by Karen Chance
“Here! Someone dropped this.” I looked away from his perpetual glower to peruse the yellow and black flyer he’d given me. It showed a man staring up a hill at three old crones. They sort of reminded me of the Graeae, only they had better hair. It informed me that it was a souvenir of the Lyceum Theatre’s performance of Macbeth, beginning December 29, 1888.
“Okay, great. We know the date. It’s a start, but I don’t see it getting us too far.” I tried to pull away again, but he stopped me, this time with words.
“The more you feed the geis, the stronger it will become. Not to mention that prostitutes in this era wear more clothes than you currently have on. You can’t go anywhere without causing a riot.”
“How did you know?” It was disconcerting to find out that I’d been wearing the equivalent of a sign on my back for years. Could everybody see it but me?
Pritkin gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I knew the first time I saw you together.”
I considered the situation and figured it was worth a shot. “I don’t suppose you could do something about it? We are in this together, after all, and I could probably think more clearly if—”
“Only Mircea can remove it,” Pritkin said, dashing what little hope I’d had. “Even the mage who cast it for him couldn’t do it without his assent. The best you can do at present is to stay away from him.”
I frowned. It was pretty much the same thing Casanova had said, but I wasn’t buying it. “I don’t know much about magic, but even I know there’s no such thing as a spell that can’t be broken. There has to be a way!” Pritkin’s expression didn’t change, but a momentary flash in his eyes told me I was right. “You know something,” I said accusingly.
He looked evasive but finally answered. I suppose he decided it would be faster to humor me. “All geasa are different, but most have one thing in common. Each has built into it a . . . a safety net, if you like. Mircea would not want to be hoisted by his own petard, so he would have designed the geis with a way out of the spell, should something go wrong.”
“And that would be?”
“Only Mircea and the mage who cast it know that.”
I stared at him, trying to figure out whether he was lying. His words rang true, so why did I get the feeling he wasn’t telling me everything? Maybe because no one ever did. “If this is 1888, Mircea hasn’t done anything yet. There is no geis. Or there shouldn’t be,” I added, since obviously something was happening.
“You have a habit of getting into unprecedented situations, ” Pritkin said with a scowl. “I’ve never heard of this particular scenario. I don’t know what will occur if the two of you spend time together in this era, but I doubt you would like the consequences.” He adjusted his long coat to minimize the ominous bulges underneath. “Stay here. I will look about and see if anything strikes me as unusual. I lived through this period and am more likely to notice anything out of place than you. I’ll return shortly and we will discuss our options.”
He left before I could react, leaving me staring witlessly after him. Magic users live longer than norms, true, but not enough to look about thirty-five at a century more than that. I’d known since soon after meeting him that there was more to Pritkin than met the eye, but this was getting really weird.
I sat down on one of the steps and hugged my knees, staring at a patch of threadbare carpet. The minimal outfit was cold and the horns were adding to my headache. I took them off and stared at them instead. The gold glitter was starting to flake off in pieces, showing the hard white foam beneath. I felt a little bad about that. Assuming we ever got back to our time, the girl whose locker I’d burgled was going to have to pay for a new one. Of course, if I didn’t get back at all, she’d need a whole new outfit.
I noticed that the stairway was getting colder but didn’t worry about it until a woman suddenly appeared in front of me. She was dressed in a long blue gown and seemed as solid as any regular person, but I immediately knew she was a ghost. That was due less to my keen sense of the paranormal than to the fact that she had a severed head tucked under her arm. The head, which had a Vandyke beard that matched its dark brown hair, focused pale blue eyes on me.
“A dashed improvement over Faust!” it said, rolling its eyes up to its bearer.
The woman stared at me with no expression, but when she spoke her voice did not sound pleased. “Why do you disturb us?”
I sighed as deeply as I could manage with the damn corset cutting me in two. Exactly what I needed, a ticked-off ghost. I was just thankful I hadn’t shifted as a spirit myself, or I’d have a lot more reason to be worried. I have time traveled before without my body, appearing in another era as a spirit or in possession of someone. But both states create bigger problems than putting up with an uncomfortable costume for a while.
