by Karen Chance
“Can you remove it?” I asked, because Rhea was a gifted witch.
She shook her head. “Spells that intertwine two people are difficult. You normally have to have both parties agree, unless you have a key.”
“A key?”
“Something built into the spell that serves as an off switch,” Saffy said, flopping back down onto the sofa.
Yeah, heard that before, I thought. Mircea and I had been bound by another spell once, a geis which had needed a . . . somewhat creative solution to remove. I really hoped this was going to be easier.
“Does Lover’s Knot have one?”
Saffy blinked at me. “I have no idea. You can’t tell just from the feel of it.”
“How would you tell?”
“You’d ask the one who cast it—”
“Or the one who designed it,” Vi added. “Do you know who that was?”
I shook my head. “It’s a really old spell, which is probably why you don’t know it. It was lost for centuries, until a dress designer in Paris rediscovered it in an old grimoire. But he was only using a piece of it, in some magical couture he was designing. As far as I know, he never cast the whole thing.”
“But somebody did,” Vi pointed out.
I looked at Marco. “Any ideas?”
He’d been part of Mircea’s family for years, before he’d thrown in his lot with me. He probably still didn’t know everybody, because the family was huge and spread across the globe. But he knew more than I did.
Yet he was shaking his head. “Could be a lot of people. The master keeps a sizeable group of magic workers on staff—”
Vi snorted. “Yeah, crap magic workers. Only the dregs work for vamps.”
“Maybe at some courts,” he corrected. “But when it comes to senate members? They can take their pick.”
“Of who?” she challenged. “The covens might sell them some magic, from time to time, but they don’t work for them, and the Silver Circle sure as hell—” She stopped suddenly, at the increasingly sardonic look on Marco’s face. “You aren’t serious.”
“The Black Circle?” Saffy said, sitting forward, her drink forgotten.
Marco rolled his eyes. He seemed to like the newest additions to my court, but was frequently appalled at how ignorant they were about vamps. Sort of like the way they were surprised by how little anyone understood the covens—their sayings, their customs, their taboo topics, etc. I was running a regular United Nations around here, where everybody was having to learn to understand each other.
But it was a slow process.
“You act like they’re the only competent off-the-grid mages,” Marco said. “But there are plenty of decent ones—and some better than decent—who get into trouble with the Circle, or with some other magical organization, and need a place to roost. But they don’t want to join the dark—”
“So they join the vampires?” Vi looked like this was news to her.
“My father was one,” I confirmed. “He was a necromancer, which meant that the Circle didn’t trust him and wouldn’t employ him. He ended up working for Tony Gallina, one of Mircea’s masters, and then Mircea met him and tried to lure him away for his own court.”
“Did it work?” Saffy asked.
“No.” I sipped the drink she’d left by my elbow despite it not being smart, because it had been that kind of day. “He died before then.”
There was a small silence, and then Vi spoke again. “Well, if you don’t know who cast it, then you have two choices. There are people who specialize in spell removal, who can do some forensics and try to figure out the key. But they are probably also going to figure out who you’re linked with in the process, and if you don’t want that to get out—”
“It can’t get out.”
“Then your only choice is to get him—or whoever cast it for him—to agree to remove it,” Vi said.
I scowled.
Great.
“Which you need to do anyway,” she pointed out. “Or he could just have it recast whenever he wants.”
But Saffy was shaking her head thoughtfully. “Not if one of the components is missing.”
“Meaning?”
“Lover’s Knot—it’s in the name. Cassie said the spell works on incubus magic, using the emotional bond between two people as a conduit to link their power. So, we cast an anti-love spell. No conduit means no link.”
“There are anti-love spells?” I asked, surprised.
Saffy nodded. “If there’s a spell, there’s usually a reverse as well. Levitation charms to defy gravity, for example, can also be used to greatly increase it, making things too heavy to lift.”
“Why would anyone want to do that?”
Saffy looked at Vi, who grinned. “Tell her.”
“I had a little run in with a war mage once,” Saffy shrugged. “He levitated a bunch of weapons at me, and I didn’t have back up at the time, and couldn’t watch them all at once . . .”
“She cast an anti-levitation charm on them,” Vi said, looking proud of her lover. “Making them drop to the ground and stick there like glue. The last she saw of the guy, he was cursing and trying to pry a gun from the pavement, only to have it fire and shoot off his big toe!”
“I don’t know that it shot it off,” Saffy said. But she was grinning, too.
I reminded myself for something like the hundredth time not to piss off a witch.
“Give it a try,” I said.
Saffy obliged. Unlike Vi, she didn’t use magical cargo pants. Her clothing of choice varied, but today was skin tight jeans and an oversized tee that kept slipping off one shoulder. She kept her magic on her wrists, on dozens of thin black cords strung with tiny charms, amulets and jujus.
She took one off, strung with a cute little daisy charm in what looked like bronze, not that it mattered. She picked them up from flea markets and thrift stores, or wherever she found anything interesting. It was the enchantments that she put on them afterward that counted.
She put this one on my inner wrist and activated it with an incantation, her dozen or so other bracelets glinting in the sunlight as her hand moved in graceful, ancient motions.
