Embrace the Night

Chapter 22

It hadn't been difficult to snag the line with the orb's help, especially when I already knew where it was. Getting anywhere, I soon discovered, was a little harder. With Mircea, I'd thought of the lines as rivers of power, but this one was more like the rapids, with bumps and currents and eddies battering me every which way.

The bubble of protection provided by the orb kept the energy stream from frying me, but that was about it; there was no steering wheel, no seat belts and, worse, no brakes. I was slammed against first one side and then the other, before the thing flipped totally upside down, dropping me the length of my body before I was caught by the bottom of the sphere. It was the carnival ride from Hell, and I didn't know how to get off.

I gathered my stolen booty into a wad and hastily tied my skirts around it to keep it from getting slung all over the place. Then I set about trying to figure out how this thing worked. Through trial and error, I found that I could maneuver the small circle of protection by pressing on one side or the other of the orb, although it was nowhere near as easy as Mircea had made it look. A small rotation could cause me to go careening off in that direction for what felt like a mile. I quickly learned to scale back my movements, caressing the orb with tiny motions of my thumbs.

It was about as easy as trying to guide a plastic beach ball through the incoming tide using chopsticks, but slowly I got a little better. I managed to position myself close to the side of the line, which is where people seemed to enter and leave. The current was rockier there, not as stable as in the middle of the stream, and I got buffeted about even more as I tried to bump the bubble back into my world.

The ley line seemed to have a kind of skin stretching over it formed of extra-thick bands of power that made leaving even trickier than I'd expected. Every time I pushed at the line, it pushed back, forcing me to have to spend time maneuvering back into position again. But finally I managed to rock just the right way and half of the bubble cleared the energy field.

Which is when things went from bad to really, really bad.

The orb kept my feet and legs in place, suspended in the bucking, whirling energy stream, but I guess it didn't operate beyond the confines of the lines, because the part of me that was outside was totally exposed to the elements. I found myself hanging upside down, my hair blowing in a fast breeze, as I tore over the darkened city. My eyes were flooded with tears from the slap of frigid air, but if I squinted, I could see the Seine glittering far, far below, twining through Paris like a silver snake. I'd forgotten: ley lines didn't always follow the ground.

I couldn't scream, there was too much air in my face, and I could barely see. The pouch I'd made of my skirts ensured that they weren't in my face, but it kept bumping into me, hard enough to hurt. Damn it, what had he been carrying, anyway?

Even worse, although whatever gravity field the line exerted was keeping me from plunging to my death, it wouldn't hold once the orb slipped completely free. It didn't feel like that would be long in coming, because more of my body was coming into view all the time and I didn't know how to stop it.

I also didn't know how to use my rudimentary shields as a parachute, even if they were strong enough to bear my weight, which I doubted. War mages apparently learned all kinds of uses for their personal protection, but as I'd once reminded Pitkin, I wasn't one. I watched the pulsing river of power all around me and wondered if I'd just completely screwed myself. Then the ley line took a sudden plunge, like an invisible roller coaster, and headed straight for the ground.

I did scream then, although the sound tore out of my throat and away before I could hear it. My ears were filled with rushing wind and vertigo, as the line twisted and turned and suddenly headed back up again. For the next few minutes, it climbed and dove, spun and plunged, until I was so dizzy, I didn't even know which way was up anymore.

Dangling by only one leg, my body almost free of the small protection the orb afforded, I saw a huge, dark shape rushing toward me. I could see the line up ahead, and it was climbing again, high, so high, over the city that, if I fell, there would be nothing to catch me. Whatever the shape was, I had to grab it.

I pulled and yanked, freeing myself by inches as the dark blob grew bigger. It was a building of some kind, but I couldn't make out details. My hair was in my eyes, obscuring what little vision the wind and panic-induced tears had left me. I put a hand out blindly, and out of nowhere, a horned creature with a bored expression jumped in front of me.

My foot slid free of the line, and all my weight was suddenly hanging from my arms, arms that had grabbed the monster in a death grip and weren't letting go. My feet swung out over nothing, before slamming with the force of inertia into the side of something hard. The impact caused a shudder to rack my body, and for a moment my grip loosened. But the creature never moved, never so much as twitched, and carefully, I renewed my grip.

