“Damn it, Dory!”
“—and word is spreading. I could barely get in the door tonight; by tomorrow . . . well, if there was going to be a tomorrow. But I guess not.”
The eye flaps of squintiness made a reappearance. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. I know exactly what you’re doing.”
“I just need you to drive a speedboat. Can you do that?”
“Sure, but—”
“There’s one outside.” I nodded at the lolling door, beyond which, tied up at the pier where the slavers had left it, was the boat they’d been planning to use for a getaway. Only Eagle Boy had kicked them off before they could, leaving it conveniently situated for us. Well, conveniently assuming we could reach it.
“So I’m supposed to do what?” Fin whispered. “Load ’em onto the boat while surrounded by war mages? Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
He just looked at me.
“I’ll provide a distraction.”
“Oh great. Oh yeah. That’s what I need. A dhampir-led distraction!”
“Would you stop bitching?” I said softly. “Just get them on the boat; I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Sure. Fine. Whatever. This is why I never go anywhere with you,” Fin informed me. But he slunk off in the direction of the selkies, while I looked around for a distraction.
Huh.
This could be a bit of a challenge.
On the one hand, I was without my usual bag of tricks, which I’d been forced to leave in the car due to the sad lack of trust between us magical allies, and I was currently surrounded by war mages.
On the other hand, distractions were kind of my thing. When you’re typically the smallest badass in the room, you have to use whatever you can to keep the bigger ones from all piling on you at once. Because they do that. All the time.
The movie bad guys who suddenly can’t shoot straight when the hero is on-screen, or who politely wait their turn to have a go at you, just don’t exist in reality. I’ve never been in a well-mannered fight, or fought a gentleman warrior nobly giving me a chance to beat him. Well, not unless you counted Louis-Cesare— I stopped that train of thought abruptly, because it hurt. A stupid amount. It was also useless, because there weren’t any Louis-Cesares here.
There weren’t any guys like him anywhere.
Stop it.
So.
Options.
Under the circumstances, there were really only two: the tower of treats in the form of all those crates, and Huey and Louie by the door.
The crates would be more fun, and thanks to the troll’s rampage, there were plenty of things to send crashing into them. But there were a lot of them, and I didn’t think the guys could possibly have gone through them all. They were probably going to cart them off and sort through them later, meaning they didn’t know everything that was in there.
And neither did I.
And sending up a two-story mountain of magical weapons, however weak-ass they might be, wasn’t a plan.
So, the boys it was. And since they were already looking at me malevolently, or as malevolently as they could manage past the now-red-and-swollen stripes across their faces, this should be easy. And it probably would have been—except that another distraction flew through the door before I had the time to start.
Actually, make that several. Okay, more than several, I thought, watching a whole stream of flying cameras charge in all at once. It looked like the reporters had decided that the only way to get a good look around was to come in force, so they had.
And it might have worked, if they’d been dealing with anyone else. But war mages are a breed apart. And while their shoot-’em-up training is understandable for some of the challenges they face, where a split second of hesitation can get you dead, it can cause problems at other times.
Like now, for instance.
A fireball engulfed one of the little flying cameras, frying it midair, and a spell clipped another, sending it spiraling toward the ceiling, where it detonated in a burst of expensive parts. But there were a lot of little black balls left, maybe half a dozen, and—predictably—somebody focused too much on the targets whizzing around and too little on what was behind them.
“No!” James ran back in, trying to corral his group of weapon-happy war mages. “Don’t contaminate the scene! Don’t contaminate—”
Too late, I thought, watching a fireball miss a camera, and hit the mountain of crates head-on.
What looked like the Fourth of July went off inside the warehouse’s old walls. The mages promptly shielded, the selkies fled through the open door, and I grabbed part of a pallet as a shield and ran for the side entrance. Because my work was done here. Or it would have been, if I hadn’t immediately gotten disoriented thanks to the thick, white clouds suddenly boiling everywhere.
There must have been a whole lot of fog bombs in those crates.
And a bunch of stupefaction bombs as well, judging by the way I was suddenly staggering around.
Not to mention incendiaries, because something set my shield on fire!
I dropped it and stumbled backward, awkwardly grabbing for another. But my head was spinning, my eyes were trying to cross, and I couldn’t see anything but fog and the multicolored sparks lighting it in patches here and there. Or hear over the firework explosions of more crates going up and some spell-enhanced war mage shouts. And so my hands grabbed something else instead.
Something that had been zooming by and still was, only now it was zooming me along with it.
Because whatever charm the reporters had put on their little camera balls, it was a strong one.
At least enough to tow me through a couple war mages while I tried to get my confused head to tell my fingers to let go. And then into a support column—ow—and then into thin air, as the determined flying camera I’d latched onto decided to kamikaze the ceiling. And the wall. And the floor again.
After which it shot back into the air for no apparent reason—except to try to shake me off, I realized.
Which was why I determinedly held on, even after all the knocking about had cleared my head. Because there was a reporter outside somewhere controlling this thing, and he was pissed that something was interfering with his attempt to get a scoop. If he couldn’t shake me, the next step would be to recall his little device to sort out the problem, which would get me out the door.
Assuming I lasted that long.
Which might be a problem, because the fog covered a lot of sins. And Huey—or maybe Louie; I couldn’t really tell them apart—was seizing the opportunity for some revenge. Only not with magic, because that leaves a trace, doesn’t it?
Unlike fists.
At least, I guessed that was why one of them had just swung for my head instead of throwing a spell. And then grabbed onto my legs when I tried to kick him. Probably assuming that I was too disoriented to fight back, since I was determinedly clinging to the little camera ball.
Which I smashed into his head a couple times, and then used my legs—which had bigger muscles anyway—to hurl him at a column. One he bounced off of and lunged for me again, because yeah. Dumb as a rock.
A rock that went barreling underneath me, because I picked my feet all the way up this time, to the point that I was hugging the camera.
My ribs didn’t enjoy it, but my eyes had fun watching him take out his partner, who’d been creeping up on the other side.
They staggered off into the fog, and I deliberately wrapped my arms around the remaining intact lenses, wanting to end this. It almost ended me when the camera went crazy, bouncing along the ceiling before slamming back into the floor and dragging me across the rough old boards. And out into the night, because the mage had finally figured out that the only way to clear the obstruction was to pry me off.