Angel's Ink (39 page)

“Oh, please!” I snorted. “You’ve been hounding my ass for years, snarling at me every chance you get.”

“But have I dragged you before the council?” Gideon said, aiming his wand at me, but there was no gathering of energy to indicate that he was weaving a spell. He was only trying to get his point across. Of course, that logic did reach my heart, which was trying to claw its way up my throat. “I could have pulled you in front of the council for any use of magic until I finally wore them down, but I didn’t. I left you with warnings. Roughed you up a bit. If you were scared of me and the council, then I thought you might be more selective in your use of magic. If anyone else caught just one of your blatant infractions against your agreement, we both would have been in trouble. I’ve cloaked what I could, but you’ve been reckless. You need to finish this business with Simon quickly.”

Gideon sat back in his own seat, giving me some breathing room again. Shifting in my seat so that I sat forward, facing the steering wheel, I slumped down, knocking my right knee against the keys dangling from the ignition. They danced briefly, glinting in the fragment of light slashing through the car. My mind was struggling to keep up with all the information that Gideon was unloading on me. My entire perception of the world was changing before my eyes and I was having troubling keeping up.

Sucking in a deep breath, I dropped my hands from the steering wheel. “Okay, so you’ve been watching over Sofie and supplying her with information in the expectation that she would pass it along to me. You’ve also been protecting me from myself so that I wouldn’t come up before the council, who would no doubt vote to lop my head off so they could finally be rid of me.”

“Essentially.”

“But why? That’s what I don’t understand. Why are you helping me?”

This time, Gideon seemed to hesitate, heaving a sigh as he stared to his right out the door window. I watched him in silence, waiting for his response. This was the most time I had ever spent with him that didn’t involve me bargaining for my life while he strangled me.

“We’re trying to push through some change in the mentality in the Towers,” he replied softly.

“What kind of change?” I wasn’t sure I liked where this was leading.

Gideon must have heard something in my voice because he looked over at me and smirked. “It didn’t start with you, if that’s what you’re thinking, but you’ve become the most visible voice toward our cause whether you meant to be or not. We want a different life from what we originally walked into when we started our apprenticeships. The idea that warlocks and witches are empowered so that they can rule with an iron fist over humans and other races is outdated and cruel. We still support the idea of dedicating ourselves to the art, but we also want more. We want lives and families.”

Reaching into the inside pocket of his black sport coat, Gideon pulled out a photograph and held it up to me. I slowly took it and held it so that it caught the light slicing through the car. It was a picture of a woman kneeling before a large house beside a young girl with black braided pigtails. Both appeared to be laughing on that sunny summer day.

“That’s my wife, Ellen,” he said, pointing to the pretty blond woman. “And that’s my six-year-old daughter, Bridgette.”

“Human?” I asked as I handed the photo back.

Gideon stared at the picture, rubbing his thumb across the faces of his wife and child. “Yes,” he murmured, and then cleared his throat as he carefully put the picture back into his interior pocket. “Well, Ellen is human. Bridgette still has time to surprise me with powers, but so far she is just a human little girl.”

Resting my left elbow on the car door, I leaned my head into my hand, my eyes wide with shock. This hard-ass guardian for the council and protector of its beliefs was a doting husband and father, breaking some of the Towers’s most basic rules. Warlocks and witches were not to associate with humans and certainly not permitted relationships with them.

“If you’re caught,” I breathed, but I couldn’t finish the thought out loud.

“Then we will be killed,” Gideon said in a cold voice that drew my gaze back over to him. “My innocent daughter will be killed. My wife, who has done nothing more horrible than love me, will be slaughtered.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the images of Gideon’s happy family as I struggled to get my heart to stop racing. I felt myself getting sucked down this swirling vortex that was spiraling closer and closer to the utter destruction of everything—both human and Ivory Towers—and resulting in chaos. When I was sixteen, I had run from the Ivory Towers, just grateful that I still breathed. I had turned my back on everything and had started a new life. But now I was getting sucked back in.

“Does she know?” I asked in a choked voice.

