Kate Daniels 03 - Magic Strikes

championship fight was over two million.”
    With hazard pay, I made just above thirty grand a year.
    I stared at the sand of the Pit. In my head, the building vanished. The fence, the concrete, the guns, Saiman, all dissolved into the blazing sun, blindingly bright and merciless. I heard the noise of the crowd in the wooden stands, the quick staccato of Spanish, the high-pitched laughter of women, and the hoarse cries of the bookies calling out numbers. I felt my father’s presence behind me, calm and steady. The reassuring weight of the sword tugged on my hand. I smelled my skin, scorched by the sun, and blood fumes rising from the sand.
    “Shall we sit down?” Saiman’s voice intruded upon my reverie. Just as well.
    We took our seats. Huge rust curtains slid aside on the far left and right of the chamber, revealing two entrances: the one on the right painted garish gold and its twin on the left in a cheery shade of solid black.
    Saiman leaned to me. “The fighters enter through the Gold Gate. Corpses leave through the Midnight one. If you ‘walk out gold,’ you’ve won the match.”
    A long, deep bellow of a huge gong tolled through the Arena, calling the spectators to silence. A slim woman in a silver dress stepped out of the Gold Gate.
    “Welcome! Welcome to the house of combat where death and life dance on the edge of the blade.” Her voice was deep for a female and it carried through the Arena. “Let the Games begin!”
    “Sophia,” Saiman said. “The producer.”
    The woman disappeared back into the Gold Gate.
    A huge scoreboard suspended on chains slid down from the ceiling and stopped just above the Midnight Gate. Two names written on white paper in beautiful calligraphy sat in twin wooden frames: RODRIGUEZ VS. CALLISTO. The odds beneath it said -175+200. Rodriguez was a slight favorite to win. If you bet on him as the winner, you would have to put in $175 to get back an extra $100. If you bet on Callisto and she won, for every $100, you’d get your money and $200 back.
    “Both human. Mildly interesting.” Saiman dismissed the scoreboard with a wave of his hand. “The Reapers, Kate? I’m eager to hear your assessment.”
    “Both Mart and Cesare are fighters?”
    Saiman nodded.
    “Have you ever seen them bleed?”
    “Cesare. During a bout with a werejaguar, he suffered several deep gashes across the chest and back. Mart so far has been untouched.”
    I nodded. “Have you noticed how perfect Mart’s skin is?”
    Saiman frowned. “Its tone is quite even, but I don’t see your point.”
    Not surprising. Someone who treated skin like clay he could mold and mash at will wouldn’t realize the significance of a perfect complexion. “Pimple” was simply not in Saiman’s vocabulary.
    “Ordinary people have blemishes. Acne, bruises, blackheads, clogged pores, small scars. Mart has none. His skin is completely uniform and unnaturally perfect.”
    “Perhaps he has accelerated healing.”
    “I’ve seen shapeshifters with scars, and they regenerate broken limbs in a couple of weeks. A normal human’s history is written in their skin, Saiman. We have training scars from before we got good enough. But he has none. How long since you first met him?”
    “Two months.”
    “So he has been in Georgia since late summer. Have you ever seen him sunburned?”
    “No.”
    “A man with skin that shade should develop a nice crispy crust after half an hour under Atlanta’s sun. Why is he paler than a flowering dogwood? And have you ever seen him with a different hairstyle?”
    I could almost feel wheels turning in Saiman’s head. “No,” he said slowly.
    “Hair always at the same length?”
    “Yes.”
    I nodded. “Let’s talk about his buddy Cesare. Tattooed from head to toe?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you notice that all of his ink looks perfectly fresh? First, most people get tattooed over a period of years. A complicated design takes time. The process is ritualistic for many people and as important as the result. Ink fades over time, faster if exposed to the sun. All of his tattoos—at least everything I could see—were the same color, bright black. As if he never goes outside.”
    “Perhaps he simply planned his tattooing ahead of time and used sunblock.”
    “I doubt very much that a man could walk into the tattoo parlor and unroll a full body plan of tribal designs. In any case, you said he bled. Deep wounds would cause distortions in his designs, especially considering how intricate