“I’ll do it. Just stop whatever you’re doing.”
I must have imagined the sigh of relief he gave. That or whatever he’d done had busted my eardrums and was making me hear things. There couldn’t be much out there that scared the big, bad sorcerer.
I dragged myself up to sitting, not wanting to have this conversation lying on my back. My dignity was already smarting from the smack down I’d gotten from the teenage-looking sorcerer.
“Great. I knew you’d agree. I just had to incentivize you.”
Oh, he’d done that alright.
He started to help me to stand but backed away when I smacked his hands and glared.
I wiped the blood from under my nose. Whatever he’d done had given me a nosebleed in addition to the ear bleed. “Tell me exactly what I have to do.”
Suddenly, he seemed every inch the teenager as he rushed to explain. “Okay, well, I’d hoped to have the werewolf help me in this, but since he’s dead, you’ll have to do.”
“What was in the package?” I didn’t need to hear how I was his emergency choice.
“It had information about all of the murders and disappearances that have been happening since the summer. I was helping the werewolf figure out who’s been orchestrating all of this. We were close too. He was supposed to send something back with you. It was something he said was the cause of everything that’s happened.” He stopped in his recitation and looked at me hopefully. “I don’t suppose you saw a package lying around addressed to me?”
I shook my head. All I’d seen was a pile of broken limbs, blood, and a piercing set of blue eyes. There could have been a house sized package lying next to all that with the sorcerer’s name scrawled on it in big block letters, and I never would have noticed.
He looked disappointed.
“So, this killer you want me to find—it wouldn’t be the person who has been running around town killing spooks all summer, would it? The same one that’s been on the human news—the one killing and hiding the bodies of all those people?”
“That’s the one.”
He was crazy. Totally crazy.
“You’re crazy. No way am I going after that guy. He’d squash me like a bug. One of my life goals is to not die by dismemberment. You might as well get back to the torture part of things.”
“You’re not going to die.” He thought a minute and shrugged. “Probably. Anyway, it’s too late now. You’ve already agreed.”
“I take it back.”
He frowned at me. “You can’t do that.”
Ha.
“Watch me.”
He gave me a pitying look. “No. You really can’t do that. Check your arm.”
I looked down at my sleeve covered arm but saw nothing.
He rolled his eyes and grabbed one arm. I flinched back.
His grip tightened, pulling me forward. “Stop that. I just need to show you the mark.”
He rolled the sleeve up on my right arm, exposing the forearm. There, on the underside of the arm about an inch or two below the bend of the elbow, was a pale silver tattoo of a stylized lion wrapped in thorns. Looking closer, I realized the tattoo wasn’t silver, or at least not only silver. It had purple glints in it, almost like someone had embedded metallic purple thread in the dye.
Where did this come from? I would have remembered if I’d gotten a tattoo like this.
“What the hell is this?”
He sighed. “It’s a sorcerer’s bond. The mark announces and formalizes any agreement you’ve entered into with a sorcerer. Once you’ve completed your task, it’ll disappear. How can you not know this? Honestly, I’m amazed you’ve survived this long.”
I gaped down at it. Sorcerer’s bond? I’d never heard of such a thing. And when did I enter into any sort of agreement?
