by Karen Chance
"Basically?" Mircea repeated dryly.
"Well, yeah, pretty much. But I think I know why the counterspell won't work. Because the geis was put on two of you—one in the current timeline and one in the past. But since only one of you is present whenever we try the spell, it doesn't think you're all there. So to speak."
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's like with the Graeae," I explained impatiently. "I accidentally set them loose and we've been trying to trap them again ever since. Only it seems they register as one person for the sake of any magic used on them, and if one of the three is missing, the spell won't work. So they just make sure that they are never all together anymore. Then we can cast the spell all day and nothing will happen."
"Let me see if I understand," Mircea said, pulling on another of Ming-de's little gifts. "You believe the geis views the two of me on whom it was placed as one person."
"Because you are."
"But because I hold the spell in two separate timelines, if it encounters only one of me, it does not view me as a complete person, and therefore will not work?"
"Exactly. We all have to be present at the same time—two of you and one of me, because I had it placed on me only once, but you had it done twice. Once by the mage who initiated the spell and once by me. At least, I hope I have that figured right, because if we need another me this is really going to get complicated."
"Going to?" Pritkin muttered.
"That would be why, in Paris, your dress did not harm me," Mircea mused, ignoring him. "Because, linked as we were by the geis, it saw us as one. And, of course, it would not harm its owner."
"Well, two-thirds of its owner, but yeah, that's it."
"I am in there, am I?" Mircea slipped onyx cuff links into the French cuffs on his shirt and eyed the box skeptically.
"We can let you out," I said dubiously, "but I don't think…that is, I'm not sure how you'll react. Marlowe said he couldn't control you, there at the end…"
"Can we get on with this?" Pritkin demanded.
Mircea ignored him, but he gave me back a frown. "Has it not occurred to you that the mage has deceived you? Perhaps in an attempt to get into this very room, past security, to assassinate me in a vulnerable position?"
"Do mages frequently do that?" I asked, surprised.
"A few dark ones have tried. After what happened to the last one, I have had a reprieve for some years." He glanced at Pritkin. "But perhaps the lesson has been forgotten, and must be taught again."
Pritkin leapt up from his chair. "If I intended to harm you, I have had more than enough time already!"
Mircea bared his teeth in an expression that in no way resembled a smile. "Feel free to try."
I refrained from throwing something, but it was close. I'd known bringing Pritkin was a bad idea, but after the debacle with Nick, I hadn't dared to trust anyone else. Not to mention that he was the only one who knew the spell. It had to be him, and it had to be now.
"I honestly don't know how much time you have left," I told Mircea quietly. "If we do nothing, the spell will run its course and you'll die anyway."
"The spell was never designed to kill," he reproved. "Not in its wildest permutation."
"No, but it can drive someone mad! And then the Consul will do the killing for you."
Mircea paused, his eyes sliding to the snare. He regarded it for a long moment, expressionless. I guess it would be a little weird—okay, a lot weird—to imagine yourself trapped in there when you were standing right beside it. "The Senate has many experts at its disposal. Surely they can find a solution."
"That's already been tried. Do you think the Consul would have had you imprisoned if there was an alternative?"
"But would not this counterspell remove the geis from me, as well as from your Mircea? And thereby change time?"
"No, we don't think so." It was one of the things I'd asked Pritkin before we left. "It's being cast on the three of us, to break the bond we all share. But it can't affect anyone who isn't here, which includes the Cassie of this time. So your link with her should remain and, uh, run its course."
"Leading to a great deal of trouble."
"I'm afraid so. But there's no other choice—not if you want the present timeline to continue."
"The one in which you are Pythia." I didn't answer, but I didn't have to. Mircea had known since the battle at Dante's that his crazy gamble had paid off. He looked thoughtful for a moment, but then his eyes slid to Pritkin and his expression hardened. "I know you think you are acting for the best, dulceata? but you do not know what our enemies are—"
Pritkin swore and, before I could stop him, said something in a low, guttural language that sounded awfully familiar. Before I could blink, before he even finished speaking, Mircea had pressed him against the wall, a fist in his shirt and murder in his eyes. "Mircea, no!" I grabbed his free arm. "I thought we were going to wait until he agreed!" I said to Pritkin, furious.
