by Karen Chance
I could feel the geis react, faint tremors humming just beneath the skin, symptoms of an imminent explosion. And I didn’t care. I had somehow never noticed the tensile strength of his body, of those hands, lean and strong and achingly gentle. A flash of what it would feel like, pressed down beneath his weight, sent heat spiraling through me. I wanted that. Wanted everything.
And then he broke away, looking shocked and a little wild, like he hadn’t during the fight, when it would have made sense. I looked at him, with the rumpled hair and the dirty face, and wanted to kiss him again. Not because of a compulsion, but because he already tasted familiar, because I wanted more of the warmth that seemed to bubble up through my skin whenever we touched.
But I couldn’t. This Mircea was two weeks behind the times, so to speak. For him, the geis had just woken up. But the more contact we had, the faster it was going to grow. Putting my Mircea through even more hell.
I jerked away, and he let me go. But his puzzled gaze shifted from me to Françoise and Radella. “Is there something you wish to tell me, dulceata??”
I glanced at Françoise, but she gave me one of those French shrugs that I’ve never been able to interpret. Great. I looked back at Mircea and swallowed. “I don’t feel well,” I told him honestly. “Can we talk a little later?”
After an almost imperceptible pause, Mircea nodded. He stood up, still staring at me while issuing orders, sending the vamps who had shown up far too late scurrying around like frightened ants. I sat on the ground and watched them, wondering what they were doing until I saw that one of them had some kind of industrial vacuum. He started sucking up the remains of the mages who’d been hit by the Lot’s Wife spell. Another followed him, tossing shoes and other non-sand-like bits into a large-size garbage bag.
I no longer hurt anywhere, but I still felt exhausted and slightly removed from everything. Mircea must have hit me with a suggestion, the vamp equivalent of an all-night bender. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to try to shift again just yet.
Another vamp had started breaking apart the two withered corpses. They were so old that their bones snapped easily, brittle like dried sticks. They made a crunching sound as he shoved them into a garbage bag. I watched them, the shiny gloss of the suggestion dulling my reaction. I knew they must have been killed by a spell meant for me, but at the moment it didn’t seem all that important. The vamp managed to get both of them into one bag. It looked like he’d brought the good kind, because it stretched but didn’t break.
Another vamp suddenly ran screaming across the parking lot. He’d managed to set himself on fire trying to extinguish the Pinto. Mircea looked disgusted, but he moved off to help. He’d have probably done as much even if the guy hadn’t belonged to him. He was a senator, and had to uphold the Senate’s unofficial motto: always clean up your mess.
I felt a slight twitch of pain in my wrist, the kind that said the suggestion might be weakening and maybe I should think about finding some aspirin. But I didn’t move. I slumped there watching the stuff that never makes it into movies because it’s not exciting. It’s just people doing a job. After the action comes the fire extinguishing and the street sweeping and the explaining to families that somebody isn’t coming home. Only that last wouldn’t happen here. No one knew who the dark mages were or where to find them. If the man I’d killed had a family, they wouldn’t know anything was wrong until he just never came back.
The thought hit like a narrow, very sharp knife, slid right between the ribs. All the pieces of myself that I didn’t talk about, didn’t think about, came rushing back. And for a minute, I saw another scene.
Mac, a friend of Pritkin’s and briefly mine, had followed me into Faerie and died there to protect me. I still had nightmares about it, my mind showing me surreal images of his hands pressed to the trunk of a tree, the bark growing liquid and pushing up between his fingers. It flowed over his wrists, paralyzing him as it surged up his body until skin, hair, everything, was covered with the same monotonous, uniform gray. Like a shroud. I usually woke up in a sweat, my heart pounding, when it covered his face.
When there was nothing human left.
It hadn’t happened quite like that, but I couldn’t complain about my brain’s editing process; the reality had been worse. I was sick of being the person who got people killed. I’d sworn it wasn’t going to happen anymore, and yet here I was, not just the reason for it but the actual instrument. A man was dead tonight, and I’d done it. I’d killed him.