After a few seconds gasping for breath, I peered through a curtain of tangled hair to see a leering, doglike face sticking out its tongue at me. I blinked at it, but its expression didn't change. After another few seconds, my brain caught up and informed me that whatever my hands were clutching, it wasn't alive.

I was suspended from a stone gargoyle that looked out over what would probably have been a panoramic view of Paris had it been daytime. Below, tiny lights occasionally lit up bits of the world between the shadows, and a sliver of moon danced on the Seine. I was on top of Notre Dame. Somehow I'd come full circle.

My arms were tired, my shoulders ached and it was a very long way down. With a lot of muffled swearing, I hauled my body over the side of the parapet and dropped onto the floor. My knees gave way and I abruptly sat down, clinging gratefully to the heavenly feel of a non-moving surface. The stone floor was cold and wet with half-melted snow, but for a second I seriously thought about kissing it.

The stars seemed to be spinning around above me, so I sat there, panting, until they stopped. The orb had landed a few yards away, and I watched it pulsing its strange light against the high stone wall of the parapet. At least Pritkin couldn't follow me, I realized, and the idea cheered me up immensely.

I started searching the area for Pritkin's clothing, which had scattered everywhere when I landed and the knot in my skirts came loose. I collected it into a small bundle in front of me and set about carefully examining each piece. I'd gotten away with a pair of woolen trousers, a white linen shirt with drawstring ties at neck and wrists, a potion-studded belt, a pair of sturdy leather boots and some warm woolen socks.

I regarded the latter with a twinge of guilt. I hadn't expected him to be so literal, to even remove his footwear. Apparently, he'd believed that a bargain was a bargain, and I hadn't made any exceptions to my demand. Or maybe he'd felt bad about subjecting me to that. Maybe he'd thought he deserved a few cold toes, at least…Okay, no. Probably not. But still, the socks made me feel a little bad.

Not bad enough to keep me from putting them on, though. The boots were too large, but I pulled them on as well, lacing them as tight as I could. I'd lost my shoes somewhere over Paris, and I wasn't going to search for Mircea barefoot.

I looked through everything twice, then went back through it one more time, checking every seam for hidden compartments. I even held the little potion bottles up to the light, just in case he'd somehow stuffed a slip of paper into one of them, but no dice. The map wasn't there.

Of course not, I thought furiously. I'd hoped that he'd been so ready to assume I'd stolen it that he hadn't checked thoroughly before accusing me. But it looked like he'd been telling the truth. He really had lost it. And that meant it could be anywhere: still on the barge, trodden underfoot in the battle, or dropped as he dangled from his shields ten stories above the city. I would never find it.

I got up on tiptoe and leaned over the parapet, to see if anything might have fallen below. For the most part, the sky was brighter than the city, with buildings casting black shadows that wiped out everything in their path, like big slices of the world were just gone. But the famous rose window glowed as brightly as a searchlight against the black sky, illuminating the cobblestone expanse in front of the main doors of the cathedral. Nothing was there.

I was still standing there, trying to think what to do, when a brilliant yellow flash lit the night sky. I looked up to see half of an enraged, naked war mage leaning out of a ley line, his hair whipping across his livid face as he shot straight at me. I yelped and stumbled back, cursing myself. It looked like Pritkin wasn't as exhausted as I'd thought. And with his shields intact, he didn't need clothes or toys to access the ley lines. I scooped up his weapons in my transparent skirts and ran for it.

He landed right behind me, his eyes wild, his hair smoking from the energy that had leaked through his overtaxed shields. For the first time he looked like his father's son. I looked around frantically and spied a single wooden door inside the bell tower. Mercifully, it wasn't locked.

I saw Pritkin for a split second as I spun around to close it, silhouetted against the dim gray arches leading out to the parapet. He was almost to the door already, just a few steps behind me, as if he hadn't even broken his stride in leaving the line behind. I didn't try reasoning with him; his expression told me how well that was likely to go over. I slammed the door in his face, threw the bolt and fled.

The winding, claustrophobic staircase was so narrow that my dress brushed it on either side, and it was completely black except for the orb's dim glow and occasional tiny elongated windows that showed slivers of the slightly less black outside. I could see maybe two steps in front of me as I wound my way downwards, trying to hurry without slipping on stones that were already slick with hundreds of years of wear.

