by Karen Chance
We got up to rejoin the others, but were stopped at the door by a small parade. A line of little bird bodies was climbing out of a large trash can and slowly lurching inside. They'd obviously been in the trash for good reason: no feathers, skin or even flesh was in evidence, just brittle bones held together by cartilage and, apparently, thin air.
Jesse said a word I'd have preferred he didn't know at his age, and looked at me fearfully. "He doesn't do it all the time, only when the baby's fussy or…or something."
I followed the trail of pigeon corpses inside, where they joined a bunch of others, who were doing an odd shuffling motion on the floor around Miranda. I finally realized it was supposed to be a dance. The baby was happily waving a sauce-covered spoon at them, while a maybe eight-year-old Asian boy grinned proudly.
"Necromancer?" I asked softly.
Jesse scuffed a shoe over the now quite filthy tile. "I forgot about him."
"Uh-huh." I wondered what else he'd "forgotten."
I explained the situation as well as I could to Miranda. "Yesss, okay," she hissed, wiping a lump of sauce off the baby's chin. "Yum, yum, yum." The little girl burbled at her and Miranda bared her fangs in the closest she could get to a smile. I gave up.
I cautioned Jesse to see that everyone stayed out of sight and close enough to Astrid to decrease the likelihood of any accidents. Then I went looking for my partner. I needed to clear a few things off my to-do list before I had to start keeping it in volumes.
Chapter 7
Finding Pritkin wasn't difficult. He and one of his buddies were where they'd been most of the week—holed up a storeroom in the lower levels of Dante's, poring over ancient tomes. When I opened the door, he looked up from a giant volume with the trapped expression of a hunted animal. His hair, which usually defied the laws of physics, was hanging in dispirited clumps and a smear of red decorated his forehead and one cheek, courtesy of the book's disintegrating leather binding. I'd gotten the impression that research wasn't his favorite thing. Maybe because he couldn't beat up the books.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"Show was canceled."
Nick looked up from the middle of a ring of books, scrolls and, incongruously, a modern laptop. He appeared harmless, a bespectacled redhead with so many freckles that he almost had a tan, his hands and feet too big for the rest of him, like a Great Dane puppy. But the gangly young man was actually a mage, and since he was a friend of Pritkin's, he was probably a lot more dangerous than he looked.
He took in my ensemble, which had settled on a watery gray afternoon. A few random orange blossoms scattered across the silk intermittently, as if blown by gusts of wind. It looked a little tired. "Any particular reason?"
"It's raining."
Nick's eyebrows drew together. "I thought you were showing in the ballroom."
"Frogs," I clarified.
The small doll-like creature perched on a stack of books at Nick's elbow finally bothered to acknowledge my presence. "Did you say frogs?"
"Kinda put a damper on things."
Nick glanced at Pritkin, who sighed. "Go." Nick didn't need to be told twice. Maybe he was tired of research, too.
His diminutive companion rolled her eyes and went back to ostentatiously ignoring me. The pixie, named Radella, was a liaison from the Dark Fey king. By «pixie» I mean a tiny, foul-tempered creature who made even Pritkin look diplomatic, and by «liaison» I mean spy. She was here to do two things: drag Françoise back into slavery and make sure I didn't cheat on the deal I'd cut with her king. He wanted the Codex, too, and figured I was the gal to get it for him. The pixie looked like she was starting to have her doubts.
She wasn't the only one. I'd agreed to the king's proposal for a number of reasons. I'd been in his territory and under his control, so saying no might have been very unhealthy. I'd needed room and board for a friend, a vampire named Tomas, in the one place where even the Senate's long arms couldn't reach. And the king had promised me help in solving the biggest riddle of my life.
Tony had always avoided telling me anything about my parents. My guess was that he'd assumed I might be a little upset if I learned about the car bomb he'd used to kill them, thereby allowing him to keep my talents all to himself. Or maybe he'd just felt like being a bastard. He always had liked combining business with pleasure.
