My heart hammered as I followed the guards, and I hoped I wouldn’t need Mac’s help. This had to be a formality, right?
All the same, I couldn’t help but notice the nerve-racking similarity between this and my life a week ago, when I’d been cuffed by the human police while standing over a freshly murdered body.
I was spending way too much time in handcuffs lately.
The shifters were silent as they led me down the narrow, cobbled streets of Guild City. Tudor-style buildings rose two and three stories tall on either side, their dark wooden beams and white plaster walls like something out of a movie. There were parts of human London that had buildings like these, but none that had so many of them.
And no neighborhood on the mundane side of London had shops full of magic. Guild City reeked of the stuff, and I loved it. I tried to focus on that as they led me to Council headquarters. Focusing on the dancing magic in the windows kept me from freaking out.
I’d seen the headquarters a few times while walking with Mac or Eve through the center of town. As we approached it from a side street, the massive building loomed. It was huge and Gothic, wider than it was tall. The walls and ornate statues were covered with black soot. According to Mac, it had once been a church of all faiths—Fae, witch, shifter, demon, and all the rest—but it was now the headquarters of the Council of Guilds. Locals called it Black Church because of the exterior, and I’d never heard another name for it.
No one seemed to notice that it was a creepy sounding name for a creepy looking place.
The guards led me closer, and we crossed the large open square in front of it. There was no one about at this hour, which was odd, considering it was midmorning. It gave the whole procession an ominous feel, and as we ascended the wide stairs to the two huge doors, I shivered.
“The Council has convened to meet with you,” Penelope said.
“Should I be honored?”
“No,” Garreth said. “Decidedly not.”
Well, shit.
They led me through the massive doors into an entryway that was done up in dark wood and marble. We passed through it quickly, entering the main part of the church. The room was enormous, the round shape so reminiscent of Temple Church that I shuddered.
Only a week before, I’d stopped a necromancer from murdering a woman in Temple Church. He’d chosen the location in the human world for a reason I still didn’t understand, but it had been horrifying to witness the beginning of his ritual. The idea that such dark magic existed out there…
I shot Garreth and Penelope a look. “I thought the Council might owe me for my role in stopping the necromancer.”
Garreth looked down at the cuffs. “Apparently not, if those cuffs are any indication.”
Ugh. “Too true.”
The round main room of Black Church was much larger than Temple Church had been, and circular benches surrounded the open space in the middle. A dozen cloaked figures watched us from the benches, their stares burning into me. They sat spaced apart, as though they didn’t like one another.
I recognized a few of them right off the bat—not the people so much, but the guilds they represented. There was a woman with long dark hair topped by a pointed witch’s hat. Her cloak’s black velvet sparkled with the occasional diamond. She was an easy one to identify—Witches’ Guild.
Near her sat a man with a black goatee and a midnight blue cloak. He looked like a wizard with questionable motives straight out of a children’s book—he had to be a sorcerer.
The shifter was a man with broad shoulders, wavy dark hair, and piercing blue eyes. He was handsome, in an earthy way, and something about his energy screamed power. Raw, animal energy that could be translated quickly into killing force. From what I knew, shifters could turn into any animal, but this guy was a big predator. My money was on a tiger or a bear, or maybe even something magical, like a griffon.
The others were harder to identify, but I knew there had to be a seer, a mage, a Fae, a vampire, and quite a few others.
I kept my gaze on all of them as I walked to the center of the room, determined not to show fear. Some of them had to have inhumanly good hearing—the shifter, for sure—and I prayed they couldn’t hear my frantic heartbeat.
It was hard not to wish that my friends were the leaders of their guilds so that they could be here with me, advocating on my behalf. But they were like me, wanting to go their own way. They didn’t live in the towers associated with their guilds, as many members did.
The sorcerer stood. He was handsome, albeit in a sharp and slightly scary fashion. I went through my mental index, pulling up all the info I had on sorcerers. They were known for being insanely intelligent, cunning, and loyal to their own kind. They sold big magic but didn’t let you out of their sight while you used it. And they always attained their goals, no matter what. Though they were frightening, they were to be respected.
In the distance, I spotted a tiny shadow low to the ground: Cordelia, my raccoon familiar, watching from the shadows. She kept tensing and moving forward, as if she were going to dart out and try to save me.
Stay there! I tried to scream with my mind. She was no match against the Council of Guilds, and I wanted to play by their rules, anyway.
If it involved getting these cuffs off.
“Carrow Burton.” The sorcerer’s deep voice echoed smoothly around the chamber. “I am Ubhan, the representative of the Sorcerers’ Guild.”
“Hello.”
“Do you know why you are here?”
I bit my lip, unsure of what to say. Maybe it was because I hadn’t claimed a guild or had no control over my magic or my signature. Or maybe it was because of the powerful gem that I’d taken from the necromancer last week when we’d stopped him mid-ceremony. He’d made it from the organs of his victims, turning a heart and a liver into a crystal called Orion’s Heart. I’d managed to grab it with my bare hands, which was apparently very rare.
I’d thought about turning it in to the Council for safekeeping—they’d wanted me to—but I’d decided against it. I didn’t trust them. Instead, I wore it on a chain around my neck, tucked under my shirt and out of sight.
I didn’t mention the gem, though part of me wished I’d given it to them. Anything to avoid this.
“Is it because I haven’t chosen a guild?” That had to be the smallest crime, so I’d confess to it.
“In part,” Ubhan said. “You have been in our city for a full week, yet you have not visited us to claim a guild.”
I’d known it was important, but I hadn’t realized it was the kind of important that would get me hauled in like a criminal.
“You also have no control of your magical signature,” Ubhan said. “You are a danger to yourself and the city as long as you cannot hide your magic.”
“But humans never come here.” The words popped out of me, and I wished I could bite them back. Hesitantly, I added, “Isn't that why we must control our signatures? So that they don’t sense what we are?”
“Precisely.” Ubhan nodded. I could feel the gazes of everyone else in the room, but he was apparently their voice. “It is irrelevant if humans come here. If we don’t control our signatures, Guild City is at risk. It is hidden within London by powerful magic, but only because we control our signatures. If we lose control of them, the shield spell weakens. Everyone in Guild City controls their signatures, and you should be no exception.”