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He nodded slowly. “Yes. He has agreed to bring Louis-César over and to leave him to develop alone as happened before. Radu will escape but avoid contact with anyone for a century, until the time I rescued him from the Bastille. And even after that, he will keep a low profile, as you would say. Will that do?”
I thought about it for a minute. It wasn’t perfect, but barring locking him in a room for three and a half centuries, I didn’t see an alternative. And I somehow doubted that Mircea would go along with that. “Yeah, it ought to, as long as he doesn’t make any vamps until our time. Somehow Rasputin is already making unregistered vamps, and we don’t need two people doing it. Oh, and tell Radu about Françoise. I get this feeling that some of the mages might try to recoup some of their losses with her tonight.”
It was a measure of just how close to the edge Mircea was that he didn’t question what I meant. “As you like.”
I gestured around. “How much of that could you see?”
“Very little, but I received the impression from our being alive that we won.”
“Not exactly.” I explained the situation in brief, including my promotion. When he got back and found out Agnes was dead, he’d figure it out anyway. “You’ll need to tell the Senate that Rasputin got away, and that the sybil went with him. I don’t know if she’ll keep the power she borrowed now, but she may.” Considering that Myra had flashed out right after my talk with the Pythia, it seemed a good bet. Maybe that would fade in time, but there was no way to know for sure. Which left me with a major problem. When she recovered from my little knife attack, she could do to me what she’d been trying to do to Louis-César. The possibilities were endless, including killing me as a child or attacking my parents before I was even conceived, making sure I wasn’t born at all. The only good thing for me was that, for most of my life, I was either in Tony’s fortress of a house, warded like the vamp equivalent of Fort Knox, or in hiding. So I wouldn’t be an easy target. But something told me that Rasputin liked a challenge.
Mircea was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, he sounded as tired as I felt. “You could tell them yourself.”
I smiled. “No, I don’t think I can.” He started to say something, but I put a finger over his lips. A
bout one thing, at least, I was sure. “I won’t go back to that, Mircea. It was bad enough before, but now everyone will be fighting over me—the Senate, the two circles, maybe Tomas…no. What kind of a life would that be?”
He took my hand in his and kissed the fingers carefully. His eyes were tired, but still beautiful as they met mine. The glowing, cinnamon amber completely overwrote Louis-César’s blue. I had a feeling that I’d never see another pair so stunning, or so sad. “You cannot run forever, Cassie.”
“I hid before. I can do it again.”
“You were found before.” He clutched my hand as tightly as he could and, for the moment, I let him. It might be a long time before I knew the touch of another person, much less one I cared about.
“Only by you and Marlowe,” I told him gently. “Tell him to take a vacation. He’ll need one to recover from the attack. Take one yourself.”
Mircea shook his head, as I’d known he would. He wouldn’t lie to me even now. For a vamp, he was a hell of a catch. I reached out and ran a hand through his hair, wishing it was his own dark, straight strands under my fingers instead of the Frenchman’s bronze curls. It was somehow hard to imagine never touching him again, never holding him. But the price was too high. There were simply too many strings attached.
“I will find you, Cassie. I only pray it will be before the circles do. Both of them will come after you, you can be sure of it. Do not underestimate them.”
“I won’t.” I started to rise, but he held on to my hand.
“Cassie, stay with me! I will keep you safe; I swear it!”
I asked him the same question I had put to Tomas. This time I got an answer. “Would you want me, even if I wasn’t Pythia?”
He raised my hand to his mouth. His lips were cold. “I begin to think I would prefer it.”
I looked around at the body of the fallen mage, the slimy walls and the despair-filled room. I tightened my grip. “I know I would,” I told him, and shifted.