"He would never have agreed," he spat, "and it doesn't matter anyway."
"Doesn't matter? He could kill you!" Laying a spell on a master vamp without his permission was considered so stupid that there wasn't even a law against it. There didn't need to be—most who tried it didn't survive long enough for a trial.
"You don't understand. The geis—"
"What about it?"
Pritkin looked like he'd swallowed a handful of nails. "Can't you feel it? The spell didn't work. The geis is still there!"
Chapter 29
"That's impossible! You said—"
"I said your theory seemed plausible if the spell had not morphed into something new. Obviously it has. In the hundred years since you placed it on the vampire, it has had more than enough time to grow, to change, to become a new spell. As a result, the counterspell won't work. Because the spell it was designed to offset no longer exists!"
"You're telling me we went through all that for nothing? That we'll just die anyway?"
"Not for nothing. In the process, we discovered—" He glanced at Mircea and hesitated. "Much of interest."
And, yeah, that might be true, but knowing what was really behind the war wouldn't do me much good if I wasn't alive to fight it. "That doesn't help!"
"I told you all along that I doubted the counterspell would work," he informed me, in the tone that made me want to hit him even more than usual.
I was about to return a scathing reply, when I suddenly remembered. He had said that, but he'd said something else, too. Something that I'd forgotten because I'd been so fixated on the Codex. There was another way to break the geis, one that Mircea had woven into the spell himself.
My heart sped up as I ran the idea over in my head. All three components of the geis were here now: me and both Mirceas. The counterspell didn't work, but that was because the original spell had changed form, not because my theory had been wrong. But Pritkin had said that the fail-safe was part of the geis and that it would morph along with it. So the fail-safe should still work.
"There might be an alternative," I said slowly.
"What alternative?" Pritkin asked, his eyes narrowing.
I looked at Mircea. "Do you remember, when you had the original spell cast, you had the mage put an escape clause in place?"
"A fail-safe, yes. I was advised to do so by everyone with whom I spoke. It is a common precaution, as the duthracht geis is famous for—" Mircea stopped, understanding flooding his eyes, followed immediately by a stubborn glint. "Dulceata? — " he began warningly.
"It didn't work with Tomas," I said, speaking quickly before he made up his mind, "because he was a substitute, but for only one of you. And just like with the counterspell, the fail-safe will only work if there's two of you, uh, participating."
"Cassie—"
"You must be out of your mind!" Pritkin broke in. "If it doesn't succeed, you could end up tied to him forever!"
"That won't happen."
"You don't know that! There is no telling what might occur with a spell left to its
own devices for that long!" Mircea hadn't spoken, hadn't moved. But suddenly the security detail was back. "I suppose it only requires the right master for you to knuckle under—is that it?" Pritkin sneered as they started manhandling him from the room. "You were brought up as a vampire's little lapdog—I should have thought you'd prefer not to die one as well!"
The door slammed shut, although I could still hear him ranting as they towed him down the hall. "You can't hurt him. He has to go back with me."
"Their orders are merely to detain him," Mircea said, looking at me narrowly. "I thought you would prefer to discuss this in private."
"Yes. Well." I stopped and mentally pushed Pritkin's accusations away. I had to concentrate if I was going to get this right. If I was going to make Mircea understand. "If I've figured this right, and I'm pretty sure I have because we've tried everything else, then…it has to be all of us. The fail-safe was never an independent entity but was tied to the geis itself. So when the geis changed, the fail-safe changed right along with it. That's why built-in safety measures are used with the duthracht. Because even if it does go haywire, they will still counter it."
"What has to be all of us?"
I narrowed my eyes. Mircea knew more about magic than I did, so he'd followed me perfectly well. He just wanted to make me spell it out.
