A chill raced down my back. “They don’t ask their guests questions, so anyone can sneak in. But if Miles isn’t in Elysium, it’s the only place I can think of that he might be.”
“If you’re sure.” Harper’s shoulders hunched. “I’m ready.”
I pushed open the door, Dex perched on my shoulder. As we entered the bar, several people shot suspicious looks in our direction and then turned away almost immediately. Dex laughed under his breath. “This is much better than last time. They don’t like spirit mages here. Or liches.”
“Good job I’m not one, then.” While Dex caught an odd look or two, Harper and I blended in as we walked to the bar.
“Hey, there,” I said to the guy behind the counter. “I wondered if you’d seen a friend of mine. Miles… or he might be using an alias.”
He jerked a thumb behind me. “Him?”
I wheeled around, my gaze going to a table under the window. My heart backflipped in my chest. There he was. Miles. He’s here?
“Is that him?” whispered Harper.
I inclined my head. “I’ll speak to him.”
I crossed the room and sat down opposite Miles, who lifted his head. “There you are, Bria. I was starting to think you’d never show up.”
“You can’t have been here all day,” I murmured. “Didn’t they already throw you out?”
“I talked to the owner,” he said. “When I explained I was trying to hunt down some rogue spirit mages, they let me in.”
“Some of Shawn’s allies stayed here, Miles. It isn’t safe. They want you dead.”
“Funny thing, that,” he said. “I got that impression when they sent me on a bogus mission right into a revenant’s nest.”
A gasp lodged in my throat. “So it was them who sent you down there?”
“So that I couldn’t find their hideout, I assume,” he said. “I should have worked it out sooner. It wasn’t until I got back to the base that I realised they’d given me false directions. They beat the shit out of my friend Tate, too. Shelley is seriously pissed off.”
“Why did they want me to spy on the Death King?” I said. “In fact, you’re the one who first told me you needed a spy.”
“It was Shawn’s suggestion,” he said. “It’s true that there’s been something wrong on the Death King’s territory for a while, but it turned out the trouble was closer to home than I thought. I thought the spy was among the liches. I knew there was at least one spirit mage involved, but I assumed it was a dead one, not a living one.”
“Were you and the Death King really friends?” I asked.
“Not sure I’d use that word, but we knew one another before he became Death King,” he said. “I should have guessed Shawn would try to poison you against him.”
“Yeah, well, I’m here on his account,” I admitted. “The Death King wants your help if Shawn and his friends attack the trials tomorrow.”
His gaze went to Harper. “Is she trustworthy?”
“She and half the contenders are in the same position as I am,” I said. “I’ve told them Shawn is a crook, but I think we’re going to need outside help if we’re to stop him and his allies.”
“Meaning me.” He dropped his gaze. “Yeah, I didn’t sign up for this shit. I lost half my Spirit Agents to those fucking traitors.”
“I’m sorry,” I said to him. “Believe me. Shawn played me for a fool, and he did the same to half the contenders.”
“Well, I won’t hold it against you.” He lifted his head, a smile playing on his mouth, and a warm feeling hit me that I couldn’t entirely put down to relief that he hadn’t turned out to be the traitor after all.
“C’mon,” I said to him. “We should go somewhere else. This is too… public.”
“What’s with the cage?” asked Harper.
“Long story,” said Miles.
I peered underneath the table. Sure enough, a cage sat there, almost concealed from sight. “What’s in there?”
The door slammed open, and Harper grabbed my arm. “There’s trouble.”
Several people walked into the bar, a close-knit group dressed in cloaks and heavy-looking boots. My heart sank as every one of them headed for our table.
“Hey, there,” I said brightly. “Can I help you with something?”
“We want the spirit mage,” said one of them.
Whispers rippled through the bar. Miles swore under his breath. “Is there a problem?”
The glint of a knife flashed. “Come outside and we won’t start trouble.”
