Embrace the Night

Chapter 16

"I can't breathe," I complained.

Sal shot me a look in the full-length mirror in front of us. "You don't need to breathe. You need to look good," she said, ruthlessly lacing up the back of my bodice. We were in the penthouse suite that she'd appropriated along with a bottle of champagne, half a dozen bellboys and the dress I'd ordered from Augustine. He had not been pleased to be woken up in the middle of the night or to have his workroom invaded, and had loudly declared that feats of genius take time and he wasn't finished yet, thank you. Then Sal bought two outfits outright and put in an order for an even dozen more and he shut up so fast his mouth made a popping sound.

"No, you don't need to breathe. I'm pretty sure it's a necessity for me."

"Did you always whine this much?"

"I don't think asking to be allowed to breathe constitutes—"

"Because I don't remember it." Sal paused to admire the very rude slogan that had just written itself across her chest. One of the outfits she'd gotten from Augustine was a black cat suit that displayed neon-colored graffiti on itself at random moments. Sal had discovered that she could influence the choice of words if she thought very hard, and she was having fun corrupting her outfit.

"Of course, I don't remember much about you at all," she continued. "You never had two words to say to anybody, except those imaginary friends of yours—"

"They were ghosts!"

“—always slinking around in the shadows, looking spooked if anyone so much as noticed you—"

"I wonder why?"

“—which as far as I can tell hasn't changed."

I sucked in a breath, planning to teach her suit a new word, except that she cinched in the waist at that moment and all the air was forced out of my lungs. "Keeping your head down is the very worst thing you can do! It makes you look vulnerable."

"Which is fair enough since I am, in fact—"

"You gonna hide all your life? You gotta show everybody that they need to be afraid of you, not the other way 'round. That thing you did with the Consul, that was good. It made 'em pull back a little, made 'em think. You haven't had any more problems with the Circle lately, right?"

"Other than the huge bounty they put on my head?"

"Huh. Maybe we need to make the point a little more obvious."

"Any more obvious and I'll be dead." Sal turned to pick up her champagne and a very rude phrase flashed across her backside. I scowled at it, but I wasn't going to lower myself to fight with a piece of fabric. "I haven't had any problems because they don't know where I am."

Sal paused to tip the last of the exhausted-looking bellhops. He'd just dumped a trunk big enough to conceal a body in the middle of the living room floor. And considering who it belonged to, it just might. "Honey, everyone knows where you are!" she said, as soon as he'd left. "I mean, come on. What do you think we're doin' out here?"

"Planning to beat up Casanova?"

"Other than that."

"I don't know. Rafe called you—"

"And we usually jump when he snaps his fingers," Sal said, rolling her eyes. "Alphonse's come to suck up to the new boss. And since he ain't around, you'll do."

"Uh-huh." Alphonse sucking up to me was about as likely as the earth suddenly deciding to change direction, just for a switch.

"You really don't get it, do you?" Sal looked genuinely puzzled. "There's a war on. Everybody's choosing sides. The smart ones are aligning themselves where the strength is. Like with Mircea. Like with you."

"What about Tony? He's your master."

"And I never fully appreciated how much I hated that little toad until he was gone."

"But if he comes back—"

"I'll kill him," Sal said, sounding as if she'd relish the opportunity.

"You can't. As your master—"

"He won't be my master by then. Mircea will."

Things suddenly made a lot more sense. "You want Mircea to break your bond."

"When this thing's over, we intend to still be standing—and on the winning side," Sal confirmed, shooting me a look out of suddenly shrewd blue eyes. "Not dead fighting for a man we both despise."

Wonderful. Yet another group who was depending on me, expecting me to somehow miraculously make everything right again. I decided that maybe I'd been better off alone; fewer people to disappoint that way, fewer things to screw up. "If I'm so powerful, why can't I keep those two downstairs from killing each other?"

Sal picked up the phone and handed it to me. "You want them to stop horsing around, tell them."

"Just like that."

"Exactly like that."

I looked at her blankly, but she just snapped her gum at me so I told the phone that I would like to speak to Casanova. It told me that he was rather busy at the moment. I said I'd really appreciate it if he could make the time. It asked if I would like to leave a message. Sal grabbed it out of my hand with a disgusted look. "Get your ass in there and tell him that the reigning Pythia wants to talk to him," she snapped.

So much for my disguise. If the Circle didn't already know where I was, they probably would soon. "Do you have any idea what you just did?" I demanded, feeling a migraine coming on.

Sal punched me on the arm. "You're Pythia. Start acting like it!"

I refrained from rubbing my now sore arm and glared. She glared right back. Casanova came on the line, sounding a little breathless. "What?"

