On the Prowl

troll’s huge arm, while the other was dangling from the creature’s free hand by his collar. The Were’s face was alarmingly red and his eyes were bulging, but they were a hardy breed. He’d get thrown out before he actually choked to death. Probably.
    Matt gave me a thumbs-up signal from beside the door, and pointed at his watch. I nodded. It was almost showtime. “If you’ll excuse me,” I said stiffly, “I have a job to do.”
    “A job?” The Fey sounded like he didn’t understand the term.
    “Yes, a job. You know, work? For which I am paid?” After a pause, he released me and stepped back. The room was more than adequately heated, but I suddenly felt cold. I hit the button to start the night’s events with a little more force than absolutely necessary.
    The lights dimmed even further out on the floor, causing an upsurge in conversation, while those over the plinths glowed brighter. The Fey moved aside as the huge, dragon’s-head podium rose out of the floor and into place. It was supposedly the real deal, killed, stuffed and mounted by Gerald’s father—or so he claimed. Its fake glass eyes surveyed the room with their usual malevolence, its snout curled into an expression of disdain.
    It didn’t look like something that had been killed in the heat of battle to me. More likely, Gerald senior had caught it napping and lopped the head off before it was fully awake, assuming it wasn’t a clever fake. Gerald’s sold some genuinely valuable pieces, but caveat emptor was definitely the house motto. The general feeling was that anyone dumb enough to buy the magical equivalent of snake oil deserved what he got.
    The Fey came around the side of the huge head. “You’re part of the auction staff?” He sounded surprised. I suppose that was fair—Gerald wasn’t in the habit of hiring people who couldn’t take care of themselves, and I guess I looked fairly harmless.
    Looks can be deceiving.
    I waited until a crescendo of canned music and the automated voice-over announcing the imminent start of bidding ended. Then I pointed at the nearest plinth. “Do you know what that is?”
    He surveyed the small, quivering box on top of the marble stand for a beat. “No.”
    “It’s a djinn. A very old, very pissed off one. Gerald recently acquired it from the estate of the mage who trapped it. Only the spell he put on the container is deteriorating now that he’s dead, and if it goes altogether before they can unload it, he’s likely to take out half the block.”
    The box gave a leap as if it had heard me, and almost managed to jump off its plinth. I gingerly sat it back where it belonged, and it quieted down. For the moment.
    “How does your presence prevent that?” the Fey asked, sounding bemused.
    I stopped looking for the gavel, which Matt had mislaid somewhere as usual, to stare at him in surprise. “You don’t know?”
    “Why would I ask if I did?”
    “I’m a projective null,” I told him slowly. What possible reason could he have for faking ignorance? If he was here for me, he certainly knew what he was getting. And if he wasn’t, why would he have come?
    “You can block magic?” His expression suddenly became a lot more intense.
    “For a certain radius. I’m here to make sure nothing blows up in a customer’s face.” I smiled at him sweetly. “At least, not before they can pay.”
    “How much of a radius?” His voice had lost its teasing tone, and was now all business.
    I glared at him. I knew it. For all their magical strength, the Fey had never produced a null, a fact that seemed to rankle. They’d been looking for a way to add that particular gift to their magical arsenal for some time, but with so few nulls to choose from, and most of them too weak to do more than disrupt a ward now and then, their hunt had been frustrating. Until they found me.
    Father’s dinner guests had offered him a deal that he could have refused; instead, he jumped on it like a starving dog does a bone. It must have seemed perfect: a chance to get rid of an unwanted burden—and a constant reminder of his wife’s preference for red hair—and get paid handsomely to boot. Too bad for him that I was tipped off.
    Great-Uncle Pip had always had a soft spot for the one person who didn’t treat him like an idiot child. By the time the deal was finalized, he’d insured that I was nowhere to be found. And no one hides better than a null. The usual tracking spells are useless on us; we simply don’t