Leaving my body behind means risking death unless I find another spirit to babysit it while I’m gone. Since the only one usually available is Billy Joe, this is something I try to avoid. Especially in Vegas, where all his favorite vices are so near at hand. The other downside is that traveling in spirit form saps my energy too quickly to allow me to do much unless I possess someone and draw energy from him or her. But I don’t even like drinking from the same cup as someone else, much less using their body.
After becoming the Pythia’s heir, I acquired the ability to take my own form along for the ride, although that has a downside, too. One possession resulted in an injury to the woman I was inhabiting—in the form of an almost-severed toe—but I’d been able to leave the wound behind when I shifted back to my own body. But if anything happened to me now, I was stuck with it. The upside of my current condition was that ghosts don’t have a lot of power over the living. They can cannibalize other spirits under certain conditions, but attacking a living body usually drains them of more power than they gain. Still, there was no reason to provoke her.
“I’ll be leaving soon,” I said, hoping it was true. “I have an errand to run and then I’m out of here.”
“You aren’t in the show, then?” the head asked, looking disappointed.
“Only visiting,” I said quickly, since the woman’s eyes had started to glow. That’s not a good sign in a ghost—it means they’re calling up their power, normally just prior to letting you have it. “Really, I want to leave, but I can’t yet. Hopefully, this won’t take long.”
“The other said the same,” she intoned, her dark hair starting to blow gently about her face as her power rose. “But after poisoning the wine, she did not go. Now you are here. This must stop.”
“She?” I didn’t like the sound of that. “The only person I brought with me is male. Maybe you’ve seen him? About five eight, blond, dressed like the Terminator? Sorry,” I said, as her forehead wrinkled slightly. “I mean, he’s wearing a long topcoat over a bunch of weapons. He’ll be back soon and we’ll get this sorted out.”
“It is not the mage that concerns us,” the ghost said sternly. “You and the other woman are the threat. You must leave.”
“She is somewhat territorial, I fear,” the head said, looking sympathetic. “We’ve been here such a long time, y’see. This land belonged to my family long before they built a theatre on it, and it sustains us.” He gave me a cheerful leer. “’Tis more fun these days. The demmed Roundheads closed all the theatres, as well as the pubs, the whorehouses, and all besides that wasn’t a church. They even prohibited sports on Sunday! They were kind enough to behead me before I had to live through that. But we triumphed in the end, didn’t we?”
“Uh-huh.” I was barely listening. Every ghost I’ve ever met wants to tell me the story of his life, and if I hadn’t learned how to nod and smile while thinking of other things, I’d have been driven crazy a long time ago. And I had a lot to mull over.
From the little I had managed to discover about my position, mostly from rumors Billy Joe overheard, the setup worked like this: if someone from my own era was messing with the timeline, the ball was in my court. It was my problem, and I’d have
to fix it. But if someone from another time was trying to interfere, that was the province of the Pythia from that person’s time. If that was true, the interference that had brought me here should have come from my lifetime. But the only person I knew who could skip around between centuries was in no position to do so. Billy had checked with some of his ghostly contacts and assured me that the wounds I put in Myra’s spirit form would have manifested as physical injuries as soon as she returned to her body. And there was no way she’d have healed damage like that in a week.
But if the woman the ghosts had mentioned wasn’t Myra, she could only be another Pythia. Maybe my power had gotten confused, or I’d been called in as help on a difficult problem. Since I didn’t know how this gig worked, anything was possible. If I could find her, I could plead for a little professional courtesy and get her to send Pritkin and me back where we belonged.
“Can you show me this other woman? Maybe I can convince her to leave and to send me home, too.”
The woman looked unsure, but the head seemed happy to help. “Of course we can! She’s not far,” it babbled cheerfully. “She was in one of the boxes earlier.”
