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“I want it removed.”
“Kit is concerned for your safety.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“But you do trust the mage?” he asked with a smile. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant one.
“More than Marlowe, yes!”
“You know nothing about him,” Mircea said, and there was a definite bite to his tone. “No one knows anything about him. The Circle’s records state that he was born in Manchester in 1920, yet the proof was supposedly destroyed in an air raid—”
“You’ve been checking up on him?”
“—and there is the little matter of our meeting him one hundred and forty years before that in Paris.”
Damn. I’d been hoping that Mircea hadn’t recognized Pritkin on our last journey back into time. It had been a pretty crazy trip and the much younger Pritkin had looked a little different. But vampire eyes—especially Mircea’s—didn’t miss much.
“The Circle’s records must be wrong.”
“The Circle’s records are rarely wrong. And even if that were the case, no two-hundred-year-old mage looks the way he does—”
“A glamourie could—”
“—or is that vigorous! I am beginning to doubt that John Pritkin is even his real name!”
I didn’t say anything. Pritkin and I had finally gotten to a first-name basis recently, or at least, he’d started calling me Cassie. I hadn’t returned the favor because Mircea was right: “John” wasn’t his name. It was an alias he happened to be using this century to hide the fact that he hadn’t been a run-of-the-mill war mage even before he’d broken with the Circle. Of course, Pritkin was an alias, too, but it felt more fitting somehow, maybe because that was what he’d been called when I first met him. And it wasn’t like I could use his real name.
Even today, “Merlin” tends to turn heads, especially in the supernatural community.
All societies have their heroes, and it was Pritkin’s misfortune to be one of ours. It didn’t matter that the old stories were almost entirely fiction, or that the truth had been darker and a whole lot grimmer. It didn’t matter that a medieval writer had even changed his name—from the coarser-sounding Myrdden. It only mattered that he was a legend and they are hard to come by.
If Pritkin’s real identity became known, it would rock the magical world and make him a target for . . . well, pretty much everyone. Every dark mage out there would want to drain him and every white mage would want a photo op. For the intensely private man I knew, it would be hell.
Mircea was regarding me narrowly. His expression said that he suspected me of knowing more than I was telling and was pissed that I wouldn’t come clean. Yeah, like he didn’t have secrets.
“He can’t be trusted,” he said flatly when it became obvious that I wasn’t going to get hit with a sudden attack of memory.
“Pritkin didn’t chain me to a bed, Mircea!” I reminded him. “So at the moment, he’s a little ahead on trust points.”
He looked like he was going to say something and then sighed and glanced at his watch. “The cuffs were to get your attention, nothing more. They are easy enough for someone with your power to defeat, once you know the trick. But you must promise me to take more care. Remain here where you are well guarded. Take at least two bodyguards with you whenever you must leave. And do not fight Kit on
the trace.”
“He’s a spy! You don’t really think this is a simple trace, do you?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “And what are you afraid he will discover, dulceata?”
“You know damn well that’s not the point! I grew up being followed around by Tony’s thugs.”
“And you resented it.”
“Of course!”
“And therein lies the difference between us,” he told me seriously. “I was also accustomed to such attentions from a young age. I never went anywhere alone; it was too dangerous. From the time I was born, I was a target for rival factions of the family, for jealous nobles, for invaders. A pawn in a political game that threatened constantly to engulf me and everyone I valued. I learned early on: safety was far more important than privacy.”
I stared up at him. I rarely saw Mircea look completely serious; he would joke on his deathbed, if he ever had one. But there was no humor in his face now.
“I still want it off.”