I heard a crash behind me, and burning bits of wood cascaded down the steps along with a lot of sparks. It looked like Pritkin had used a fireball spell on the door. Luckily, the curves of the staircase shielded me from most of it, while he had to traverse a minefield of fiery splinters in bare feet. Unluckily for me, he seemed to manage it just fine.

He grabbed me when I was barely halfway down the stairs, and the impact made me lose my footing. We tumbled, half falling, half rolling down the narrow, twisting spiral. I'd been holding the contents of his potion belt in the folds of my dress, and as I fell, little vials were slung everywhere. Some tumbled along with us, while others exploded against the walls, flooding the stairwell with a pungent stench that immediately brought tears to my eyes. Something must have splashed on Pritkin, because he cursed and let go.

I heard him falling, but I couldn't help him. I lost my grip on the orb, which went bouncing down the stairs, disappearing around a turn and leaving the stairwell in complete darkness. The only reason I didn't follow it was because I'd gotten my fingernails into one of the narrow windows, the only possible traction. The stench from the potions was unbelievable, but the cold night air from the window allowed me to breathe. I clung there, straining to hear over my own gasps, but there was no sound other than the wind outside.

"Are you hurt?" I finally yelled, but only echoes answered. I didn't hear so much as a groan from below. The stairwell was suddenly eerily quiet.

I bit my lip, but there wasn't really anything to think about. Even if I hadn't been worried about Pritkin, there was no other way out. There was only one staircase from the bell tower and I was on it. And ley-line travel was impossible, even if I was willing to risk that again, with the orb at the bottom of the staircase.

After another deep breath, I took the plunge, through a miasma of fumes and shattered vials that crunched under my boots. At the bottom of the stairs, the orb had halted at a wooden door, presumably leading outside. Next to its small puddle of light, Pritkin lay on his side in a crumpled heap, not moving. I forgot about caution and ran down the last few steps, kneeling in the small area before the door, desperately feeling for a pulse under the skin of his neck.

He was warm, which I took as a good sign, but for a long moment I couldn't feel anything else. Heavy strands of hair had wrapped around his neck, and I tugged them loose before trying again. I almost sobbed with relief when I finally found it, a tiny pulse that beat strong and sure under my fingertips. But a sticky wetness dripped off his jaw onto my hand, and after a little exploration, I found a nasty-looking cut on his scalp and another on his upper arm.

I propped open the door to let some of the vapors out, and turned back to find Pritkin on his feet. "It's only fair," he said nastily, before grabbing me by the shoulders and slamming me back against the unforgiving stone of the wall.

"Let go of me!" I twisted and fought, but he held me there while his eyes did a visual strip search by the faint light of the orb.

"Give it to me!"

"I don't have it!"

"No more lies!" Pritkin hissed.

"I never found it!" I yelled, pushing at him but getting nowhere. "Now let me go or I swear—" He shut me up by kissing me, hard and angry, so angry that I didn't know what to do except let him, silenced by him swallowing all my air. It was oddly like he was yelling at me in a new way, since all the old ones hadn't worked. I felt the scrape of stubble and the indent of his fingers through the silk, pressing me closer, then he tore away, those icy eyes vibrantly green.

"Tell me!"

Startled out of fighting for a moment, I stared up at him, panting. There was drying blood tightening the skin on his forehead and a blooming bruise on his chin, but his eyes were glittering brighter than I'd ever seen them. A sweet, heavy warmth started to spread through me, and despite the cold I could feel sweat springing to the surface of my skin. Suddenly the idea of Pritkin as half incubus seemed plausible for the first time.

The suggestion surged through my veins, almost like a drug. "I was looking for it when you attacked me," I said, not fighting it. I was telling the truth, and I needed to save my strength to escape. "I thought you had it on you, but it wasn't in your clothes."

"I said no more lies!" Pritkin kissed me again, hard, taking my lower lip in his teeth, biting. His lips were cold and a little chapped from the winter wind, but his kiss was deep, hot and hungry. My heart sped up, flight reflexes kicking in, but I wasn't pushing him away. Suddenly my hands were clutching his shoulders, my nails clawing at the bunched muscles they found there, and I was kissing him back, brutally.