"Are you through?" I asked him. "Because maybe I'm insane, but I could have sworn we were here because your master is about to go out of his mind, thereby forcing the Consul to kill him, and do I even need to bring up what happens to both of you in that case?"

Alphonse grabbed the phone, not that he needed it—vampire hearing was more than good enough to make any phone conversation a conference call. "What's the plan? We gonna break him out?"

"That would be good," I agreed.

"Rafe said you saw the master a couple days ago. If you got in then, why do you need us now?"

"Because the wards almost certainly recorded that little visit!" I said impatiently. "They'll be expecting me to try again. And the last time I removed someone from the Consul's control, she used a null bomb to trap me."

"I heard about that. Didn't believe it, though."

"Oh, null bombs exist," I assured him. "And the Consul's got a stash of them." I'd seen it for myself, and although I doubted that she wanted to use up any more of a very expensive, very scarce resource on me, the fact remained that I'd made her look bad. It hadn't been intentional, but vamps rarely cared about such trifles. And messing with the reputation of someone who ruled partly through the fear she was able to inspire was a very big deal.

"I meant I didn't believe you could pull it off," Alphonse clarified.

Neither had I. I decided it wouldn't be prudent to mention exactly how much luck had been involved. In a world where reputation was all-important, I didn't have much of one to trade on. Alphonse remembered me as Tony's tame little clairvoyant, something that was not going to convince him to do a damn thing. Thinking of me as someone gutsy enough or crazy enough to go up against the Consul would be a much better image.

Fortunately, both Alphonse and Casanova needed me to ensure that Mircea stayed alive and well. Until the geis was lifted, I could trust them. To a point. Probably.

"I think I know how we can do it," I said.

Casanova had been making spluttering sounds in the background. I thought someone had been choking him, but I guess not, because he suddenly piped up. "Okay then. You're insane. This explains a lot about you."

"Insane and the boss's girlfriend," I reminded him sweetly.

It's probably just as well I don't speak Spanish.

Thankfully, by the time Sal received word back from the Consul that she would see us, it was almost dawn. That wouldn't have bothered the head of the Senate, as she'd long since ceased to be bound by the sun cycle, but Alphonse and company weren't in that league. So I had a day's reprieve before I found out if my plan was going to work. And since I'd already screwed up my sleep cycle, I decided to use it for other things.

Nick was holding the fort when I got to the research room. He had his nose buried in a huge, dusty old tome, but looked glad to take a break. "There's been no word on your friend, Tami," he told me before I could say anything. "Not that I have the same level of access anymore, as a fugitive from justice."

I squirmed slightly. "Yeah. Sorry about that." Someone should have warned him that I tend to have that effect on mages.

"It had to happen sooner or later. The system is antiquated, but the Council refuses to see that."

"And here I just thought they were a bunch of power-grubbing asshats."

"That, too," Nick said dryly, shutting the cover of his book. It had a familiar symbol embossed on it, silver scales bright against the worn green leather.

"The ouroboros," I said, and was immediately sorry when his face lit up with the delighted air of a fanatic who has found a kindred soul.

"I didn't know you were interested in magical history, Cassie."

I hadn't been, before the Codex came along. Now I didn't have much choice. "Symbol of eternity, right?"

He nodded enthusiastically. "That's one interpretation. The snake—or dragon in some depictions—eats its own tail, thus sustaining its life and ensuring an eternal cycle of renewal." He flipped to the frontispiece, an almost translucent sheet covered with the image from the cover rendered in bright jewel tones. "This one was copied from an Egyptian amulet, dated to 1500 B.C., but it was also known to the Phoenicians and the Greeks, the Chinese and the Norse…really, it's the ultimate archetype. There's hardly a culture that didn't know it in some form!"

"How interesting." And it was, sort of. But I didn't have time for a magical history lesson. "Have you seen Pritkin today?"

I was too late; Nick was already buried in another book. "It's also one of the oldest protective symbols in the world, possibly the oldest. Not to mention the most widespread. The Aztecs believed that a giant serpent resided in the heavens as protection for Earth until the end of the age. The Egyptians had a similar myth. Both cultures thought that when the ouroboros' protection failed, the age of man would come to an end."

"Nick?" I waited until he looked up. He had a smudge of dust on his nose. "Bad-tempered blond, in need of a haircut?"

"John? Oh, he's around somewhere." Nick dismissed him with one hand, while grabbing another book with the other.

I plucked it out of his hand. "This is what you've been researching down here?" There seemed to be an awfully lot of books devoted to Nick's hobby and none to the geis.

He saw my expression and hurried to explain. "No, no. Or, rather, yes, but it does tie into our search."

"It does."

