“Her vampire master put her under a dúthracht. It is conflicting with the Pythian Rites, which have yet to be completed, ” Pritkin said curtly.
“Oh, bloody hell.” Mac sat down on his stool, looking shell-shocked.
“Answer me!” If I’d dared to touch Pritkin, I’d have shaken him within an inch of his life.
“I don’t know enough about the rites to say for certain if there is a way out at this point,” he said unhelpfully. “The ceremonies are held within the Pythia’s court, and there are few records kept on anything connected to the office.”
“What about witnesses?” I hoped I didn’t sound as frantic as I felt. “The ritual was done for Agnes once, right?”
“That was more than eighty years ago. And even if any witnesses still live, they would be of little use. Most of the ritual is carried out privately. The only people who know the complete procedure are the Pythia and her designated heir.”
“Myra.” Great, I was back where I’d started. “What about the geis then?”
“You are already doing what you can by staying away from Mircea. That will at least slow down the process. There is no other remedy, other than having it removed.”
“Then how do I do that?”
“You don’t.”
“Don’t give me that! There has to be a way.”
“If there is, I don’t know it,” he told me, sounding tired. “If I did, I would tell you. Unless the ritual is completed, it will continue to draw you to men, but the geis will oppose any except Mircea. And it will likely grow worse over time. The dúthracht is spiteful when it’s opposed.”
“But . . . but what about Chavez?” I asked desperately. “He touched me and nothing happened. I didn’t go writhing all over the ice rink!”
“You were at the ice rink? Why?” Pritkin was back to looking pissed. I couldn’t have cared less.
“To get that.” I gestured at the duffle. “I didn’t want to take it into Dante’s.”
“So you left it unattended in a public arena, where anyone might pick it up?!”
“It was in a locker,” I said sullenly. “And can we get back to the point? I felt something start to build when Casanova touched me. It was nothing like what just happened, but it felt—I don’t know. Like it could get bad fast. Only he dropped my hand before it flared. But Chavez didn’t affect me at all, and that was later. So if you’re right and the reaction is strengthening, shouldn’t it have been worse?”
Pritkin looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know.”
“The only reason I can think of,” Mac mused, “is that the geis determines the amount of threat by reading the interest level of any prospective partners, and reacts accordingly. Casanova was likely somewhat attracted to you and this Chavez wasn’t. Casanova was therefore identified by the geis as the wrong match and as a potential problem, and warned off. But Chavez, although also the wrong one to complete the bond, was not interested in you, and therefore was not perceived as a danger.”
Mac looked pleased with himself, while Pritkin and I stared at each other in mounting panic. As if by mutual consent, neither of us made the obvious connection. I did not want to go there. Ever.
“Of course,” Mac continued obliviously, “when there’s a mutual attraction, the reaction is stronger because the warning is going both ways . . .” He trailed off awkwardly.
“Okay.” I put a hand to my head, which had started throbbing in time with my pulse. At this rate, I was going to be the youngest person ever to die from a stress-induced stroke. “How do I deal with this thing?” I asked Mac, because Pritkin was busy trying not to look horrified.
Mac scratched his stubble-coated chin. “Usually, there’s a way out built into these things, especially the dúthracht. It has a habit of causing chaos, and I can’t imagine anyone putting it in place and not giving himself an escape route. But only two people are likely to know what the safety net is.”
“Mircea and whoever cast the spell.”
He nodded. “And the mage was doubtless someone disavowed who was under the vamp’s protection. He isn’t going to risk losing that to help you, even if we could figure out which of the hundreds of rogue mages—and that’s just the ones in this country—Mircea used. Of course, there aren’t a lot with that kind of skill, outside of the Black Circle. But that doesn’t help greatly. Say we could narrow it down to a few dozen, we’d still have to find him or her, and if that was easy it would have been done long ago.”
“Is there anything that can slow this thing down, make the reaction less . . . extreme?” I asked Mac, but it was Pritkin who answered.
