Billy Joe coalesced over me and he looked pissed. «Why didn't you tell me you could do that? I got trapped in there! I could have died!»
I didn't try to sit up, since the asphalt seemed to be doing a pretty violent version of the hula beneath me. «Don't be a drama queen. You're already dead.»
«That was completely uncalled for.»
«Cry me a river.» Billy Joe was about to say something else but had to move because Louis-Cesar bent over me and he wasn't about to get caught in any more bodies.
«Mademoiselle Palmer, are you all right? Can you hear me?»
«Don't touch me.» I decided I wanted to sit up after all, mainly because my skirt had ridden up to the point that my pink lace undies were showing, but no way did I want him near me. Every time we touched, I ended up thrown through time. My senses had been trying to warn me earlier, but it had been impossible to tell the difference between the fear caused by his nearness and the general terror of being captured by the Senate. In any case, I'd had all the out-of-body experiences I needed for a very long time. «Where's Tomas?» I was still unhappy with him, but the thought that I might have accidentally killed him wasn't pleasant.
«He is here.» Louis-Cesar moved away about a foot, and I could see Tomas standing behind him. He was looking at the Frenchman with a weird expression, sort of stunned, almost like he didn't recognize him.
«Are you ok?» I asked him in concern. I hoped somebody was home, since I had no idea how to go about finding some wandering spirit. After a long moment, Tomas nodded, but he didn't speak. I decided that wasn't good. «How many fingers am I holding up?»
«Oh, for God's sake!» Billy Joe pushed in between us, careful not to touch anybody, and glared at me. «He's fine. He came around a few minutes ago when you decided to rejoin us.» He scowled. «What's the idea of going on vacation when there's a crisis on?»
I ignored him. «Give me a hand up.» Tomas thought I was talking to him and bent over, forcing Billy Joe to dodge out of the way. I sat and looked about. There were eleven dead wererats, including Jimmy. His glassy rat eyes stared at me accusingly through the dissipating smoke, and I swore. «Damn it! I wanted to talk to him!» I rounded on Pritkin, who was standing with his arms raised theatrically, almost like he was pushing on something, only there was nothing there but air. «You killed him before I could ask about my father!»
Pritkin wasn't paying me any attention. His eyes were focused outside our circle and he didn't look good. His face was red, his eyes were glazed and the cords on the sides of his neck were bulging. When he spoke, it was in a strangled whisper. «I can't hold much longer.» That didn't make sense until I noticed a faint blue tinge to the air around us and realized that we were standing inside the mage's shields. He'd created a defensive bubble around us by expanding his own protection, but it looked thin and weak, not like his old shields at all. Perhaps he'd stretched it too far; personal shields were designed for one person only. He was right; it wasn't going to last.
«We have to get Cassie out of here,» Tomas said, and I noticed that his face also looked strained. Not as if he were bench-pressing a few hundred pounds like Pritkin, but as if he was terrified. He wasn't watching the mage, though, or anything beyond him. He was looking at me.
Louis-Cesar was the only one who seemed normal, with no visible signs of strain on that pleasant face. «Mademoiselle, if you have recovered sufficiently, may I suggest that you return to MAGIC? Tomas will take you.»
Pritkin mumbled something and a glowing symbol wrote itself in the air for an instant, so close I could have reached out and touched it, before dissolving into the shields. I knew what he was doing since one of the mages at Tony's had set up a perimeter ward on his vault using words of power. I had been intrigued that he could build a protective spell on something as intangible as a spoken word, but he'd explained that he was using it as a focus for his own energy.
Magic comes from many sources. The Fey and, to a much lesser degree, lycanthropes are said to get theirs from nature, drawing on the massive energy of the planet as it moves at terrifying speeds through space. Gravity, sunlight, the pull of the moon, can all be converted to energy if you know how. I've even heard speculation that the Earth generates a magical field the same way it does a gravitational one, and that someday, someone will figure out how to tap it. That is the holy grail of modern magical theory, though, and no one has managed to do it so far—although countless hours have been lost trying. Until the mystery is solved, human magic users can borrow only a tiny amount from nature; most of their power has to come from themselves. Except for dark-magic users, who can borrow tremendous magical energy by stealing the lives of others or from the netherworld, but they pay a huge price for it.