My mind was horrified, sickened, disbelieving. But my emotions appeared to be taking a break. I wasn’t trembling, wasn’t ill, wasn’t, seemingly, anything. The most I felt was kind of numb. Just numb. Despite the fact that the mage hadn’t been my only casualty.
Billy might have thrown the Lot’s Wife, but I’d donated the energy that made it possible. At the very least, that made part of the responsibility mine. But those deaths didn’t seem as real, somehow. I’d seen magic all my life, but it wasn’t the same. Vampires were magical creatures, but the ones at Tony’s had mostly used speed, strength and a lot of human weapons to kill. Some of what they did could be pretty spectacular, not to mention gruesome, but at least it made sense. Unlike an innocuous little ball that could drain five people of life in a matter of seconds. The gunshot, though, was something else. I’d seen the expression on the man’s face, watched the blood well up between his fingers from a wound I had caused. No. There was no denying that one.
And beyond the guilt and the pain and who knew what else I was going to feel when Mircea’s comforting numbness faded, I’d also probably completely screwed up the timeline. A lot of people were dead who weren’t supposed to be. Or were they?
It was really hard to think, and, ironically enough, time-travel paradoxes aren’t my best thing. But there were a few oddities I was starting to notice. Like, if this wasn’t how things were meant to play out, why hadn’t I met Mircea the last time I was here? And why had I seen only two dark mages that night instead of the dozen or so who’d apparently been hanging around? If Mircea and I hadn’t fought them off before, who had? Because I hadn’t seen anyone else volunteering.
“Cassie. We should go,” Françoise said gently.
I looked at her blearily. She appeared to be bouncing up and down without actually lifting off the ground, and all her edges were blurry. I decided that was probably me. “How did it go?”
She grimaced. “Don’t you remember?”
I thought back for a minute, to my experiences here two weeks ago. “You were captured. I remember freeing you, but that’s about it.” I hadn’t really wanted to know what a bunch of witches and a pixie were doing locked up in one of Dante’s lower levels. I’d run across them while here on other business and helped them get away, but I hadn’t asked a lot of questions. “I’m a little fuzzy on details,” I admitted.
“Zee mages, zey thought I was one of zee slaves, who ’ad escaped,” Françoise explained. “Zey locked me up, and when Radella tried to ’elp me, zey captured her as well.”
“Did you get it?”
She nodded gravely. “I was in the second group. I over’eard the spell when the others were sent. I was to go next, but zen ze news came that you were ’ere—ze other you,” she explained helpfully. I nodded. “Zey closed ze portal and left us, because everyone was told to drop what zey were doing and find you.”
Yeah, I bet. Tony had wanted me pretty bad. I suppose his goons thought they could finish the slave run later. I was suddenly viciously glad that they’d been denied that much, at least.
“I should never ’ave left you,” Françoise said mournfully.
“I want to see the damn rune before I go anywhere else with you people,” the pixie put in, crossing her tiny arms.
“Why?”
“Because you’re all completely insane!” Radella snapped. Her eyes were on the vamps, who were kneeling beside the diamond pattern on the asphalt, debating whether it was worth trying to scrape anything out of the cracks,
or if a new paving job would be easier.
“Because I could ’ave ’elped you,” Françoise said, looking at me like she wondered if maybe I’d gotten hit in the head. Which I had, as my throbbing jaw was busy reminding me. I’d forgotten about that until just now. Oh, yeah. That suggestion was going south pretty fast.
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” I told her. “And you might have gotten killed.”
“Better zan you!”
I shook my head, but stopped because it made it ache worse. “Since when is my life worth more than yours?”
“Since you became Pythia!”
From halfway across the lot, Mircea’s head whipped around. I repressed a sigh. Damn vampire hearing.
