CLAIMED BY SHADOW

                                                             CHAPTER TWO            

           “Is that who I think it is?” Casanova gave a panicked glance at the mage, whose coat had blown open to reveal enough firepower to take out a platoon.  Even vamps are cautious around war mages–wizards and witches who have been trained in human and magical combat techniques by the Circle.  They have the Shoot first, ask questions if you feel like it later mentality that human law enforcement left behind with the Wild West.  Of course, police officers don’t have to face the kind of surprises the mages frequently get. 
            I’d already seen as much of this particular mage as I wanted and apparently Casanova felt the same.  Without waiting for me to answer, he let go of dignity and dove under the table.  I was wondering if it was worth the effort to try to run when Enyo hopped down from her bar stool and jogged over.  She gestured at the mage and raised bushy eyebrows that in her case protected only empty folds of skin.  I’m not sure how I knew what she was thinking, because she didn’t say a word, but the point came across.  I shook my head emphatically.  I wasn’t actually sure what he was, but “friend” didn’t sound right.
            Enyo whirled to face the mage, who was only a couple of tables away.  He stopped dead in his tracks and a second later I realized why.  The three sisters weren’t pretty by anyone’s standards, but they looked harmless enough.  Enyo’s squashed face–containing so many folds that the absence of eyes wasn’t all that noticeable–toothless mouth and straggling hair normally made her resemble a particularly homely bag lady.  But she didn’t look that way now.
            My mythological knowledge is not great, mainly composed of bits and pieces left over from long-ago lessons with Eugenie, my old governess.  This was one of those times I wished I’d paid more attention. Where a diminutive old lady had been, a towering Amazon stood, clad only in matted ankle-length hair and a lot of blood. Enyo’s transformation was so quick that I hadn’t seen it take place, but Pritkin’s face, which had shut down to the pale, closed look he gets when truly terrified, told me there was more to her story than I recalled.  I decided I didn’t want to know. 
            I have never claimed to be a hero.  Besides, Casanova had started to crawl away, using the tables as cover, and I still didn’t know where Tony was.  I dropped to the floor and followed on his heels.  The next second, it sounded like all hell had broken loose behind us, but I wasn’t crazy enough to look around.  I’ve had lots of practice running away, and I’ve learned that it’s best to keep your mind on the goal.
           Half of a black lacquered chair flew over my head, but I just ducked lower and crawled faster.  Casanova appeared to be heading for a blank stretch of wall, but I knew better.  This was Tony’s place and he never built anything that didn’t have at least a dozen emergency exits.  I was pretty sure that somewhere up ahead was a door hidden by a glamour, so when the top half of Casanova’s body disappeared into the red Chinese wallpaper, I wasn’t surprised.  I grabbed a handful of his suit coat, scrunched up my eyes and followed.  I opened them again to find that we were in a utilitarian corridor with industrial fluorescent lighting.
            Casanova tried to pull away, but I held on for dear life.  It wasn’t easy since the impromptu escape had left me with a serious wedgie and he was stronger than I was.  But he was my best link to Tony and I wasn’t about to lose him.  “Oh, all right!” he said, dragging me to my feet.  “This way!” 
            We raced to a door that led to a much more luxurious corridor carpeted in thick scarlet plush.  The gold brocade wallpaper boasted a line of salacious prints and reeked of musky perfume.  I gasped, but Casanova was too busy punching the elevator call button a dozen times to notice.  It finally came just as I was about to give up on the idea of breathing all together, and we jumped on board.  Casanova hit the button for the fifth floor and I managed to choke out a protest.  “Shouldn’t we be heading down, to the parking level?  If we stay in the building, he’ll find us.”
            He shot me a look.  “Do you really think he came alone?”  I shrugged.  I’d never seen Pritkin work with other mages so it seemed possible.  He did enough mayhem all on his own.  “He almost certainly has back-up,” Casanova informed me, running shaking hands down his slightly rumpled suit.  “We need to hide.  Let the internal defenses deal with him.”
            The elevator let out into a spacious office that looked a lot like a boudoir.  There were mirrors and fat chaises everywhere, and a bar almost as big as the one downstairs lined one wall.  A good-looking secretary, who was probably going to be recruited by the incubi if he hadn’t been already, tried to offer us refreshments, but Casanova waved him off. 
