Curse the Dawn

by Karen Chance

  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!”

  Chapter Twenty

  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 Prit
kin. 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.

  The idea of just passing out, dirt and all, was starting to look really attractive. But no. I couldn’t sleep like this.

  I had to tug the shirt off over my head one-handed, as the heat of Caleb’s spell had turned the buttons into melted lumps and my left arm still didn’t work. I glanced in the rapidly fogging mirror and, despite everything, had to smile. Pritkin was the only person I knew whose hair came out of a move like that completely unchanged.

  But the fun part was still to come: trying to strip off the still-damp jeans with only one workable hand. It was harder than I’d expected, as sodden denim tends to cling. I stumbled into a towel rack and almost fell on my borrowed butt fighting them off. But as Pritkin had never adapted to the newfangled idea of underwear—apparently they hadn’t had tightie whities in the sixth century—that was that. Except for a whole lot of dirt.

  The shower was hot and I stood with my face directly in the spray, despite the fact that it woke up a thousand cuts I hadn’t noticed before. It didn’t make the welt on my ass, where I’d landed on the fence post, or the raw, red patch on my chest too happy, either, but nothing’s perfect. It did help with the mud, which had ended up smeared all in Pritkin’s hair and down his neck.

  Soap hurt, but I lathered up anyway, scrubbing away the worst of it and trying not to think about the fact that I had actual hair on my chest. And on my legs, I noticed, as I bent to wash between Pritkin’s toes. They were long guy hairs that the water had turned from dark blond to light brown, acres and acres of them and not just on my calves. They climbed up my thighs too, I saw with mounting horror. And how freaking wrong was that?

  I rested my forehead against the glass and just breathed for a while. Every muscle and nerve in my body felt tight and thrumming with tension, ready to part with a brutal snap if I so much as breathed wrong. Why was it always the little things that got to me? I could handle vast numbers of people wanting me dead—that wasn’t new—or demon attacks or crazy ex-war mages or even the weight that definitely should not be there dangling between my legs. But for a moment I couldn’t, simply couldn’t, handle the hair.

  I’d possessed people before, I reminded myself. I tried like hell to avoid it, but that hadn’t always been possible. So why did this feel so different? Maybe it was because my previous trips into other bodies had been short, with the longest lasting a couple of hours. Maybe it was because I’d just almost died—again—and, hey, that never got old. Or maybe it was because it was Pritkin.

  I’d possessed only one other person I’d known beforehand, and that had been by accident. It had lasted only a few very confused minutes, which had been more than long enough. This, on the other hand, was already promising to take my and Pritkin’s relationship to a deeply weird level, and there was no end in sight.

  The horrible itching under my skin suddenly stopped. I cautiously ran my fingers over the wounded arm, the movement sending a little more mud and some dried blood slushing down the drain. But underneath, I felt only whole, unbroken skin, without even a ridge to show where the injury had been. Pritkin’s body had healed as if he’d never been hurt, all in the space of about an hour. It seemed that there were advantages to having a demon father.

  Of course, there was a downside, too.

  It was something I’d been doing a little reading on, lately. The old accounts were spotty and often contradictory, not to mention having been embroidered on shamelessly by every writer who heard the tale. But the earliest legends, before the romantic additions, all had one thing in common: they were pretty damn grim.

  After Merlin’s mother died in childbirth, her family disowned her half-demon child. He somehow survived anyway, becoming a local curiosity who lived alone in the woods. Some said he was a madman, others a prophet, still others whispered of an unusually powerful wizard, whose human magic was strengthened by demon blood. None had thought to speculate about what it had been like, growing up alone, shunned and regarded as a freak of nature.

  And then there had been the sojourn in hell. Pritkin had once told me that, although hundreds of years had passed here on earth while he was gone, it had felt like he was away only a decade or so. But a decade in the demon realms didn’t sound like fun to me. I didn’t know for certain what it had been like, because he never talked about the things he’d seen. He was the most guarded person I’d ever met, with conversations about anything remotely personal quickly running into a wall of silence. But he never spoke of demons except with contempt or hatred, and he’d hunted the more dangerous ones mercilessly since his return.

  I remembered his pale face and tried to ignore a prickle of worry. Pritkin had grown up with impossible events as a way of life and usually took them in stride, but this was different. Before he met me, possession was something he’d associated only with the more powerful demons. Being suddenly thrown into someone else’s body probably reminded him a little too closely of the part of himself he preferred not to think about. I wondered what his reaction was going to be tomorrow with no assassins or exhaustion to blunt the effects. Why didn’t I think it was going to be good?

  After a while, the darkness behind my eyelids and the hot water pounding my skin leached away some of the tension from a day that, even by my standards, had sucked. I was almost calm again, or as close as I was going to get in this body, when a ghost stuck his head through the shower door. I yelped and jumped back, and my foot slipped on a sliver of soap. I ended up on Pritkin’s butt, chest heaving, staring up at Billy Joe.

  “What the hell?”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  I dragged myself up, wincing, using the spigot for a handhold, which twisted and sent a spray of boiling-hot water raining down on me. I leapt out of the shower, biting my lip on a scream, and grabbed a towel. “What are you doing here?”

  “You first. Because I’ve been looking for you for hours and when I finally locate you, what do I find?”

  “Sorry you’ve had such a bad day,” I said viciously, patting at my red flesh. Damn, that had hurt.

  “Not nearly as bad as you’re going to
have when you get back. People are freaking out. Francoise told everyone the Circle has you, so the Senate demanded your return and, of course, the Circle told them to get bent. When I left, that vampire of yours was threatening bodily assault on Saunders if he didn’t give you up.”

  “Why? The Senate knows where I am. They have a trace on me!”

  “Yeah, and it told them you’re with the old head of the Circle.”

  I felt the blood leave my face. “Have they mentioned that to anyone? Saunders, for instance?”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “If the Circle finds out I’m talking to Marsden, I can forget about us reaching any kind of deal!”

  “Yeah. ’Cause that looks so likely anyway.”

  “Can you find out if they’ve said anything? It’s important.”

  “I can try.”

  “I really need this, Billy. There’s some kind of internal power struggle going on and I don’t want to get caught in the middle of it. I have enough problems.”

  “I can see that. Speaking of which, in case you weren’t dying or stuck in one of the Circle’s cells, Tami said to remind you that a bunch of kids are still missing. And that Alfred doesn’t have a driver’s license.”

  “I know. Tell her I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “And that will be . . . ?”

  “That depends. Among other things, Marsden has a charm on a cord around his neck. He used it to bring me here.”

  “And if you don’t get it, he can use it to bring you back.”

  “Right. So can you—”

  Billy shook his head, cutting me off before I even finished. “No way, Cass. I had to use a hell of a lot of energy to find you. I can’t carry anything in this state. Now, if I had a draw . . .”

  “You aren’t the only one who’s exhausted,” I said, peering outside the door. Sure enough, there was a small pile of neatly folded clothes sitting there. “I’ll get some sleep and eat a good breakfast and you can have a draw then.”