Tempt the Stars

There’s likely more of them,” he said as I started to take a step.
    “How do you know?”
    “They wouldn’t be much use as an alarm, otherwise.” He held up a finger with a slender cord draped over the top. He gave a gentle tug, and a long line of it rose from the muck, with a “snake” dangling down every six feet. It looked like a banner for an
Addams Family
birthday, with all the balloons predeflated.
    “An alarm—okay, that’s just stupid,” I pointed out.
    A blond eyebrow rose. “If it looks stupid but it works . . . then it’s not stupid.” He indicated a small silver thing near the top of the nearest snake. “Removing the cap sets them off. Luckily, I stepped on this one instead of tripping over the line and pulling out all the caps at once. That much noise would wake the dead.”
    “Wake the—oh,
crap
,” I said, staring around.
    “It’s not a bad system,” he commented, carefully laying the slimy thing back in the gunk. “Crude, but effective, and uses too little magic to be easily detectable. Of course, it presupposes an intruder would come through here. But given the thickness of the trees on either side, that’s not too much of a stretch.” He looked at me with narrowed green eyes. “The question is, why does someone with a demon army need a child’s plaything for security?”
    “That’s a good question,” I agreed, and tried to grab him.
    But he was already on his feet and backing out of range. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me what’s going on?”
    “What’s going on is that we’re about to have company!” The demons around here might be deaf, but I knew some people who damned well weren’t.
    “Try again,” Pritkin said. “I doubt there ever were any demons here.”
    “Screw demons!” I said, grabbing for him again. And again getting dodged. “Damn it, Pritkin! Tony’s guys could have heard that from across the
state
—”
    “Tony’s?”
    Shit.
    Blond eyebrows came together. “The house we’re looking for belongs to
your old guardian
?”
    Shit, shit.
    “I—no,” I said lamely, trying to think up the lie I hadn’t bothered with before. Which would have been easier if the damned forest wasn’t still doing the cha-cha. I gave up. “Tony’s place is over there.” I gestured back toward the way we’d come. “But it’s close enough to have heard all that, so we need to go!”
    “Agreed,” he said grimly, reaching for my hand. “And then we need to talk.”
    Only it didn’t look like we were going to be doing either. His hand closed over mine, warm and real and steadying. But apparently not enough.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked, after a few seconds, when I just continued to stand there and look at him.
    “It isn’t working.”
    “You mean your Pythian power?”
    “No, my singing ability,” I snapped, trying again. And again went nowhere. Maybe because I couldn’t concentrate with my brain sloshing around in my skull like this. “How long did you say these effects last?” I asked desperately.
    “I didn’t. And it depends on the person. Perhaps half an hour—”
    “Half an
hour
?” I looked at him in horror. It might as well be the end of time.
    And for us, it probably would be.
    “I can only tell you what some of my colleagues said, after a visiting toddler turned one of these loose at Central. No one had shields up, and a few people were seen stumbling about for approximately that long—”
    “Well, that’s a problem, isn’t it?” I said, trying for calm when I knew,
I knew
, we were screwed. Pritkin was good, but he was only one man and Tony could send dozens, many of them masters. And while they might not have magical party favors, they did have lots of things that went bang and crash and
blew people’s heads off
. And we couldn’t even shoot back, because we might get unlucky and kill one of them, and that would alter time and then—
    “Perhaps no one heard,” Pritkin said, not looking nearly concerned enough. “This many trees have a sound-deadening effect, and we are in a depression—”
    “Yes, Pritkin! Because that’s the kind of luck we get!” I said shrilly, because the calming thing wasn’t working.
    And that was before something started crashing through the trees across the clearing.

Chapter Eight
    It wasn’t a vampire. Not unless I was seriously misremembering, and Tony’s stable had included someone the size of Sasquatch. But judging by Pritkin’s expression, which had shifted over