“Yeah. That’s kind of the point,” I said, grabbing her hand. Françoise looked confused, but I didn’t stop to explain that the Pythia is supposed to be the one protecting other people, not needing it herself. Mircea was striding toward us, looking determined, and I was not up to a verbal fencing match with him tonight. Hell, I lost those even when my brain didn’t feel like it was about to throb out of my skull. “Hold on,” I said, really hoping I could manage one more shift before I passed out.
Chapter 13
Sight down the barrel of the gun. Balance the butt on your other palm if you need to steady your aim. Squeeze the trigger lightly. You won’t have to apply much pressure to get it to fire. I breathed slowly and watched the paper target flinch as if the bullets were cutting through flesh. Almost all of them hit outside the target range, and not a single one was inside the circle that represented the vital organs. Ironic, that.
The unused storeroom had good ventilation for an indoor locale, so Pritkin had set it up as a firing range. Daily practice was supposed to improve my aim—at least that was the theory. So far, the paper cutouts at the far end of the room hadn’t had too much to worry about.
I released the empty clip and reloaded. The weapon felt the same as always in my hand; the weight, the smoky scent of the oil and powder, the almost-there smell of burnt paper, were all familiar after almost two weeks of this. When I’d picked the gun up today, that had seemed strange. Like killing a man yesterday should have changed it somehow, added weight, shown up on the sleek black surface like a mark. Something.
But it didn’t.
Nine mm Beretta, clip holds fifteen rounds. Maximum effective range is fifty meters, but it’s better close up. Remember to take the safety off and aim for the torso. Pritkin had been giving me pointers, determined, as he put it, to reduce my status as a giant bull’s-eye in the field. And that’s how I’d been thinking of the lessons: as something designed to help with defense. It had somehow never registered that defense with a gun usually meant shooting something more substantial than a paper target. That defense with a gun might mean killing.
I’d grown up around guns, had seen them so often that they were just a part of the scenery, no more remarkable than a vase or a lamp. I hadn’t owned one myself, because I wasn’t expected to fight. At Tony’s, I’d been among the group of useful noncombatants whom other people were supposed to protect. I’d been told a hundred times that, if an attack ever came, my job was to get to one of the many bolt-holes secreted around the place and wait it out.
There had been a certain comfort in my old position that I’d never really appreciated until now. Because the simple truth was, the moment you took on a position of responsibility, there were people who would look up to you, who would expect you to shield them, who would expect you to save them. I was used to running away, was damn good at it in fact, or I wouldn’t have lasted this long. I knew how to get fake IDs almost anywhere, how to change my appearance, how to blend in.
I didn’t know how to keep people alive.
My clip was empty again, the little click, click telling me to reload. I pressed a button and missed the grab. The spent clip bumped against my shoe before spinning away on the floor. I retrieved it and manually reloaded with fifteen new bullets.
Despite the ache in my wrist, my hands were steady. I kept being surprised by that, kept expecting to fall apart. I’d washed up in front of the bathroom mirror after we got back, letting the washcloth linger on the back of my neck, cool and soothing, while I waited to dissolve. Only I hadn’t yet. It was starting to really worry me.
Once when I was about six, Alphonse had come back from a job covered in blood, with a gash in his forehead that almost bisected the scalp, making him look like Frankenstein’s monster before the doc stitched him up. But he’d been in a rare good mood, because the other guys, the ones he’d left lying in pieces all over a basketball court, had looked worse. They’d taken out a couple of our people in a territory dispute and, since the dead had been Alphonse’s vamps, Tony had let him handle it. Alphonse had done his usual thorough job.
He’d seen me loitering around a corner, watching him with wide eyes, and had chucked me on the chin in passing. It had left a red mark on my skin, which Eugenie had scrubbed off later while inadvertently teaching me my first swear word. When I was older, I’d realized that he’d been making a point, coming back covered in blood to show that the insult had been properly avenged, but all I’d thought at the time was that it was strange to see him so relaxed. If it hadn’t been for the gore, he could have been anybody returning from a good night’s work.
It hadn’t bothered him either.