I wrapped my right leg around his, feeling him hard against my silk-clad thigh, while he tore at the lacings on my back. I wasn't wearing much underneath the dress—the tight fit had made a bra unnecessary—which became obvious when he pushed the dress down to my waist. The feel of the freezing air on my skin slammed me back into my body, as he ran his hands over me. The only minor satisfaction was that he didn't look much better than I did. His skin was shiny with sweat, and it was running out of his hair and down the back of his neck. And despite everything, I wanted to bury my face in that limp hair, to lick that glistening skin, to bite that flexing shoulder.

"Where is it?" He grasped me by the shoulders, shaking me roughly. The motion caused the dress to slide even farther, the silky lining slipping over my skin with a soft hiss until it crumpled around my feet, the transparent fabric looking like a heap of plastic wrap. I was left standing there in the freezing cold, wearing only panties and thigh-highs and Pritkin's oversized boots.

Rage and hurt thickened my throat for a moment, so that all I could do was look at him, eyes burning, as he continued his search. He didn't strip me, but his hands ran over every inch, stopping only at the tops of my stolen footwear. "You don't have it on you!" He glared up at me accusingly, his hands still on my calves.

"As I told you!" It took everything I had not to kick him in the face.

"You had time to hide it!"

He started on the laces to his boots, while I furiously tried to think. I didn't think another denial was likely to do me any good, not when he wasn't even listening to me. "It drains your power, doesn't it?" I said instead. "Seducing someone who resists you?"

In a flash, he had my wrists pinned against the rock, his hips pressed up against me, between my legs. "Not when they're practically starved for it," he said softly. "It must be unsatisfying, lying with a corpse, night after night. I can feel the frustration in you, the desperation, the need."

I stared up into green eyes that glittered so brightly they might have been on fire. And for an odd, out-of-body moment, I really wanted to claw them out. "At least I know what Mircea is!" I spat. "Can your lovers say the same?"

Shock lit those eyes for an instant, before it was masked behind the certainty that I was bluffing. "And what am I?"

He'd had to guess about my weak spot, sensing the buildup of emotion from weeks of battling the geis but not knowing the real cause. But I didn't have to speculate about his.

"I knew as soon as I saw you," I said flatly, hating myself even as I uttered the words. It's never easier to twist the knife than with someone who once trusted you enough to bare his secrets. But I didn't have a choice. If he tried another suggestion, I honestly didn't know if I had the strength left to fight it. "You're half incubus."

A look flashed across Pritkin's face for an instant, like he'd been slapped, hard, and was trying to hide how much it hurt. "How did you know?"

I ignored the question. I had to do this while I actually had his attention, or there was no telling where this would end. "If I'm lying, why did I take your things?" I demanded, my heart hammering. "I could have been long gone before you showed up, if I hadn't taken the time to search your belongings. Why do that if I already had the map? Now let go!"

For a second, something like doubt flickered behind his eyes. Then his chin jerked out in familiar stubbornness. "I will let you go when you return my property."

"I can't return what I never had," I snapped, throwing everything I had into wrenching out of his grip. He didn't come after me and I snatched up my dress, before remembering that it was useless for concealment. I put it on anyway—the stairs were damn cold. "If you wouldn't mind," I said through gritted teeth.

His gaze moved down my body again and my skin tightened from just the pressure of his eyes. Then he blinked and looked away. With a quick gesture from him, my dress suddenly became a lot more opaque. I didn't thank him for it.

I headed for the door, only to have it slam in my face. "We are not finished here," Pritkin barked.

I whirled, so angry I couldn't even see, and tripped on the too long skirt. He helped me up and without a word turned me around and did up the lacings. His fingers were cool against my overheated skin, and swiftly competent. The only reason I let him touch me was the certainty that if I returned to Mircea like this, he'd kill Pritkin.

Not that that didn't have a certain appeal.

"Let go of me," I said icily as soon as he'd finished. I felt betrayed and absolutely livid, but my body wasn't smart enough to know it. It had liked the feel of his hands, wanted more of it, wanted it now. It was almost like there were two of me, one who heartily approved of the mage and one who would have dearly loved to see him dead.

Then something occurred to me that I should have noticed before. "The geis. It didn't flare."

