Embrace the Night

Chapter 18

"What, I can't leave you alone for five minutes?" Billy hissed. No matter how many times I body-swap—not that it's been all that many—I still get a weird tingle hearing my voice saying words my brain didn't think up. Maybe I'll get used to it eventually, but I doubt it.

I glanced at the darkened window and saw what I'd expected: a swarthy, saturnine type in a too loud suit, with slick black hair and a slight overbite. Not the prettiest face around, but also not one to attract anyone's attention. I'd have to remember to thank Alphonse for strong-arming his man into this.

Possession tends to weird vampires out, mainly because it's supposed to be impossible. Even low-level vamps are able to evict an unwanted guest with a little effort, and the stronger ones have shields formidable enough to ensure that nothing takes up residence in the first place. But Marcello had preferred allowing a hitchhiker aboard to suffering his master's punishment. So far, he'd behaved himself, staying quiet and not attempting to wrest back control. I wondered how long that was going to last.

Outside the limo, neon-lit streets melted by in chaotic smears, shimmers of light and color and noise. Billy and I were headed out of the city to our rendezvous with the Senate. I'd slipped away without telling Pritkin, mainly because he and the Consul hadn't exactly hit it off the first time they met and I didn't need any help making a bad impression. But also because as soon as I got my hands on Mircea, I was off to get the Codex and finish this thing. And I still wasn't convinced that Pritkin was all that interested in saving a vampire's life—especially not now.

It still felt strange not having him there, though: like an empty holster where there should be a gun. I hadn't realized how much I'd come to rely on his particular brand of insanity. It was too bad; what we were attempting tonight would have been right up his alley.

So I had about a thousand things to worry about and less help than I'd planned. Yet not only did that not keep Billy from bitching, but it didn't even slow him down. "You were out of it for almost a day," I pointed out.

"Well, forgive me for exhausting myself saving your life!" he snapped. "Not to mention that you were supposed to be sleeping! Not running around with gangsters planning a hit on the Senate!"

"We're not hitting the Senate," I told him patiently for maybe the sixth time. "We're going in, grabbing Mircea and getting out. No big deal." It was what I needed to believe, anyway.

"Right. Which is why you're too scared to stay in your own body." Billy paused, fidgeting.

"What?"

"My boobs don't fit in this dress. And no, I can't believe I just said that."

"Don't do that," I batted his hands away from a part of my anatomy they did not need to know any better. "You're supposed to look dignified."

"In these shoes? I'll be lucky if I don't break your neck."

"Women do this all the time. You have it for one night. Stop with the whining."

"Whining? You really want to go there, Cass? Because we can go there. We can so go there."

"I take it back," Sal told me. She and the rest of Alphonse's boys had been watching the exchange with slightly interested expressions—which, since they were vamps, meant they were pretty much fascinated. Her boyfriend and Casanova were in the other limo, presumably to demonstrate family solidarity to anyone who might have heard about the fight. "If this is what you put up with every day, you deserve to whine."

"I don't whine," I snapped.

"Gee, thanks for the input, Bonnie. Feel free to jump into a private conversation just any old time," Billy added. Immediately after meeting them, he'd started calling Sal and Alphonse "Bonnie and Clyde," and nothing seemed to be stopping him. And since he was in my body for the moment, I really wished he'd shut up so maybe Sal would stop fingering her automatic.

Billy fidgeted with my anatomy some more, but succeeded only in getting one breast stuck higher than the other. He regarded them sadly, head tilted slightly to the side. "You know, death has been a lot weirder than I thought."

I looked out the window at the sunset that was painting the desert a deep bloodred. We'd just left Vegas, so we were nowhere near MAGIC yet. But I could feel Mircea's presence growing with every mile, like a magnet drawing me closer. "Life can be pretty strange, too," I said.

The outside of MAGIC is a group of nondescript stucco buildings in the middle of a sea of not-too-interesting canyons. There's nothing to distinguish it from any other ranch except its isolation and the fact that there aren't any horses or day-trippers in sight. But its looks are the least of its protections. Area 51 has less security; of course, it also has less to hide.