            We barreled through a set of doors to a plush inner office.  Casanova ignored the huge four-poster bed sitting incongruously in the corner and the two scantily clad women reclining on it.  He stepped through a multicolored modernist painting that covered most of one wall and I followed, ignoring the scowls the girls sent my way.  On the other side was a narrow room that was bare except for a table, a chair and a large mirror hanging on the wall.  He waved a hand over the mirror’s surface and it shimmered like a mirage in the desert.  I quickly figured out that this was his way of checking on his employees. 
            I’d seen similar devices before.  Tony had never been able to use security cameras, since anything run off electricity doesn’t do well around powerful wards and his Philadelphia stronghold had bristled with them.  I’d had to learn about his surveillance equipment in order to elude it when up to things I preferred him not to know about, like stealing his personal files and setting him up with the Feds.  Not that that had worked out too well, but at least I hadn’t been caught during the preparations.  I’d discovered that any reflective surface could be spelled to act as a monitor linked to other shiny exteriors within a certain radius.  Considering the number of mirrors and all the polished marble around the place, Casanova could probably check on anything within the spa. 
            He muttered a word and an image of the bar appeared.  I wondered about the distortion until I realized that he was using the large Chinese gong behind the bar as his spy hole.  It was convex, so the image was too, along with being tinted faintly bronze.  I saw the backs of three people who I identified as war mages due to the amount of hardware they were wearing.  I didn’t see Pritkin, and was slightly worried that Enyo had eaten him. 
            She certainly looked capable of it.  The vague old woman had been replaced by a blood-covered savage whose head brushed the edge of the fringed lanterns that swung from the central chandelier.  Her hair was still gray, but the body had gotten a definite upgrade and she now had a full compliment of teeth and eyes.  The former were longer and sharper than a vamp’s and the latter were yellow and slitted like a cat’s.  She looked pissed off, maybe because she was encased in a magical web courtesy of the mages.  She slashed at it with four-inch long talons and it ripped like paper, but before she could move, the slender cords reknitted themselves, holding her fast. 
            It looked to me like a standoff, and I wondered why her sisters, who were still lounging at the bar, didn’t intervene.  I’d barely had the thought before Pemphredo glanced up at the gong.  Since it was her turn with the eye, she was able to wink at me before cutting loose. 
            I remembered that, when I’d looked up some information on the sisters after they dropped in, Pemphredo had been called ‘the master of alarming surprises.’  I hadn’t been sure what that meant, but since the three had been given the task of protecting the Gorgons, I assumed they each had some kind of war-like talent.  But considering what had happened to Medusa, it didn’t seem like they’d been too effective. 
            As if she’d heard me, Pemphredo suddenly turned her gaze on the nearest mage, a delicate Asian woman, who didn’t even have time to scream before the heavy lacquered chandelier came crashing down on her head.  Pieces of splintered wood went flying everywhere, and the woman disappeared under a pile of red silk lanterns.  It seemed the gals had been practicing.
            The mage managed to crawl out from under the fixture a few seconds later, looking battered and bloody, but still breathing.  She was in no condition to rejoin the fight, though, and her companions were having trouble holding Enyo on their own.  She was tearing through the net almost faster than they could reform it, and it was starting to look like a question of who would tire first.  I couldn’t tell if she was getting weary, but even with their backs to me, the mages looked strained, with their raised arms visibly shaking. 
            “We have a problem,” Casanova said.
            “Duh.”  I watched as Pemphredo glanced at one of the other mages, who promptly shot himself in the foot.  Deino was sipping beer and trying to flirt with the new bartender, who had crouched behind the bar with his arms over his head.  Casanova was probably going to get requests for combat pay after today.  I decided that I could live without learning what her special talent was.
            “No.  I mean we really have a problem.”  I glanced up at Casanova’s tone to see a pissed off mage standing in the doorway, a sawed-off shotgun leveled on us.
            I sighed.  “Hello, Pritkin.”
            “Call off your harpies or this will be a very short conversation.”
            I sighed again.  Pritkin has that effect on me.  “They aren’t harpies.  They’re the Graeae, ancient Greek demi-goddesses.  Or something.”
            Pritkin sneered.  It was what he did best, other than killing things.  “Trust you to side with the monsters.  Call them off.”  An edge of anger threaded through his words, threatening to grow into something more substantial soon. 
