A faint glow lit the snail from within. It lingered for a second and burst, painting the snail’s shell with brilliant gold.
“Only powerful magic can see Keong Emas,” the old man said. “White tiger magic.”
Oh shit. I clamped the snail in my hand and felt it slide into its shell. “How much?”
“Take her.” The old man nodded to the guy in the red hat.
Red Hat peeled himself from the wall. Behind me a man and a woman moved from behind the curtain, cutting off my exit.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” the old man said.
“Jim!” I yelled.
“He won’t help,” the old man said. “Nobody will help.”
I dashed left, but Red Hat’s hand gripped my shoulder and he jerked me off my feet with superhuman strength. I kicked at him, but he batted my legs aside and carried me back to the corner, where a woman pulled the tarp off the cage. A man knelt in the cage on all fours, filthy, wearing rags smeared with old blood. Plastic ties forced his wrists together, and above them a ragged cloth with a holding spell scrawled in ink bound his forearms. A leather muzzle clamped his whole face, leaving only the narrow strip of space around his eyes visible. Bandages hid his head and all I saw was one eye, mad, furious, and brilliant turquoise.
There was a second cage next to him. An empty cage.
Panic squirmed through me. I kicked and thrashed, but the cage kept coming closer and closer. If I went tiger, he couldn’t carry me, but I’d be too dazed to fight and I would drop the snail. I couldn’t drop the snail, or Jim would die.
Jim would come for me. He wouldn’t fall asleep. He wouldn’t let them kill him.
I kicked and jerked with all the shapeshifter strength I had.
“Don’t make this harder on yourself,” Red Hat told me.
We were almost to the cage. “How can you do this?”
“Your uncle kept a lot of people from feeding their families.” Red Hat shoved me the final five feet. “We have mouths to feed. I don’t have a problem doing this.”
I thrust my legs at the cage and braced myself. “Jim! Come get me!”
The man in the other cage moaned a wordless scream and rammed the bars.
Red Hat jerked me down. “Nobody’s coming for you.”
No! No, I will not be put into a f**king cage. I kicked against the cage, pitching myself backward. My head smashed into Red Hat’s face. He dropped me. My feet touched the ground. Yes! I scrambled left.
Something smashed against my temple. Pain exploded between my ears. I spun. The woman behind me swung again and the bat took me straight in the face. The world shivered and I tasted blood on my lips.
Red Hat clamped me and muscled me forward. The man in the other cage let out a long desperate wail.
It was over. Jim fell asleep. Nobody was coming for me.
*
RED HAT WAS dragging me to the cage. The blond woman leaned over and swung open the door.
A man flew through the curtain and slid across the floor, knocking the tables and benches out of the way until he hit the wall. I caught a glimpse of long dark hair. He clenched his hands to his throat. A thin red spray shot from between his fingers. He gurgled, his eyes huge with sharp fear.
The curtain fell, revealing Jim, drenched in blood. His eyes glowed green and his face was terrible.
He came! Oh my gods, he came for me. It was going to be okay. Everything was going to be okay.
A stocky man lunged at Jim from the left, swinging a machete. Jim grabbed him. His knife flashed, and the man crumpled down, his machete slick with his own blood.
Red Hat threw me aside. I crashed into the cage and thrust the snail into the pocket of my jeans.
The blond woman by the cage screamed and swung her baseball bat at me. I ripped it out of her hands and bashed her with it. The bat snapped with a sharp wooden crunch. The blow knocked the woman across the room. That’s right, f**k you!
A man fired a crossbow at Jim. Jim swayed out of the way, leapt, clearing the tables, and struck. The crossbowman fell like a lifeless doll. More people streamed from the back doorway.
Jim looked at me and smiled.
Red Hat shrugged his jacket off. A dark pattern swirled along his skin, like the whorls of wood grain. He headed toward Jim. A table got in his way, and he knocked it out of the way. The table splintered. Oh shit.
In the corner the old man waved his arms. Angry magic streaked through the air.
Jim was cutting his way toward me, his knife sending arcs of blood left and right. People screamed, wood crashed, Jim snarled. The scent of blood made me dizzy.
The prisoner moaned at me. The empty cage blocked his door. I pushed it. It didn’t move. I wedged myself between the wall and the cage, planting my feet on its base, and pushed, pushed as hard as I could. Wood creaked, and the cage slid out of the way. I dropped to my knees. A long knotted cord bound the door, the knots holding coins. I grabbed it. Magic scorched my fingers and I jerked back, wincing.
The prisoner screamed, hitting the bars.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I can do this. Just hold on one second.”
Red Hat smashed into Jim.
Everything slowed down as if we were all underwater.
Jim’s knife sliced, across, down, across the other way, still so fast, like lightning. The blade glanced off Red Hat’s new wooden skin. Red Hat bared his teeth and swung his giant fist. Jim leaned out of the way, lean and graceful, and thrust. The knife bit deep into Red Hat’s left eye. The big man bellowed like a bull.
Jim vaulted over him.
The caged man moaned. I’d need a week to figure how to break the seal without hurting myself. I didn’t have a week.
Outside the window people screamed. More poachers coming in.
I grabbed the magic cord and jerked. It broke, leaving dark stripes of burned flesh across my hands. Pain lashed me, but I was too busy. I jerked the door open, grabbed the man by his shoulders, and pulled him out of there. He crashed on his side.
A hand caught my shoulder and pulled me up. “Time to go,” Jim breathed.
“No!” I pointed to the prisoner. “I can’t leave him. Help me.”
Red Hat spun toward us, screaming, the knife still in the socket of his eye.
Jim cut, once, twice, and the prisoner’s hands came free. Another cut took the mask from his head, and I stared at the face of the most stunning Asian man I had ever seen. He was like a celestial being from a Chinese watercolor—absolutely flawless.
The eyes of purest turquoise stared at me and within their depth I saw a spiral of fire.
Oh no.
The prisoner surged to his feet. Magic unfurled from him like a mantle in splashes of red and gold, forming the translucent outline of a scaled beast on four sturdy muscled legs.