I dodged the moment the future firmed, but even so I barely made it. The ray threaded the gap between my arm and body, then struck the rock behind and disintegrated a load-bearing section of the tunnel wall.
I was already sprinting away from Rachel as the ceiling collapsed with a deafening rumble and boom. Stones bounced around my ankles, but the whole thing was over in seconds and I slowed to a walk, a cloud of dust making my coat billow around me and ruffling my hair.
Variam was still forming his gate spell, one eyebrow raised. “Don’t get distracted by cave-ins, huh?”
I could hear rumbling sounds as Rachel fired more disintegrate spells from the other side. It wouldn’t do her any good; more of the mountain would collapse to fill in any holes she made. “Let’s get out of here.”
Variam’s gate completed and an orange-red portal formed. We stepped through and left the Himalayas behind.
chapter 2
The gate winked out behind us. We’d come down in a wilderness region in the middle of the night, dead flat and deserted. Scrubby bushes came up to ankle height with gravel and rocks in between, all illuminated in moonlight out of a clear sky. The landscape stretched away to every side with no sign of life or variation.
“Where are we?” I asked, shivering slightly. The air felt cool after the tunnels.
“Mojave Desert,” Variam said. He was already working on the next gate, orange-red light glowing about his hands as he frowned in concentration. “We being followed?”
“No . . . yes,” I said. It’s hard to follow a gate, but not impossible, especially if you’re motivated.
“Deleo? No, don’t bother answering, of course it’s bloody Deleo. How long?”
“Three to four minutes. Honestly, I’m impressed she made it through the cave-in.”
“Impressed, right,” Variam said sourly. “You’d better hope I get this gate first try.”
I patted Variam on the shoulder. “I have faith in you.”
Variam rolled his eyes. “So, I know the list of people who want to kill you is pretty damn long. But is it me, or does Deleo suddenly want to kill you even more?”
“It’s not you.”
“I was kind of hoping Richard would’ve got rid of her and saved us the trouble.”
“Would have been nice, but no,” I said. “Don’t actually know how things went between them, but from what I’ve heard, she hasn’t been seen with him since. So either she’s been fired and she’s blaming me, or Richard’s sent her as a last chance to prove herself.”
“Does it actually make much difference?”
“No.”
Variam’s gate opened and we stepped through into another stretch of nighttime wilderness. It looked similar to the last except for fewer rocks, more sand, and cacti casting long shadows in the moonlight. “Now where?” I asked.
“Mexico,” Variam said. “Sonoran Desert.” He was already at work on gate number three. “So, look. I’m kind of noticing that whenever we go on any sort of mission these days, there’s a good fifty-fifty chance that Deleo shows up.”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t seem like she’s going to stop.”
“Probably not.”
“You considered making her stop?” Variam asked. “I mean, given the body count you’ve been racking up, I know I’m supposed to be telling you to cut back, but what if next time she follows us, we pick out a good spot and . . . ?” He took one hand away from his spell to draw a finger across his neck.
I sighed, letting my breath puff out into the air. It was a little warmer here. “It’s not that simple.”
“Is this because you guys were apprentices together?”
“It’s not that,” I said. I’d been close to Rachel once, but there was precious little of that left. “She’s got a jinn of her own.”
Variam gave me a frown. “Seriously?”
“Meant to tell you earlier, got distracted,” I said. “But yeah, it was back when we were apprentices. Actually, I’m pretty sure it was at the exact point where she stopped being an apprentice.”
The gate opened and dazzling light made me blink before Variam quickly muted the glow, shielding the oval with a veil of magic.
We stepped through into bright daylight. A high sun was beating down from a cloudless sky, and the air was hot and dry. We were standing on a small tumble of rocks in the middle of huge dunes of golden sand. I turned to Variam. “Seriously?”
“What?” Variam said.
“We’re in . . .” I paused. “Saudi Arabia? The Arabian Desert?”
“What’s the problem?”
“What is it with you and deserts?”
“I like deserts.”
I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, the long and the short of it is that the bonding ritual screwed up and it’s one of the reasons she’s so crazy. I’m pretty sure she can’t use the jinn’s powers in any kind of consistent way. But they’re always there as an option, and even when they’re not, she’s got a really good track record of seeing through my bluffs. I don’t want to go toe-to-toe with her if I can avoid it.”
“So the plan is—what? Wait for her to get bored and give up?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve got someone on call who might be able to help. If not . . . she’s my problem. I’ll fix it.”
We stood in the baking heat for a few seconds. The air felt like a furnace, and the glare from the sun made me want to shield my eyes. “You going to be okay?” I asked Variam.
“No angry voice mails,” Variam said. “As long as I get back in the next quarter hour, I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t really what I meant.”
“Yeah, I know.” Variam glanced at me, then looked down, scraping his toe along the rocks. “I’m not sure.” He paused. “You think what he said was true?”
It was a measure of how worried Variam must be that he was asking something like that. “I think he was saying whatever he thought would make us unhappiest.”
“Doesn’t mean he was wrong.”
“‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.’”
Variam looked askance at me. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, you’re doing a really shitty job.”
“Jagadev did precious little good and a lot of evil,” I said. “But what he did to Anne might end up being worse than everything else put together. Richard and Morden handed Anne that jinn, but Jagadev and Sagash put her on the path that led there.”