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“There is not. Our experts all agree.”
“Then your experts are wrong. The counterspell is contained in the Codex Merlini.”
Marlowe was looking at me with dawning understanding. He’d been there when the Dark Fey king had given me the commission to find the damn thing, when I’d discovered it contained a way out of the geis. “You found it,” he said softly.
I shook my head. “Not yet. But I know how to get it.”
“You will tell me,” the Consul said. It was not a question. “I will send for it, and if you speak the truth, I will order Lord Mircea released. You will remain here until it is brought to me.”
“You don’t understand,” I said, trying to keep my temper. “It isn’t somewhere, it’s somewhen. I’m the only one who can get it. I’ve been working on it for almost two weeks now!”
The Consul just looked at me. For a moment, I was afraid she’d gone into one of her famous time-outs, which could last anywhere from a few minutes to a few days, but then she blinked. “Why should I believe that you wish to help one of us?”
“One of you?” I threw out my hands in exasperation. “Except for the blood-drinking thing, I practically am one of you!”
Her face broke into the first smile I’d ever seen from her. After one look at it, I hoped it would also be the last. “If that were true, you would be long dead for your defiance.”
Okay. Death threats aside, we were making progress. “If I wished Mircea harm, why am I here?” I asked. “What punishment could I give him that would be worse than what he’s already undergoing? If I wanted him to suffer, I’d just stay away. That’s how you know I want to help.”
“And what do you wish in return?”
Finally, we came to it. “I want Tami freed and the charges against her dropped.”
“Cassie!” I heard Tami’s excited whisper behind me, felt her eyes boring a hole in the back of my neck, but I swallowed the words I knew she hoped to hear.
She wanted me to demand that something be done about those damn schools the mages were running, but I knew better. The Consul might be able to pull a few strings over a single prisoner, but changing an entire area of Circle policy would be overreaching. She didn’t have that kind of authority, and asking for something I knew she couldn’t provide would only make me look like I didn’t really want to help Mircea. I’d already asked for more than I thought I could get—stipulating that the charges be dropped instead of simply that Tami be freed. I wasn’t going to do any better. Not tonight.
“In return, I will retrieve the counterspell and free Lord Mircea from the geis,” I said instead.
The Consul didn’t blink this time. “Done. But you will take one of us with you.”
“I had planned to take Alphonse—” I began, but she cut me off.
“No. A senator.”
I’d been afraid of this. Why settle for just saving Mircea when there was a chance she could get the Codex, too? Only that so wasn’t happening. I hadn’t gone through all this to put that kind of power into vampire hands. Fortunately, she hadn’t specified which senator.
I smiled, and didn’t even try to make it a nicer version than hers. “Agreed.”
Chapter 19
I landed on Dante’s rooftop two weeks in the past, and almost fell off. My feet were on concrete, but the bell of my skirt swung out over thin air. I grabbed the side of a turret hard enough to scrape skin, trembling slightly with the realization that a few inches to the left and I’d have landed on nothing at all. But I hadn’t, I’d made it, and after a moment, I managed to pry my hands loose from the fake rock and look around.
Everything was strangely silent this far up: the traffic noise was muffled and there were no discernible sounds of combat. Everything looked normal, too, with the lights of the Strip glittering in the distance, outshining the star-studded canopy overhead. But a sudden rush of wind from the base of a tower pushed at me, hard enough to shove me back
a step, and with it came the smell of gunpowder and ozone. It looked like I’d found the right place.
Moving cautiously back to the edge of the roof, I saw the parking lot spread out below in a panorama of chaos. The blue smoke had mostly dissipated on one side to reveal burned and blasted cars, a number of obviously dead bodies, and Tomas standing in front of a crowd of curious onlookers. He was doing his Obi-Wan impression—these aren’t the droids you’re looking for—while a wererat dragged itself toward the back door, leaving a bloody trail on the ground.
On the other side of the lot, farther from the street, cleanup had begun. It was briefly interrupted by a vamp running across the lot, waving his arms frantically, flames streaming out from the back of his jacket. Mircea moved to intercept, while more vampires emerged from a couple of silver-gray limos parked on the far side of the casino. Mircea brought the crazed vamp under control with a word, and several others jumped him with blankets, putting out the flames. Shortly afterwards, I saw myself, Françoise and a glowing dot that I assumed was the pixie flash out.
Other than Mircea, nobody seemed to notice their departure. Most of his vamps were too absorbed in getting the fires under control—when a stray spark can be deadly, you tend to pay attention. I glanced back to the other puddle of activity and saw that everyone there also looked pretty distracted. Tomas was now talking to two cops, while Louis-Cesare propped up the younger version of me so I could argue with Pritkin. It was as good an opportunity as I was going to get.
I shifted behind Mircea. “Miss me?”
His head whipped around and his eyes widened. He glanced at the spot where the other me had just disappeared, then back again. “What is this?”
I gave him a once-over. I hadn’t been able to tell from the rooftop, but he was looking a little rough. His jacket was burnt in a diamond-shaped pattern all along the back, with little tatters of black material fluttering out behind him like Halloween streamers. His hair was half out of its clasp, falling askew over a slice of cheekbone, and he had ash on his chin. At least the shirt looked okay: it was heavy Chinese silk with little toggles instead of buttons, and seemed to have been protected from electrocution by the jacket.
