“He’s my bodyguard! When I’m vulnerable is when I need him!”
“Look, you really gotta—”
“Take that up with Mircea,” I finished for him.
“Yeah.”
“Fine. I will.” I pressed the menu button on Marco’s phone.
“Cassie—”
And there it was. I hit the button. The phone rang.
“Yes?” The familiar voice was smooth, with no sign of irritation. Not yet.
“You said you weren’t going to do this.”
There was a pause. “Cassandra.”
“Wow, we just leapt right to it there, didn’t we?” I asked, furious.
“You are supposed to be asleep.”
“I was. And then I got up to discover that I’m a prisoner.”
“You are not a prisoner.”
“Then I can leave?”
Another pause. “In the morning, when you can shift.”
“So I’m only a prisoner for the night, is that it?”
“It is for your protection.”
“And how does that work, exactly? I’ve been assaulted twice. And where have they both been again?”
“You were vulnerable the first time due to our ignorance of the threat. You were vulnerable the second because a mage provided a conduit for the creature—”
“And that explains why I can’t see Pritkin?”
A third pause. That had to be some kind of record. Mircea usually had the defense prepared.
“No. Considering the probable nature of the entity that has been attacking you, I consider the warlock to be a threat in his own right.”
“The what?”
“He had a demon servant at one time, did he not? Encased in that battle golem he devised?”
I frowned. “I guess.”
“Then he is a warlock, not merely a mage. Only warlocks can summon demons to their aid.”
“Is there a point?”
“Merely that warlocks are a notoriously unstable class. They are prone to strange behavior, increasingly so as they age, with some going mad over time. It is one reason that many mages avoid the specialization, despite the added power it gives them.”
“But Jonas had a golem once,” I protested. “He told me so.”