            “I can’t.”  It was the truth, but I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t believe me.  I couldn’t recall Pritkin ever believing anything I said; it kind of made me wonder why he bothered talking to me at all.  Of course, conversation probably wasn’t foremost on his
list.  It’d be somewhere after dragging me back to the Silver Circle, throwing me in a really deep dungeon and losing the key. 
            I discovered that a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun sounds very loud when cocked in a small room. 
            “Do as he says, Cassie,” Casanova chimed in.  “I like this body as it is.  If it acquires a large hole, I will be very annoyed.”
             “Yeah, and that’s really what’s worrying us.”  The comment came from the ghost who had just drifted through the wall.  Casanova swatted in his direction as you might a pesky fly, but missed him.  “I thought incubi were supposed to be charming,” Billy said, wafting out of the way. 
            Casanova couldn’t see Billy, but his demon senses could obviously hear him.  His handsome forehead acquired an annoyed wrinkle, but he didn’t deign to respond.  I was glad about that, since it meant that Pritkin couldn’t be sure that Billy was there. 
            Billy Joe is what remains of an Irish-American gambler with a love of loose women, dirty limericks and cheating at cards.  Because of that last item, he cashed in his chips for the final time at the ripe old age of twenty-nine.  A couple of cowboys hadn’t liked his faint Irish accent, his ruffled shirt or the fact that the saloon girls were paying him a lot of attention.  But the real kicker had come when he won too many hands at cards and they caught him with an ace up his sleeve.  Billy was soon thereafter introduced to the inside of a croaker sack, which in turn made the acquaintance of the bottom of the Mississippi. 
            That should have ended a colorful, if abbreviated, life.  But a few weeks earlier, Billy had won a variety of favors off a visiting countess–at least, he’d claimed she had a title–one of which was an ugly ruby necklace that doubled as a talisman.  It soaked up magical energy from the natural world and transmitted it to its owner, or in this case, to its owner’s ghost.  Billy’s spirit had come to reside in the necklace, which gathered dust in an antique shop until I happened along looking for a present for my notoriously picky governess.  I’ve been able to see ghosts all my life, but even I was surprised by my gift with purchase. 
            We’d soon discovered that not only was I the first person in years who could see him, I was also the only one of the necklace’s owners who could donate energy in excess of the subsistence it provided.  With regular donations from me, Billy was able to become much more active.  In exchange, I got his help with my various problems.  At least in theory. 
            He caught my look and shrugged.  “This place has too many entrances.  I couldn’t watch them all.”  He glanced behind the mage.  “He’s got his helper with him.”
            He was looking at what appeared to be a man-sized clay statue.  I had mistaken it for one the first time I’d seen it, but it was actually a golem.  Rabbis versed in Kabbalah magic were supposed to have invented them, but these days they were popular among the war mages as assistants–maybe because it’s hard to hurt something with no internal organs. 
            I reviewed possible strategies, but none of my usual defenses seemed a good idea.  The lopsided pentagram tattooed on my back is actually a ward that can stop most magical attacks.  It was crafted by the Silver Circle itself and I had seen it do some fairly amazing things, but I didn’t know if it would stop a non-magical assault of that caliber.  This didn’t seem like the best time to test it. 
            I also had a bracelet made of little interlocking daggers that seemed to dislike Pritkin even more than I did.  It had once belonged to a dark mage who had mostly used it to destroy things.  He’d been evil, and I suspected his jewelry was, too, but I couldn’t seem to get rid of it.  I’d tried burying it, flushing it down a toilet, and feeding it to a garbage disposal, but no go.  No matter what I did, the next time I looked it was on my wrist again, whole and shiny and new, glinting at me impudently.  Sometimes it came in handy, and mostly it obeyed my commands, but it never passed up a chance to relive old times.  All on its own it had sent two ghostly knives to stab Pritkin the last time we met.  The hand with the bracelet was firmly in my pocket at the moment; no need to escalate this further.  Fortunately, I had another option. 
            “Hey, Billy.  Think you can possess a golem?”  Pritkin’s eyes didn’t waver, but his shoulders twitched slightly.
            “Never tried.”  Billy floated over and eyed the golem without enthusiasm.  He doesn’t like possessions.  They sap his energy level and often don’t work anyway.  His favorite trick instead is to drift through someone, picking up any stray thoughts and leaving a hint or two of his own behind.  But that wouldn’t help us now.  “Guess there’s only one way to find out,” he muttered.    