We arrived just as the place was starting to liven up. Not that it was obvious from the exterior, which was mostly housing for the human staff members, but thanks to Marcello's senses, I could feel the activity happening beneath the ground. There was the hum of magical wards, the bright wells of energy that meant vampires, the totally different magical signatures that indicated mages and other, less familiar sensations that might be Weres or the occasional Fey. It felt how a seismic meter might look right before an earthquake hit: too much activity in too small a space, just waiting to explode. I tried not to think about how accurate that simile might be.

I followed everyone else in, trying to remember not to duck through doorways. The low ceilings could accommodate my new height, but they still felt too close, too hard. Billy, wearing my skin, was escorted into an antechamber of the main senate hall along with Sal and Alphonse to cool their heels and await the Consul's pleasure. Considering how much she liked me, I assumed they'd be there a while. The other family members were ushered straight to Lord Mircea's rooms to hang out while the important types did their business.

The vamps had housed me upstairs with the other humans the one and only time I'd accepted their hospitality. Looking around, I could see why. Mircea's suite was a little too impressive, like an underground Renaissance palace, with lots of inlaid-marble floors, rich tapestries and crystal chandeliers reflected in too many mirrors. Three different hallways broke off from the foyer and an honest-to-God butler conducted us to a library where refreshments were milling around. The simple room I'd been housed in before was more welcoming, and far more Mircea, than this opulent blandness.

After a couple minutes of fighting off would-be blood donors, I started threading my way through the crowd. I'd almost made it to the hall when I stopped dead. Standing in the middle of the doorway was a vampire with big brown eyes, messy brown curls and a cheerful goateed face. Charming, if you ignored the whole cold-blooded murderer thing.

I could feel Marcello's unease mount at sight of the Consul's chief spy. I really couldn't blame him—it wasn't making me any happier. I didn't know why Marlowe was slumming with the help, especially with an important meeting about to start, but it probably wasn't a good sign. He tended to show up where the action was, but there was no way he could know anything interesting was about to happen here.

"You're not hungry?" he asked cheerfully.

"Ate before we left," I said, in Marcello's low voice. I was glad I didn't need my borrowed heart to beat, because it was suddenly in my throat. "I thought I'd pay my respects to the master."

"Lord Mircea is indisposed."

"Then I'll keep it short."

Casanova joined us, a suave figure in cool blue and white, with a bright print tie. He looked like he was heading for a posh party on a private yacht and managed to make Marlowe's dark, Elizabethan-era attire look like it came from a bad stage production. "I'd like to see him, too," he commented, "to thank him for my new position."

"I thought it was merely an interim appointment."

Casanova smiled slightly. "That's why I'd like to see him."

Several other vamps made tentative movements towards us, as if they were thinking of joining the party. Most didn't get a chance to see Mircea very often, and with Tony under a cloud, they probably planned to do a little groveling. And blame everything on the fat man before the big boss gets any ideas, Marcello added in my head.

Stop that, I thought back.

"How brave of you," Marlowe said genially. "He's not in the best of moods, these days. Most people have been keeping a somewhat…safer…distance." The newcomers scattered so fast I almost didn't see them leave.

"Just you two, then?" It was still very friendly. I felt cold sweat breaking out all over my borrowed body.

"We'll convey everyone's best wishes," Casanova said, apparently unfazed. Marlowe glanced at me. I didn't say anything, but I didn't leave, either.

He shrugged. "If you insist."

We followed him down a long hall to a large bedroom/sitting room combo. I could tell by the fist-sized hole in the door that it was Mircea's. It looked like things hadn't improved since my last visit.

Unlike the muted colors that predominated in the public rooms, it was awash in color, something I'd failed to notice on my previous visit because the lights had been off. They still were, but Marcello's eyesight was a lot better than mine, and easily picked out the bright turquoises, reds and greens of traditional Romanian folk art in niches and painted on a huge carved wardrobe. The pieces should have looked gaudy and cheap next to the rich but understated brown and cream decor, but they didn't.

Other than the colorful art, the first thing I noticed was the bed. The broken post was still listing to the left, and the covers were still rumpled but no one was in them. A quick glance confirmed that Mircea wasn't lurking in any of the room's dark corners, either. But someone else was.

