Armed & Magical

“The men in blue robes are Conclave shield weavers,” Tam told me. “They’re reinforcing the stage’s shields. Since these are Ronan’s best students, I can’t risk anyone being hurt.”



“Some risks are worth taking, Tam. I want to help you.”



“Sometimes you can risk hurting someone just standing close to them.”



“What happened in that alley won’t happen again. I won’t let it.”



Tam’s low laugh brushed against me like the softest fur. I shivered and gripped the chair’s armrests. Tam had never been able to do that before.



“Stop it.”



His laughter stopped. “Just a demonstration, Raine. What happened between us is still there. We’re not entirely separate anymore. Mychael knows this. Some things are beyondmortal control—and some things are impossible to resist.Like you. Please stay away from me.”



Don’t think about Tam. Don’t think about what we did, or what I’d like to be doing again right now. Eternal damnation versus amazing sex. Close, but no contest. Amazing sex didn’t last nearly long enough—damnation lasted an eternity. That tossed a bucket of ice water on my lust.



“What have the Khrynsani got on you?”



Silence. “It’s complicated,” he finally said.



“With you it always is,” I muttered. “I’m a bright girl, Tam. I can handle complicated. You’d be surprised at the knots I can untangle. You made a bargain, but you didn’t keep it. Then you killed the person you made the bargain with. In my family that makes any and all deals null and void. How does it work in your family?”



“You saw last night how it works in my family.” His voice in my head was tight with repressed rage.



“The Khrynsani aren’t your family.” I stopped, thought, and concluded in the span of two seconds.



Oh hell.



The Khrynsani worked for Tam’s family. The Mal’-Salins.



I just sat there. A Khrynsani shaman could have popped out of the floor right next to me and I don’t think I would have batted an eye.



Things fell into place for me and it wasn’t pretty.



The Khrynsani wanted me, which meant the Mal’Salins wanted me. Their lawyers were taking the legal road. Their shamans were going for dark alleys—and Tam. You didn’t get to pick either your enemies or your family, and both were just as likely to stick a dagger in your back.



Tam’s presence in my mind vanished. My glance flicked back to the dining suite. He was gone.



Piaras appeared at my side and I damned near jumped out of my skin.



“You looked like you were concentrating on something. I didn’t want to disturb you.”



“You didn’t disturb me, kid. You scared the crap out of me.”



“Sorry.”



“It’s okay. It’s my fault; I wasn’t paying attention.” I was too busy realizing that Tam’s family had somehow roped him back into service, and had come close to lassoing me along with him.



I felt someone watching us. I had a feeling who the voyeur was, but I turned and looked to the front table anyway. Yep, it was Carnades. I was half tempted to stick my tongue out at him.



Piaras grinned sheepishly. “Well, how did I do?”



“Absolutely beautiful.” I didn’t mention the people in the audience who thought the same thing but wanted more. “If it hadn’t been for those stage shields, everybody out here would’ve been—”



I sucked in my breath and froze. Something was lightly brushing the skin between my breasts. I looked down. Nothing there except me and mine.



I stood as calmly as I could considering I was being groped by invisible fingers. I stepped back and the touching didn’t stop. I blew out my breath in short puffs and looked at Carnades’s table. He was turned away from me, talking to someone. It wasn’t him.



And it wasn’t Tam.



Piaras’s hand gripped my arm. “Raine, what is it?”



“Someone’s touching me.”



“I’m touching you.”



“It’s… not you.” My breath came in gasps. I couldn’t get any air.



Vegard was beside me. “Ma’am, what’s wrong?”



The fingers suddenly splayed, the tips pressing into my breasts, the palm pushing hard against the center of my chest. Power radiated inward from that invisible hand. Searching. Summoning.



The Saghred surged against the hand from inside of me. The pressure from both inside and out held my rib cage like a vise. I couldn’t breathe at all. Piaras’s face blurred and faded. I was going to pass out.



“Raine!” It was Vegard. I could see his face, but his voice sounded like he was yelling down a well. I dimly heard him call for Mychael.



With the pressure came a presence. Not just old. Ancient. Its weight crushed me, thickened the air that I couldn’t breathe. Filled my gasping mouth and nose with the sharp, coppery scent of blood. More blood than one body could hold, the blood of hundreds, thousands of screaming victims.



It was magic. Ancient and malignant. And evil. Gleefully evil.



