didn’t look much better. A dark bruise was mapping its way across my left cheekbone, matching the ring of them that circled my right wrist like a bracelet.

“You look really pathetic,” I told him.

One eye cracked, regarding me hopefully from behind a clump of lank curls.

“But you’re still not getting my coffee.”

“You owe me,” he muttered, not bothering to lift his head.

“How do you figure that?”

“Look at me!”

“You wouldn’t have gotten that way if you hadn’t run off
toward
the guy who’d just tried to kill us.”

Pritkin’s head jerked up. “And we wouldn’t be here in the first place if you hadn’t gone after the Corps
on your own
!”

“Sugar?” Marsden set a tiny teapot and a cup and saucer in front of me. The saucer had cookies. Lemon cream. Yum.

I looked down to find my coffee missing.

I reached for it and Pritkin shrank away from me, huddled over the mug protectively. “Fine,” I muttered, concentrating on my tea. I’d probably have to detox once we got switched back. Assuming we did. Now that I’d had a chance to think about it, I was feeling a little nervous on that point.

“You were going to explain how we ended up in the wrong bodies,” Pritkin reminded me.

“I’d rather clear up a few things first, like why we’re here. Wherever here is.”

“You’re in the country outside Stratford, my dear,” Marsden said, and then paused. “Oh, that does sound odd, addressing John that way. May I call you Cassandra?”

“Cassie. And Stratford where?”

He blinked. “Upon Avon.”

“We’re in
Britain
?”

“Yes, the Circle has been based here for centuries. Shakespeare’s old home has always drawn the tourists, you see. No one notices any rather odd types coming and going, as a result.” He sipped his tea. “Everyone just assumes they’re Americans.”

I scowled at him. “I thought the Circle was based in Vegas.”

“Oh, no.” He looked slightly shocked at the idea. “That wouldn’t do at all. I’d have never gotten any work out of the Corps then, now would I?”

“Our North American branch was based at MAGIC,” Pritkin clarified. “And can we return to the point?”

I decided to man up to it—since I could actually currently do that—and fished the ivory menace out of Pritkin’s pocket. “Meet Daikoku, one of the seven Japanese gods of luck.” I left off the “good,” since I hadn’t seen much sign of that, and filled them in on the rest of the legend.

Marsden was biting his lip and Pritkin was staring at me incredulously by the time I finished. “You knowingly invoked an unknown, potent magical object without placing any boundaries on its power?” He sounded like he didn’t quite believe it. “Have you gone completely mad?”

“It seemed better than the alternative.”

“It wasn’t,” he said harshly.

Pritkin could piss a person off in record speed at the best of times, which these weren’t. I felt my temper rising. “And why not?”

A muscle leapt in my cheek. I hadn’t known it could do that. “Because djinn are demons! They lure the foolish into a pact by dangling wishes in front of them, and as soon as anyone takes the bait, they have him! They can do anything to him they want, any amount of harm, as long as they fulfill the technical requirements of the wish!”

“Just ask Parsons,” Marsden agreed. “Only we can’t, of course.”

I glanced at devil dog, which had abandoned the puddle of mangled chew bone and was now lazily scratching. “The salesman promised that Daikoku isn’t a djinn.”

“And salesmen’s promises are never exaggerated!” Pritkin’s voice dripped sarcasm.

“We survived, didn’t we?”

“We would have in any case. Caleb—”

“Was going to take me in!”

“I could have talked him ’round, had you given me—”

“Oh, don’t even! We were surrounded. They’d pulled guns on us!”

“Guns no one chose to fire! They were attempting to capture you, not to kill you!”

“And you know this how?”

Pritkin slammed a hand down on the table hard enough to spill my tea. “Because you’re still alive!”

The low-grade headache I’d had for what felt like a hundred years was back with a vengeance. “Being captured by the Circle might be a death sentence for me,” I reminded him grimly.

“She might have a point, John,” Marsden spoke up. He’d been looking back and forth between us, like a fan at a tennis match. “That’s why I summoned you, actually.”

“Summoned?” The word didn’t make sense. “You summon ghosts or demons.”

“And Pythias.” He flopped a little chain out of his shirt. It had a small gold charm on it.

“Come again?”

“An old trick,” he told me, pushing the plate of cookies at Pritkin, who ignored it. “The holders of your office have a habit of being elsewhere at crucial moments—or should I say, elsewhen? In any case, the Circle had this constructed some centuries ago as a way of recalling the Pythias in times of emergency. Once activated, it will bring you to us the next time you try to shift.”

I stared at the wicked little thing in horror. “But if you could do that—why didn’t the Circle recall me ages ago to stand trial?”

“Because I’m a foolish old man who misplaced it—along with a few other things—after I was forced out of office,” he replied innocently.

“You kept me from shifting!”

“No. The charm merely brought you back when you tried it.”

“You almost got us killed!”

“Nonsense. John was with you. And I didn’t know I was going to be attacked the very moment you arrived, did I?”

I paused, having to rearrange my thoughts somewhat. I’d just assumed the mages had been after me. Everyone else was. “But they attacked us!”

“Doubtless thinking you were my allies.”

“But . . . who were they?”

“I don’t know most of them,” Marsden said. “But their leader was an ex-war mage named Jenkins. He was disavowed for financial fiddling some years ago. He became an assassin-for-hire afterward—a very successful one, by all accounts. But we could never catch him.”