"Tami!" It was out before I could stop it. Tami looked confused, Casanova gave me an "I can't take you anywhere" expression and Marlowe grinned.

"Thank you. I was wondering how to tell which of you it was," he told me pleasantly.

I was too busy goggling at Tami to pay him much attention. She looked older than I remembered, more so than should have been true for seven years, and she was too thin. Even more of a worry were her clothes—a rumpled tan suit with torn pantyhose—which would have told me something was wrong even if her expression hadn't already said that she was on her last nerve. Tami had always taken pride in her appearance, never flashy but always neat and clean. The fact that it looked like she was still wearing the clothes they'd nabbed her in really bothered me. But she was alive.

Casanova sidled up, probably wanting to be in position so I could shift us out. That had been the plan, in case anything went wrong. Too bad it wouldn't work now.

"Don't bother," I said, to get him to stop elbowing me in the ribs. "She's a null."

"What?" Casanova frowned at Tami and she frowned back, fear starting to replace the confusion on her face.

"It's okay," I told her quickly, hoping I wasn't lying. It didn't seem to reassure her much, probably because she didn't know who the hell I was.

"In what definition of the term is this okay?" Casanova demanded.

I shot him a look, but he had a point. Since my power follows my spirit, not my body, it had seemed simple enough to slip in to see Mircea in disguise and shift him out. Even if the Senate had rigged a null bomb to prevent that, it wouldn't be triggered by Marcello. I should have remembered: nothing was ever simple where the Senate was concerned.

"It was a good plan," Marlowe said, almost as if he'd been reading my mind. He tried to look sympathetic, but that grin kept popping back out.

"Except for the part about it being a complete failure?" Casanova inquired.

"How did you get Tami?" I asked Marlowe.

"We heard that the mages had a null in their holding cells and asked to borrow her for a time," he told me readily. "We thought it would be cheaper than using up a bomb every time you visit."

And damn it, I should have thought of that. Parking a null beside Mircea's bed was the perfect solution. Unlike a bomb, Tami was «on» all the time. And the fact that a live null's power was effective only over a very limited area wouldn't matter if she was sitting right next to him. She was just as secure this way as in one of the Circle's cells, and her presence ensured that, if I showed up again, I'd be trapped until the vamps could nab me.

Like right now, for instance.

"I didn't know until we started chatting that the two of you were acquainted," Marlowe added.

I said one of Pritkin's bad words. No wonder Marlowe looked so damn happy. The Circle had handed him a major lever to use on me without even realizing it.

I decided to just skip the part where we did the threats and the bargaining and the arriving at the obvious conclusion thing. "If she's a loaner, the Circle is going to want her back," I pointed out.

If possible, Marlowe looked even more pleased. That damn grin was going to crack his face pretty soon. "We'll think of something," he assured me. "Shall we?"

I sighed. It was a good thing that I'd dressed Billy up for the occasion, because it looked like we were going to see the Consul after all. "Yeah. Let's get it over with."

Tami stopped dead when we entered the Senate hall and just stared. There was plenty to look at, from the huge red sandstone cavern to the knife-edged chandeliers to the colorful banners that hung behind the ornate seats that clustered around the huge mahogany slab of a meeting table. But I didn't need to wonder what had caused her mouth to drop open like that. It was hard to concentrate on anything else when the Consul was in the room.

I thought at first that, just for a change, she had decided to wear something that wasn't still alive. But then the gold and black snakeskin print on her caftan undulated, sending a tide of glimmering scales rolling up and down her body. And a huge snake's head rose behind her face like a hood, with gleaming black eyes that watched me malevolently. I realized with a start that she'd skinned what looked like the granddaddy of all cobras, but somehow kept it alive. Augustine, I decided faintly, would have had fits.

Billy moved to meet me, and I was relieved to see that at least he'd solved the breast issue. Augustine's creation fit me like a glove down to the waist, where it billowed out in a bell skirt with a slight train. I wasn't into antique fashion, but I'd seen enough period movies to argue with him about authenticity: it didn't look like something Marie Antoinette would have worn to me. He'd only sniffed and informed me that (a) styles had quickly changed after the queen's head went for a meander without her body, (b) we were talking about magical fashion here, not human and (c) I was an idiot. It was kind of obvious why Augustine wasn't exactly a household name. You had to really want the clothes to put up with the guy.