I paused, sure for a moment that I couldn't get the words out, that they wouldn't fit past my throat. "The sex thing," I finally blurted. "It needs to be all of us." Which was absolutely the most shocking thing anybody had ever said for the long moment before Mircea smiled.
"You know, dulceata? when I told you that I enjoy a wide range of experiences, I did not expect you to take me quite so literally." He started buttoning up the shirt. I assumed by the fact that he was getting dressed that I must not have been as clear as I'd thought.
"What are you doing?" I demanded. "I told you, we have to have sex now!"
"No, I believe the term you used for a threesome was ‘the thing. " Mircea slipped on his suit coat. "I admit to having few reservations about personal relations, but one rule I do try to maintain." He leaned over and kissed me lightly on the cheek. "If the lady cannot bear to say it," he whispered, "we don't do it."
I pushed him back and glared at him, hands on hips, immediately pissed. "No one made you put the geis on me," I told him, pushing a finger into that completely clothed chest. The soft, luxurious weave of Chinese silk met my hand, something that didn't make me any happier. "No one told you to make sex the condition to break it! I've been through hell to figure a way out of this and now that I have, you're playing hard to get?!"
His amusement, if anything, seemed to ratchet up a notch. I guess Sal was right; I didn't do tough well. "You have to admit, dulceata? that your story does seem somewhat—"
"Strip," I ordered.
Mircea stood there by the bedpost, giving me a disbelieving lift of an eyebrow, and a look that clearly said, You did not just order me to take off my clothes. Except that I had, and I gave him a stubborn chin raise in response. Very slowly, he pulled off the suit coat and dropped it onto the bed. His look challenged me to take something off as well.
I tossed my head at him. Fine. After the week I'd had, that didn't seem like much of a challenge at all. I reached back and unhooked the catch at the top of my dress. Sal had refused to let me visit "the master" in my old sweats, and had cobbled together an outfit for me. One tug had the zipper down on the dress and the satin material sliding over my curves until it was no more than an icy blue puddle around my feet. I still wore a strapless satin bra and panties set, purchased to match the dress, and a corset in white.
The corset was a slightly jarring note, but I hadn't had a choice. Whoever they'd had patch me up had done a good job, and a glamour had covered most of the assorted cuts, bruises and claw marks. But the fact remained that I don't heal like a vamp. Underneath the white lace and ribbons was an ugly two-inch-long scar that we'd been afraid would bleed through onto my pretty new dress.
"You are serious." Mircea was frowning.
I spread my hands. "Yes! Yes, I'm serious! What is the problem?"
He looked torn between exasperation and disbelief. "You know the problem! You explained it to me. And I do not intend to spend the rest of my life bound to the wishes of a—" He cut off abruptly.
"Of a what?" I could feel my temper rising.
He recovered quickly. "Of a young lady who, however charming, knows so little about our world."
"I'm learning fast," I said, "and don't patronize me." I was pretty sure the word he'd almost uttered had been "child." And whatever else was true of me, that wasn't. Not since the age of fourteen, when I'd run away and learned exactly the kind of world I lived in.
"I wouldn't dream of it," he said, unruffled. "Any more than I would dream of completing such a dangerous spell."
"We're not completing it! Two of us would have done that. The fail-safe wouldn't have worked if we'd had sex in London, because all three of us weren't there. But here and now, it will override the geis."
"You can't be certain of that."
"Maybe not. But I can be certain that you'll die if the geis isn't broken. Would you prefer that to living under someone else's mastery?"
"I cannot say," he replied mildly. "Having never had a master. But I did die once. It wasn't so bad, as I recall."
"Mircea!"
"Cassie, would you listen to yourself? You expect me to believe that another version of me is in there" — he nodded toward the snare—“and that the three of us must copulate to break the geis despite the fact that one of us is very likely mad?"
"You think I'm lying to you?"
"I have already told you what I think—that you have been deceived. You must—"
"I must do nothing. I'm Pythia. Which, in case you missed it, means I outrank you."