“Once we cross into Faerie, it may not be an issue. Like the rest of our magic, the geis should not work well there.” He was still apparently admiring the blank wall. “I, er, think this would go more smoothly if you waited elsewhere. Mac can look at your ward when he finishes with me.”
I didn’t argue. I grabbed another Coke, scooped my weapons into the duffle and left, taking it with me. It was a measure of how shaken Pritkin was that he didn’t object.
I sat on a rickety stool at the counter and thought things over. There was little I could do, except to avoid attractive men until I could get into Faerie. I hoped Pritkin was right and the effects would be less there, maybe enough to buy me time to find Myra. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was the best I could do. I drank my soda and looked around for something, anything, to keep my mind off the image of a mostly naked Pritkin getting a sword carved into his taut gold skin.
I sat out front for more than an hour, leafing through a couple of huge black binders filled with tattoo designs. There was everything from voodoo veves to Indonesian tribal designs, but most were traditional magical symbols and Native American totems. I figured out pretty fast from the descriptions under the photos that all of Mac’s designs came with some sort of supernatural benefit. I didn’t see the sword he was doing for Pritkin among them, but maybe it was a special order.
The two volumes were divided into categories and levels. First, someone selected the main thing they wanted the tattoo to do. Some were for protection, with specialties for cuts and abrasions, blood loss, fire damage, head trauma, poison and frostbite, among others. The length of the list made me wonder why anyone wanted to be a war mage. It also made me curious why, before today, Pritkin hadn’t had any tattoos. There were some that sped up healing, but although I’d seen him heal almost as fast as a vamp, he hadn’t been wearing them. Unless they were somewhere I hadn’t seen. I dragged my mind away from that image and quickly flipped over a few more pages.
There were also a lot of offensive spells, with a division between stuff like better vision and enhanced hearing and a whole list of nasty things to do to your enemies. I didn’t linger over that section, not wanting to know what the Circle’s war mages had in mind for me. I also found out that not everyone could get every tattoo. What kind and how many you could have depended on your level of magical ability. The images drew their power partly from the natural world, so they worked to a limited degree like talismans, but they also fed off a person’s innate magic. It sounded sort of like a hybrid car that used electricity to extend the gas mileage. There was a long, complex chart in the back of the books for assigning yourself a range from which to choose. I didn’t completely understand it because I’d never been tested for that sort of thing. Magical children are usually graded by ability early, so they can be shunted towards an appropriate apprenticeship, but of course, Tony had already known what he had planned for me.
I discovered that there were limits to what even a powerful mage could support. Someone with a snow leopard tattoo to aid her in moving silently and a spider for help in weaving illusions, for example, had to subtract a certain number of points from her powerbase for the energy those two enhancements used up. Unless she was very strong, she probably wouldn’t be able to support another major improvement. It was all very complicated, even with the chart, and I finally lost interest. None of this helped me figure out how to get
past whatever block the Circle had put on my ward.
Pritkin finally emerged, looking pale and a little ill, and I took his place in back. I didn’t mind Mac checking on my problematic protection. He and Pritkin needed me alive until they reeled in Myra, so he had a vested interest in fixing it if he could. I was a little worried about the geis acting up, but apparently I wasn’t Mac’s type. I didn’t get so much as a twinge from the hellish thing, even when I removed my tank top. I wasn’t wearing a bra, but I held the shirt in front of me and Mac’s hands were as impersonal as a doctor’s.
“Can I ask you a question?” He was poking at my back with something that resembled an extremely fuzzy pipe cleaner. It didn’t hurt, but it made my aura itch.
I repressed the urge to wiggle. “Sure.”
“Why are you doing this? You seem . . . that is, you don’t strike me as particularly vindictive.”
I glanced at him over my shoulder. “What am I supposed to be vindictive about?”
He shrugged. “John said you plan to kill this vampire, Antonio. I’m assuming he deserves it, but . . .”
