Considering the ruins that parts of Cairo ended up in, as well as other cities in the Middle East, it was a reasonable request. Patrick just wasn’t sure he could meet it.
5
Sage tailedthem all the way to Marek’s Fifth Avenue penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park on the Upper East Side. Marek hadn’t gone the obvious nouveau riche path and bought a brownstone or space in a luxury tower. No, he’d gone straight for blue blood territory, buying up an entire Art Deco building. Patrick was vaguely jealous. If he’d come into that much wealth at a young age, he probably would’ve bought a tropical island somewhere and never told anyone the location.
They parked in the basement amongst a fleet of other vehicles. Patrick climbed out of the car and was the odd man out on the way up to the apartment. Sage and Marek were in deep conversation, with Jono chiming in every now and then. Patrick’s headache had eased enough that their chatter didn’t make the receding pain worse.
He’d have preferred going to his borrowed apartment to sleep off the day, but the time on his phone said it was 2346 and his night wasn’t done yet.
When the elevator doors opened with a soft ping onto a small foyer, the mahogany apartment door on the other side was already open. Leon stood behind Emma in the doorway, both of them waiting impatiently for their arrival. Patrick hoped no one else was in the apartment. He was so done with people right now.
“Marek,” Emma said in relief as she rushed forward to hug him. “You’re safe.”
“Relatively speaking,” Marek muttered as he hugged her back.
Emma let him go but not before scent-marking him on the throat with a swipe of her hand and wrist. Marek didn’t fidget beneath her touch, as if he was used to her forwardness. Her actions spoke louder than words at Marek’s place in their pack.
He waspack—period.
Leon hadn’t moved from his spot in the door, glaring at Patrick. “You’re not welcome here.”
“Patrick is here to ward Marek’s home,” Jono said easily enough. “Casale’s orders.”
“Marek’s home is already warded, by a mage no less. We don’t need his help.”
Jono shrugged. “Let him in, Leon.”
Leon scowled. Patrick thought he’d have another fight on his hands, but Jono was god pack, no matter what his personal rank in New York City might be. Leon stepped aside without argument, still looking annoyed, but the doorway was cleared.
Emma pried herself away from scent-marking Marek and Sage with the focus of a mother hen and hustled them inside the apartment. Patrick noticed she still wore those impossibly high heels from the bar earlier and barely came up to Marek’s nose. The woman was tiny but bossy, and Marek didn’t even try to fight her.
“After you,” Jono said.
Patrick felt too boxed in when he stepped inside the apartment. The threshold wrapped around the home practically sang in his ears, making the nerves in his teeth tingle. Patrick shook his head to clear it, taking in the apartment with a quick look.
Crown molding lined the ceiling, a holdover from another design period, but that was the only hint of age in the home. What walls he could see were white and decorated with framed photographs instead of art. A wall of windows facing Central Park probably provided a lot of sunlight for the sleek kitchen with its modern appliances and the wide, open-plan living area. A hallway led to other rooms, and a staircase led up to a second level, housing who knew what up there.
Patrick peeled away from the small reunion going on and headed for the windows. He stared down at the street and the hazy, dimly lit darkness that made up Central Park in the center of Manhattan at night. His gaze skipped over the swath of inky urban greenery to the tall buildings on the Upper West Side. The distance was a length Patrick knew any decent sniper could easily handle when finding their target.
He reached out and touched his fingertips to the cool glass, sensing the pulse of the threshold against his shields. It was strong—as strong as Patrick could probably have made back when he could tap a ley line. But that wasn’t the case any longer. Throw in a demon that could chew its way through the veil, and Patrick knew his magic wouldn’t be enough to ward this place.
The magic in the Greek coin he carried was another matter entirely.
He dug out the obal Hermes had given him that afternoon. The magic embedded in the gold coin wasn’t too dissimilar to the sort lying dormant in his dagger. An immortal’s primordial magic, even just a spark, always felt different to his sense. More wild and dangerous than what humans could produce in their souls, reminiscent of the metaphysical power running beneath the earth.
Patrick had learned to manipulate ley lines before he was thirteen years old. The military had honed that ability in the Citadel before he lost it to a soul wound he’d carry to his grave. Some things, however, the body would never forget. He might not be able to channel external magic through his soul anymore, but manipulating embedded magic in something closely resembling an artifact was still possible.
Patrick pressed the coin against the glass, holding it there against the flat of his palm. A golden glow filtered out between his fingers as he coaxed the foreign magic free, shaping it into the form of a barrier ward. That particular ward was the strongest form of defensive magic a mage could cast, and one which he’d never had much luck in holding up for very long with his own magic.
But this wasn’t his magic.
No mageglobe, just a mind full ofcommand, ofwill, as Patrick shaped magic into what he needed. He was careful to keep his own magic free and clear of the power he held in his hand. No sense in tainting the defense he was constructing by creating a hole a demon could waltz right through.
Lines of light crawled away from the coin and his spread fingers, cutting over the glass like a brilliant glowing spider web. It moved as fast as lightning, wrapping itself around the entirety of the apartment building, sinking into the threshold already laid down. The threshold bent beneath the weight of magic but didn’t break, absorbing the barrier ward that now encased the apartment with power borrowed from an immortal.
When the ward came full circle, locking into place inside the coin, Patrick let it go. The rough-hewn circle of gold glinted in the window, having sunk into the glass, anchoring the magic.
Patrick turned around to face Marek and the others, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the Greek coin. “Don’t remove it.”
