One of those dark eyebrows lifted in a very familiar gesture. “Why should I tell you? I know what you are. I try to be open-minded about these things, at least when the sorceress is young, pretty and thoughtfully wears so few clothes.” He ran a single finger up my spine, dancing lightly along the vertebrae. “You have less on every time we meet—I applaud the trend.” His words were light, but his eyes were intense on my face. “But however trying Augusta may be at times, her death would be more so.”
“Then help me prevent it!”
“But are you here to prevent it? You rescued a man who slipped us poison—”
“Someone else slipped it to you! He was trying to take it away!”
“—and will not even give me your name. Yet you ask for my trust.”
“If you think I’m an enemy, why rescue me? Why not let Dmitri do his worst?”
Mircea’s mouth curled into a predatory smile. “A show of strength is often useful on these occasions, and I do not care for the man. Dmitri’s tastes are well known, and I find them . . . displeasing. Depriving him of a prize was no hardship. ” His hand smoothed down the bow of my back, and my spine turned liquid. “Now, little witch, you are going to tell me what you are doing here, and explain some very curious events at the theatre two nights ago.”
I stared at him, my mind blank. The truth was impossible if I had any hope of not messing up the timeline more than it already was, but he would smell a lie before I finished getting the words out. There was only one possibility that might work. “Take me to Augusta, and I’ll think about it.” When he hesitated, I forced a laugh. “The great Mircea, afraid of an unarmed girl!”
His lips quirked upward with slow mirth. After a moment, his expression slipped into a true grin, one that made him look years younger. He raised my hand and kissed the palm. “You are quite correct, of course. What is life without a taste of danger?” He tucked my arm into his. “Come, let us see what Augusta can make of you.”
Despite the crowded ballroom, Augusta was not difficult to find. She and another female vamp, a petite brunette, had commandeered a spot on the other side of the room and cleared a space on the floor. A crowd had gathered around them, laughing and calling out encouragement, although I couldn’t see the attraction. The two vampires appeared merely to be standing in the middle of the circle.
We stopped by the vamp in the toga. “Your Augusta is making herself very popular,” he observed.
Mircea looked pained. “She is not my Augusta,” he murmured, and the vamp laughed. He’d seemed plain before, with flyaway brown hair that looked like he went to Pritkin’s barber and a wind-chapped complexion. But laughter changed the face entirely, adding animation to the whiskey-colored eyes and charm to the expression. When he laughed, he was handsome.
“That’s not what she says.”
“As you should know better than anyone, Consul, some women are prone to exaggeration . . . and fits of temper.”
“The more passionate ones,” he agreed. “Although they are frequently worth the trouble. Speaking of passionate shrews, how is your Consul?”
“She is well. I wondered that you did not ask before.”
“Your news fair drove all else from my mind.”
“Shall I tell her so?”
That produced another chuckle. “Only if you wish to incite a war, my friend.” The vampire hadn’t so much as glanced at me, which I’d assumed was due to my status as party snack. But his eyes suddenly slid in my direction. “And who is this? Are you beginning a collection of dainty blondes, Mircea?”
The Consul smiled at me, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Mircea’s grip tightened a fraction. “Are we not permitted to bring guests, Consul?”
“Guests, yes. As long as they are one of us, or human.”
He tilted my chin up with a finger. Something shifted behind his eyes, a killer peeking out from behind the jovial mask. “Very pretty. And very powerful. You will answer for her actions, of course.”
Mircea bowed slightly and the Consul left to work the room, chatting and talking, back to charming in a blink. I repressed a shiver. “They don’t seem to like magic users here,” I said weakly.
“They can complicate matters. Different precautions must be taken than are needed for our people.”
“I’m surprised he let me stay, then.”
“You caught him in a good mood. Augusta and I recently removed a problem for him.”
“I’m not planning to cause any trouble,” I assured him fervently. Mircea just looked at me, a wry quirk to his lips. “I’m not!”