“No, thanks.” Then Miles was on his feet, blasting the intruders with spirit magic. His foot knocked the cage, and the door sprang open, releasing a group of feathered creatures into the bar.
Vampire chickens?
My hands flamed, as did Harper’s, and a warning look from the bartender prompted me to put out the flames and grab a cantrip instead. The paralysing cantrip went off, leaving the intruders in a heap on the floor.
The bartender strode out into view, and everyone turned in his direction. “You lot, get back to your drinking and stop gawking.”
Everyone obeyed, but I sensed them watching us out of the corner of their eyes. Especially Miles, who was in the process of herding the chickens back into their cage. Where in the name of the Elements had he got those from?
The bartender turned to Miles, Harper and me. “As for you lot, I’ve had enough of you people wrecking the place. That includes the chickens—which are illegal, by the way.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “Might want to yell at the dickheads who’re passed out on the floor instead of us. Just saying.”
“C’mon.” Miles picked up the cage, carrying it to the doors. “I knew that would happen if I met you in public, but I didn’t have another way to reach you. Did anyone follow you?”
“Not that I’m aware of.” I shot Harper an uneasy look. “More importantly, where the hell did you get those chickens? Were they the same chickens that escaped in Elysium?”
They couldn’t be, surely. I mean, the guy was on the run with people out to kill him. Unless this was his new business venture.
He cleared his throat. “Can I explain later? I think we need to get off the street, if Shawn is sending his allies all the way over here.”
“He’s based in this city,” I told him, in a low voice. “He and his allies are hiding in the citadel, but they booby-trapped the door against me after they found out I wasn’t going to be their lackey.”
His gaze travelled towards the dark shape of the citadel. “Are you sure you can’t get in?”
“Not now I’m on their shit list,” I said. “They also have a wyrm in there. A full-grown one. How they caught it, I have no idea.”
He swore. “So that’s what they didn’t want me to see.”
“Apparently,” I said. “Tomorrow is the last day of the trials and Shawn’s last shot to get at the Death King, so all his attention is going to be there. What he doesn’t know is that all the people he duped into taking his side are now aware that he was talking complete bollocks. We’re ready for him.”
“I like where this is going.” Miles grunted, adjusting his grip on the cage. “Okay, tell me the plan.”
“When Shawn shows up, we’ll send word to you,” I said. “Harper’s sprite, Mav, will be waiting next to the node. You wait near another node—any will do—and she’ll come through and give you the signal.”
“We’ll have people watching out for any signs of Shawn’s approach,” added Harper. “There’s half a dozen of us involved now.”
Miles nodded. “Okay. I’ll wait for your sprite’s signal and I’ll bring my allies to help. There are enough of us left to give Shawn and his mates some serious grief.”
“Good.”
We parted ways with Miles, and Harper and I headed back to the Death King’s territory. When he’d vanished from sight, I fell into step with her. “I think that went well. Even the part with the vampire chickens.”
Harper laughed un
der her breath.
“What?” I said. “Help me out here.”
She broke into full-on giggles. “Didn’t you tell me he made you drop those chickens in the middle of the city and cost you your job in the process?”
“Yes,” I said, nonplussed. “Why?”
“Because—” she broke off with another laugh—“he clearly felt so bad about that misstep that he went there in person to collect up every single one of them.”
“No way.” She had to be kidding. “That would be a complete waste of everyone’s time. Besides, he just let them go again.”
“To save your neck.” She stopped laughing. “He’s totally sweet on you, Bria.”
“A likely story.” Okay, he seemed to forgive me for believing Shawn’s lies, but that wasn’t enough to warrant him risking arrest from the Order of the Elements to recapture a bunch of vampire chickens I’d all but forgotten about already. It was almost weirder than the fact that a bunch of us were about to face off against rogue spirit mages with the help of the King of the Dead of all people.
Whatever happened, if Shawn planned to strike the Death King before the trials were up, we had to be ready for him. And we would be, if my plan went ahead without a hitch.
I was counting on it.