"You said it yourself," Pritkin said tightly. "I am half incubus. I can break through geasa during feeding."

I stared at him, speechless, as a myriad of pieces clicked into place. Rosier could overcome the geis, so of course his son should have been able to do so. But he hadn't, at least not in our time. He'd preferred to suffer excruciating pain, on more than one occasion, rather than…what? Risk getting too close to me? Be tempted to repeat what had happened with his wife? A wife this Pritkin hadn't had yet, I realized. No wonder he wasn't so worried about using his abilities, wasn't so careful to avoid touching anyone.

A memory of how much touching had just been going on flashed across my mind and I felt a wave of heat rise in my cheeks. God, I hated him. But I hated the geis just a little bit more.

"I want the geis removed," I said abruptly. "That's why I need the Codex. Can you do it?"

He looked at me incredulously. "You expect me to believe that you have gone to such lengths for no more than that?"

"Why do you want it, if not for a spell?" I countered.

"To destroy it! It is the only way to be certain that it never falls into the hands of people such as yourself!"

"Give me the spell to reverse the geis, and you can do anything with the Codex you damn well please! I won't care."

There was dead silence for a minute, while he stared at me with a half-bewildered, half-angry expression. For the first time he looked like my Pritkin, the brash, sardonic, brutally honest man I knew. "Why did you not merely say so?" he finally demanded.

"I just did! Now, are you going to give it to me or not?"

Pritkin passed a hand over me, and I could feel my aura crackle. "You carry two geasa, not one," he informed me after a moment. "And they are oddly intertwined. I have not seen this configuration before. How did it occur?"

"It's a long story." And not one I could tell him anyway. "Can you lift it?"

"Perhaps. If you return my map."

"How many times do I have to say this? I. Don't. Have. It."

"If you didn't take it, then where—" his eyes widened. "My cloak!"

It took me a second, but I got it. A wide grin broke over my face that I didn't even try to make less than vicious. "That would be the one you were wearing when you stole the map, wouldn't it? The one Mircea grabbed before we left?"

Pritkin snarled and I grinned wider. He said a few words, none in a language I knew. Probably some ancient British version of "screw you."

"Are you going to give me the counterspell or not?" I demanded.

"Persuade the vampire to give me the map, and I will give you the spell," he finally said, although it sounded like it choked him.

I sagged back against the wall, suddenly exhausted. "Done."

We retraced our steps, but the cellar was empty and the raucous tavern on top of it was filled with people who were not Mircea. "Would he go after the Codex on his own?" Pritkin demanded.

"I don't think so." Mircea was after me, not the Codex. "But he'll know that you'll discover it missing pretty soon. He'll expect you to come after him. And he'll expect a fight. So he wouldn't have stayed here—it's too public."

"Where would he go?" Pritkin demanded.

I opened my mouth to point out that mind reading wasn't one of my skills, but abruptly shut it again. The rose window, I thought, seeing it lit up in my memory like a huge Christmas ornament. It was the middle of the night, and the streets around the cathedral had been deserted. Where better to hold a showdown?

I said as much and Pritkin made a noise that in anyone else would have signaled an incipient heart attack. But he pulled me back into the cellar and ripped a ley line open almost savagely, like tearing the air. A moment later, after another wild ride between worlds, we were pushing open the main doors of the old church.

On either side of us were long stained-glass windows, glowing faintly with the reflected light of a few dozen candles. Not surprisingly, they looked a lot more authentic than the ones in the casino, with the glass rolling in subtle lines toward the bottom of the panes, thicker there than at the top, brittle with age even two hundred years ago. More candles lit a sweeping line of similar masterpieces leading toward the darkened front of the church. Where Mircea stood, washing up at a holy water font.

"That is not possible," Pritkin said, staring at him in disbelief. He couldn't have sounded more shocked if Mircea had been sipping blood from a communion chalice.

Mircea must have heard us come in, but he continued what he was doing. He stood with his back to us, the candlelight on his bare skin causing his muscles to fall into sharp relief. He'd washed the river gunk out of his hair and now he threw it back, the water droplets shimmering in the light. The scene looked for all the world like a really good romance novel cover.

I sighed and Pritkin turned his glare on me. "He's a vampire!" he said, as if I hadn't noticed.

"Yeah. And?"