Black flowers bloomed on the edge of my vision. The hand on my chest suddenly blazed into a white-hot brand, searing my flesh, burning through bone. My silent scream became one of the thousands as I fell into darkness.



Chapter 13



“It wasn’t Tam,” I said for the umpteenth time.



I could almost sit up in bed now. I was perfectly fine. Well, at least better.



Mychael wasn’t listening to me.



It didn’t help my case any that when I came around, I didn’t have the strength to get my head off the pillow. Hard to be defiant and have a decent argument when you couldn’t lift your own head. I was surprised to find that I didn’t have any burns. It felt like someone had hauled off and punched me in the center of the chest with a branding iron.



Apparently I was out cold all the way back from Sirens to the citadel. And judging from the cramp in my neck and the dark outside my window, I’d added a couple of hours of sleep on top of that. I felt better, still crappy, but better.



Once he determined that I could speak, Mychael had started in with the questioning. You’d think that air-deprived impressions and images wouldn’t stick around in your head all that long, but you’d be wrong. Like the phantom hand in the center of my chest, those images were seared into my mind. There was going to be no forgetting those anytime soon. By the next time I went to sleep, they’d probably have taken a place of honor in the parade of night-mares that made me go scream in the night.



I wondered how long I could go without sleep.



“All I know is that the Saghred responded to him,” I told Mychael wearily. “Big-time.”



His blue eyes narrowed. “Like Tam?”



“Nothing like Tam.”



Tam had been amazing; this had been amazingly painful and nearly deadly.



My tone must have implied my enjoyment of the former, because Mychael’s scowl deepened. Great. Jealousy was rearing its ugly head. Normally I’d feel flattered; now I knew it was only adding unwanted trouble to an already-too-long list.



“The Saghred just said hello to Tam,” I explained. “It greeted Mr. Fiery Fingers like a long-lost friend.”



I knew who it had to be. He was an ancient, powerful, bullying slaughterer who enjoyed his work way too much. I’d read all about him and his antics—in his own words and his own handwriting. All the blood, the thousands of screaming victims had been Saghred sacrifices.



“You’ve got a seriously unwanted guest on your island,” I told Mychael.



“I’ve got a lot of those right now.”



“This one makes Banan Ryce look like a choirboy.”



Mychael didn’t move. “Do you have a name?”



“Rudra Muralin.”



Mychael sat back in the chair he’d pulled beside my bed. He didn’t say anything for a while. “Are you certain?”



“I can’t imagine the Saghred reacting that way to anyone else. He kept it fed and happy. The rock was trying to rip me apart to get to him.”



Mychael knew what Rudra Muralin being here meant. I could see it in his eyes. The Khrynsani and the Nightshades had just been downgraded from dangerous to a mere nuisance.



Mychael had himself a big problem. Mine was catastrophic.



A thousand-year-old psychotic goblin teenage spellsinger wanted his rock back.



“Rudra Muralin was in Sirens,” I said. “It doesn’t tell us what the Khrynsani have on Tam, but it might go a long way toward explaining why he had to act like he was going along. And it would also explain why he didn’t want me there.”



Mychael’s lips quirked in a sardonic grin. “Tam can be a wise man sometimes.”



I pressed my lips into a thin line. “So what did the fount of wisdom have to say for himself?”



“Probably nothing more than what he told you.”



I blinked. “You were eavesdropping.”



“I was doing my job.”



“I thought your job was to keep us apart.”



“My job is to keep what happened in that alley from happening again. Tam was less than forthcoming with me. I thought he might tell you things that he’d kept hidden from me.”



“So you struck out?”



“What he told me, I already knew. When he discovered that the Khrynsani were going to kidnap one of his employees, he and some of his men went to retrieve the boy.”



I nodded. “That matches the story the kid told me. Either it’s the truth, or Tam told the kid what he was supposed to say if anyone asked. That adds another question. What do the Khrynsani want with a nightclub spellsinger? And then it just so happened that I was there while Tam was there, and Darshan the shaman was tickled to see us both. I take it Tam didn’t say why.”



“He refused to give details. I could have arrested him, but I know Tam and that wouldn’t have made him talk. Though if the Mal’Salins are threatening or coercing him, a containment room might be the safest place for him right now. And if the Khrynsani discover Tam killed one of their own with a death curse, he may wish that I had arrested him.”