15
Upon our return to the castle, Harper and I split up and went back to the dorms to prepare for the following day. I slept for an unsatisfying couple of hours and rose at dawn, at which point I visited Sledge under the guise of an invisibility cantrip to remind him of the plan. In truth, I didn’t trust him not to screw up, but I didn’t want to leave him out in case he objected and caused trouble for all of us later on.
“Watch the node, okay?” I said. “That’s where the signal will come from. Mav is going to be there.”
When Shawn showed up, Mav would go through the node to meet Miles on the other side and give him the signal, too.
Sledge grunted. “When do you let me out of here?”
“When the distraction is in progress,” I said. “One of the others will help you escape. The important thing is that you cause as much of a diversion as possible when Mav gives you the signal, so the liches will swarm over to the node.”
“And the liches will surround Shawn and his friends, right?” he said.
“Better hope they do,” I said. “If you don’t see any signs of him, then don’t cause a ruckus.
There’s no guarantee they’ll come through the node. It’s the closest route to the castle, but it’s also the riskiest.”
For that reason, I suspected they’d try to break through the front gates instead, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try something none of us had thought of yet. I could think of a hundred possible ways this might go wrong, and at the very least, we could expect an ugly conflict between the liches and the spirit mages. If the Death King shut down the contest, we’d lose our chance to snag Shawn in our trap, so our best bet was to act as though nothing was wrong.
Easier said than done.
I left the jail, checked there were no liches within sight, and met Harper near the node. “All set?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “Carla disappeared overnight. Herod thinks she went back to join Shawn.”
“Shit.” I’d expected at least one person to clear off, but not this close to the end of the trials. “He’d better not have come here and threatened her.”
“I doubt he’d have taken the risk,” she said. “Mav, you ready?”
“You bet.” Mav gave a wave from within the node.
“She’ll give Miles the signal when Sledge tells her to,” I said. “Is Dex ready?”
“Yeah, I asked him to keep an eye out from the castle,” she said. “Aria, too.”
“That’s it, I think.” Everyone in on our plan was on high alert, and yet a sense of unease remained hanging over me like a dark cloud.
“They’re calling us in,” said Harper, indicating the arena. “Better go.”
“All right.” I walked with her to join the other contenders, wondering if anyone else had run off overnight like Carla had. What would we do if Shawn showed up and nobody gave the signal?
Did we screw it up by getting the others involved at all?
Unsurprisingly, my focus levels on the actual contest that morning were pretty much non-existent. The remaining contenders were divided up into groups to make jigsaw puzzles out of magical pieces of stone and then light them up using our fire magic. Harper and I were put in different groups, which was an annoyance, but even Liv hardly seemed to have any attention span left, instead pacing around peering into bushes as though expecting to find Percy or someone else lurking out of sight. If she hadn’t gone walkabout yesterday, I might have told her my plan, but now wasn’t the time to drag anyone else into it. Besides, for all I knew, she might be in league with Shawn and the other spirit mages.
When the Elemental Soldiers stopped near the arena wall to converse, I caught a whisper from the Water Element—“Did you know the contenders’ magic is still acting up?”
Seriously? Is it Mav? Surely not—she was waiting all the way over by the node to give the signal and wasn’t paying any attention to the contest—but I couldn’t think of an obvious reason as to why anyone’s magic would be glitching out now. Unless it was part of the Death King’s final test. Not that I’d seen him today, either. Maybe that was the reason for the bone-deep sense of unease thrumming in my nerve endings.
A short while later, a shout came from the direction of the jail. Sledge’s signal. He’d spotted Shawn or one of the other spirit mages. Go time. I caught Harper’s gaze across the arena and was on my feet an instant later.
Liv had clearly been waiting for an attack, too, because she was the first to run towards the jail. I waited, tensed, for Shawn’s appearance, but it never came. Instead, Liv returned to view, carrying Mav in a firm grip. Crap. She must have spotted the sprite hiding inside the node. If Mav couldn’t give the signal to Miles, he and the others wouldn’t know when to show up and help against Shawn. Yet I didn’t see him either, or any of the other rogue spirit mages.