“Why would I doubt you? Merely because the first time we met, I was almost poisoned, and the second, I came very close to a duel?” His smile broadened. “Fortunately, I don’t mind trouble. If, as the Consul said, the reward is worth it.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so we watched the women for a while. I still couldn’t tell what they were doing, possibly because they had their backs to us. The brunette was in pale blue, the icy color embellished with too much lace, but Augusta wore a gorgeous off-the-shoulder champagne satin gown with a gold and cream brocade train. I might not like her, but there was no question that she knew how to dress. The full skirts blocked my view for a moment; then something tore through the middle of them, coming straight at me.
“Oh, no! He’s loose!” Augusta’s voice rang out over the room, shaking with laughter. A wild-eyed, naked creature scrabbled on hands and knees for the edge of the circle, leaving a trail of droplets behind him. They were black and oily looking against the deep green. Right before he could reach me, something snapped his head back, throwing him twitching onto his side.
Augusta had a leash in her hand as she walked towards him, one end of which was looped around his neck. He lay on his back, quivering in terror, as she stood over him. “Up,” she said impatiently, tugging on the leash.
It forced his chin up, and I got a glimpse of his face through a snarl of greasy black hair. His mouth worked with pain, then tightened into a rictus of rage, distorting his features beyond recognition. But I knew those beetle black eyes. I’d seen them in more than a few nightmares.
“Jack,” I whispered, and he stared up at me blindly.
“What’s wrong?” the brunette called. “I thought you liked to play with women!”
“I think he prefers the helpless kind,” Augusta said, trailing her long fingernails down his chest, hard enough to leave red welts among the sparse hair. “So they call you the Ripper, do they?” she crooned. “By the time I’m done with you, you’ll truly deserve the name.”
The man curled into a ball in a vain attempt to protect himself from those daggerlike fingernails, and I gasped when I saw his back. It had been lacerated until the skin hung in strips, what little there was of it. Mircea noticed as well. “If you don’t let him rest soon, Augusta, he’ll die and spoil your fun,” he observed mildly.
She laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said with a coy look.
Mircea frowned and knelt by the man’s side. He looked up after only a moment. “You’ve made that madman one of us?” he asked incredulously.
Augusta shrugged. “I’ll dispose of him when I’m finished, or you may, if you like, for all the trouble he gave you. But you will have to wait.” She casually stroked the side of Jack’s face, an almost tender gesture, and he gave a desperate, broken cry. I realized with sickened disgust that she’d thrust one of those long fingernails through his right eyeball. “I like this one. He screams so nicely.”
Mircea shook off Jack’s hand, which had grasped his trouser cuff in a silent plea, and Augusta dragged her captive back to the center of the space. Better to show him off, I supposed. Mircea glanced at me as I struggled to show no emotion. “How did you know who he is? Augusta only unveiled him tonight.”
“I heard a rumor,” I managed, after swallowing hard. “How did you find him?”
“He found us. We were looking for someone else.” Jack screamed as the brunette ground her heel into
his groin, and I flinched before I could stop myself. “She’ll grow tired of him quickly enough, once he breaks,” Mircea said. I didn’t comment. They would find out soon enough that it’s hard to break an already fractured mind.
My attention was diverted from Jack by the sight of two ghostly figures. They had moved from among the assembled spectators into the circle itself, unseen by the crowd. One was the intriguing creature from earlier, still a featureless blob; the other was Myra.
I froze. On the edge of the circle stood the chief pain in my butt in all her spiritual glory. It was easy to recognize her since the only other time we’d met she’d also been in spirit form. I could hardly believe my eyes, especially since she looked healthier than before I’d stabbed her. Her fair hair, which had hung in lank, unwashed strings the only other time we’d met, was combed and shining. Her face was pale but she looked like she’d gained a few much-needed pounds. How the hell had she recovered so fast?
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
Mircea thought I was talking to him. “You wished to see Augusta. There she is, safe and sound.”