The daisy heated up after a moment, and then sank into the skin, leaving me with what looked like a tiny tattoo. I waited, not feeling any different, but not being sure if I was supposed to. She looked at me expectantly, her kohl rimmed eyes bright.
And then she frowned.
“Did it work?” I asked.
“Not if the laser beams in your head are anything to go on,” Marco said heavily.
“I thought this would happen,” Vi said, as I got up to check things out in the mirror over the fireplace. “Emotions are tough, and spells that try to control them are hit and miss. This one is usually used to overcome an inconvenient crush—”
“Which is not what I have,” I finished for her. It might have been once, but Mircea and I had been through too much for that. We might not be together anymore, but Horatiu was right. I would probably always love him.
Wasn’t that a bitch?
Saffy tried again, layering the poor daisy with God knew what, but nothing worked. She finally gave up and did a quick glamourie for my eyes, which apparently didn’t need a charm. I peered into the mirror expectantly, because spells, as opposed to the topical variety of glamouries, took a moment.
“I hope this works,” I said worriedly. “The last one didn’t last a day.”
“That’s what you get when you pick up a glamourie in the same aisle as the hair dye,” Vi said cynically.
“I didn’t. It cost me a fortune and was supposed to be guaranteed for two weeks. I’m thinking of asking for my money back.”
“Which was one did you use?” Saffy asked.
“Something called Wild Orchid, from this spa in Chelsea.”
“It’s a good spa,” Rhea said.
“I guess, if they’re carrying the Orchid line.” Saffy looked impressed. “That’s coven made, from fey imports. What’d you pay? Like
eight hundred a pop?”
“Twelve.”
Vi whistled. “You got taken. Although I’m not surprised; places like that always mark everything up.”
“You pay for the privacy,” Saffy said. “Anybody asks, they don’t know you. Still, it should have worked.” She frowned. “Maybe you got a bad batch or something.”
“Or maybe you’re just a better witch,” I said, as I watched my eyes fade back to normal. I gave a sigh of relief, and I wasn’t the only one.
“Damned right,” Saffy said. “I was starting to think I’d lost my touch.”
Vi draped an arm around her neck. “You can practice your love charms on me, cutie pie. Hey, maybe that was how you got me in the first place.”
“Ha! You pursued me for weeks.”
“I don’t remember it like that,” Vi said, walking her toward the door. “I think I need to be checked for illicit charms. All over.”
Saffy laughed and they left, their arms around each other, and the meeting finally broke up.
Well, most of it.
Chapter Fourteen
Marco, of course, didn’t go anywhere. I hadn’t really expected him to. He did, however, send Rhea off to get me some dinner, which I appreciated.
The room was starting to get swimmy.
“How long have you known?” he demanded, as soon as the door shut behind her.
I didn’t even try to pretend that I didn’t know what he meant. “Six weeks.”
“Six weeks?” Black eyes flashed. “When were you planning to tell me?”
I wasn’t, I didn’t say, because I doubted it would help. I got up to get a refill, mainly to buy me a minute, but Marco took the glass from my hand. And when he returned, it was full of water.
I drank it anyway.
“There was a chance it wouldn’t be an issue,” I explained. “Mircea’s obsession is with Elena. Which is frankly a lot easier to deal with than the obsessions that some vamps get. He doesn’t want to rule the world or corner the stock market. He wants one woman. So, okay, we go into the past and bring her here—”
“Bring her here?”
“—then he doesn’t have an obsession anymore. And since she died, her absence wouldn’t affect the time line. It seemed . . . doable.” Marco just looked at me. “I thought that maybe, for once, we could head off a problem,” I said defensively.
He abruptly got up and paced across the room until he hit the conference table, before abruptly whirling back around. “You do realize that he’s about to lead a damned army into Faerie.”
“Of course, I do—”
“Then what the hell are you doing? Damn it, Cassie! He’s going to get killed and possibly take a lot of people with him! He can’t be off his head and do a job like that!”
“I get it—”
“I don’t think you do!”
Marco was agitated, something I could hardly blame him for, although I hadn’t expected it to be quite this bad. Although maybe I should have. Marco might be my chief bodyguard, but he’d had a number of other jobs over the centuries, one of which was soldier.
“What was the alternative?” I asked. “Tell the consul? Hey, your highness, just thought you ought to know that your general could go squirrelly and run off chasing his wife in the middle of battle—”
“As opposed to him actually doing it?”
“I don’t think he’s that far gone—”
“And if you’re wrong?”
He sat back down on the sofa, taking up a couple of Saffy’s worth of space, but the hugeness was part of his charm. I felt safer when Marco was around, despite knowing that he couldn’t fight some of things we were facing in this war any better than I could. But the more primitive part of my brain equated size with security, and I felt the usual calm, like a warm fuzzy blanket, wrapping around me.
Unfortunately, it didn’t look like I was having the same effect on him.
“I was barely twenty, and off on my first big adventure,” he told me seriously. “I was with a cohort going to relieve another one stationed in Judea—a simple enough assignment and a good first posting. Or it would have been, had our commanding officer not been more interested in opium laced wine than doing his job!”