"Yes. You see these?" He pointed out a line of symbols on the frontispiece, rendered in silver gilt and curving around the outside of the snake's scales. "The Ephesia Grammata," he announced proudly, as if that explained anything.

"And that would be?"

"Sorry. The Ephesian Letters. They gave an added…oomph…to the protection. You often see them on amulets in conjunction with the ouroboros symbol. They were said to have been written by Solomon himself." He flipped to a line drawing showing the snake surrounding a guy on horseback with a long spear. "That's him, attacking evil," he added, pointing to the figure in the middle of the circle. "And there's the Ephesian letters again."

"But what are they?"

Nick blinked at me owlishly for a moment through his glasses. "You've never even heard of them?"

"Why would I ask you about them if I had?"

"It's just…they're famous. Even to norms." He looked slightly offended at my level of ignorance. I crossed my arms and stared at him. "They were said to have been inscribed on the statue of Artemis at Ephesus, the center of her cult in the ancient world," he explained. "She was closely associated with protective magic, and the words were considered some of the most potent voces magicae in existence."

"Magic words," I translated. "And what do they mean?"

"That's just it." Nick looked at me proudly, like I'd finally said something smart. "No one knows."

"What do you mean, no one knows? Why use words if you don't know what they mean?"

Nick shrugged. "Words have power, some more than others."

"And yet no one's ever figured them out?"

"Oh, we know what the individual words mean," he said, sounding vaguely patronizing. "The first one, askion, translates roughly as ‘shadowless ones, probably some reference to the gods. The problem is that each word is only a mnemonic aid, a memory prompt for a line of text."

"It's only one word out of a whole line? What happened to the rest?"

"That's the point. Together, the complete text forms a spell too important, too powerful, for anyone to risk writing it down in its entirety." He grinned, a flash of large white teeth in his freckled face. "Except once."

"Let me guess. The Codex contains the full spell."

"The oldest riddle in all of magic," Nick said dreamily. "The secret to ultimate power."

I was beginning to understand why the Dark Fey king wanted the Codex so badly. "Sounds like something people might have wanted to hold on to."

"It's the same old story," Nick said, his smile slipping. "A group of power-hungry leaders, probably of the Artemis cult, didn't want to risk it falling out of their hands. So they only transmitted the full spell orally. But when the temple burned to the ground in 356 B.C., they all died."

"And since no one had ever written it down—"

"No one knew what it meant."

"Well, that was stupid."

"Exactly. It is possible to be too careful. Sometimes you can lose more by being overly cautious than by taking a necessary risk."

"Like telling me where Pritkin is?" I asked idly.

"Yes, I—" Nick stopped, frowning. "You tricked me." He sounded more surprised than upset.

"Where is he?"

"You need to give him some time. He's—"

"Had as much as I have, and I was attacked, too. I need to talk to him, Nick."

"I really don't think—"

I leaned across the table, slamming a hand down on his precious pile of books. Keeping my temper these days was starting to take a lot more concentration than I could spare. "Here's the thing, Nick. Tonight I have to pay a visit to the Consul, who has a bit of a short fuse and is already less than pleased with me. So I really need to know if a ticked-off demon lord is likely to crash the party. And the only way I can get that information is to talk to your buddy."

"I understand, but you have to consider—"

"And when I need to do that is now."

His frown deepened. "Are you trying to intimidate me? Because I think you should know—"

"I thought all war mages were sworn to the Pythia's service." Not that they recognized me as holding the office legitimately, or had so far shown any loyalty whatsoever. But supposedly Nick felt otherwise. Or else I had to wonder what he was doing here.

"Well, yes, technically, but—"

"I'm Pythia," I reminded him. "And you're a war mage. I don't have to intimidate you for information you are duty bound to provide."

Nick blinked at me a couple of times, then sighed and rubbed his eyes. He looked like he was getting a headache. "He's in the training salle."

"Where you should have been half an hour ago," Pritkin said crisply, from behind me. I jumped and a hand reached out to steady me. "If you kept your appointments, you wouldn't have to browbeat information out of my colleague."

Nick looked as surprised to see Pritkin as I was despite the fact that he'd been facing the door. I had this weird picture flash across my mind of Pritkin simply materializing out of thin air, like his father, before I squashed it. He was corporeal, all right, just damn sneaky.

"She didn't browbeat me," Nick said, offended.

Pritkin shot him a look. "Of course not." He was wearing gray sweats that looked like he'd already run a marathon in them. He gave my outfit a long look, but didn't comment. "Get changed and come with me."

"Why?" I asked, my stomach already sinking. Because it was that time of morning, only being up half the night I hadn't noticed.

"We're going jogging."

"I don't run for recreation. I run when someone's after me with a weapon."

"That can be arranged," he muttered, pulling me out the door.