            As soon as Billy stepped into the thing, I found out why experiments are done under controlled conditions.  The golem began careening about the outer office, knocking over tubs of plants and sending the girls screaming into the next room.  Then it altered course, stumbled through the painting and crashed into Pritkin, sending him sprawling. 
I couldn’t tell if that had been deliberate, but I sort of doubted it when the creature started ricocheting around our tiny cubicle like a pin ball on speed.  It knocked me a glancing blow on its way to destroy the table and sent me staggering into the mage.  I started to yell at Billy to get out of the thing, but my breath was knocked out by Pritkin’s knee, which came into contact with my stomach when I fell on him.  To be fair, my high heel might have gotten him in a sensitive spot, but it had been an accident.  I didn’t think his knee was.
            As I was struggling to get enough breath back to tell him off, a very familiar and extremely unwelcome feeling came over me.  Time shifting is supposed to be under the Pythia’s control, not vice versa, but someone really needed to tell my power that.  I had only enough time to think, oh no, not now, before I was flailing about in that cold, gray area between time. 
            After a short free fall, the ground rushed up and hit me in the face.  When my vision cleared, I identified it as carpet with a red and black oriental pattern thinly stretched over very hard wood.  For a stunned minute I thought I’d ended up back in the bar, but then I noticed the two sets of feet in front of me.  They didn’t look like they belonged to tourists.
            The woman was wearing tiny black silk heels with a scattering of jet beads on the toe.  They matched the beadwork on her elaborate black evening gown, the hem of which was about a foot in front of my face.  The beading ran up the front of the dress to an impossibly small waist, then disappeared, I assume so it wouldn’t detract from the fortune in diamonds she wore draped around her slim throat and clipped into her golden curls.  I glanced at her lovely blue eyes, narrowed in distaste as she regarded me, and quickly looked away.  It isn’t a good idea to stare a vampire in the eyes for long, and that is unquestionably what she was.   
            I scrambled to my feet and got another shock.  I almost fell again–only Tony would be sadistic enough to make waitresses wear three-inch heels–and a hand reached out to steady me.  A very familiar hand. 
            Like the woman, her escort was obviously dressed for evening, in a black swallowtail coat over a low-cut vest, white shirt and white bowtie.  His highly polished shoes shone more than his understated jewelry-plain gold cufflinks that matched the clip holding his hair in a discreet ponytail at the nape of his neck.  The discreet accessories didn’t surprise me–Mircea has never liked showy clothes.  What threw me was the abrupt, overwhelming sense of joy that spread over me as soon as our eyes met. 
            I was suddenly struck by the sheer masculine beauty of him.  He was so gracefully made that I caught my breath, all long limbs and elegant lines, like a dancer or a long-distance runner–or what he was, the product of noble blood going back for generations.  Only one feature didn’t fit that picture: his mouth was not the thin-lipped aristocratic version, but had the full, beautifully sculpted lips of a sensualist. 
            Maybe there had been more peasant stock in the gene pool than the family would admit, people who might not have the airs and graces of their lords, but who knew how to laugh and dance and drink with a passion the aristocrats had forgotten.  Dracula was supposed to have been the one born of a fiery gypsy girl, but I’d sometimes wondered if the old rumors had gotten things mixed up, and instead it was Mircea who had Romany blood.  If so, it suited him. 
            His hand was under my elbow in a light, impersonal touch, but for some reason it made my whole arm tingle.  I knew I should pull away–the blonde was starting to tap her fan impatiently against one silk-covered thigh–but I had never wanted anything less.  I tried to sense the geis Casanova had talked about, but nothing registered.  If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn there was no spell to find. 
            I realized vaguely that my hands had begun smoothing the thick silk of Mircea’s waistcoat.  It was crimson with red dragons embroidered on it and seemed a little flashy for him, although the tone on tone made the design almost invisible unless the light hit it just right.  The embroidery was smooth against my fingertips, a beautiful, intricate design.  I could even see the tiny scales on the dragons.  Then my wandering hands discovered something more interesting, the faint prick of nipples, just discernable under several layers of fabric. 
            My fingertips traced them delicately, my whole body vibrating with pleasure from that small sensation.  I couldn’t seem to pull my hands away, and even odder, Mircea didn’t move back.  He just stood there, looking bemused, but the hand on my arm began pulling me gently towards him. 
