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“What about Tony? He’s your master.”
“And I never fully appreciated how much I hated that little toad until he was gone.”
“But if he comes back—”
“I’ll kill him,” Sal said, sounding as if she’d relish the opportunity.
“You can’t. As your master—”
“He won’t be my master by then. Mir
cea will.”
Things suddenly made a lot more sense. “You want Mircea to break your bond.”
“When this thing’s over, we intend to still be standing—and on the winning side,” Sal confirmed, shooting me a look out of suddenly shrewd blue eyes. “Not dead fighting for a man we both despise.”
Wonderful. Yet another group who was depending on me, expecting me to somehow miraculously make everything right again. I decided that maybe I’d been better off alone; fewer people to disappoint that way, fewer things to screw up. “If I’m so powerful, why can’t I keep those two downstairs from killing each other?”
Sal picked up the phone and handed it to me. “You want them to stop horsing around, tell them.”
“Just like that.”
“Exactly like that.”
I looked at her blankly, but she just snapped her gum at me so I told the phone that I would like to speak to Casanova. It told me that he was rather busy at the moment. I said I’d really appreciate it if he could make the time. It asked if I would like to leave a message. Sal grabbed it out of my hand with a disgusted look. “Get your ass in there and tell him that the reigning Pythia wants to talk to him,” she snapped.
So much for my disguise. If the Circle didn’t already know where I was, they probably would soon. “Do you have any idea what you just did?” I demanded, feeling a migraine coming on.
Sal punched me on the arm. “You’re Pythia. Start acting like it!”
I refrained from rubbing my now sore arm and glared. She glared right back. Casanova came on the line, sounding a little breathless. “What?”
“Are you through?” I asked him. “Because maybe I’m insane, but I could have sworn we were here because your master is about to go out of his mind, thereby forcing the Consul to kill him, and do I even need to bring up what happens to both of you in that case?”
Alphonse grabbed the phone, not that he needed it—vampire hearing was more than good enough to make any phone conversation a conference call. “What’s the plan? We gonna break him out?”
“That would be good,” I agreed.
“Rafe said you saw the master a couple days ago. If you got in then, why do you need us now?”
“Because the wards almost certainly recorded that little visit!” I said impatiently. “They’ll be expecting me to try again. And the last time I removed someone from the Consul’s control, she used a null bomb to trap me.”
“I heard about that. Didn’t believe it, though.”
“Oh, null bombs exist,” I assured him. “And the Consul’s got a stash of them.” I’d seen it for myself, and although I doubted that she wanted to use up any more of a very expensive, very scarce resource on me, the fact remained that I’d made her look bad. It hadn’t been intentional, but vamps rarely cared about such trifles. And messing with the reputation of someone who ruled partly through the fear she was able to inspire was a very big deal.
“I meant I didn’t believe you could pull it off,” Alphonse clarified.
Neither had I. I decided it wouldn’t be prudent to mention exactly how much luck had been involved. In a world where reputation was all-important, I didn’t have much of one to trade on. Alphonse remembered me as Tony’s tame little clairvoyant, something that was not going to convince him to do a damn thing. Thinking of me as someone gutsy enough or crazy enough to go up against the Consul would be a much better image.
Fortunately, both Alphonse and Casanova needed me to ensure that Mircea stayed alive and well. Until the geis was lifted, I could trust them. To a point. Probably.
“I think I know how we can do it,” I said.
Casanova had been making spluttering sounds in the background. I thought someone had been choking him, but I guess not, because he suddenly piped up. “Okay then. You’re insane. This explains a lot about you.”
“Insane and the boss’s girlfriend,” I reminded him sweetly.
