Then dozens of spectral gazes simultaneously shifted, focusing exclusively on me, and their weight hit me like a sudden cold wind.

“Good evening, everyone,” I said quietly, turning to address the circle of raw fury and devotion that surrounded me. “Our friend Mortimer is in trouble. And we don’t have much time.…”

Chapter Forty-one

The Corpsetaker’s stronghold hadn’t changed.

But it had awakened.

I felt the difference as soon as I approached, and a quick effort to invoke the memory of my Sight brought the changes into sharp, clear view. A column of lurid light, all shades of purple and scarlet, rose into the night sky over the entrance to the stronghold. I could see the magical energy involved, my gaze piercing the ground as if it had been slightly cloudy water. There, beneath the ground, where I had seen them on the stairs and in the tunnels, were formulas of deadly power, full of terrible energy, now awakened and burning bright.

All of that shoddy, nonsensical, quasimagical script hadn’t been anything of the sort. Or, rather, it had been only apparent nonsense. The true formulas, strongly burning wards built on almost the same theory and system I had once used to protect my own home, had been concealed within the overt insanity.

“Right in front of me and I missed it,” I breathed.

I should have known better. The Corpsetaker had once been part of the White Council, sometime back before the French and Indian War. We’d gone to the same school, even if we’d graduated in very different years. Not only that, but she was getting assistance from a being that had been created from part of my own personal arcane assistant. Evil Bob had probably given her similar advice on constructing wards.

Wards weren’t like a lot of other magic. They were based on a threshold, the envelope of energy around a home. Granted, the loonies currently inhabiting the tunnels were hair-on-fire bonkers, but they were still human, and they still had the same need for a home that everyone else did. Thresholds don’t care about sunrise, not when a living, breathing mortal fuels them every moment, just by living within them. Build a spell onto a threshold and it doesn’t easily diminish. As a result, you can slowly, over time, pump more and more and more energy into spells based upon it.

The Corpsetaker hadn’t needed access to a wizard-level talented body to create the wards. She’d just used tiny talents regularly over months and months, and built up the wards to major-league defenses a little at a time, preparing for the night when she would need them.

Obviously, she’d decided that since she was torturing a world-class ectomancer in order to make her big comeback from beyond the grave, tonight was a great night not to be interrupted.

“I hate fighting competent people,” I growled. “I just hate it.”

“Formidable defenses,” said a quiet voice behind me.

I looked over my right shoulder. Sir Stuart studied the wards as well. He’d become a tiny bit more solid-looking, and there was distant, distracted interest in his eyes.