“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he told me.
“Not your fault, Vegard.” I gave him a half grin. “How did you know you were going to get caught in a stampede of screaming, half-naked working girls?”
Mychael scowled. “You wouldn’t have been separated from him if you had waited rather than storming up here.”
“I wasn’t going to lose this one,” I said, a little more forcefully than I’d intended.
“Instead you’d rather risk losing yourself,” said his voice in my head.
Mychael knew what had almost happened as if it had been happening to him. And in a way, it had. Mychael and I were two-thirds of an umi’atsu bond; an intimate, magical bond that usually linked only two mages, binding them first through their magic, then through hearing, sight, and finally their minds and souls. After that, an umi’atsu bond could only be broken by death. Body and soul become one; magically mated, if you will. The level of magical talent I was born with came nowhere near mage level. Ever since the Saghred had latched onto me like a psychic leech, my so-so powers had gotten one hell of a boost, and no one knew what my limits were. And, in a first as far as umi’atsu bonds were concerned, there was a third mage bonded with us—Tamnais Nathrach, a goblin aristocrat, nightclub owner, and quasi- rehabilitated dark mage. Tam was also a good friend of mine. Some considered an umi’atsu bond much like a marriage, which made my intimate connection to two gorgeous and powerful men more awkward than I wanted to think about.
Vegard handed me a dark cloak. “You dropped this downstairs, ma’am.”
I took it and draped it over my arm. “Thank you, Vegard.” I’d been cloaked when I came in here, and no doubt Mychael wanted me to wear it when I left. Thanks to the Saghred, I was in enough trouble with a lot of influential people on this island; I didn’t need to add to it by being seen leaving the city’s most lavish and notorious bordello.
Vegard indicated the blanket-covered man. “Sir, the coach is waiting outside,” he told Mychael.
I knew where that coach would take him—a containment room in the lower levels of the citadel, where an exorcist would be waiting for the man and the ancient specter who had possessed him. Fortunately for the poor bastard, he’d only been possessed a few hours ago. If the specter had been inside of him from one sunrise until the next, the possession would have been permanent.
Four Guardians arrived with a stretcher. They put the man on it, securely strapped him down, and started down the hall toward the stairs. I started to follow. Mychael’s hand on my arm stopped me.
“Professor,” he said to Sid. “Please accompany my men. I’ll escort Miss Benares out another way.”
Sid nodded solemnly. “It’s not exactly a proper place for a lady to be seen leaving.”
“No, it’s not.”
Once Sid and the Guardians were on the stairs, Mychael took my hand and started toward the wall the na**d guy had pinned Sid against.
“Uh, Mychael. That’s a wall.”
A corner of his lips curled in a crooked grin as he ran his free hand behind a wall lamp. There was a click, and a section of the wall opened.
I laughed once and shook my head. “Damn, there was another way out.” I looked up at his sea blue eyes sparkling in the lamplight. “And you knew about this how?”
He winked at me. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been here.”
“You don’t say. And you know your way around, too.”
We stepped into the darkness. Mychael spoke a soft word, and lamps flickered to life, lighting the way down a narrow staircase.
“I know the floor plan of every bordello on this island,” he told me. “It’s part of my job.”
“And which job would that be?”
“Prostitution is legal here, as is gambling.” His smile vanished. “But there are other things that are highly illegal. Many of those acts are committed in places such as these, sometimes with the knowledge of the proprietor, most of the time without.”
Mychael’s hand tightened on mine to assist me down the steep stairs, and a familiar surge of energy radiated from that point of contact throughout the rest of my body. I knew from past experience that Mychael was feeling the same shiver of raw sensation. We shared a bond all our own that had nothing to do with the Saghred. We didn’t know what it was; we just knew it was getting stronger. But we had bigger problems to deal with. Sarad Nukpana and evil specters first; deliciously tingly and mysterious magical bonds later.
At the bottom of the stairs was a simple wooden door that provided us with a discreet exit to a side street next to a perfectly respectable bakery.
As we neared the main boulevard, Mychael reluctantly released my hand.
Phaelan grinned and his eyes sparkled as he watched the Guardians load the stretcher in the coach. “I was right; the old guy wanted to get laid.”
I sighed and shook my head.