It was the same vindictiveness that had led him to decide that merely killing my father wasn't good enough. He'd been an employee of Tony's, one of the humans kept around to manage things in daylight, but he'd refused to hand me over when ordered. And no one ever told the boss no and got away with it. So Tony paid a mage to construct a magical trap for my father's spirit, allowing him to continue the torment from beyond the grave.
I hoped to pry Tony's trophy from his cold dead fingers someday, but that required finding him first. And my last trip into Faerie had proven that I was no match for the Fey. Without the dark king's help, I would never get anywhere near the bolt-hole Tony had found for himself. And for some reason, the king wanted the Codex as much as I did. A fact that worried me more than a little whenever I let myself think about it.
"What happened to your neck?" Pritkin demanded.
My hand went to the scarf I'd tied over the puncture marks. One edge of the gauze pad I'd put over the wound was sticking out above the chiffon. Trust Pritkin to notice, and to comment. "Cut myself shaving."
"Very funny. What happened?"
I hesitated, trying to think up a good lie, and Pritkin snorted. I sighed. "Mircea happened."
"Where is he?" Pritkin was halfway to his feet before I shook my head.
"Relax. I went to him, not vice versa."
"You went to him? Why?!"
My fingers made patterns in the dust on a nearby book's cover. The skin below was old and flaking, and looked vaguely reptilian. I pulled my hand away and resisted an impulse to wipe it on my skirts. "I accidentally shifted."
"How do you accidentally—"
"Because it's getting worse!" I tried to read his scribbled notes, but they were in some language I didn't know. "Any luck?"
"No." He saw my expression. "I told you this could take some time."
"And what am I supposed to do in the meantime? I'm sick of waiting tables and doing fill-in work for Casanova. Some days I feel like I'm going out of my mind!"
"Going?" the pixie muttered.
Pritkin was staring at the stacks of books as if they'd just insulted his mother. He finally pulled out a huge blue one from the bottom of a pile. "You aren't in any immediate danger, as long as you don't have any more ‘accidents' involving Mircea."
"And what about him?" I demanded. "It's getting worse."
"He's a master vampire. He can take it."
Instead of replying, I reached across the table to remove the top from the small white pot by Pritkin's elbow and looked pointedly inside. The inch of liquid it held was faintly green, with a pleasing floral scent. Chrysanthemum, as a guess. I glanced up to see him giving me the evil eye.
"Don't think I don't know it was you."
I'd had Miranda start replacing the black syrup he called coffee with something more organic two days ago, after the last time he got tanked on caffeine and bit my head off. I was pretty sure he was cheating, but I didn't call him on it. I honestly didn't think he could survive without his daily fix—or, to be more accurate, that nobody could survive him without it.
"You're the best argument for decaf I've ever seen," I said. "And, honestly, you don't find anything weird about eating bean sprouts and tofu and drinking twelve pots of coffee a day—?"
"My record is six."
"And I thought you Brits liked tea. But maybe water would be—"
He snatched the pot away. "I need that!"
I got a better look at him and decided he might be right. He might have had a chat with a shower recently, but not a long one. His eyes were red, and when he moved his head just right, the light showed a fine coating of reddish-blond stubble on his c
heeks and chin. Add that to a T-shirt and jeans that he appeared to have slept in, and he was looking rough, even for him.
"You need to get some sleep," I heard myself say. "You look like crap."
"And who will handle things then?"
"Nick and me." Pritkin shot me a look and I bristled. "I'm not a trained researcher, but there has to be something I can do."
"Yes, you can get me some damn coffee!"
I told myself that throwing something at his head, however richly deserved, wouldn't help matters. He'd probably dodge anyway. "The vampires heard a rumor that the dark mages might have the Codex."
"How helpful. Did Mircea tell you that before or after he almost drained you?"
"Rafe told me."
"Good to know you're keeping up with the family."
