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The Consul didn’t say anything, but she didn’t lower her arm, either. “Give me the Codex, Cassandra.”
“That wasn’t the deal,” I reminded her. “I agreed to save Mircea. That was all.?
?
“We will attend to our own.” She pulled someone forward who had been standing behind her. Tami. “Give me the book and I will give you your friend.”
“You’ll give her to me anyway. As soon as Mircea is healed, she is free. You’ve sworn it.”
Those sloe eyes narrowed. “But he isn’t healed. Not yet.”
It took me a second, but I got it. “And you have him.” I had the counterspell, but I couldn’t heal Mircea if I didn’t know where he was. And that left Tami under the Consul’s manicured thumb until she chose to release her. Or until she gave her back to the Circle.
“So you’ve decided what? That you want the Codex more than you want to save Mircea?”
“Once I have the Codex, our mages can cast the spell.”
How inconveniently true. “And if I refuse to give it to you?”
The Consul’s grip on Tami’s arm tightened slightly. “I do not think you will refuse.”
“And I think she will,” a ringing voice said behind me. The corridor was suddenly flooded with a blinding golden light. “Well done, Herophile. You have fulfilled your quest!”
I didn’t need to turn around to know who was standing there. The Consul’s expression, one of mild surprise, was enough. For her, that was practically a goggle.
I shifted my eyes, while moving Jesse and me back a few feet, toward the shattered window. “What do I get, a gold star?”
The ten-foot golden god in the too short tunic laughed, and it echoed off the walls. “Give me the Codex and you may have anything you like. It’s our world now, Herophile!”
Behind him, I could see a whole row of dark-coated figures, and the rotting fruit smell that accompanied them told me what they were. Dark mages. I guess they were there for bad little Pythias who didn’t do what they were told.
“Because I already have a gold circle,” I continued. “The Codex was hidden behind one. I should have thought of you when I saw it.”
“Gold is the alchemical sign for the sun, yes,” he said, still approving.
“I did wonder. Because the Circle’s symbol is silver.”
“Like the moon. Artemis’ emblem, that damn traitor,” he said casually.
The Consul’s beautiful face found an expression, and it wasn’t one I liked. “You’re working with our enemies,” she hissed, and Tami gave a sudden cry as her arm was squeezed tight.
“She gave her priests the spell, didn’t she?” I continued, ignoring it. The Consul hadn’t gotten to be two thousand years old by being stupid. If I gave her enough, she’d figure it out for herself.
“She was always ridiculously sentimental,” he agreed. “She thought we were being too hard on mankind, that your people were in danger of disappearing altogether.”
“Were we?’
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said carelessly. “You breed like rabbits.”
“Lucky us.” My tired brain was having trouble piecing things together. Since he was in a good mood, I decided to let him help. “So the ouroboros is the spell to block your kind from our world.”
He laughed. He was happy, even jocular. Of course he was. I hadn’t told him no, yet. “It was the symbol for Solomon’s protection spell, the one that trapped me here, the one I undid when I defeated that bitch at Delphi. The Pythoness, they called her—the last of a line of powerful witches who maintained the spell he had cast. I killed one of them and made her home my chief temple and her daughters my servants: Phemonoe and Herophile. I even kept the name: ‘pythia’ means python, you know.”
No, I hadn’t. But I was learning all kinds of things lately. “With her death, the original spell lapsed, because there was no one to maintain it,” I reasoned. “And the paths between worlds were opened again. Until Artemis decided to give the spell back to mankind.” He nodded. “But her priests are dead. Who maintained it after the destruction of her temple?”
“The Silver Circle, of course.” He looked surprised that I hadn’t known that. “But they forgot. I had given the Pythias part of my power. And when my people were barred—”
“The power remained.”