“Marco—”
“He failed to order the usual precautions on the road one night, I guess thinking we were in safe territory. Or maybe smuggling in pretty boys from a nearby town was easier without a giant ditch filled with sharpened spikes in the way. In any case, while he was carousing, we got set upon by a bunch of brigands. That’s right, a Roman cohort was decimated by a bunch of local thieves, and do you know why?”
“Marco—”
“I survived because I was knocked out by an asshole on horseback wielding a mace, before I could find my shield. I woke up to a field of the dead, many of the rest fled, and our commander’s head on a pike! The army covered it up, of course, not wanting their rep to take the hit. And later showed up with a legion and wiped out the brigands. But that didn’t bring back all those dead boys, none of whom had to die if our leader wasn’t distracted!”
I drew my legs up. It allowed me to notice that my toenails were ten different shades of red, some with glitter and some not, because a couple of the younger initiates had gotten to me the other night, when I’d been too tired to care what they did. I picked at the rainbow while I laid it out for Marco.
“Okay, but again, the alternative is what? I tell the consul that Mircea is close to losing it and she’ll kill him. He’s powerful enough as it is. But with the Pythian power at his beck and call, not just through whatever influence he can exert on me but in his own right? He could challenge her. He could win.”
“He won’t. He doesn’t want the job. Never did—”
“And she’s going to believe that?”
Marco pursed his lips. “Hard to say. She plays her cards close to the chest, that one.”
“The rumor I heard is that she’s been planning to off him anyway, once the war is over and he’s no more use to her—”
“That rumor has been going around for at least a century.”
“Maybe because she’s been planning it for that long!”
“Or because she’s using it,” Marco said cynically. “If everybody assumes that she and Mircea are thick as thieves, it hampers his diplomatic work. Sometimes, you need somebody to believe that you might be willing to turn on the boss, given the right incentive. Helps them think they have a chance with you, so they spill their guts. Or give you concessions, in case they’re talking to the next consul.”
“Is that what you’ve heard?” I felt the knot in my chest loosen a little.
He shrugged. “Among about fifty other rumors. You know how it is.”
I sighed and went back to picking at my toes. “I hate politics.”
“Bad trait in a Pythia.”
“Like my hundred other bad traits?”
He grinned slightly at that. “You grow on a person.”
He did, too, but right now, that didn’t help. “Whether she kills him or not,” I pointed out, “she’ll almost certainly remove him and put someone else in his place—”
“Good!”
“No, not good. Nobody else can lead this thing.”
“You don’t know that—” Marco began, but I steamrollered on. Because I did know that. I’d been getting a thorough education in vamp politics lately, more than I wanted, frankly. And none of it was good.
“The other senates—God, you know what they’re like! They’ve spent centuries hating each other’s guts and the war didn’t change that. Even with all Mircea’s charm, and all the friends and alliances he’s built up over the years, its still like herding cats. Everybody is suspicious of everybody else, everybody is using the war as an opportunity to jockey for favor or grab for power, everybody has their eye on what comes after without worrying about the fact that there isn’t going to be an after if we don’t pull together!”
“That’s the senates for you,” Marco said, ey
eing me.
“Exactly! Mircea is the only one who has been able to sort of, kind of, keep them in line. Without him, we don’t have an army, we don’t have an invasion, we don’t have anything—except a colossal mess!”
“There’s got to be somebody else—”
I shook my head. “Nobody that enough people trust. This whole alliance was Mircea’s baby. Nobody thought he could do it, could form six squabbling senates into one, even to avoid a possibly world ending war. But he did, and now he leads it—or at least the army part of it—and he’s the only one who can. You talk about people dying? Remove Mircea from the equation and people start freaking dying, Marco.”
“So you’ve been trying to salvage this thing by giving him what he wants,” he summarized.
“What he needs,” I corrected. “You know how it goes otherwise.”
Marco frowned, but he didn’t debate it. He’d had his own struggles with the vampire affliction. In his case, it had been over his wife and daughter, who had been butchered while he was away at war. He’d come back to find their decomposing bodies in a ditch, something that he’d blamed himself for throughout his long life.
But unlike Mircea, Marco had never been powerful enough to lead a vampire family. He’d always worked for someone else, so whenever his mental issues started to cause trouble, he was just traded away to another master, making him somebody else’s problem. It had been a hard life, and a precarious one, since some masters preferred to stake their problems rather than trade them. Not to mention that nothing was done about the underlying factor.
Until, that is, he landed at the Pythian Court, with a whole gaggle of little girls who needed him desperately, and who he could save.
It had seemed finally to calm the turmoil in his mind, which is what had given me the idea about Mircea. After all, while really old vamps weren’t common, they weren’t entirely unknown, either. Marco himself was something like two thousand years old. The consul, the leader of the North American Vampire Senate, was even older. If vamps got past the bump in the road that their obsession caused them, they were virtually immortal.
If.
“What’s the plan now?” Marco asked, huge arms crossed over an equally massive chest. “You can’t bring Elena here if she didn’t die.”