Claimed By Shadow by Karen Chance

with them, then they’d walked into a mess not of their own making. No wonder they hadn’t been in a good mood when they met us again.
    “It doesn’t matter,” Pritkin said, almost like he’d been reading my mind. “They want you dead. Making it easy for them won’t change that.”
    I swallowed. I’d suspected that the Circle wouldn’t cry much if I had an accident, but hearing it stated so baldly was hard. You’d think I’d be used to people trying to kill me by now, but for some reason it doesn’t seem to get any easier. “You sound certain.”
    “I am. That’s part of what we need to talk about.” He looked at Casanova, who sighed.
    “There are several emergency exits, but none are good options.” He flapped a hand at me. “Can’t you do whatever you did earlier, and shift away? With the internal defenses targeting you as well as them, I can claim you came here to bully me for information about Antonio and then left after trashing the place.” He glanced around. “Oh, wait, that would even be true.”
    “Speaking of which, you were going to tell me where Tony is.”
    “No, as I recall, I was doing quite a good job of not telling you.” He tried to hand me a handkerchief, I guess to wipe off the cupcake that had gotten smeared in my hair at some point, but I ignored it. “I’ll help you get out of here, chica , and I will gladly tell lies to the Circle to throw them off the trail, but as for Antonio—”
    “That vampire,” Miranda spat on the ground. “He in Faerie. He bring usss here, then betray. We work like ssslavesss.”
    Casanova looked sick. I smiled at the gargoyle, who was actually rather attractive if you concentrated on her slanted red eyes. “Thank you, Miranda! Tell me more.”
    She gave a feline sort of shrug. “Not much to tell. He in Faerie.” She looked at Casanova. “This sssircle, they come here?”
    He ran a hand through his slightly tousled hair. Somehow, he had managed to avoid all the flying food. The only visible damage was a few wrinkles I’d put in his tie. “Possibly. It seems to be our day for unwanted guests.”
    “No!” she told him, poking his leg with extended claws. “We have work! No more messss!”
    I noticed that a couple of valiant little gargoyles were trying to get a laden cart, which had somehow avoided the carnage, through the disorder to the door, and that another was grunting into a phone and scribbling an order on a pad. I was about to agree with Miranda that we needed to get out of their hair—or horns or whatever—when yet another visitor arrived. Pritkin’s golem came through the doors and the keening noise started up again from every side.
    I groaned and stuck my fingers in my abused ears. Pritkin stared intently at the golem for a minute, as if some sort of nonverbal communication was going on, then glanced at me. He made a gesture, and blissful silence descended. I knew it had to be some kind of spell, because the pandemonium didn’t diminish, but the cacophony quieted to a faint background noise. “They’re coming. We have to go.”
    I nodded. “Fine. Then get lover boy there to tell us where Tony’s portal into Faerie is. And don’t lie,” I told Casanova. “I know he has one.”
    “Yes, he does, but I don’t know where it is,” Casanova said distractedly. “Miranda! Can you calm your people down, please? It isn’t going to destroy anything!” He looked at Pritkin. “Is it?”
    “It will if you don’t tell us the truth,” I said grimly.
    He looked askance at the golem, which looked back as far as the vague indentations it called eyes would allow. It had no fangs, horns or other oddities. It was just a badly made statue, like something a potter had started and then forgotten. But I didn’t like it any better than Casanova did when it turned those empty eyes on me.
    “I don’t know where the damn portal is!” Casanova insisted. “Tony was selling witches to the Fey, but he had a special group who dealt with