The man’s enthusiasm seemed to help the woman decide, and she nodded brusquely. “Quickly, then.”
The ghosts followed me down the stairs, politely not passing through me, then led the way to the box beside Mircea’s. I parted the curtains and peered inside, but it was empty. Onstage a woman in a green medieval gown with huge, red-lined sleeves was gesturing dramatically. I barely noticed her. My eyes fixed on Mircea, who was staring at the elaborate gilt frame of the stage instead of the actress, with the fixed gaze of someone who isn’t really seeing it. I felt the same. One look at him and everything else suddenly seemed irrelevant. I had been bespelled before, but it had never felt like this. Then I’d known it was fake; I just hadn’t cared. But even knowing this was due to a geis, it still felt unbelievably real. I could hate that he’d done this to me, but I couldn’t hate him. The very thought was absurd.
“There.” The ghost pointed a finger in front of my face. “The wine has already been delivered.”
She indicated a tray with a bottle and several glasses that sat on a small table behind the seats occupied by Mircea and the blonde. “What are you talking about?” I forced my eyes to look at the ghost instead of Mircea, and something like rational thought returned. “Are you telling me that bottle is poisoned?”
“She said she would stay until it was consumed, but perhaps her power was insufficient.” The ghost looked pleased for the first time. I could almost hear her thinking, One down, one to go.
I ignored her, my panic at the thought of anything happening to Mircea so overwhelming that I could hardly bear it. I ran out of the box and collided with Pritkin, who had been standing there looking annoyed. He steadied us both or we would have ended up on the floor. “Let go!” I batted at his hands, which were gripping my upper arms painfully. “I have to get in there!”
“I told you to stay away from him. Do you want to become completely besotted?”
“Then you do it,” I said, deciding he might be right. I wanted to go in that box way too much for it to be a good idea. “There’s a bottle of wine in there, and it may be poisoned. You have to get it!” I didn’t know whether poison would kill a vamp, but I didn’t intend to find out.
He tried out his usual glare for a second, then his face changed and I knew I was in trouble. “If I do this, do you swear to speak with me for as long as I wish without shifting times, attempting to kill me or placing any spells, curses or other impediments in my way?”
I blinked at him. “You want to talk?” We never talked. Stabbed, shot at and tried to blow each other up, sure, but never talked. “About what?” I asked nervously, but Pritkin only gave me an evil smile. He had me over a barrel and he knew it. “Fine. Whatever. We’ll talk as long as you agree not to try to kill me, imprison me or drag me off to the Circle— or anybody else. And you don’t get an indefinite time, either. One hour, take it or leave it.”
“Agreed.” To give him credit, he didn’t waste time once the bargain was struck, but immediately let me go and slipped past the curtain. For several minutes I waited anxiously, but nothing happened. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and went back to the empty box so I could at least see what was going on. It wasn’t good.
Onstage, a skinny Macbeth with a drooping moustache was starting the dagger-of-the-mind soliloquy, while in the box, Pritkin had a real dagger at his throat, courtesy of the blonde. She was being shielded from the audience by Mircea, who stood behind her, but my box was closer to the stage and I could see them clearly.
Before I could think how to help Pritkin, things got worse when Mircea started to open the bottle. His eyes were on the mage and there was a slight smile on his lips. I didn’t like that look. Mircea has always been a strong believer in letting the punishment fit the crime. If he’d decided that Pritkin was trying to poison them, he was fully capable of forcing the entire contents of the bottle down the mage’s throat and waiting to see what happened.
Normally, Pritkin might have been able to get out of this kind of thing on his own, but he was trying not to call attention to what was happening. I sympathized with his dedication to the whole integrity-of-the-timeline thing, but getting killed over it seemed a little fanatical. I was Pythia, at least temporarily, and I wasn’t willing to go that far. Normally I wouldn’t lose much sleep over Pritkin’s death, but he had gone into that box because I asked him. If he died, it would be partially my fault.
