Inked

After a breathless moment, I emerged to see the same white tile, the same pale walls, the same water fountain that no one had ever bothered to hook up. I put a hand to my face, expecting to feel the pain of a split lip if not a broken cheekbone, but only soft skin met my fingers. There was no wound, even though the ache was still there.

It wasn’t helped by the shock of icy water that came out of nowhere and hit me square in the face. I coughed, wiped my eyes, and looked up to find that the corridor was gone. In its place was a hot summer day, with the sun glaring down from a vivid blue sky.

It gleamed off the chrome fender of a beat-up motorcycle and the dark brown hair of the guy washing it. The hair tickled his neck because he didn’t get it cut as often as he should, like he remembered to shave maybe twice a week. Whiskey brown eyes that were the same shade in either form met mine, sparkling with challenge.

I blinked, but it was definitely Cyrus. He had the stripe of sunburn across his shoulders he got in the spring, after last year’s tan wore thin, and he was wearing the ragged cutoffs with the yellow splotches from the time we’d painted his living room. They rode low on his hips, showing off a hard stomach and thighs heavy with muscle. The sight was enough of a distraction that it took me a minute to notice his accessory—a now-empty bucket clutched in one hand.

“Big-time war mage,” he taunted, yelling to be heard over the blaring radio. “Is that the best you can do?” I followed his gaze down to the water balloon I gripped in one hand. “I bet you can’t even hit me,” he jeered, dodging back and forth along his driveway, deliberately using only human speed.

I took a drink of the beer I’d gone into the house to get and gri

“You cheated!” he sputtered, looking outraged, before putting on a burst of speed that made him only a blue and tan blur as he tackled me around the shins.

I went down, but hit tile instead of grass, so hard that I slid all the way across the corridor, bashing my head on the side of the water fountain. I lay there for a minute, panting, until an orderly caught sight of me and hurried down the corridor, looking concerned. I waved him off and staggered back to my feet, amazed to find that I wasn’t dripping wet.

I exited medical and propped myself against an empty piece of wall down the hall while I waited for my heart rate to edge back into the safe zone. A couple passing mages gave me the once-over, but looked away when I scowled at them. I rested my head against the wall and swallowed, wondering if I was crazy.

The day I’d just relived had been a few months before I moved to Vegas, when I was still working for the Corps’s Jersey office. Like most Weres, Cyrus didn’t care for city life and felt claustrophobic in apartments. He’d had a house on a few acres in Galloway, close enough to Atlantic City to make his cover as a ne’er-do-well with a gambling habit believable, but far enough away that he could breathe. I’d driven down one Saturday with a six-pack and a birthday cake to celebrate his turning the big three-oh, and found him feeling playful.

He never did finish washing that bike.

I hadn’t thought about that day in months, but it had been just as clear as if it had happened yesterday. Clearer, because I couldn’t taste yesterday’s fettuccini like I had the chlorine in that water or the smoothness of that beer. I’d never had a memory that real.

If it was just my memory.

Had Sebastian been right? Was I somehow tuning in to what Cyrus was thinking about? If so, it would quiet the biggest fear I had about this proposed expedition.

Mated was a Were term, and not one that was usually applied to human-Were couplings. My parents had been married for more than four decades, but no Were had considered them mated. I think most of Lobizon had assumed that Mother was going through some kind of phase and would eventually come to her senses. Because human marriages, even long-standing ones, didn’t bind two people as closely as a mating.

Or so I’d heard. It wasn’t like Mom had bothered to explain exactly what the term meant. With Neuri forcing me to keep my distance from the clan, she’d assumed I would marry a human. So had I, until I met Cyrus. Not that we’d gotten around to talking marriage. In fact, we’d only recently gotten back together after a lengthy split. So mating didn’t seem too likely. Not to mention that Cyrus had never so much as uttered the term.

But despite occasional rumors about my mental stability, I didn’t go around hallucinating.

I didn’t want to feel hopeful, in case I was wrong. But I didn’t think I was—that crack to the jaw still hurt like a bitch. And if that was what Cyrus was currently experiencing, then he was already in trouble.

“And I’m telling you, a map won’t do you any good!” My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Jamie’s distinctive burr coming down the hall. “Tartarus isn’t fixed like the city above. The tu

“What rest of it? I thought the tu

“That’s a typical newbie mistake,” Jamie said kindly. “The tu

“Then those caverns should be on the map,” Hargrove insisted, trying to hand it to him.

Jamie didn’t even bother to glance at it. “If that thing’s more than a week old, it’s out of date; if it’s more than a month, it’s useless. There are turf wars going on all the time, and the city shifts with them. You have to have someone who knows the signs to get you anywhere, much less to get you back. You need a guide.”

“I thought you—” Sebastian began, but Jamie was already shaking his head.

“I’ve been out of it too long. Sure, I could figure it out, given time. The main markets are pretty stable, although I doubt your beastie is holed up anywhere so public. But what you need is someone who has been there recently. And that lets out every tu

They disappeared into medical, probably looking for me. I stared at Sebastian’s back until the closing doors hid it from view. Then I took off in the other direction.

If a dark mage was responsible for this, then a mage needed to go after him, not someone who would be just as vulnerable to his spells as Grayshadow had been. I knew Sebastian wanted to help, but he’d said it himself: if he died, the next bardric might not be so interested in maintaining ties with the humans. Not if it was going to get some of his people killed.

So I was going alone. Well, more or less.

“Nope, nothing.” The moon-faced mage behind the desk made a brief moue of disappointment to show camaraderie before preparing to blow me off.

“What do you mean, nothing? A bum, a bag lady, a freaking pimp. I don’t care!”

“Yeah, I got it the first time,” Michaelson told me, scowling. He was already having a rough day, and I wasn’t making it better. “Look, I gave you the report, okay? That’s all I got. If you want to talk to street people, go to a police station; hell, go to the street! But you won’t find ’em here.”

“Since when?”

“Since we started needing the lockup for more dangerous types.”

“Nsquital demons are not dangerous!” I pointed out, referring to the red-haired creature who had just been escorted in back.