But damn, he could sew. Or conjure or whatever. I hadn't really appreciated his skill back at Dante's, what with the near asphyxiation that went with it, but despite the fact that I was never going to outshine the Consul, I thought I looked pretty good.

The basis of the dress was deep midnight blue silk, but it was hard to focus on that because of what was happening on top. Or, rather, what appeared to be happening inside the dress, because the more you looked at it, the harder it was to remember that this was fabric and not a night sky, and that those were jewels and not an unimaginable swoop of stars. Somehow, Augustine had created a rotating band of diamonds that looked an awful lot like the Milky Way.

When Billy got up close, Marlowe flinched and stepped back. It took me a moment to realize why: stars are essentially millions of tiny suns. That probably explained the faint, disco-ball effect that the dress seemed to be throwing on the cavern floor, shedding a puddle of tiny prisms all around the hem.

"Cassie?" Tami was looking at Billy in disbelief, and I decided that switching back would make more sense than trying to explain at this point. Possession was not a skill I'd had when she knew me.

I slipped back inside my own skin and Marcello sighed in relief. Apparently, he hadn't enjoyed the cohabitation any more than I had. "About time," Billy muttered as he headed straight for my necklace. The tone clearly said that I'd be hearing about this later.

"It's okay, Tami," I told her, ignoring both of them. "I know you didn't do anything wrong. This is just a mix-up."

Marlowe laughed. "Mix-up? I don't think so." He'd apparently recovered from the singeing, although I noticed that he stayed a little farther back than before. There were tiny burn marks on his hose, the size of pinpricks, that I could swear hadn't been there earlier. "She's guilty as hell."

Tami had recovered enough from the initial shock to send him a pretty good glare. It looked real familiar, maybe because I'd been on the receiving end of a carbon copy very recently. "Jesse! He's your son, isn't he?" I would have gotten it before, only she hadn't had a kid of her own when I knew her. Or, at least, she hadn't mentioned one.

Tami's head jerked back to me. "Where is he? Is he all right? Are the others—"

"They're fine. They showed up a few days ago. I have them somewhere safe."

"Oh." She visibly sagged, and for a moment I thought she was going to end up on the floor. But she recovered in time to give me a hug that forced whatever air Augustine's contraption had left me out of my lungs. "Thank you, Cassie!"

"It's no big deal," I gasped. "You did the same thing for me once, if I remember. Although next time it would be kind of nice to get, oh, a phone call? You knew where I was."

"But not what you'd say. And it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."

"You know me better than that!" I couldn't believe she'd actually thought I'd say no.

"I used to know you better than that," she corrected. "But times change. You got out of that life. Made a new start. And besides, paranoia is a damned useful quality." We said the last together, laughing in spite of everything, because it had been the Misfit mantra that Tami had drilled into our heads practically every day.

Tami quickly sobered, however. "I was so worried, Cassie…the war mages wouldn't tell me anything, and I didn't know…Jesse's smart, but so many things could have gone wrong and I—"

"Nothing went wrong." I grinned ruefully. "Except that he wouldn't tell me anything, either. Not that it surprises me now. He's his mamma's boy. Only I didn't know you had a son."

"I didn't plan to get pregnant. When I found out, I hid it, and when Jesse was born…I had a talk with his father and he agreed to take him. His wife couldn't have kids, and he somehow persuaded her to swear the baby was hers. We thought that, as long as Jesse took after him and didn't show any signs of, of anything, he could get an apprenticeship one day, have a normal life. But when he was eleven—" she swallowed. "There started to be all these fires."

It took a second before it hit me. "He's a fire starter? Wow, that's really…rare." I caught myself, but it didn't fool Tami.

"And really bad," she said, her mouth twisting. "It put him straight on the Circle's shit list, and they locked him up. His father spent two years petitioning to get him out, hired good lawyers, did all the right things. But they finally had to tell him it was hopeless. Something else, something minor, yeah, maybe they could have helped. But not for Jesse." Her eyebrows drew together. "And I wasn't going to put up with that shit!"