Had Sledge given the wrong signal? Or was the enemy mage already hiding somewhere in the grounds?
Liv approached the arena and waylaid Harper. The sheer panic in her expression made it impossible to hide that Mav was her responsibility. I tried to catch her gaze, but Harper left the arena and followed Liv, her gaze fixed on the struggling water sprite. Liv’s grip on the sprite didn’t relinquish, and I cursed her under my breath as I looked for someone who could tell me why Sledge’s signal had come at the wrong time.
Another howl from the jail made the hairs on my arms stand on end. Something else was going on over there. I wouldn’t get another chance to warn Miles, so I left the arena and headed that way at a jog. If Mav hadn’t been able to get the signal through, I’d do it myself.
In front of the jail, the liches who guarded the doors were nothing more than twin piles of ashes. Someone had taken them down… but no spirit mages were in sight, and none of the other fire mages had left the arena.
Sledge. The bastard must have turned on us.
As I ran towards the jail, Liv appeared behind me, some kind of cantrip gleaming in her hand. On instinct, I grabbed a cantrip of my own, but she didn’t aim at me. Instead, the disc flew from her hand and slammed into the gleaming node. At once, the current of light died to a flicker.
What in the world?
Spirit magic blasted from her hands, this time aimed at me. I staggered back, panic rising. Did she think I was the villain, or had she been a traitor all along? Whatever the case, she’d done something to turn off the node—and with it, she’d taken away my chance to warn Miles.
If the enemy was already inside the grounds, we were screwed.
Liv jerked her head at the cantrip I’d dropped. “Where’d you get that?”
I raised my chin. “The Death King’s storeroom.”
No point in hiding anything now. Once all the cards were on t
he table, she could decide for herself if she wanted to be a hindrance or a help. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two guards escorting Harper and Mav from the grounds—yet still, Shawn and his allies were nowhere to be seen. Either Sledge had given the wrong signal, accidentally or otherwise, or there’d been a change of plans which nobody had enlightened me on.
“You and Harper were in on the same plan,” said Liv. “Care to tell me who else was involved?”
I wish I knew. Our plan lay in tatters, and around the castle, the liches were on the move. Dark shadows swept across the castle’s grounds, blocking the gates and masking Harper from view. The only way out was the node behind me, which Liv had somehow switched off. Unless my transporter spell might still work. I took a step in that direction, but Liv got in the way.
“You aren’t getting away that easily,” she said.
There came a flash of light from outside the gates, a current of energy flaring up to the sky on the other side of the fence. The other node. Please say it’s someone on our side.
When Liv glanced over the fence, I reached into my pendant. “Sorry, Liv, but I have backup.”
I flung a paralysis cantrip at her and took off at a run, hoping I could beat her to the gates. Whoever had shown up, friend or foe, I needed to get the hell out of here while I could.
I skidded to a halt at the gates. A group of tall, graceful, smartly dressed individuals gathered outside. Vampires?
What the hell was going on? Whatever it was, it wasn’t the diversion I’d planned, and it definitely wasn’t Shawn and his pack of spirit mages. Liv appeared as dumbfounded as me when she set eyes on the newcomers.
“We have come here for justice,” said the leading vampire. “Hand over Olivia Cartwright and Brant Edwards, and we will spare your lives.”
And that’s my cue to leave.
I fumbled for an invisibility cantrip and switched it on, waiting for an opening to run through the gates. Harper must be somewhere on the other side after she’d got kicked out, but the vampires blocked my path, arguing with the Death King. He seemed to be negotiating about whether to trade Liv and some guy called Brant over to the vampires, which might have caught my attention under any other circumstances. Had Liv seriously managed to make an enemy of the vampires who ran the city of Arcadia? Whatever the case, the time for bargaining for the help of the Death King’s people was over.
Cage of Fire (Parallel Magic Book 1) Page 16