“The man I pursued,” Pritkin said shortly. So Adidas had had a name.

“Why did he want to kill you?” I asked Marsden.

“Because Saunders hired him, of course. Even now, he might find it difficult to persuade anyone in the Corps to murder me!”

“You have a number of enemies, Jonas,” Pritkin protested. “Jenkins among them. We can’t merely assume—”

“Don’t be naive, John! If he could, Saunders would lock me up and throw away the key, but he’s afraid the trial would give me a public platform and he doesn’t want that. He prefers to dismiss my allegations as the ramblings of a bitter old man while he waits for his men to pick me off!”

“Saunders? Are you talking about the Lord Protector?” I asked, trying to make some sense out of this. Marsden nodded. “But why is the leader of the Circle sending assassins after you?”

“Because of you, my dear.”

“I don’t even know you!”

“But you do know Peter Tremaine. You released him from MAGIC’s cells yesterday. And he came straight to me. It seems that he discovered the truth about the honor-able lord’s activities six months ago—”

“What activities?”

“—but was locked away on a trumped-up charge to keep him quiet. Now that he’s out, he is as determined as I am to have the truth known. And he is convinced that you can help our cause.”

He beamed at me, all rosy cheeks and smiling eyes, and I felt my stomach fall. “What cause?” I asked fearfully.

He blinked, the thick glasses making his watery blue eyes look huge. “Oh, didn’t I say? We’re planning a coup!”

I stared at the batty old man, speechless. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him; he clearly wasn’t joking. It’s just that I couldn’t imagine anyone suggesting suicide in such a bright and cheerful tone. No one sane, that is. I should have known that the Circle’s old leader would have an extra dose of crazy.

I don’t know what I would have said if Pritkin hadn’t taken that moment to face plant onto the table. After some wrestling, he ended up with his head between his knees and me crouched beside him, running a hand slowly up and down his spine. “Are you going to be sick?”

“No,” he said indignantly. And then promptly was.

“Oh, dear!” Marsden fussed as I held Pritkin’s head. “I should have thought—you’re both tired after all the excitement. We can talk about this tomorrow.”

“Not if I have—” I began, and Pritkin kicked me. “I mean, yeah, tomorrow.”

After some general clean-up, Marsden led us to a large bedroom at the top of the stairs.

“There are towels in the bathroom, and I’ll fetch you something to wear.” He sized Pritkin’s current body up thoughtfully. “I picked up a few things in town today, but you’re smaller than I expected. Still, we’ll make do.”

I bit back a comment. He didn’t seem to find the idea of shopping for his intended kidnapping victim at all strange. But arguing with a crazy man was a waste of time. Not to mention that we were stuck with his hospitality until I could figure out how to get that damn charm away from him. Or get the phone working. Or get a partner with more energy than an anorexic mosquito.

“Where’s mine?” I asked after Pritkin collapsed onto the bed. He looked like he was already asleep, despite the truckload of caffeine.

“I beg your pardon?” Marsden inquired politely.

“My room,” I clarified.

He blinked at me. “Oh.” He seemed a little nonplussed. “Oh, yes, yes, of course. Well, I suppose I could put you . . . But we’ll need fresh sheets.”

He bustled off. I left him to it and went to find a bathroom. It confirmed my impression that Marsden wasn’t married. There were no curtains over the frosted windows and no rugs on the floor, but there was a washcloth that had dried into an upside-down flower shape hanging off a faucet. Thankfully, there were also towels in a pile on the edge of the tub, and a little tower of the kind of soaps people keep for guests. There was also a modern-looking shower, a radiator and a wardrobe holding even more towels.

And nothing else.

I looked around, even peered behind the wardrobe, but no dice. I finally gave up and went to ask Pritkin. He was passed out on his back, leaking mud onto Marsden’s nice cotton sheets. I shook him lightly, not happy about having to wake him, but his old boss was nowhere to be found and things were getting fairly urgent.

One eye slitted slightly. “What?”

“Sorry. It’s just—there’s a problem with the bathroom.”

“What problem?”

“There’s no toilet.”

“This is an old house,” Pritkin said, like that explained anything.

“And they didn’t need to pee in the past?” I demanded.

He groaned and threw an arm over his face. “There’s a WC down the hall.”

“A what?” I asked, a little desperately.

“A water closet. It’s in a separate room.”

“Why? Why not put it in the—”

“Because a bathroom is where one goes to
bathe,
hence the name.”

“That’s bizarre.”

“No, Miss Palmer,” Pritkin said savagely. “It isn’t. What is bizarre is that I currently have a
vagina
.”

I’d never heard quite that tone in his voice before, but it didn’t sound good. I decided that I had enough information. I fled.

The WC turned out to be right beside the bathroom in a narrow little closet of a room. I was so relieved that the actual act of using it as a man wasn’t nearly as traumatic as I’d expected. I dragged myself back to the bathroom and turned on the water in the shower to get it hot, too tired to risk the tub in case I drowned in it.

The filthy coat hit the floor, along with the thigh strap for the holster, the bandolier-style potion belt, the bloody keep-your-pants-up belt that I’d used as a tourniquet, the under-the-arm holster, the five knives and the heavy boots—complete with two more knives—that constituted Pritkin’s idea of casual attire. It made a god-awful mess, but the floor was tiled and I promised myself I’d clean it up later. When maybe I didn’t feel like I was about to fall over.