"What is your problem?"
Pritkin ignored me. "I don't suppose ‘Rafe' also had an address?"
"No. But you must have some idea—"
"Dark mages never stay in one place for long. If finding them was easy, we'd have destroyed them by now!"
"There must be rumors."
"There always are. And by the time the Corps hears them and sends a team in, the dark have long since decamped—and often left us a nasty surprise."
The «Corps» was the official term for the war mages, the enforcement arm of the Silver Circle, who tended to be a lot more fanatical about their jobs than human police. They really did have a license to kill, and they believed in exercising it. I didn't want to deal with any group that regularly made the Corps look bad. But if they had the Codex, I didn't have much choice.
"You're not going to find them in dusty old books," I pointed out. "What are you doing down here?"
The pixie flipped over a page in one of the larger volumes. She had to plant her feet and use both hands to manage it. "We'd explain," she panted, "but it requires words of more than one syllable."
"Trying to find another solution to that geis of yours," Pritkin replied.
"By doing what?"
"By attempting to create a spell that can break it." He wasn't even looking at me as he said it, but had already gone back to scanning another arcane passage.
I reminded myself sternly that Pritkin was a friend. It was easier to think of him that way than to be constantly frustrated by the fact that I wasn't allowed to murder him. "We already know where the counterspell is. It's in the Codex!"
"The geis was doubled, if you recall," Pritkin said curtly.
"Then we'll cast it twice!"
"Magic doesn't work like that. Do you recall what happened when you went back in time and met a Mircea who did not yet have the geis?"
"It jumped from me to him," I said impatiently. Pritkin hardly needed to ask, considering that he'd been there at the time.
"Doubling the spell and setting up the feedback loop you now have."
"Yes, but with the counterspell—"
"You act as if there are still two distinct spells, when that is by no means certain!" he snapped.
"I don't understand." I kept my temper because it was rare that I could get him to talk about this at all, and I wanted answers.
"The geis was designed to be adaptable. That was its chief strength, but the adaptability also made it too unstable for most uses. Often, it changed from the original spell to something new over time, adapting to meet the needs, or what it perceived as the needs, of the caster."
"You sound like it can think."
"No more than a computer program can. But like a sophisticated program, it does adapt to new input."
"Like what?"
Pritkin's green eyes met mine coolly. "The spell itself is logical. What its designer failed to take into consideration is that most people are not. They are often confused about what, exactly, they really want, and the spell does not differentiate between hidden thoughts, subconscious desires, and acknowledged ones."
"What are you saying? That I'm trapped in this because I want to be?!"
"Not now, perhaps, but—"
"I don't want Mircea to die!"
"Yes, but that was not the point of the spell, was it? It was designed to bind two people together."
I stared at him, horrified. Was that why the spell had jumped from me to Mircea in the past, because I'd secretly wanted it to? If I'd been less attracted to him, or more in control of myself, could all this have been avoided?
"And it has been unsupervised for more than a century, doubtless growing and changing all the while." Pritkin went on relentlessly. "It is very likely that you are seeking the counter to a spell that no longer exists."
I stared at him, feeling panic well up in my throat, dark and bitter. Being under Tony's thumb most of my life had taught me not to try to control my surroundings; instead, I'd controlled the only thing I could: myself. The idea of having that last small freedom removed frightened me on more levels than I'd known I had.
"You're saying the counterspell won't work."
"You changed the parameters of the geis when you doubled it," Pritkin repeated. "It may well have become something with which the counterspell was not designed to deal. And if so, finding the Codex will do you no good at all."
I didn't reply for a long moment, just stared into clear green eyes that met mine unflinchingly. What he was saying sounded scarily plausible, but how did I know he was telling the truth? How could I be certain that this wasn't an attempt to persuade me to stop searching for something he didn't want me to find in the first place? It was hard to believe him when I had another authority telling me the exact opposite, assuring me that the Codex would fix everything and making finding it my first official duty.