“Who?”

“Your wife.”

“What I am? Yes, she knows.”

“Does she understand the danger she’s in?” I pressed, anger growing inside me. Had Gideon not considered any of this when he decided to become involved with a human? Should anyone else discover the information he had shared with me, her life and her child’s would instantly be forfeit.

“She knows and she loves me anyway. I’m very lucky,” Gideon admitted, though I was more willing to argue that he wasn’t very lucky at all to be putting loved ones in the way of a speeding train.

I shifted in my seat again, feeling restless with pent-up energy and anxiety. Pacing the alley seemed like an appealing alternative to sitting in this cramped car with Gideon. The summer heat was turning the vehicle into a sweatbox. Unfortunately, I felt that getting out of the car wasn’t an option—Gideon had probably set a silencing spell over the vehicle so that our conversation couldn’t be overheard.

“So what do you want from me?” I said, unable to keep the anxiety I was feeling from spilling into my words. “I didn’t leave Simon so that I could lead some kind of half-assed revolution. I don’t want anything to do with the rogues who left their mentors. I don’t want anything to do with what you’re talking about. Don’t misunderstand me. I support the ideas that you’re discussing, but I just don’t want anything to do with you people. I’ve worked really hard to set up this life for myself, and right now it’s all on the verge of falling to pieces. Leading some crazy revolution against the Towers isn’t going to help me fix the mess I’ve made of my life.”

Gideon chuckled. “We don’t want you to lead us.” Surprisingly, his assurance irritated me more. His smile waned slightly as I glared at him. “We’re not trying to strike out against the Towers and start a war. We are just trying to protect ourselves so that we can live in secret with some security. Change will only come slowly. Not in a great explosion or a war.”

“Then what do you want from me? Why are you protecting me?”

“The only thing we want from you is that you live.”

“Live?” I repeated dumbly as my sluggish brain fought to keep up with Gideon’s brand of insanity.

“Just stay alive,” Gideon said, whispering it like a prayer. “As long as you’re alive, you give so many hope that we can escape the rigid ideas that still cage those of us in the Towers. You give hope that speaking out against the council and cruel mentors can be done successfully. You show that compassion is not a sign of weakness. You living your life outside the Towers will lead more to our cause.”

“So instead of being the leader of your cause, I’ve become its symbol?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t feel good about this.”

“I didn’t want to tell you, but you and Simon keep hammering at each other. Eventually, it won’t end in a stalemate. I thought you needed to know what’s riding on this fight.”

“Oh, yeah! Putting more weight on my shoulders ahead of the biggest fight of my life is always a good idea,” I snapped. “It’s not enough that I worry about the safety of my friends simply because they know me, but let’s also throw on the success of an entire group looking for its freedom.”

“We never meant for it to work out this way.”

A sound of disgust jumped from the back of my throat as I shook my head. I had enough problems to worry about. I didn’t need to worry about Gideon and his family, even though they were now stuck in the back of my mind like a maggot burrowing through rotten meat. If I died, would their movement die with me? Would Gideon attempt to go into hiding in an effort to save his family? Or worse . . . would he cut off all ties from them so they wouldn’t be in danger?

“Unfortunately,” the warlock continued when I didn’t say anything, “we need you to kill Simon just as badly as we need you alive. He is one of the most violently outspoken against the murmurs of our cause. He is also the one running in the lead to take the open seat on the council. He’ll shift the vote on the council and could potentially lead his own movement to seek out those who are thinking like us. Families would be wiped out in a single cleansing and I would be forced to either leave the Towers or lead the cleansing.”

“So you’re asking me to kill Simon and live through the process?”

“He knows he can’t claim the council seat if you’re still alive.”

“Then help me kill him if you’re so desperate to keep me alive!”

“I can’t.” Closing his eyes, Gideon leaned his head back against the headrest and his shoulders slumped. “I’m taking a big risk talking to you. As far as most know, my job is to find a way to bring you before the council so that they can finally vote for your death. Talking to you runs counter to those orders.”