"I believe the mage is surprised that I do not burst into flames from the holy water," Mircea said, toweling off with what looked suspiciously like an altar cloth. I was a little surprised myself, considering that he's Catholic. But then I got a better look at it and realized that it, like the cathedral, had seen better days.

Boxes, barrels and casks were piled here and there, clogging all but the main aisle, which was marred by a lot of muddy footprints. Outside, I hadn't been able to avoid noticing that the probably saintly but definitely creepy statues around the entrance had been vandalized. It didn't look like the revolution cared for religion all that much.

"But, of course!" Pritkin sneered. "The water is not sacred at the moment! The Jacobins made certain of that!"

"They vandalized the cathedral before turning it into a ‘Temple to Reason, " Mircea agreed, probably for my benefit. "Which, considering their excesses, does seem somewhat ironic."

"They defiled it," Pritkin snapped. "Naturally it now embraces something equally foul!"

"But," Mircea continued, "as we are not of their ilk, let us make good on the name. I have found that most men can be reasonable, given the right incentive." He held something up in two fingers of one hand, while continuing to towel his hair with the other.

"That is mine!" Pritkin took a step forward before he caught himself.

"And you have something that belongs to me. I suggest a trade," Mircea said, turning around at last.

I saw it when he recognized Pritkin; it was nothing overt, but for an instant his body stiffened and his eyes slid to me. I shook my head briefly, but stopped when Pritkin glanced between the two of us. "What subterfuge is this?" he demanded. "Do you take me for a fool?"

"No, not a fool," Mircea said, with the air of a man who didn't know quite what to make of him. I wondered how long it would take him to put it together. Magical humans could live as long as two hundred years, so there might be a few still around who were alive at the time of the French Revolution. But they wouldn't look thirty-five.

"This is how we shall proceed," Pritkin said crisply. "You will take the map outside and leave it beside the ley line. I will pick it up and open a fissure. As soon as I have verified that it is authentic, I will give you the spell."

"He already knows the spell I need," I explained.

Mircea switched his incredulous look from the mage to me. "And you trust him to give it to you?"

"I am not the one whose honor is in question!" Pritkin said, furious.

"You kidnapped and tried to kill her!"

"I kidnapped her so I wouldn't have to kill her!"

"Mage, by all that is holy, I swear—"

"Holy?" Pritkin's sneer was the same as always. "You dare to even use such a term, you—"

"Shut up!" I yelled, and it echoed oddly off the sides of the cathedral, like a ghostly loudspeaker. I could not take one more minute of this. "We don't have a choice," I told Mircea more calmly.

"He has already proven himself treacherous! Trusting him again—"

"I'm not asking you to trust him. I'm asking you to trust me. Please."

Mircea didn't answer, but he crossed the space and grabbed Pritkin's arm, so fast that I didn't even see him move. "If you harm her, you will never see the map again," he said softly. "You will not live long enough to see anything again."

Pritkin tried to shrug him off, but found that he couldn't. "If you speak the truth, I have no need to harm her!" he said viciously. "Now release me!"

Mircea reluctantly complied, after a squeeze that made Pritkin set his jaw in pain, and we all trooped back outside. Pritkin stubbornly didn't rub his arm, although it had probably lost circulation, and he took care to keep us both clearly in view. Mircea put the map in the center of the cobblestone pavement and moved back half a dozen yards, which in vampire terms meant he may as well not have bothered to move at all. He could cross that much space in a heartbeat.

I looked pointedly at Pritkin. He waved a hand at me and uttered a few guttural syllables. Nothing happened. He frowned and did it again. "I didn't feel anything," I said, except my blood pressure starting to rise.

"It was not successful."

"You said you could lift it!"

Mircea's lip curled. "You can never trust a mage."

Pritkin glared at him briefly, but it wasn't even close to his best attempt. He looked preoccupied, a finger tapping against his lips. "Tell me, was a method of egress attached to the spells when they were placed, in the event that something went wrong?"

"Yes, but that's already been tried," I said, exasperated.

"What was it?"

I glared, but I had no choice but to answer. I didn't know what information he needed to make the spell work. "Sex with the originator or someone of his choosing. But nothing happened."