Mircea caught my hands, which had been trying to get the loops of silk that served as buttonholes on his shirt loose from their toggles. I really wanted that damn thing off. "You are Pythia because we put you there!"
I gave a sudden push. He ended up sprawled on the bed. "Dulceata?—"
"I have the title because I've damned well earned it! Stop assuming that I'm the same little girl you left at Tony's. I'm not."
"Mages are treacherous," he said stubbornly. "And this one has obviously—"
I stopped him by placing one foot on the edge of the bed, between his legs, while balancing on the other. I didn't spend much time in four-inch heels, and I wasn't sure how long I could stay there. "Take it off," I ordered, nudging his inner thigh with the toe of my shoe. I'd let Sal talk me into ice blue satin heels with a strap around the ankle and toes studded with crystals in a starburst pattern. I'd thought they were a little much, but for some reason she had absolutely insisted on the shoes.
"A pretty thing. Much nicer than your last footwear selection."
I gently nudged him again, and this time I didn't hit his thigh. He breathed in sharply. Mircea could pretend all he wanted, but at least one part of him wasn't completely indifferent to my proposition. "Cassandra," he began, his tone menacing, and I repressed a grin. Okay, now I knew I was getting to him.
The shoe continued its work, moving in circles that grew bigger with every sweep, grazing but never quite touching. Just a little encouragement, though it didn't feel like he needed much. "It's too risky," he told me stubbornly. "If you're wrong—"
"I'm not wrong."
"You don't know that. You admitted it yourself."
I nudged him again and his eyes dropped to half-mast. "I thought family were the only ones you can trust. So trust me, Mircea."
He didn't answer, but his hand slowly closed around my ankle, then smoothed down over my heel to the spike. He stroked his thumb over the silken material, up and down, until I started to feel a little giddy. I was beginning to understand why Sal had pushed for the shoes.
"I told you to take it off," I repeated. I could already feel my leg going wobbly. Mircea managed to get
the tiny jeweled buckle around my ankle undone one-handed and slipped the pump off. Then his lips were on my foot. It wasn't something I'd expected, and it caught me off guard. The feel of his tongue dragging along my arch, was enough to make my toes curl and my breath catch.
"What about the other you?" I asked, while my brain could still form sentences.
"What about him?" he murmured, before his teeth closed over my heel. He bit down, a fairly gentle nip, but my knee buckled from the sensation. I twitched and wobbled, and had to grab the bedpost to keep my balance.
"Damn it," I muttered.
Mircea grinned at me, unrepentant, and pulled me down beside him. "The mage did not curse me earlier. Did you not wonder why?"
I stared at that beautiful face. It was close enough to kiss, but I didn't think that was what he had in mind. "He wants to help."
"Perhaps. But is it not equally possible that he has arranged a trap?"
"He has no reason to—"
"Tensions have been rising between us and the Black Circle for some time. They would love nothing better than to strike a preemptive blow. And what could be better than killing a Senate member and the new Pythia, all at once? He made sure to exit the room—"
"Because you threw him out!"
“—something he could have easily anticipated. Once we are alone, he would expect curiosity to compel us to open the box, and thereby spring the trap on ourselves. And once the general alarm was raised, he could slip away in the confusion."
And I thought I was paranoid. "That isn't—" I stopped, because he wasn't listening to me anymore. He looked up and, for a moment, his gaze was somewhere else.
"The mage is becoming difficult for the guards to handle. I will return shortly." He rolled off the bed and headed for the door.
"Mircea!"
He looked at me over his shoulder, his face grave. "I will not kill him, Cassie. But I will have the truth of this—of a lot of things. One way or the other."
I watched him go, wondering how things could possibly have gone so bad so fast. I'd known Mircea distrusted mages—all vamps did—but I'd foolishly assumed that a life-or-death situation would override that. And it probably would have, if he'd believed that was what we were facing. But he'd convinced himself that Pritkin was a dark mage assassin and I was the naive dupe he'd conned into helping him. If I needed his cooperation, I was toast.
