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“Mircea bugged me?” I guessed.
“And Marlowe, I believe.”
“Why? Was he afraid Mircea might not tell him everything?”
Rafe looked shocked. “We all have the same desire, mia stella: to keep you safe. And a new version of the spell was recently perfected. It is much harder to detect, even by mages.”
“Then why not remove the old one?”
“We were not aware that the mage was also planning to cast one on you. And if someone did abduct you, they would expect to find such a spell.”
“So the original was left to give them something to remove, in the hopes that they wouldn’t look any further.”
“Exactly!” Rafe seemed pleased that I’d grasped his point so easily. Yet he managed to totally miss mine. Sometimes I forgot that Rafe, who had taken to modern clothes and cars, music and art, almost better than any vamp I knew, had been born in the same century as Mircea. No wonder he didn’t understand why I’d object to having my every movement followed. The women back then had probably enjoyed it.
Pritkin met my eyes. He got it; he just didn’t care.
“You could have asked me,” I pointed out, keeping my temper because I was too tired for anything else.
“You admitted that you would have had it removed.”
“If you had explained that you’d done it for my safety—”
“Yes, because safety is so important to you!” He rounded on me. “So important, in fact, that you deliberately lied in order to stay in a situation you knew was perilous. For no reason!”
“No reason?” I felt my face flush with more than sunburn. “I had the impression that you needed my help!”
“Until the prisoners were freed, yes. Afterward, there was nothing more you could do and no reason for you to remain. You should have left when I instructed you to do so!”
“Partners don’t abandon each ot
her to die.”
“If the alternative is to stay and die with them? Yes! They do!” His words were angry, but his face was oddly still, strained and pale.
I tried again. “I am concerned with safety. But I can’t always do my job and—”
“That was not your job. Rescuing those prisoners had nothing to do with the time line! Had I guessed that you were foolish enough to almost get killed over them, I would never have agreed to help you!”
“It might not have been my job, but it was my doing. If I hadn’t gone to that meeting—”
“Then we wouldn’t know that there is a problem with the lines.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about? The battle—”
“Should have had no effect. If the lines were that unstable, they would be useless to us. Someone or something must have weakened the structural integrity of that line before the battle.”
“Someone? You think this was deliberate?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve never heard of anything of the kind occurring naturally, and the fact that the breach targeted MAGIC is highly suspect.”
I thought about the incredible power of a ley line, all those acres and acres of jumping, brilliant energy, and didn’t believe it. “But how?”
“I can’t explain it. No one has that kind of power. Not the dark, not even us.”
“Apollo does.”And if anyone had reason to want MAGIC destroyed, it was him.
But Pritkin didn’t seem to think much of that idea. “If he could send that amount of energy to his supporters, he would have done so long ago and destroyed the Circle at the outset. Thankfully, you possess the only remnants of his power on Earth.”