Captain Phaelan Benares was my cousin by relation, and a seafaring businessman by trade. The Benares family had extensive interests in shipping and finance. That was how the family saw it. Law enforcement in every major port and city in the seven kingdoms called Phaelan a pirate, and our family a criminal dynasty. I walked the fine line of being a member of the Benares family, but not being in the family business. My family didn’t understand why; law enforcement didn’t believe me.
Phaelan had been the one to come to the conclusion that if a man had spent the past couple thousand years trapped inside a soul-sucking rock, the first thing he’d want to do wouldn’t have anything to do with world domination. He suggested checking Mid’s brothels and asking the working girls about their clients. Did they have any new ones? Were any regulars asking for something a little irregular? Naturally, Phaelan and some of his crew volunteered for duty.
“Yes, you were right,” I told him. “You don’t have to be so happy about it.”
“Why shouldn’t I be? I’m a man proud to do his civic duty.”
“By finding a sorcerer in a cathouse.”
“By endangering myself for the greater public good.”
“By talking to every working girl in the city?”
“And flushing out any new perverts in town. Someone had to do it, and Mychael couldn’t spare the men to do the legwork.” Phaelan indicated the coach that was pulling away. “And it looks like it went well.”
I snorted. “Oh yeah, it was a piece of cake.”
A buxom, blue-eyed, blond working girl sashayed by with a come-hither glance at Phaelan, and legwork took on a whole new meaning.
“Speaking of treats,” he said, moving to follow her.
I grabbed him by the arm.
Phaelan wasn’t particularly tall, but he was dark and definitely handsome. Many of the working girls obviously had working eyes, and were doing their best to give my cousin the come-hither. Phaelan’s dark eyes were busy remembering the cream of the crop for later visits.
Once the coach was safely on its way, Mychael came over to where we were. Vegard had been guarding me from a discreet distance. He was supposed to stick to me like glue, but he was considerate enough to occasionally give me a little breathing room.
“I take it you received my bill?” Phaelan asked Mychael once he was close enough.
I couldn’t believe my ears. “You billed him?”
Phaelan looked mildly insulted. “Mid’s establishments aren’t cheap. I merely wanted reimbursement for services rendered.”
I laughed once. “For services rendered to you.”
My cousin waved a negligent hand. “Same thing.” He beamed with his newfound civic pride. “I believe in being thorough. And I’m only billing him for half. The Fortune has been anchored in Mid’s harbor for damned near two months. We’ve never stayed anywhere this long; my men were getting restless, so I footed the bill for half.”
“How generous of you.”
“I thought so. My men are happy; you bagged yourself a ghost.”
“Specter,” I corrected him.
“Same thing.”
“One’s dead. The other is not.”
“Whatever. Either way, tonight was a win-win for me and Mychael.”
I turned to Mychael. “And you agreed to this?”
Mychael smiled slightly. “It seemed a small price to pay. I’ve got enough problems; I didn’t want to add ‘restless’ pirates to the list. It kept the peace.”
Phaelan grinned wickedly. “And we got a piece.”
There was a commotion at the entrance to the Satyr’s Grove.
“Stay here,” Mychael told me. “Phaelan, Vegard—”
Vegard stepped up beside me. “Keeping her here, sir.”
Mychael’s eyes met mine. “I’ll be right back.”
Phaelan’s civic-mindedness had helped snare one Saghred escapee, but there were five more out there—and one of them was Sarad Nukpana. The others appeared to be sticking to the goblin’s plan; and worse, they were saving their collective strength, or at least they weren’t wasting it in bordellos. All that power, millennia of intelligence—and it had a purpose.
I looked around us. At nearly two bells in the morning, the red-light district was a busy place. The entire city was busy, day or night. The Isle of Mid was home to the most prestigious college for sorcery, as well as the Conclave, the governing body for all magic users in the seven kingdoms. Thousands of students and mages, and somewhere among them were the specters of five escaped sorcerers, spirits without bodies. The one tonight had taken a body for fun; the others were stalking bodies for power. Mychael had safety measures in place for the students, though he thought that the students would be safe. The specters were after power, so a teenager sputtering through his or her first spells need not apply.
Mychael had made sure that everyone on the island was aware of the situation. But for the vast majority of those on Mid, it was school and business as usual. Public opinion split between not believing in what they deemed ghosts or believing they were qualified to protect themselves. They practiced magic, yet they didn’t believe in ghosts.