"You got him out."

Her chin jerked up. "Hell, yeah, I got him out. They always treat us nulls like we're useless, but when I walk up to a ward, it damn well goes down! But he'd been in there two years! He told me all kinds of things, how they live—like they're in prison—how nobody ever touches them—like they're contagious—and the rumors."

"What rumors?"

"You haven't heard? The Circle is talking about starting mandatory operations, as soon as the kids are old enough."

I frowned. "For what?"

"To make sure they can't reproduce, can't pollute the precious gene pool, even if they somehow get loose!"

"It's a charge the Circle denies," Marlowe put in mildly.

Tami whirled on him in a fury. "The goddamned Circle wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the ass!"

Only Tami wouldn't think twice about telling off a master vampire in front of half the Senate, I thought, as Marlowe backed up a step. He raised his hands, mouth quirking in a smile he mostly managed to conceal. "I never said I believed them."

"But why are you here?" I asked. "I mean, I know you broke the law, but it wasn't anything that serious." Locking up a den mother in the most secure prison they possessed seemed a little overkill, even for the Circle.

Marlowe arched an eyebrow at me. "Blowing up half a dozen of the Circle's educational facilities isn't that severe? Oh, but I forgot to whom I was speaking."

I frowned at him, and then the rest of what he'd said registered. I transferred my frown to Tami. "Wait a minute! You're the Vixen Vigilante, aren't you?"

She scowled, running a hand over her creased skirt. "Do I look like a vixen to you?"

Considering what she'd been through, I thought she looked pretty good. But that didn't mean I agreed with what she was doing. "What on earth were you thinking?"

"I was thinking I needed to get my son away from those SOBs! But after I broke Jesse out, he begged me to go back in for some friends of his. And then they had friends and then the friends had friends…And sometimes wards weren't the only obstacles, especially once they figured out I could get past them. They started rigging booby traps, so I started carrying explosives and…it snowballed."

"Oh." I blinked, finding it hard to reconcile the crazed vigilante with the woman I'd known. Of course, she was probably having a similar problem with me.

"But the Circle set a trap and I fell into it, and now they want me to give up the names of everyone who's been helping me find homes for the kids. And I won't." She glared some more at Marlowe. "I don't care what you do to me. You damn vampires can drain me dry and I won't tell you a goddamned—"

"That's not why you're here," I told her, jumping in. A show of spirit was one thing; insulting the Senate was something else. I'd already done enough of that for both of us. "I want to see Mircea," I told Marlowe, pulling Tami behind me.

"He's indisposed."

"You already said that. I still want to see him."

Marlowe's expression blanked with that creepy speed the vamps sometimes showed. "No," he told me seriously. "I don't think you do."

"Where is he?" Alphonse demanded. He and Sal had been prudently keeping to the background, but they came forward now. One of the Senate guards moved to intercept, but Marlowe made a gesture and he let them pass.

"He had to be moved to a more secure area." Marlowe shot me a look. "I have need of every operative right now; I do not have the men to keep Lord Mircea safely confined."

"Confined?" The word didn't make sense in context with Mircea. He was a first-level master. They went wherever they damn well pleased. "What are you talking about?"

"He attempted to leave, I assume to find you. But he was not in full control of his faculties. We did not know what he might do if he escaped into the human population in such a state." Marlowe grimaced. "He was…displeased…to have his wishes denied. I have six men in critical condition who can attest to that fact."

I swallowed and tried for a neutral expression. I doubt I made it. When Mircea had been thinking clearly, he had ordered me away. If he was trying to track me down now, it meant that things had deteriorated—even faster than I'd expected.

"Where. Is. He?" Alphonse repeated, although it sounded more like "Don't make me eat your face."

Sal grabbed his arm while Marlowe just looked irritated. Clearly, he didn't think much of Alphonse's intelligence. It was a point of view I was coming to share. Challenging any Senate member wasn't bright, but antagonizing the chief spy was suicidal, especially for someone who was barely a third-level master.

