I floored the gas and the Z-ster leaped forward. Still, the silver sedan continued to gain on me.
And then the magic hit.
Dark mystes, I’d learned when battling Cahors, liked to go for the heart. That’s what this one did. It felt as though someone had reached a taloned hand into my chest, taken hold of my heart, and squeezed with all his might. This was what it must have been like to have a heart attack. I clutched at my chest and eased off the gas. My car shimmied, slowed, and drifted off the road, through the shoulder, and into the sand and rock and dry brush that lined the highway.
The sedan slowed as well, pulling onto the shoulder and halting.
I wasn’t going to sit there and let them finish me. Despite the agony in my chest, I stepped on the gas again. The wheels spun, spitting up rocks and sand before finally gaining traction and fishtailing out of the desert back on to the road, a cloud of red dust in my wake.
The sedan glided after me, and whoever was gripping my heart seemed to give a good hard twist. I gasped, afraid I was on the verge of blacking out.
Namid had once told me how to block attacks like these. I grunted a warding spell. The pain, my heart, and a sheath of magic around it.
The crafting hadn’t worked very well when I tried it against Cahors, but I’d gotten stronger, more skilled. As soon as I released the magic, the pain in my chest vanished. And before the bastard could attack me again, I cast a second spell, encasing the car in magical armor.
The moment I released the magic, the sedan sped up, until its front end was right on my bumper. Literally.
I’d had enough of him, too. I slowed, forcing him to do the same, and then I punched it. That sedan, whatever kind it might have been, was more than a match for the Z-ster, but I did manage to put a few yards between us. And then I cast a third time.
As simple as you please: the road, his tire, a nail.
I heard the blow-out, watched in my rearview mirror as the sedan swerved and slowed. The driver managed to stop without flipping over or going off the road, but by then I was doing one hundred and ten, with no intention of slowing down.
I chanced a grin, knowing that this one time, I’d gotten the better of these dark sorcerers who had been screwing around with me for the past several days.
“That was well done, Ohanko.”
I practically jumped out of my skin. The Z-ster veered dangerously, and I slowed down.
“Damnit, Namid! You can’t surprise me like that when I’m driving!”
“I am sorry. Should I leave you?”
“No! Where have you been? I tried to speak with you, and you didn’t answer, not even to tell me that you don’t like being summoned.”
“I do not.”
“I know.”
“When was this?”
I hesitated. “Yesterday afternoon.” Had it only been yesterday?
“Why did you summon me?”
“Because Billie and I were nearly blown up by a magical bomb.”
I chanced a peek his way and found him staring back at me, his waters placid, his eyes as bright as searchlights.
“All right, she was nearly blown up. It seems I wasn’t in any danger at all. Not then, at least.”
“You are now.”
“So I’ve gathered. What is this about, Namid?”
“What do you think it is about?”
If I’d thought it would do any good at all, I would have pulled out my Glock and shot him. I hated it-hated it-when he answered my questions with questions. He reminded me of a teacher I’d had in high school, the most annoying geometry teacher on the planet, who had responded exactly the same way to all of our questions. I couldn’t stand the guy. Learned a helluva lot of geometry, though.
“I think I’m caught up in a magical war between dark sorcerers and whatever you’d call people like us.”
“I am a runemyste,” Namid said in a voice like a hard rain. “And you are a runecrafter. Or a weremyste, if you prefer. It is these others who should bear names of a different sort.”
I glanced his way. “So you admit that there are others.”
The myste frowned. “Would it not be foolish of me to do otherwise? I have said many times, have I not, that my kind guard against the use of dark magic in your world.”
“Yes, you’ve said that, but . . .” I shook my head, the frustration of the past few days spilling over. “But you say it in a way that makes it sound like dark magic is a random occurrence, that you’re here to guard against men like Cahors, who present a threat that’s real, but isolated.”
“And so I am.”
“But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”
“I do not understand what you are asking.”
I couldn’t tell if the myste was being purposefully obtuse, or if this was simply the hazard of communicating with a centuries-old being who saw the world in a fundamentally different way. On most occasions, this would have been when I threw up my hands and surrendered. Not today.
“I’m asking why you’ve concealed from me the fact that your war with dark weremystes is ongoing. I’m asking why you’ve effectively lied to me for more than seven years.”
“I do not believe I have,” he said, his waters riffling as from a scything wind.
“There’s a war going on.”
I looked at him again, though I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road for too long. I could imagine dark sorcerers coming after me in a whole fleet of those sleek silver sedans.
“Yes,” he said after a long pause.
“And it didn’t occur to you to mention this to me until now?”
“It occurred to me many times. I did not believe you were ready to know the entirety of this truth.”
“I’m not a kid, Namid. I know I’m not as skilled as you’d like me to be, and I know that I disappoint you more often than not. But I took down Cahors, and that should have earned me some modicum of consideration, of respect.”
“You have my respect, Ohanko, and have for longer than you know. Why would I expend so much time on your training if I did not respect your crafting and your mind?”
This was without a doubt the kindest thing he had ever said to me, and yet it served only to make me more angry.
“You’ve got a pretty twisted way of showing respect.”
“I am sorry you feel that way.”
We fell into a lengthy silence, until at last I said, “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Bloody hell, ghost! Are you going to tell me what’s going on or not?”
“I still am not certain you are ready to hear all of it.”
“I don’t give a god-damn! Somebody’s trying to kill me. Someone came within a hair’s breadth of killing Billie. Someone is tormenting my dad. And that doesn’t even begin to get at the stuff I’ve been hired to find out. Whether you think I’m ready or not, I’m in it now. And I want to understand it-the risks and the stakes.”
“I should have asked sooner. How is Billie?”
I felt much of the anger I’d directed at the myste sluice away. “She’s better, thank you. But I almost lost her. And I’m afraid I’m losing my father. I need your help, Namid.”
“And what do I get in exchange?”
He couldn’t have surprised me more if he had asked to borrow money from me. In spite of everything, a small laugh escaped me. “What do you want?”
He appeared to consider the question for a few moments. “I am not a ghost,” he said. “You know this, and yet you insist on referring to me as such again and again. I would prefer you did not.”
I laughed again, shook my head. “Wow. Okay. I’ll . . . I’ll try to stop calling you a ghost.”
“You will try?”
“Some habits are hard to break.”
Again he weighed this before nodding. “Very well.”
We lapsed once more into silence, until I wondered if he expected me to ask more questions. But eventually he began on his own.
“You know the history of the runemystes,” he said, his voice as deep as a mountain lake. “How we were sacrificed by the Runeclave so that we might forever be guardians of magic in your world. Often omitted from that history is the fact that some in the Runeclave saw a different path for those skilled in runecrafting. They wished to make war on the non-magical, to become dominant. When the Runeclave created the runemystes, these dissenting weremystes sought to do something similar.