Inked

dressed,” I told Dieter. “We’re out of here.”
    I checked my phone, having some questions for Jamie or Caleb, but I didn’t have any bars. And then I didn’t have a phone, either, because one of Dieter’s flailing arms ripped it out of my hand. He was dancing around again because the ants were on the move. They’d finished with the ankle, leaving only pale skin and coarse black hair behind, and were crawling up the inside of his leg.
    He brushed at them frantically until they disappeared beneath the edge of his boxers. And then he lost it. He tore the shorts off, slapping at his butt and various other things while I went for my phone. And found something a lot more interesting.
    Dieter’s dance had disturbed the rug, revealing a line in the sand covering the floor. I retrieved my phone, tossed the rug back and found a trapdoor. And a second later, I found the wardsmith.

8
    HE’D been folded double and wedged into the small space so tightly that it took me several minutes to get him out. But it was obvious from the start that there was no real rush. A cigarette still dangled from his lips, but there were no lungs left to smoke it with. They’d been torn out along with the rest of his chest.
    It had been a Were attack. The claw marks were clearly visible, but I didn’t really need them. Few things kill a man so fast that he doesn’t even have time to look afraid.
    I heard an odd, choking sound, and looked up in time to see Dieter’s bare ass heading out the door. I threw a lasso spell after him, but only got it around one leg. He went down, scrabbling for purchase in the dust. A few people stuck their heads out of nearby tents, attracted by the noise, and wasn’t that just all I needed.
    “Cut it out!” I told him, irritably, but he either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He turned over onto his back and started kicking his leg, trying to shake the spell off, but only succeeded in tightening it further. “He can’t hurt you,” I pointed out, reeling him in.
    “It’s not him I’m worried about!” He leaned back, trying to use his weight against the spell, but that just resulted in him getting yanked down the street in little hops, one leg stuck out straight in front of him. I gave a final heave and he fell through the door, his nose landing maybe a foot from the corpse. “Auggh!”
    “Just tell me what you know,” I said, because something had really spooked him. I couldn’t believe that this was the first dead body he’d seen—he lived in Tartarus after all.
    “That’s the Predators’ mark!” He pointed a shaking finger at the deep wounds on the man’s chest. “They always leave the body carved up like that. It’s like their signature or something.”
    “The Predators?”
    “A Were gang. One of the worst!” He took off again and this time, I let him go. Things were starting to get a little dangerous for a bystander, even a not-entirely innocent one.
    I bent over the wardsmith again. He had a bent back, a scraggly beard, pouchy cheeks and was wearing an old pair of jeans and a faded sweatshirt. He looked like a street person, but the Thunderbird tat on his arm was a stunner. I’d never seen one like it, and it practically screamed quality. It was also a talisman, or it would have fallen free of the body when he died and his magic failed.
    I brought out the three wards I’d found in the sofa and compared them. Each wardsmith has his or her own personal style, sort of a signature on their pieces. An expert could probably have told at a glance whether the same hand had made these. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one. But there was something in the rounded, almost abstract quality of the pieces that looked awfully—
    The attack came so fast that I never even heard it—at least consciously. But my shields slammed into place right before a blow landed across my chest, jarring through my bones into my teeth. If I hadn’t had shields, it would have killed me. As it was, I went skidding on my back through the side of the tent and across the road, before rolling into the open side of a used-clothes shop.
    I landed in a pile of sweaters the proprietor was sorting and bounced back up, fighting with the smothering blanket I’d taken with me. I tore free just in time to see someone lunge for me in a blur of motion. And the next thing I knew I was flying backward through the air with what felt like half my ribs broken. I struck down with a thud that jarred my whole body, momentarily knocking