When Marlowe ignored him, Alphonse let out what could only be called a growl. "Control your servant," Marlowe said, "or I will."

It took me a moment to realize that he was addressing me. It didn't make sense. Alphonse was not my servant. Alphonse was…oh, shit. "You're treating me as Mircea's second, aren't you?" It came out okay, even though my lips had gone numb.

"He named you as such while he was still…capable," Marlowe admitted.

Okay, this was bad. Really, really bad. It explained a lot of things, including why the Consul had yet to order me dragged off to a cell somewhere, but that was about the only positive aspect.

Technically, Mircea could appoint anyone he chose as his second, the person who spoke for the family in the event that the master was unable to do so for a time. It was the position Alphonse had held under Tony. But why on earth had Mircea chosen me? He had an entire staff at his home in Washington State, not to mention a vast family of adherents, any one of which would have made more sense as temporary guardian. I couldn't defend the family, which was a second's primary job. I had trouble just keeping myself alive! What the hell had he been thinking?

I licked my lips. It was a telling gesture that would have won me a smack upside the head from Eugenie, but they were suddenly so dry I couldn't speak otherwise. But nothing seemed to be coming out of my mouth anyway.

"Well, of course he did," Sal said. I felt an iron grip descend on my shoulder. It said, don't you dare pass out and disgrace us all. I straightened my spine slightly, and the pressure eased enough that I might get away with only a slight bruise. "The master and the Pythia have formed an alliance."

Marlowe's expression made it clear what he thought about that, but then the Consul spoke up and nobody else's opinion mattered. "Then you may speak for him," she told me.

I moved a little closer, but stopped before the reflection cast by my dress hit the table. I doubted the little points of light it was giving off would be more than a flea bite to her, but I didn't need any help pissing her off. I was probably going to manage that all by myself.

I looked up into that beautiful bronze face. "Why has Lord Mircea been imprisoned?"

"As you were told, for his protection. He was becoming difficult to control without inflicting damage. The snare also obviates the need for constant supervision."

"The snare? You mean you put him in—"

"We had no choice," Marlowe said quickly. "Nothing else could hold him."

Alphonse cursed and I bit my lip before I said something I probably wouldn't live long enough to regret. But despite my best efforts, I felt my blood pressure skyrocket. She was talking about the type of magical cage Françoise had tried to use on the Graeae. It was meant for dangerous criminals, which meant the designer hadn't worried about providing a lot of comfort—or about ensuring unconsciousness. The Consul's offhand comment meant that Mircea was all alone in a blank world going slowly out of his mind, with no comfort of any kind—no voice to talk to, no hand to touch. Nothing. I couldn't think of a worse fate.

"Are you going to accept that shit?" Alphonse hissed in my ear. His fist was clenched and he looked like a man who dearly wanted to run amok. "Because I—"

I stomped on his foot, hard, and amazingly, he shut up. "No." I looked at the Consul again. "Mircea must be set free. Immediately."

She inclined her head slightly. "You agree to complete the geis?"

"I didn't say that."

"Then he remains where he is," she said flatly. "We cannot cure him. In confinement, he cannot injure himself or others."

"He is being injured! The geis is driving him mad!"

"A fact you could prevent, if you chose." A flash of anger rippled across that usually impassive face. "If he had not named you head of house, I would order you locked in a room with him and we would have done with this!"

"If Mircea wanted that, he wouldn't have named me his second," I pointed out, thinking frantically. And just like that, I realized why he'd sent me away, why he had taken the only step possible to ensure that the Consul could not force us together. "He's afraid, isn't he?"

"What?" Alphonse was obviously lost, but Sal looked thoughtful. I was starting to wonder who really ran that partnership.

"You're Pythia now," she said slowly, working it out. "And the geis responds to power." Her eyes suddenly got wide. "Oh, shit."

That settled it. I was never going to assume Sal was slow on the uptake again. She'd gotten it a lot faster than I had.

For Alphonse's sake, I spelled it out. "When Mircea placed the geis on me, he was the most powerful of the parties involved, so it was under his control. It was supposed to be lifted before I became Pythia, but that didn't happen. And now Mircea is afraid that my power will override his. That, if we complete the geis, I won't be his servant—he'll be mine."