“Fine,” I growled, gripping the steering wheel tightly. I pulled myself forward so that I touched my forehead against the sticky plastic. “I’m alone in this. Kill Simon. Stay alive.”

“That’s it.”

“Thanks,” I grumbled as I flopped back down in my seat.

Gideon scratched his chin in thought, his grim expression starting to lighten. He opened his eyes and looked at me. “But I can give you a small tip. You’ve got some newly acquired goods in your basement. Go to your black market connection.”

“Chang?”

“Yes, trade him for a magic deflection amulet. Merlin grade. It might not block everything, but it would give you a serious edge over Simon.”

I nodded, lost in thought. Most didn’t believe that a warlock by the name of Merlin ever really existed, but his name was used to mark the highest power within the magic world. Merlin-grade items were extremely rare and valuable since they were nearly impossible to create and just as hard to destroy. It would give me an edge over Simon, but I was afraid that Chang would use it as an opportunity to get his hands on all the river waters. I still needed the waters to trade for something to get Trixie out of her bind.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“And keep your goddamn wand with you!”

“Thanks.”

“When you’re done with Simon, make sure that all of that stuff is destroyed,” Gideon admonished, making me feel somewhat relieved that he didn’t want to get his hands on it. If I hadn’t been so desperate, I would never have brought all of the various waters back, but I knew I needed something really enticing to tempt Chang.

“Not a problem,” I agreed.

“Stay alive,” Gideon ordered one last time.

“You too,” I said with a snort, but when I looked over he had already disappeared.

Stay alive.
He almost made it sound easy.

Chapter 32

T
ucked under my T-shirt and out of sight, the silver amulet was cold against my chest. As soon as Gideon disappeared, I’d darted back inside the tattoo parlor and grabbed my wand and the corked bottle of water from Phlegethon, the river of fire, that I had put aside for the old black market collector. The water from Phlegethon wasn’t the most appealing or dangerous of the set of five, but I’d suspected it would be enough to pique Chang’s interest. With four more waters still in my possession, the temptation that he might be able to possess them all eventually made him willing to deal with me that night. I warned him that if something went wrong, he would be dealing with my friends for the other four underworld waters.

Chang had not been happy to part with his magic deflection amulet, throwing curses at me as he pounded his cane on the floor, but in the end, he acquiesced to my request and I was on my way to Sparks’s run-down little house at last.

I parked my car down from the house where I had encountered the werewolves on my last visit to OTR. Closing the car door, I looked over at the ramshackle house and found that no one was outside. It was dark except for a flickering blue light that seeped between some curtains on the second floor. Either someone was still awake, or they had fallen asleep with the TV on. The yapping alpha-now-turned-Chihuahua was nowhere to be seen, but then I guessed that he was currently keeping a low profile until the spell wore off.

My footsteps slowed as I approached Sparks’s house. The old man was sitting on the crumbling concrete steps leading up to the front door. A streetlamp outside his house lanced through the area, casting him in bright, unflattering light against the shadows that clung to the nearby homes and sickly trees. The old tattoo artist sucked on a cigarette, a thin wisp of gray smoke curling up from his right hand. Flicking off some excess ash with his thumb, Sparks stared straight ahead as he released another puff of smoke. He had yet to look at me, but he knew I was there. He was expecting me despite the fact that it was now close to four in the morning and I had given no indication that I would be returning to visit him so quickly.

Walking down the middle of the empty street, I closely watched my former tattooing mentor take one last drag from the cigarette before he flicked it across the sidewalk to where it rolled into a pile of dried leaves and gray cigarette butts.

“Late night,” he said in a rough voice that rumbled to where I had paused in the street, across from him.

“Yeah.” I resisted the urge to shove my hands in the pockets of my jeans as I stood there. I needed my hands out and ready at my sides should Simon decide to attack suddenly. But there was nothing in the stillness, not the wind or even a car easing down the narrow, pothole-laden street. Sparks didn’t say anything as he leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees as he stared down at the cracked sidewalk in front of him. He had yet to look up at me, and I was wondering if the old bastard could look me in the eyes.