            I went willingly, lost in admiration for the way the gas light gleamed in his hair, and a thrumming energy suddenly ran up my arm.  It hit my shoulder, then dove back down to jump from my fingertips like electricity.  Mircea jerked slightly as the sensation hit him, but he did not let go.  The feeling echoed back and forth, holding the two of us in a loop of sensation that made the hairs on my arm stand up and my body tighten. 
            The dark eyes examined me as slowly and thoroughly as I had inspected him.  The sensation of that gaze made me shiver, and Mircea’s eyebrow climbed a fraction at my reaction.  His hand moved to the small of my back, but encountered only the tough frame of the corset.  His touch slid down to the curve of my hip, his fingers splaying over the thin satin of my shorts as he pressed us close.   
            I took a deep breath and tried to cope with the waves of emotion that were rolling over me like the tide in front of a hurricane, but it did no good.  Mircea didn’t help by reaching up to delicately brush my cheek with the backs of his fingers.  A spark of gold leapt in his pupils, a color that I knew from experience indicated heightened emotion.  When he was truly angry or aroused, cinnamon amber light spiraled up to fill his eyes, giving them an otherworldly glow that others found frightening but I had always thought beautiful. 
            Someone cleared his throat in a harsh bark.  Pritkin’s voice sounded over my shoulder.  “My deepest apologies, sir, madam.  I am afraid one of our actresses is not well.  I trust she has given no offense?”
            “Not at all.”  Mircea sounded distracted, and he made no move to release me. 
“I will take her backstage, where she can rest.”  Pritkin put a hand on my arm, to haul me away, but Mircea’s grip tightened on my hip.  His eyes had begun to glow, the green and light brown flecks no longer visible against the rising tide of reddish-gold. 
            “The child does not look well, Count Basarab,” the female vamp said, taking his free arm, mirroring Pritkin’s stance with me.  “Let us not detain her.”
            Mircea ignored her.  “Who are you?” he asked.  The accent was thicker than I had ever heard it, and the tone was filled with the same wonder I felt.
            I swallowed and shook my head.  There was no safe reply.  I didn’t know where or even when I was, but since the female vamp had a slight bustle on her gown, I didn’t think it was anywhere I’d find familiar.  There was a good chance I wasn’t even born yet.  “Nobody,” I finally said. 
            Mircea’s companion gave what in a less elegant person would have been a snort.  “We will miss the opening,” she said, tugging on his sleeve. 
            After a noticeable pause Mircea released me, the invisible energy stretching between us like strings of taffy as his hand slid away.  He allowed his companion to lead him down the corridor, but he looked back at me in puzzlement several times.  The energy arced between us, but didn’t break, as if there was an invisible cord spanning the distance, tying us together.  Then they disappeared into a small curtained archway to what I vaguely recognized as a theatre box. 
            As soon as the red velvet curtains swooshed shut behind them, the connection between us snapped.  I was immediately hit with a longing so intense it was actually painful.  It clenched my stomach like someone had sucker-punched me, and started a headache pounding behind my eyes.  I barely noticed Pritkin dragging me to the end of the corridor, where a set of stairs climbed toward, presumably, another set of boxes.  An orchestra started to tune up somewhere nearby, which explained why there were no more people in sight.  The entertainment was about to begin. 
            The stairs were lit by a series of small lanterns along the wall, with deep areas of shadow in between.  As a hiding spot it wasn’t great, but I was too preoccupied to care.  My hands were shaking and sweat had popped out on my face.  I felt like a junkie who has been shown the needle but denied her fix.  It was horrible. 
            “What did you do?”  Pritkin glared at me, his short blond hair standing up in tufts as if it was angry, too.  It was a pretty fierce expression, but I’d seen it before.  And, compared with what had just happened, it was almost trivial. 
            “I was about to ask you the same question,” I replied, massaging my neck to try to clear my head.  My other arm was clenched across my stomach, where it felt like a hole had been ripped into me by Mircea’s absence.  This could not be happening–I wouldn’t let it.  The only part of my life that I’d ever been able to control was my mind, and Mircea was not going to take that away.  Whatever it took, I was going to find a way to break this thing.  I would not spend the rest of my life salivating over him like some teenager with a rock star.  I was not a groupie, damn it! 