“To right a wrong, of course.” Myra’s voice was high and sweet, like a child’s. It didn’t go well with her expression. If looks could kill, I’d already be out of her way. “Isn’t that what we were trained to do?” She was staying near the brunette, not coming any closer. I wasn’t sure whether that was because Augusta was there, too, or because the brunette’s body offered her a shield from my knives. I freed my hand from Mircea’s cloak, just in case, but he caught my wrist.
“That is a pretty trinket you’re wearing, but I would not advise sending anything deadly at Augusta. You can see what she does to those foolish enough to attack her.”
I ignored him. “What wrong?”
“Oh, but I forgot,” Myra added sweetly; “you weren’t trained, were you? How dreadful.”
That singsong voice was really starting to get on my nerves. “This isn’t a game, Myra.”
“No,” she agreed. “It’s a contest, for very high stakes. The highest, you might say.”
“Meaning what?”
Mircea followed the line of my gaze but of course saw nothing. “To whom are you speaking?”
“Meaning you aren’t fit to be Pythia.” She regarded me out of eyes that were such a pale blue, they were almost white. I assumed they weren’t that light when she was in her body, but at the moment it was creepy. “Agnes was old and dangerously unstable when she appointed you. If her decision had gone through the usual review process, she’d have been laughed out of the hall. But she skipped all that, didn’t she? She went behind everyone’s backs and fucked up a system that’s been in place for thousands of years. I’m here to fix that.”
“By killing me?”
“Nothing so crude. Let me give you a little lesson, your first and last, all in one,” she said pleasantly. “Any being that travels in linear time is defined by its past. Take that past away, or change it, and you redefine that being.” She smiled, but there was acid in it. “Or do away with it completely.”
“I know that.” What I didn’t understand was why she was here, in this time. If Augusta had just turned Jack, then it looked like I was back in the 1880s. If Myra wanted to change my past, she was a little early. “Do you have a point?”
“What is happening?” Mircea demanded, looking back and forth between the vampires and me as if he realized he was missing something.
“Do I have a point?” Myra mimicked. “God, you’re thick. I know first-year initiates who catch on faster!”
She glanced at Mircea, and I tensed. I really didn’t like her expression. “If you want to kill me, why attack him?”
“You still don’t get cause and effect, do you?” Her voice held genuine astonishment. “Let me spell it out for you. Mircea protected you most of your life. Why do you think Antonio never lost his temper and killed you? Why did he open his arms and welcome you back after you ran away? If Mircea is removed, his protection is removed. And that means you die, long before you become a problem for me.”
The ghostly creature behind Myra jerked slightly, as if it didn’t like this information any better than I did. It moved those huge eyes back and forth between the two of us, its color shading from a silvery hue to dark purple. Odd flutterings starting around the edge of its diaphanous shape and, with no further warning, it changed. The pale, almost featureless face grew a mouthful of deadly-looking fangs, and the eyes flooded with dark red, like old blood. I stared at it in shock, but Myra didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she thought I was grimacing at her.
“And did Agnes become a problem for you?” I demanded. I was assuming that Myra had been the woman at the theatre who had poisoned Mircea’s wine. How she’d recovered so fast I didn’t know, but if she was here, then she could have been there. And it wasn’t as if there were a lot of other contenders. I couldn’t know whether the poison she’d used was the same kind that had killed Agnes, but the similarity in method was interesting. “Is that why you killed her?”
Myra laughed as if I’d said something genuinely funny. “That’s against the rules, or didn’t you know?” she asked. Then she stepped into the brunette’s body and disappeared.
Mircea gripped my upper arms. “Are you mad?”
“The brunette,” I gasped. I didn’t say any more, because the vamp Myra had possessed suddenly hurtled herself at Mircea. He grabbed her around the throat before I had a chance to blink, holding her away from him. She twisted and fought, but her reach wasn’t quite long enough. Not that it would have made any difference if it had been. Apparently, to Myra a vamp was a vamp. She didn’t understand that the brunette was a child compared to Mircea, and that he could break her as easily. But she was a fast learner. In less than a minute, Myra flew out of the woman, disappearing into the crowd.