I aimed at the target again, which was still looking pretty pristine despite the fact that the air was getting acrid. I thought of Mircea’s face, his eyes reflecting fire, his body outlined in jumping, deadly flames. I wanted to touch him so badly that I could feel his fingers on my wrist, like a phantom ache. This was how reaching for something with a missing hand must feel, restless and empty and wrong. And I’d almost been left with it forever, thanks to a guy who thought that trying to electrocute someone was an acceptable way of saying hello.
The air rang with gunshots and the sound of ripping paper until the clicking noise came again. I reloaded, my eyes smarting from the smoke, wishing life was that easy. Just fill up what was empty, replace what was lost. But it wasn’t. Some things couldn’t be replaced. So you had to make sure you didn’t lose them to begin with.
It was all the way past crazy and out the other side that I was starting to agree with Alphonse.
That afternoon, Françoise and I made our way to the imposing marble and glass edifice in the main arcade where Augustine had set up shop. My run-in with the dark mages had made one thing very clear: if Mircea hadn’t been there, I’d have lasted all of about thirty seconds. If I had any hope of actually getting my hands on the Codex, I had to be better prepared. I just hoped Augustine could do what I had in mind.
Françoise had paused in front of the two large plate-glass windows that displayed selections from the ready-to-wear line. She eyed a slim flute of a dress with golden bubbles rising upwards from the hem, like champagne, but passed on without comment. Inside, a large chandelier took up most of the ceiling, its crystals formed by icicles charmed not to melt despite the candles scattered among its many tiers. Françoise immediately began browsing, although what she planned to use for money I had no idea. I’d offered to take her shopping, since she’d ended up here sans family, friends and wardrobe. But my bank account didn’t run so much to pricey boutiques.
I decided to explain things if and when she found something, and walked past the staff into the small workroom in back. Nobody tried to stop me. I was back in Elvira mode, wearing a black wig and an official-looking name badge. I’d discovered that it avoided a lot of questions if I looked like an employee, although it wasn’t doing my arches any good.
The workroom was so crowded with racks of garments and bolts of fabric that I couldn’t even see Augustine, but I heard someone muttering in a far corner. It turned out to be the great man himself, wrestling with a piece of golden fur that appeared to be trying to eat him. He threw it off and slapped a chair down on it, then started digging in the pile of papers on a nearby desk and muttering more.
I approached with caution, because the fabric was bucking and making a valiant attempt to throw off the chair. “Uh, hello?”
“It’s no use complaining,” he told me quickly. “There was no show, so nobody gets paid. Including me.”
“I’m not here about that.”
The fur gave a heave and almost dumped him onto the floor. He pretended not to notice, but he surreptitiously slid the edge of the heavy desk over to join the chair. “Then I’m at your disposal.”
“I’m thinking about a dress. Something French.”
“You can’t mean that complete hack Edouard,” he said, sounding appalled. “Darling, please. I can design you something better with my eyes closed. Hell, I could design you something better dead!”
“I don’t mean I want a French designer,” I tried to explain. “Just something that looks—”
“Forget Paris. Paris is done,” he told me airily. “Now, at what occasion are you planning to showcase my work?”
“I need an outfit that would fit into the late eighteenth century.”
“Oh, a costume party. I don’t do costumes.” Considering that Augustine’s personal style was a cross between Galliano and Liberace, I thought that was debatable. At the moment he was wearing a saffron yellow tunic with puffy sleeves over a pair of purple harem pants. A gold sash tied around his waist pirate style held not a saber but a pair of scissors, a measuring tape and a tomato-shaped pincushion.
“I don’t think you understand,” I told him patiently. “It’s kind of important.”
“Ah, you want to dress to impress,” Augustine said archly. “Well, in that case, you’ve come to the right place.” He pulled me over to a dressmaker’s form in one of the few open spaces in the room. With a mumbled word, it took on a very familiar, very detailed shape. I had a sudden urge to throw a towel over it. “Any special orders I need to know about?” he demanded. “Some of those can affect the design.”