I sighed and raised my wrist. A dimly glowing dagger practically jumped out of my bracelet to hover beside my arm. It was fairly buzzing with excitement over the prospect of a fight, but I wasn’t sure this was a great plan. Among other things, I had a feeling that it might decide to stab Pritkin instead of shattering the bottle. They had a history and, as far as I knew, had yet to fight on the same side.
“Take out the bottle only,” I told it sternly. “Don’t attack the mage—you know how he gets. I mean it.”
I got a faint bob of what I hoped was agreement before it was off. It flew over the balcony, straight for the bottle, which Mircea had just raised to Pritkin’s lips. It shattered the thick glass easily, causing dark red wine to cascade over the mage’s coat and splash Mircea’s formerly pristine white shirt. Mircea whirled around, the bottle’s neck still in hand, and saw me. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then stopped and just stood there, looking dazed.
Unfortunately my knife didn’t follow his example but decided to ham it up. Onstage, Macbeth was asking if this was a dagger he saw before him. My flashing, luminescent knife dipped and swooped over the startled crowd, causing gasps and even a few screams, before coming to a halt in front of the actor’s stunned face. It bobbed up and down for a minute, as if taking a bow, then flew back to me. Thunderous applause broke out all over the theatre, drowning out the rest of the actor’s lines.
As soon as the attention hog melted back into my bracelet, I felt the disorientation spread over me that indicated that a time shift was coming. “Grab my hand, quick!” I yelled at Pritkin. “Takeoff is any second.”
He had used the moment of distraction to jerk away from the blonde. She was between him and the way out, but he got around that problem by vaulting onto an unused seat and launching himself across the divide between the boxes. He almost slipped on the edge, but I caught his hand. The next minute, we were once more spinning through time.
Chapter 3
We landed in a heap on a white tile floor, and something fell with a splut right in front of my nose. My eyes crossed trying to identify the pale pink item. As soon as I did, I shrieked and scrambled back, knocking Pritkin off balance in the process. A crooked hand with skin the color and texture of old stone grabbed the offending item and returned it to a silver tray. “No guests allowed,” I was informed in a gravelly baritone.
I didn’t reply, being too busy staring at the platter of severed fingers that th
e owner of the voice was clutching between long, curved claws. I should have been more concerned by the greenish gray face, like mildewed rock, that was peering at me over the tray. It had a deep scar running from temple to neck and its only remaining eye, a narrowed yellow orb, was fighting for forehead space with two black, curled horns—not something you see every day. But I couldn’t seem to tear my attention away from the severed digits.
There had to be twenty or more, all index fingers as far as I could tell, that had been shoved between pieces of bread. The crusts had been trimmed away and a piece of ruffled romaine lettuce carefully wrapped around each one. Finger sandwiches, some part of my brain observed. I choked, caught between a retch and a hysterical giggle.
My gaze moved around what I now identified as a busy kitchen. Another of the stone-colored things—this one with glowing green eyes and bat wings—stood on a stool at a nearby island, pressing something into small, finger-shaped molds. My frozen brain finally thawed enough to recognize the smell. “Oh, thank God.” I sagged against Pritkin in relief. “It’s pâté!”
“Where are we?” he demanded, dragging me to my feet. I had trouble standing, both because I’d somehow lost a shoe and because a larger gray thing barreled past, knocking me back with a flailing tail. It was wearing a starched white linen chef’s outfit, complete with little red scarf and tall hat. The breast of the tunic had a very familiar crest emblazoned on it in bright red, yellow and black—Tony’s colors.
“Dante’s.” When Pritkin had fallen on me at the theatre, my concentration must have wobbled. We’d ended up a little off course.
“You’re sure this is the casino?” The mage was eyeing a nearby platter, which contained radishes that had been partly skinned to resemble human eyeballs. They had olives for pupils, and it almost looked like the pimentos were glowering at us. I took a closer look at the shield, a copy of which adorned every uniform in sight and appeared over a set of swinging doors across the room. It looked very familiar.