Magic had always seemed like both something that was mundanely part of Riordan’s life and some weird esoteric thing that only mattered to the shaman. He’d never really thought about it too hard. And now he was paying for that by discovering that eating a strong protection prayer burned like hell as it went down.

Honestly, Riordan wasn’t sure he expected to feel much of anything at all, even after sensing the potential power in the material components. Too many years of being “just” a shifter worked against him. He kept underestimating the power he could bring to bear.

The tingle spread from the top of his head and out to the tip of his toes and fingers, rebounding and resonating until his bones vibrated and his teeth clenched. Desperate for relief, Riordan breathed, falling into the cadence of the regenerative meditation breathing. He pushed at the power thrumming in his body, hoping it would settle and stop taking up all his attention. Absently, he wondered if this was something similar to what Quinn did, putting magic into his body instead of his well.

Except, didn’t he do that regularly, as a shifter? Every second he was passively boosting his strength and resilience, wasn’t he pouring magic into his body? Wouldn’t his body be used to it then? As soon as he thought that, Riordan flexed his passive shifter boosts instinctively and the protection spell snapped into alignment with it, sinking into him and drawing additional effect from the parallel effects.

Riordan stayed with his head braced against the chair in front of him for a minute longer, just breathing and letting mind, body, and magic all settle. He huffed a small self-deprecating laugh. That had gone about as well as could be expected. Better, in fact, since he did manage to layer a protection spell on himself that would persist for a while without someone being able to steal its anchor.

Once he was grounded again, Riordan took a moment to check his surroundings and the time. Damn. That casting had taken longer than he’d hoped. He estimated that he had maybe another ten minutes before they arrived, give or take, and less than that before Billy would have to restrain him. Time for some quick and dirty spells.

He ripped a few papers off the pad and scrawled the major points on their route up to the latest crossroads on two of them. Then Riordan folded them into simple paper airplanes. He felt a bit silly using such a simplistic design. A real shaman would do some sort of origami animal and call upon a spirit to inhabit it for its task or some shit. On one paper plane, Riordan wrote “To Vera” and the other was “To Quinn.” He added a short explanation to Quinn’s, just in case, worded vaguely enough to give nothing away if a mundane found it.

In Yiddish, he entreated the paper airplane to pull the wind to it and find its way to its recipient. Riordan held the image of Vera in his head, trying to capture her spirit and magical signature. For her, he also thought of the pack house, hoping that the paper might make it to the location even if it couldn’t manage to find its target properly. Riordan’s skill with distant targets definitely left something to be desired.

He repeated the process with Quinn’s plane. The death mage’s presence was stronger in Riordan’s memory. That swirl of dark energy wrapped around a determined and righteous young man with a fatalistic and quirky sense of humor. The pale grey eyes that went silver and black when he was casting. The even paler skin and thin body, coiled with purpose even as he was slowly killing himself. Riordan understood Quinn better than Vera, despite knowing both for such a short time and only one of them being a shifter.

Riordan didn’t dwell on his kinship with Quinn. There was no space for such maunderings in mission mode. Instead, he was grateful for the clear image of Quinn, physically, magically, and mentally. It increased the chance that the message would reach him.

Rolling the window down, Riordan made no move towards it. He needed Billy to stop paying attention again before he slipped those spells out since they were on the forbidden list. Instead, Riordan shoved his pad of paper and pens back in his pocket before they could flap away in the breeze and turned towards the stones. The most he could think of to do with those before he ran out of time was just to pour power into the stones to boost their purification and protective purposes. Riordan clasped the clear quartz in both hands first, filling the material vessel with a drop of magic as he focused on purification and amplification, imagining the power strengthening the crystalline structure inside both physically and magically. He honestly had no idea if he’d done more than store some magic in the rock before he moved to the next one.

After four stones, Riordan took a second to casually stretch, slipping the first paper plane out the window and activating it with a Yiddish command to seek. It seemed to stabilize in the air before the wind ripped it away and it was lost behind the car. Riordan did another two more stones before loosing the second plane. He felt like he was running out of time.

Indeed, he only made it through three more stones before Billy pulled the car over to the side, putting it in park without shutting off the engine, and mechanically stated his order again, “I must restrain and blindfold you prior to arrival.”