“I don’t strike you as a homicidal nut?”
He laughed. “Something like that. If you don’t mind my asking, what did he do to you?”
I thought about it while he changed instruments. The easy answer was “everything,” but I didn’t want to get into a long conversation on a topic that, even on a good day, managed to depress me. But avoiding it entirely might not be smart either. I didn’t need Pritkin to get any hints that Myra interested me a lot more than Tony at the moment. I decided on a partial truth. It wasn’t like I didn’t have plenty of legitimate grievances against the fat man.
“Revenge isn’t my main goal. I guess you could say that I want to retrieve some personal property.” I jumped as a spark suddenly arced over my skin. Mac’s new instrument made my aura crackle, like it was filled with static. I sat very still to avoid shocking myself again.
“He stole something from you?”
I repressed a sigh. Apparently, Mac wasn’t going to be satisfied with the short version. “Twenty years ago, Tony decided he wanted a competent seer at his court, someone he could trust. But accurate seers are few and far between, and honest ones aren’t likely to work for a member of the vampire mafia. He finally decided that what he needed was to find one he could bring up from childhood to be loyal. And, as luck would have it, one of his human employees had a young daughter who seemed perfect for the role. But even though my father had been on Tony’s payroll for years, he ignored the order to bring me to court.”
“Your father was a rogue?” Mac asked. He seemed surprised.
“I don’t know what he was. I was told he could communicate with ghosts, so I guess he had some clairvoyant ability. Whether he was a mage or not—” I shrugged. One of these days, I hoped to ask him—about that and a lot of other things. “All I know is that he was one of Tony’s favorite humans. Until he told him no, that is.”
“Surely he must have known what the vampire’s reaction was likely to be.”
“I assume he planned to flee with my mother and me, since refusing Tony isn’t considered healthy, but he never got the chance. And Tony felt that the betrayal, as he viewed it, deserved more than a mere assassination. So he paid a mage to construct a magical snare, which he used to trap my father’s ghost after he rigged my parents’ car to explode. He’s been using it as a paperweight ever since.”
Mac’s hands had gone very still on my back. I glanced behind me to see him staring at me blankly. “You aren’t serious . . . are you?”
I turned back around. “Yeah. From what I understand, it’s only about the size of a golf ball, so it could be anywhere. Tony has three houses and more than a dozen businesses, and those are just the ones I know about. I don’t feel like searching through them all so I thought I’d let him tell me where it is.” I actually assumed he had it with him. It would be Tony’s style to carry his trophies along even when fleeing for his life.
Mac was just standing there, his hands on my shoulders. He looked stunned for some reason. “Haven’t you ever been tempted?” he finally asked.
“Tempted to do what?”
“You’re Pythia. You could go back, change what happened. ” He moved so he could see my eyes. “You could save your family, Cassie.”
I sighed. Sure I could. “You don’t know Tony. Besides, I thought the idea was for me to help guard the timeline, not to interfere with it myself. I could end up changing something vital and possibly make things even worse.” Make that probably, with my luck.
His gaze sharpened. “But, technically, you could do it.”
“Yeah, I could keep my parents from getting in the car that Tony rigged to explode, but if I did, my life would have been completely different, along with who knows how many other people’s. And, knowing Tony, he’d have managed to kill them some other way,” I smiled grimly. “He’s persistent like that.”
Mac regarded me searchingly, to the point of making me uncomfortable. “Most people would view the power as a great opportunity to advance themselves,” he finally said. “It could bring you, well, almost anything you wanted. Wealth, influence—”
I gave him exasperated eyes. “The only thing I want is a nice, uncomplicated life. With no one trying to kill me, manipulate me or betray me.” And where, if I messed up on the job, I didn’t get anyone killed. “Somehow, I don’t think the Pythia gig is going to help me with that!” I was tired of the inquisition and I wanted to get dressed. “Are you done?”