Alphonse looked like someone who had just had a load of bricks dumped on him. I left him to process things while I turned back to the Consul. "Tony had a portal," I told her abruptly. "He used it for his smuggling operation. You can use it to send Mircea into Faerie, where the effects of the geis will be lessened. He should be in control of himself there."

"The Fey will not allow it." The beautiful mask was back in place, and so perfect that I almost thought I'd imagined the other.

"The dark will. Their king and I have an understanding. And one of his servants is available to escort Mircea to the palace, so he will not be harmed on the way. All we need is a power source to open the portal." I gave Billy a metaphysical poke. I doubted that asking him to babysit a bad-tempered pixie was going to go over well, but I didn't have a choice. I didn't trust Radella. "Make sure she doesn't try to double-cross Françoise," I told him.

"And how am I supposed to do that?"

"She can hear you," I reminded him. For some reason, she'd never had a problem with that, even in our world. "Tell her the deal is off if she tries anything."

Billy streamed halfway out of the necklace to grin at me. "This has potential."

"And don't antagonize her!"

"Of course not." He put on his wounded face.

"That will not solve the issue at hand," the Consul insisted, ignoring my one-sided conversation. The snake's hood behind her flexed, a long, slow ripple that cascaded down into the gleaming caftan. I didn't know if that meant anything, so I ignored it.

"I've been working on a permanent solution." I had hoped to avoid bringing this up, considering how she was almost certain to respond, but I was out of other options. "There is a counterspell."

"There is not. Our experts all agree."

"Then your experts are wrong. The counterspell is contained in the Codex Merlini."

Marlowe was looking at me with dawning understanding. He'd been there when the Dark Fey king had given me the commission to find the damn thing, when I'd discovered it contained a way out of the geis. "You found it," he said softly.

I shook my head. "Not yet. But I know how to get it."

"You will tell me," the Consul said. It was not a question. "I will send for it, and if you speak the truth, I will order Lord Mircea released. You will remain here until it is brought to me."

"You don't understand," I said, trying to keep my temper. "It isn't somewhere, it's somewhen. I'm the only one who can get it. I've been working on it for almost two weeks now!"

The Consul just looked at me. For a moment, I was afraid she'd gone into one of her famous time-outs, which could last anywhere from a few minutes to a few days, but then she blinked. "Why should I believe that you wish to help one of us?"

"One of you?" I threw out my hands in exasperation. "Except for the blood-drinking thing, I practically am one of you!"

Her face broke into the first smile I'd ever seen from her. After one look at it, I hoped it would also be the last. "If that were true, you would be long dead for your defiance."

Okay. Death threats aside, we were making progress. "If I wished Mircea harm, why am I here?" I asked. "What punishment could I give him that would be worse than what he's already undergoing? If I wanted him to suffer, I'd just stay away. That's how you know I want to help."

"And what do you wish in return?"

Finally, we came to it. "I want Tami freed and the charges against her dropped."

"Cassie!" I heard Tami's excited whisper behind me, felt her eyes boring a hole in the back of my neck, but I swallowed the words I knew she hoped to hear.

She wanted me to demand that something be done about those damn schools the mages were running, but I knew better. The Consul might be able to pull a few strings over a single prisoner, but changing an entire area of Circle policy would be overreaching. She didn't have that kind of authority, and asking for something I knew she couldn't provide would only make me look like I didn't really want to help Mircea. I'd already asked for more than I thought I could get—stipulating that the charges be dropped instead of simply that Tami be freed. I wasn't going to do any better. Not tonight.

"In return, I will retrieve the counterspell and free Lord Mircea from the geis," I said instead.

The Consul didn't blink this time. "Done. But you will take one of us with you."

"I had planned to take Alphonse—" I began, but she cut me off.

"No. A senator."

I'd been afraid of this. Why settle for just saving Mircea when there was a chance she could get the Codex, too? Only that so wasn't happening. I hadn't gone through all this to put that kind of power into vampire hands. Fortunately, she hadn't specified which senator.

I smiled, and didn't even try to make it a nicer version than hers. "Agreed."