Had it worked? If it hadn’t, my goose was cooked.
“What the fuck?” the sorcerer spat, lowering his hands.
The copper shone dully from his wrist. The thing was on. I had a feeling I’d know if it had done its job in the next few seconds.
“What is this?” he hissed, finally noticing his new bracelet.
“I don’t know,” I said cautiously. “You tell me.”
There was no need to tell him I had tried to limit his power if the thing didn’t work.
“It looks like a genie’s shackle,” the sorcerer ground out. “Which would be crazy and suicidal on your part because everyone knows these don’t work on sorcerers.”
This was going to be painful and deadly, but mostly painful.
He reached for the cuff and yanked. And yanked. The cuff didn’t budge, remaining stubbornly attached to his wrist.
“Whatever, I don’t need it off to take care of you,” he sneered and raised a hand. “That was a big mistake on your part.”
Nothing happened.
He blinked at me, his face turning nearly purple with rage. He dropped the drink and pizza and raised both hands, then shook them when nothing worked. He hopped up and down, shaking his hands like a giant bird. If I hadn’t been so scared the cuff would stop working at any minute, I would have found his flailing hilarious.
“What did you do to me?” he screeched, his teenage voice cracking.
I shrugged, not feeling too bad about binding his powers after the session in the basement. “Just evened the playing field a little.”
“Take it off, vampire.”
I folded my arms. “I don’t think so.”
He shook his arm at me. “Take it off, or I will grind up your parts for use in my spells and when you heal, I will dismantle you to do it all over again and again until you’re begging me for death.”
Like a threat like that was going to convince me to follow his orders? Right. Let me get right on that.
“Like you wouldn’t do that anyway.”
“Arg,” he screamed and kicked the wall.
I rolled my eyes and waited out his little hissy fit. I had no idea sorcerers could be so temperamental. It was going a long way to detracting from the mysterious air they cultivated. He was beginning to seem more like a person and less like this dark, scary being capable of ending me with a snap of the fingers.
“Take it off,” he whined. “I feel like I can’t breathe, like a limb has been amputated.”
“Uh huh,” I said. He was really laying it on thick. “I’ll think about it, but in the meantime, you’re going to answer some questions.”
“What? What is it that you want?”
There were many things I wanted but only a few he could help me with.
“What’s been doing all this killing? You know more than what you told me.”
“Have you encountered it?” he asked, his eyes filling with a feverish light. “Describe it to me. Tell me everything.”
That wasn’t the reaction I’d expected. Something along the lines of furious denial, yes. Sudden interest and begging for details, no. Perhaps I’d been wrong in my assumption of his involvement in the attacks on me.
“It seemed to reanimate the dead,” I said. I had turned events over in my head the whole way here. It’s the only thing that made sense. “The things that attacked us had the milky eyes of the dead, and the flesh was in an advanced state of decomposition.”
“That’s not specific enough,” the sorcerer said, biting his thumbnail. “Too many creatures have the same ability. I need more information before I can narrow it down.”