“Oh, right,” Mac replaced his instruments in a small case and looked politely away so I could get dressed. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
“The good.” Why not try something different for a change?
“I think I can fix it.”
I blinked at him in surprise. I’d been expecting to hear that there was nothing he could do and that I’d have to go into Faerie with no protection. “Really? That’s great!”
“Do you know anything about how your ward works?”
I shook my head. “Not a lot. My mother somehow transferred it to me, but I don’t even remember it. I was only four when she died. For years, I thought it was a regular ward that Tony had put on me as an added safeguard.”
Mac looked almost offended. “Regular ward! No, I guarantee you’ll never see another of the like. It’s hundreds of years old and priceless, one of the Circle’s real treasures.”
“It’s a tattoo, Mac, not a work of art.”
“In fact, it’s both.” He stretched out his right arm and pointed to a small brown and orange hawk near the bend in his elbow. “Watch.” He muttered something, then took hold of the loose skin in the crease of his arm and pulled. A second later a small, metallic bird glimmered on his palm, its wings outstretched in flight like the one on his arm. It took me a moment to realize that it was the one on his arm, or rather, the one that had been there. Now there was only a bare, bird-shaped patch of skin. I picked up the small metal object. The feathers and detail were gone. It looked and felt like solid gold. For a moment I suspected sleight of hand or some trick, but after letting me examine it, he put it back in place and I watched it dissolve into his skin.
“What is that?”
“A red-tailed hawk. It increases the power of observation. Doesn’t help the eyesight, but if you want to notice more about your surroundings and retain the knowledge, you can’t do better.”
Something was bothering me. “The books out front said that there’s a limit to how many tattoos anyone can support, even the strongest mage, because each one takes some of your magic to maintain itself, and even more when it’s used.” I looked him over, almost dizzy with the number of squirming images all over his body. “How can you wear so many?”
He grinned. “I’m not a super-mage, Cassie, if that’s what you’re asking. There are two types of tattoos. The ones I etch directly into someone’s aura feed partially off his magic, so of course there’s a limit to
how many anyone can support. But ones like my hawk or your pentagram draw their power from outside sources, so there is no limit to those. Except, of course, to your ability to afford them. The enchantment process for even a small one can take months—I shudder to think what went into your ward.”
“So you’re an advertisement for what’s available?” Personally, I’d have made people flip through the books outside rather than turn myself into a walking billboard.
“In my case, it isn’t a choice. To other people these are enhancements—to compensate for some part of their magic that isn’t as strong as they’d like or to add power in an often-used area. But to me they’re necessities, unless I want to retire from our world entirely.” He saw my confusion and smiled slightly. “I had a run-in a few years back with a spell that ate through my shields and attacked my aura. The physical wounds I sustained in that fight healed, but the ones in my metaphysical skin were permanent. That’s why I didn’t realize you were under a geis until you told me. With my own aura so damaged, I have to concentrate to read other people’s.”
I stared at him, horrified at what he’d so casually revealed. It wasn’t only what had happened to Mac that freaked me out, but the knowledge that there were spells that could actually do something like that. The more I learned about the mages, the scarier they got.
“But with the wards, you’re okay, right?” I kept my attention on his face so I wouldn’t focus on my own aura, to reassure myself it was intact and undamaged. Under the circumstances, it would have been tacky.
Mac seemed to understand where my thoughts were going anyway. He waved a hand in the air and my bright red and orange flames suddenly sparkled between us like a cheerful fire on a cold night. “My wards compensate to a degree, Cassie, but they’ll never again be like this—a seamless, perfect blanket of protection. Most people couldn’t get past my defenses, but war mages aren’t most people. Sooner or later one of the dark ones would have found the chinks in my man-made armor, the places where the wards don’t overlap perfectly. I was removed from active duty as soon as anyone realized what had happened, and told I couldn’t take the field again.” He saw my expression and grinned. “It’s not all bad. I’m in much less danger these days!”