The brunette collapsed, sobbing, clutching Mircea’s feet and begging for forgiveness almost incoherently. “She was possessed—she didn’t know what she was doing,” I told him.
He lifted the hysterical vamp to her feet and looked at me over her head, his face darkening with anger. “Vampires cannot be possessed!”
I thought of Casanova but decided not to debate the point. “Not by most things,” I agreed, my eyes on the crowd, which had grown with the advent of violence.
I’d invaded a vamp before, a first-level master. The difference was that I’d done it by accident, not knowing about that facet of my power, and almost scared myself to death. It hadn’t done him much good either. But Myra could obviously manage it at will, and there was a whole roomful of vampires for her to choose from.
“What is out there?” Mircea pushed the sobbing vamp towards Augusta—her master, I assumed—and started to examine the crowd himself, those quick dark eyes taking it in, no doubt memorizing the faces. Too bad that sort of thing wouldn’t help.
I didn’t have to answer, because a woman who might have walked straight out of Versailles, in cream-colored panniers and a two-foot-tall headdress, lurched out of the crowd. She didn’t make a beeline for Mircea as I’d expected, but staggered drunkenly about the circle, careening into Jack, who was huddled off to the side, trying to disappear into the shadows. They went down in a tumbled mass, naked, dirty legs entwined with embroidered satin, until Augusta snatched up his leash and yanked him away.
The vamp didn’t get up, but stayed in the middle of the floor, limbs thrashing, head rolling, eyes showing white. It looked like she was fighting the possession, trying to throw Myra out. If she succeeded, it would really help. My knives could rip through flesh as easily as spirit, but I couldn’t risk attacking when Myra was clothed in someone else’s body. Her puppets might not deserve an untimely death, not to mention what it would do to the timeline.
Several vamps started toward the woman, looking concerned, and I grabbed Mircea’s arm. “Get them back! I can stop this if I get a clear shot.”
“No! You are not killing the host merely—”
“I??
?m not going to touch the host,” I said as the woman screamed and clawed the air. “Once the spirit realizes it can’t control her, it will come out. As soon as it does—”
I stopped, but too late. Normally, Myra wouldn’t have been able to hear a whispered comment from yards away, but in a vamp’s body, she also had a vamp’s hearing. The woman’s head raised and she gave me a smile that was halfway between a grin and a grimace; then she collapsed. One of the women who had been trying to help her suddenly darted back into the crowd, no doubt with a passenger on board. Damn it!
I searched the crowd for the new host, but when I finally spied her, she’d fainted into the arms of a young vamp. Myra was playing hide-and-seek. “Watch the women,” I told Mircea, hoping Myra would overhear. She’d been in only women so far, possibly because she didn’t like invading a male’s body any more than I did. And those closest to Mircea were all women. If Myra overheard me and switched to men, he’d at least get a split-second warning before he was attacked again.
I went back to scanning the crowd of vamps, who were muttering among themselves but showing no signs of dispersing. In fact, more were drifting over every minute from around the ballroom, as people realized where the entertainment was currently to be found. And the more who crowded in on us, the harder it was to predict where Myra would strike from next.
Fear crept up my spine. All I could see was that ring of faces, avidly waiting to see someone bleed, something die. A male vamp, wearing a vivid green burnoose, fell onto the floor. He was up in an instant, looking around with a snarl, his fangs very white against his dark skin. Then I saw movement toward the center of the circle and caught a look of hatred on Augusta’s face, her blue eyes narrowed to icy chips. The young man had been a diversion.
I clutched Mircea’s arm and pointed. “Not him! She’s in Augusta!”
A murmur went through the crowd—everyone knew something was wrong, but no one was likely to interfere. This was Europe, and both Mircea and Augusta were members of the North American Senate. If they wanted to kill each other, that was their affair. No one would lift a finger to hinder or to help.