"Us?" Max asked, all ears. "Are there more like you?"
"I meant my friend," Gio said.
"Why can't your friend help?"
"Because I'm not going to lead Javic's bunch to him," Gio said firmly. "He has a wife and a family. He didn't ask to be involved in—"
"From the sound of things, he got you involved inhisproblems."
Gio shook his head. "Let's not argue about this. I'll just say that he's offered, but he has a family to think about, including a baby nephew. I'm just one man. If you can't help me, I can find another way."
"I never said I couldn't help. What if we don't set a trap to kill this Javic guy, but turn the tables and capture him instead. Do you like that better?"
"Much better." Gio seemed relieved.
"Perfect," Max said. Her mind was already turning over the problem. She hadn't realized that magic would be part of this job, but she already accepted the existence of shifters, dragons, and mate-bonds, so it wasn'tthatdifferent. There must be rules. "How do his portals work? Does he have to step through them?"
"Yes," Gio said.
"Then we can prevent him from leaving by tying his feet. How does he open it? Is there a gesture, a word, an object ..."
"To be honest, I'm not sure. But he can do it quickly, I do know that, and unlike the magic that M—that my friend uses, he doesn't seem to need to rely on props and other items. It's some combination of words and gestures. Mostly he moves his hands."
"So we can prevent him doing magic at all by gagging him and tying his hands."
"Maybe," Gio admitted. "He controls fire as well. He may be able to burn ropes away."
"So we'll use steel cables or handcuffs." She was right, this was turning out to be a fun exercise. It might be less fun to put into practice, but she'd cross that bridge when they came to it. "What about the other thing? You said he can make gargoyles? How does that work, like a golem or something?"
"They're called stoneskins, sort of a proto-gargoyle, a humanlike shape made out of stone. They're not individually intelligent. He has to control them directly, so they can't do anything if he's not giving them commands."
"From how far away?"
"I'm not sure," Gio said, looking surprised. "I never thought about that. But not all that far, I think. I'm pretty sure he has to either give them a verbal command or be in sight of them."
"Okay, we can work with that. Anything else?"
"Hmm. He may be leaning on others for his power. I have noticed that when he opens a portal, there are others behind him, chanting."
"I can see why you called them a cult. The chanting is a dead giveaway."
"They also have black robes."
"Leaving no cliché unturned, I see."
Gio smiled briefly. "They also have weapons. One of them tried to capture me with a net gun in our last encounter."
"Okay, so we'll know to watch out for that. And if we can separate him from the rest of them, it might be that he won't even have enough power on his own to get back."
"You really do enjoy this," Gio said. He seemed impressed. "And here I was always content with crossword puzzles."
Max gave him a quick smile. "This is the fun part, the thought problem of it all. It'll get messy soon enough." She considered it some more. "You know, to lure someone into a trap, you need bait. Do you know how goats are used in hunting?"
"As a poor substitute for hunting dogs?"
"Very poor. As bait, however, there is no substitute for a staked-out goat—or at least, so I used to hear from my uncles when I was a child."
"This sounds hard on the goat."