“Yeah, I know, buddy,” Riordan sighed. He stretched and gathered up his stones. He slipped the unenchanted ones and the jar of lavender into the door pocket. Two of the enchanted stones Riordan kicked under the passenger seat. Three went into his own pockets. The other four stones he held out to Billy when the man came around to open up Riordan’s door. For a moment, Billy just stared at the stones impassively.

“I think you should take these,” Riordan prompted. “You wouldn’t want your prisoner to have them, right?”

He wasn’t sure if Billy responded to that suggestion based on his orders or if he’d understood the unspoken subtext that Riordan wanted Billy to take the best of his purification stones. Riordan had no idea if it would be enough to help Billy fight the compulsion on him, but he felt determined to do whatever he could to help, however small or pathetic Riordan’s efforts were. Billy pocketed the stones wordlessly and then held up a length of nylon rope. The similarity with the black rope still bound so persistently around his left arm made Riordan shiver, even if this new rope was off white.

“Wrists please,” Billy commanded with surprising politeness.

This was part of the deal. Part of the mission. Riordan didn’t fight it, though he held his hands out in front of him, held in loose fists. When Billy didn’t challenge Riordan on that choice or force him to hold his hands behind his back, Riordan relaxed slightly. He flexed his wrists as Billy tied a quick and competent lark’s head double column knot, leaving the tail ends of the rope leading forward to be used like a lead leash. That knot could be load bearing, splitting the weight between the wrists fairly smoothly. Or the ankles, depending which way the subject was tied up. Weird memories and thoughts came back to Riordan in moments like this.

He preferred to think of hanging someone up to torture with these ties than to think of himself as being leashed though. That certainly said something about his mind space.

The knot was secure. Riordan wasn’t going to be able to just slip his hands free. However, Billy hadn’t stopped Riordan from giving himself some wiggle room in the rope and had made a definite choice in allowing Riordan to have his hands tied in front of him. Even without shifting, Riordan could do a lot with his hands being only tied at the wrist. It was probably the best compromise that the compulsion allowed the man. It was enough for someone like Riordan. He nodded at Billy in acknowledgment of the concessions.

Another short rope was used as a hobble around Riordan’s ankles. Billy knotted the rope around each ankle with about a foot of loose rope between. Riordan would be able to walk in short steps, but he’d trip if he tried to run. Billy tied the rope over Riordan’s thick boots, which gave more options for slipping the bindings if needed.

A thick pad of cloth became the required blindfold. Riordan had a harder time submitting to that, but he stored the discomfort inside, saving it up for a later moment and its real target. He could play the victim. He knew better, after all. No matter how vulnerable being deprived of his sight could make someone psychologically, Riordan didn’t exactly need sight to be effective.

“Should I be worried that you are so smooth with these sorts of knots?” Riordan asked, keeping his voice light and joking to reassure Billy. “I didn’t expect your job to include many captives in this corner of the world.”

A soft huff of breath fluttered against Riordan’s skin as Billy pulled away from securing the blindfold. Riordan interpreted that as laughter, suppressed under the compulsion acting in full force. He wished he’d taken more time to get to know Billy now. By the end of this mission, Riordan suspected he would know Billy a hell of a lot better.

Or they would be dead. It could go either way.

The car door closed again. Riordan focused on his hearing, pushing his shifter magic to boost it until he could hear every scrape of Billy’s shoes against the gravel and dirt of the road shoulder. Billy entered the SUV at the driver’s seat again, the vehicle shifting with his weight and then the door clicking shut. Riordan’s window rolled up a second later.

Focusing, Riordan built an image of the world as defined by sound. The SUV pulled out onto the road again, its tires rumbling over the battered asphalt and its engine humming. Billy breathed evenly, but his hands squeaked against the wheel in periodic spasms of clenching. Birds sang from the shade of the trees on both sides of the road. Occasionally, Riordan caught the sound of chickens or human voices off the road, quickly fading as they passed the little pockets of homesteads tucked into the woods. They had been sticking to tiny roads, skipping both Honor and Interlochen and just going south past route 31 into the grid of tiny, sometimes barely paved, roads that Riordan had dashed over or worked around during his initial escape.

In fact, Riordan felt a well of darkness growing nearby that tugged on him like the hands of a familiar lover. His left arm itched and spasmed, the rope tightening and shifting after lying quiescent for so long.

They were approaching the killing tree.