"No good?" The pixie fluttered in front me, her little face gone livid. "It will keep my king from killing you!"
An image of the Dormouse from Alice in Wonderland suddenly flashed across my vision. I looked at the teapot longingly, wondering if she'd fit. Maybe if I pushed.
"I haven't forgotten our deal," I told her tersely. "And I don't respond well to threats."
"And I don't make them! You made a deal with him, human. You do not want to find out what he'll do if you break it!"
I glanced at Pritkin, who was being oddly silent, only to see that he'd gone back to his research. Apparently, thoughts of my possible death at Fey hands weren't enough to hold his attention. I slammed a hand down on the tabletop just to see him jump. "The Consul already has every magical authority in the book working to try to find a way around this thing! Why do you think you'll have more luck?"
"Because I must."
"That's not an answer!" He just looked at me. "Damn it, Pritkin, I'm Pythia now! I can't do my job if you keep deciding what I do and do not need to know!"
"If you're Pythia, then act like it!"
"I'm trying to. And I don't think that involves waiting around for fate to kick me in the butt yet again! I want to do something!"
The massive volume he'd been working on suddenly leapt up and slammed against the door, leaving a powdery blue stain where it hit. Before I could comment on exactly how useless childish gestures were, the door opened and a gingery head poked in. Nick looked like he thought he might be safer with the free-for-all upstairs.
He cautiously edged in, pushing a room-service cart and skirting the upended book. "It's stopped. But there has to be a couple thousand of them." His voice was almost admiring.
"What caused it?" Pritkin demanded.
"Augustine's best guess is that one of his competitors is trying to rain on his parade."
I winced at the pun, but Pritkin only looked even more severe. "There's going to be more of this kind of thing, with the Corps preoccupied with the war."
"What kind of thing?" I asked.
"Mages with vendettas deciding to take matters into their own hands," Nick explained.
"The Corps can't fight the war and police every mage with a grievance, and they know it," Pritkin finished grimly. "And what's all this?"
"Lunch. I met a waiter on the way back with
the cart." Nick started sorting through the sandwiches, fruit and cookies. "Would you like something, Cassie? There's plenty here."
"Not really hungry."
"She'll eat." Pritkin said curtly.
"I said—"
"If you starve to death it would damage my professional reputation."
"I eat plenty."
"The same does not apply should I strangle you in understandable irritation, however."
"I'll have a sandwich," I told Nick. "No meat."
He came up with a benign-looking egg salad, which he handed over along with a box of apple juice. I eyed him thoughtfully. Unlike his friend, he was still a member in good standing of the Circle. He might be able to find out about Tami for me, assuming it was the Silver who had her. On the other hand, I didn't know his opinion on the whole magical handicapped debate. He might view them with the same vague embarrassment/lack of interest everyone else seemed to show and not think she was worth asking a few questions. But nothing ventured…
"Since she sheltered you seven years ago, I'm assuming she's not a teenager, right?" he asked after I'd sketched the problem.
"She was in her late twenties when I knew her, which would make her mid-thirties now. Why?"
"Then she's way too old for the harvesters," Nick said, around a mouthful of what I hoped was chicken. "They wouldn't waste their time, especially not if she was weak to begin with."
Pritkin caught my expression. "He's talking about the people who make null bombs."
Nick nodded. "That's when—"
"I know what they are," I said numbly. The bombs were highly prized, as they concentrated a null's usual effect, stopping all magic in an area for a period of time—including mine. I'd found out about them only recently, as Tami had never brought the subject up. Not too surprisingly, considering that the process required to make a bomb drains nulls of their life force, thereby killing them.
"Don't worry," Nick said, slathering mustard on another roll. "Like most mages, nulls come into their full power when they hit puberty, making them as strong then as they're ever going to get. Harvesters like to get them as soon thereafter as possible, to maximize the amount of life force they have to give. Your friend wouldn't interest them."
