I stared at Ian in disbelief. “Whose side are you on?”
“Mine, always,” he replied, and the demon chuckled.
“Ah, Ian, if you didn’t have fangs, I’d swear you were one of ours.”
Ian bowed as if that were the highest compliment. Ashael chuckled again, then he regarded Vlad and me with a lot less humor. “As I said, without a soul contract, I don’t have the power to break her spell, and no other demon will, either.”
I could hear a grinding noise as Vlad’s jaw clenched. “Then we’re finished here,” he said, striding us toward the edge of the roof. “Ian, stay or leave, I don’t care.”
“Wait.”
The single word stopped Vlad from vaulting us over the roof’s edge, but it didn’t come from Ian. It came from Ashael.
Vlad turned, arching a brow. The demon’s smile was sharklike. “There might be one other way.”
“And that is?” Vlad prodded when Ashael didn’t go on.
The demon lifted his shoulder in a half shrug. “Her magic.”
“Her who?” I asked, barely concealing my dismay at the thought of going on another magical wild-goose chase.
Ashael looked at me as if I were slow. “You.”
Chapter 17
“Me?” I said.
At the same time, Vlad ground out, “I am not amused,” in a tone that sounded like sharp-edged gravel.
Ashael let out an elegant snort. “Don’t play coy. When I drew forth your aura, I could see the magic in you, and it has nothing to do with that spell.”
Ian cast an interested look at me. “Hiding a big secret, were you, poppet? Naughty lass, and here I thought we had agreed to honesty all the way ’round.”
“I’m not hiding anything!” My arm flung out in Ashael’s direction. “He’s lying. I don’t have any magic.”
Another snort from the demon. “No, you just vibrate all over from electricity because you’re excited to see me.”
Oh, so he’d misunderstood. “That’s not magic; it’s a crazy side effect from touching a downed power line when I was thirteen.” That power line accident had given me my psychic abilities, too. Before it, I had been completely normal.
Ashael cocked his head, staring at me. “You didn’t know,” he finally said. “How curious. Did you, Impaler?”
I expected Vlad to say, Know what? in his usual annoyed, imperious manner. But he didn’t. Instead, Vlad looked at me in a way that made me take several steps backward.
“No,” I whispered. “You don’t believe this, do you?”
“I suspected,” he replied, shattering me. “No human ever came close to harnessing your level of abilities. It either had to be magic, or you had vampire blood somewhere in your lineage.”
Ashael grunted. “Not just magic; she’s a trueborn witch with an added benefit of legacy power. That’s as rare a combination for witches as Cain’s legacy is for vampires.”
I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “But I’m not a witch. And even if way up in my family tree someone else might have been, how would you know?”
“The same way you know which color is yellow and which is red,” Ashael replied in a mild tone. “You were born with the ability to see and differentiate colors. I was born with the ability to see and differentiate magic from a person’s aura, whether that magic is infused by a spell, inherited, or other.”
It shouldn’t sound too incredible to be true. After all, I saw people’s worst sins if I touched them with my bare right hand. But I still couldn’t believe that the demon could just look at me and know more about me or my family than I did.
“How could Leila’s magic be used to break the spell?” Vlad asked, moving right along while I still grappled with disbelief.
Ashael came closer. Then he did that weird, feel-the-air-around-me thing again.
“Those with trueborn magic are rare. They didn’t used to be, but most trueborns were killed centuries ago in the great witch purges. Yet a trueborn with legacy magic is even rarer. I’ve only come across one other person with both. If memory serves, she was one of the Ani-kutani.”
I flinched, and Vlad noticed. “You’re familiar with what that means?” he asked me.
“I’m one quarter Cherokee,” I replied. Vlad’s look became pointed. Right, he knew a lot of history, but obviously not much Native American lore. “The Ani-kutani used to be a powerful Cherokee ruling priesthood. No one knows how long they reigned, but they were rumored to have been the ancient Appalachian mound builders. Legend says the Ani-kutani eventually became so corrupt and hated that their entire line was massacred by the Cherokee around the thirteenth century. To this day, most Cherokees still despise their memory.”
Ashael’s gaze gleamed. “Yet you are most likely a direct descendant from the Ani-kutani. That’s what you get when you leave annihilation to humans. Someone usually weakens and spares a baby.” He punctuated his criticism of humanity’s mercy with a contemptuous snort. “With all that incredible magic in your bloodline, you never noticed anything special about your family?”
I didn’t like the disdain in his tone, as if I wouldn’t have noticed if Mom was fond of pointy hats or rode around on brooms. “Unless you count the fact that Mom had a real talent for gardening, no, there was nothing unusual about her.”