It wasn't as crazy as it sounds. The ritual to complete the power transfer from the old Pythia to me had required that I lose my virginity. It was a fairly standard clause in the ancient world, where sex played a part in everything from healing spells to worship. But it had given Mircea an idea. He had made sex the condition for the release of the geis as well.

It must have seemed foolproof: the geis would protect me until the ritual, whereupon it would be broken by the same act that made me Pythia, thereby ensuring that Mircea didn't end up bound to my power. It would have worked, too, except that the spell had been doubled before the transfer was complete. Tomas had afterwards served as Mircea's stand-in for the ritual, and I became Pythia right on schedule—but with the geis still alive and kicking.

"You are sure?" Pritkin insisted. "Because if the geis expands beyond its original parameters it becomes, in effect, a new spell. And in that case, the counterspell will not prove efficacious. That is the reason additional precautions are usually taken."

"The geis?" Mircea's gaze sharpened.

"Don't ask," I snapped, still glaring at Pritkin. "And yes, I'm sure!"

"Then there is nothing to be done," Pritkin said with a slight shrug.

"Don't lie to me. I need the real counterspell!"

"You already have it."

"I don't believe you!" I grabbed his shirt, not caring about the possible consequences. I felt like screaming in frustration. "Give it to me! I have to lift this thing. You don't understand!"

"I have done all I can! Now give me my property!"

"I'd sooner see it destroyed than give it to you!" I told him, so angry I could barely see. I should have known. Every time I trusted that man, every single time, I ended up like this, teary-eyed and fuming. There is a saying: insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Or maybe that was stupidity.

Pritkin swore. "Is outraged modesty worth so high a price?"

I smiled at him fiercely. "I guess I'm just vindictive like that."

"Give it to me and we part, if not friends, at least not enemies," he warned. "And believe me when I say, madam—you do not want me for an enemy."

"Maybe I didn't make myself clear," I said grimly, kicking the map back toward Mircea. "No geis, no map. Either lift this thing or you'll never see the Codex again. I swear it!"

Pritkin didn't reply, except by doing the last thing I'd expected. He threw off my hold as if it wasn't there and jumped straight at Mircea. I was knocked to the side, and by the time I sat up they'd already taken the fight halfway across the cobblestone expanse, back toward the cathedral.

Mircea might have been drained from the attack at the casino, but a master vampire is still a master vampire, something Pritkin was learning the hard way. The fight was over so quickly, it was almost a non-event. A vicious jab from Mircea's elbow sent the mage staggering back into the huge old cathedral doors, which he hit with a sickening thud. Pritkin must have been pretty drained, too, because his shields didn't manifest to cushion the impact.

He ricocheted off the doors and sprawled limply on the steps, in a pose that called to mind a cast-aside doll. Mircea nonetheless started toward him as I scrambled to my feet. "Mircea! Don't kill him!"

He looked up and hesitated slightly, then gave a small nod. He'd seen Pritkin in our time; he knew he wasn't supposed to die tonight. I ran forward, worried that it was already too late, that the cracking noise I'd heard had been Pritkin's skull. But when I knelt beside him, I couldn't find any major injuries. I checked his pulse, then pulled up an eyelid. He might have been faking it on the stairwell; I wasn't sure. But he'd been out cold on the barge, and if this wasn't the real deal, he was a damn fine actor.

"He's unconscious," Mircea confirmed. He could sense things like blood pressure, and he would know if the mage was faking.

Mircea carried Pritkin inside the cathedral and we covered him with his cape. The place was deserted and it was still hours before dawn. He would be undisturbed until he came around. But it was too quiet and the place had a weird air about it, not like a church where people regularly congregate but like one of those deserted crypts at Pere Lachaise, beautiful but forgotten. I didn't like leaving him there.

Mircea caught my arm, pulling me away from the mage. "He will live," he assured me. "But when he awakens—"

He had a point. Pritkin wasn't the type to give up, even with a possible concussion. And the last thing we needed was for Mircea to have to inflict even more damage. "Where to next?" I asked wearily. I was cold and hungry and now that the adrenaline rush was wearing off, my eyes kept wanting to close. I was really not looking forward to an exhausting search.

"We both need to rest before we go on your treasure hunt," Mircea said, echoing my thoughts. He frowned for a moment, and then his face cleared. "I know just the place."