Midnight's Son (Darkling Mage 5)

“What are you, my bodyguard now? How much is he paying you?”

“Sterling and Gil are meeting us there,” he added, ignoring me. “Let’s go. The Wings will be here any minute to check on the aftermath.”

He tugged on my jacket, and, somehow feeling entirely helpless, I tagged along.

“I could shadowstep us there in a minute,” I said.

“Quit bragging,” Herald said. “I don’t want to ris

k getting killed in that death chamber you call the Dark Room.” He pulled tighter with one hand, then adjusted the straps on his backpack with the other.

Wait. His backpack?

Was Herald coming with me?

Chapter 18

“Yes,” Herald droned. “I’m coming along. How is this a surprise to you?”

It wasn’t, at that point, since we were already on the damn bus. But it was pretty weird at first, considering Carver had specifically pinpointed that I was going to be traveling avec vampire and werewolf. Asher was pretty disappointed about being asked to stay behind, but I had to agree with Carver on that one.

This was way too dangerous to have someone as powerful and as valuable as Asher being with us on the field. The Lorica was already scouring the city for me. We didn’t want to give them a twofer bonus if they did end up killing me, then capturing Asher in one fell swoop.

“So Carver put you up to this, right? He doesn’t trust me enough to take care of myself, so he asked you to come and provide support. Warding, maybe, keep me extra hidden from the Eyes.”

Herald leaned his chin on his fist, staring out the window. “Nope. Came on my own.”

I blinked, my gaze flitting from his face to the scenery rushing by outside. “Didn’t know you cared,” I said, chuckling.

“I don’t,” Herald grumbled. “I just don’t like the idea of my friends dying. Especially the dumb ones who can barely take care of themselves.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s said to me,” I mumbled. Herald chuckled, still staring at the landscape.

Sterling and Gil sat side by side a couple of rows behind us. Gil was snoring quietly, a cap pulled halfway over his face, and Sterling’s fingers smashed away at a device he held in both hands. Was that a gaming console? Huh. Asher’s influence, I guessed.

I dozed off a couple of times, my head lolling about, and more than once I woke up with a bit of drool running down my chin. The second time it was because the bus had stopped moving. We’d made it, then. Silveropolis.

At least by the light of the evening, very little of the town’s name made sense. Damn near nothing was very silvery about the old, though admittedly charming buildings that surrounded the terminal. As for “polis,” it wasn’t quite big enough to qualify as a city, either.

An odd choice for the Midnight Convocation to gather, certainly. I’d have thought that the entities would prefer to meet somewhere more convenient, maybe a little more modern. The gods, as far as I knew, weren’t opposed to a bit of technological progress. I’d met one that even had wifi access in the dimension she called home.

But as the boys and I meandered through the streets, heading towards the bed and breakfast that Carver had helpfully rented for the duration of our stay, I began to understand. Silveropolis was sparse in multiple senses of the word. The streets were pretty empty, of both cars and people. What few civilians we did spot seemed to be on the upper side of middle aged, which did fit in with the name of the town.

Almost every establishment we passed seemed to be another version of the same mom and pop store, their popularity owing, perhaps, to the existence of so many moms and pops per square mile in town. It felt like the kind of place where people would gasp if they saw someone with a nose ring, or a tattoo. A little old lady waiting to cross the street nodded at us primly, waiting for our group to pass.

Silveropolis was quiet, in short. Mundane, and low-key, and out of the way, not at all the kind of place where a powerful entity’s enemies might think to look, or pick a fight. It was so relaxed that I could barely imagine anyone getting into any kind of scuffle there. It was pleasant. Very, very pleasant.

And that made me nervous.

“It’s here,” Sterling said, nodding at a freestanding two-story building just off the town’s central plaza. This thing was adorable: a swinging loveseat on the patio, old-timey shingles, little planter boxes under every window that were just overgrown enough to be lush, but not enough to look shabby. And squeaking very, very gently in the light breeze of the evening was a swinging wooden sign with a crescent moon carved into it.

“The Twilight Tavern,” I read.

“Cute,” Sterling added. He elbowed Gil in the ribs. “You can have my breakfast. Pretty sure I won’t be up for it.”

Gil chuckled, holding the door for the rest of us. We filed in, with me heading in last – which was when I felt a very strange, and very familiar shiver in the air. A faint buzzing almost, as I passed the threshold, the same odd, numbing sensation I felt around my head when I handled the Null Dagger, a weapon designed to neutralize magic.

“Whoa,” I said. “Something’s off.”