            Pritkin gave me a little shake and I eyed him without favor.  The only other occasions when I had been dragged back in time, the trip had been triggered by proximity to a person whose past was being threatened.  “I have to tell you,” I said frankly, “if someone is trying to mess with your conception or something, I’m not feeling a pressing need to intervene.”
            His face, normally ruddy anyway, flushed a deeper shade of red.  “Get us back where we belong before we change anything!” he spat. 
            I didn’t like being given orders, but he had a point.  And the fact that I had a strong urge to run down the hallway and throw myself in Mircea’s arms was another good reason for getting out of here.  I closed my eyes and concentrated on Casanova’s office at Dante’s, but although I could see it clearly, there was no rush of power sweeping me towards it.  I tried again, but I guess my batteries needed a recharge because nothing happened.
            “There might be a slight delay on this flight,” I said, feeling queasy.  All sorts of fears began crowding my brain.  What if there was a time limit on the ritual that the former Pythia had forgotten to mention?  What if I couldn’t shift again, period, because the power had gotten tired of waiting for me to seal the deal and had passed to someone else?  We could be stuck whenever this was permanently. 
            “What the bloody hell are you talking about?” Pritkin demanded.  “Take us back immediately!” 
            “I can’t.” 
            “What do you mean, you can’t?  Every moment we spend here is a danger!”
            Pritkin was shaking me again and I think he was getting worried, because his voice had roughened.  I had no sympathy–whatever he was feeling was nothing compared to my mood.  The aching need to see Mircea, to touch him or at least to be near him, was still there, as was the fear about how I was supposed to get home.  But overshadowing it all was a growing anger.  Wasn’t my life messed up enough without having to handle the Pythia’s responsibilities, too?  Couldn’t whoever was running this show let me deal with a few of the items on my personal problem list before dragging me off to sort out other people’s?  It wasn’t fair and I’d about had enough.  If I was supposed to do something, fine.  Bring it on.
            “Let me spell it out for you,” I told Pritkin, shrugging out of his grasp.  “I didn’t bring us here.  I don’t even know where here is.  All I know is that I can’t shift us out, either because the power has decided it doesn’t like me anymore, or because it wants me to do something before I leave.”  I was betting on the latter, since I didn’t think landing at Mircea’s feet had been an accident.
            Pritkin didn’t look like he believed me, but I didn’t care.  I turned away from him, intending to find out if Mircea had any bright ideas, but Pritkin’s hand clasped around my wrist in a vise-like grip.  “You aren’t going anywhere,” he said grimly. 
            “I have to find out what the problem is and deal with it or neither of us will be going anywhere,” I snapped.  “So, unless you can tell me where we are and why we’re here, I don’t see much choice but to go exploring, do you?” 
            “We’re in London, in late 1888 or early 1889.”
            I raised an eyebrow.  I hadn’t seen any clues to help narrow things down, other than the woman’s clothes–Mircea’s were standard formal wear that could have come from a wide span of time.  It was a little disconcerting to learn that Pritkin was a connoisseur of women’s fashion.  I said as much and he actually growled at me before thrusting a piece of paper into my hands. 
            “Here!  Someone dropped this.”  I looked away from his perpetual glower to peruse the yellow and black flyer he’d given me.  It showed a man staring up a hill at three old crones.  They sort of reminded me of the Graeae, only they had better hair.  It informed me that it was a souvenir of the Lyceum Theatre’s performance of Macbeth, beginning December 29, 1888. 
            “Ok, great.  We know the date.  It’s a start, but I don’t see it getting us too far.”  I tried to pull away again, but he stopped me, this time with words.
            “The more you feed the geis, the stronger it will become.  Not to mention that prostitutes in this era wear more clothes than you currently have on.  You can’t go anywhere without causing a riot.”
            “How did you know?”  It was disconcerting to find out that I’d been wearing the equivalent of a sign on my back for years.  Could everybody see it but me?
            Pritkin gave a one-shouldered shrug.  “I knew the first time I saw you together.”
            I considered the situation and figured it was worth a shot.  “I don’t suppose you could do something about it?  We are in this together, after all, and I could probably think more clearly if–”
            “Only Mircea can remove it,” Pritkin said, dashing what little hope I’d had.  “Even the mage who cast it for him couldn’t do it without his assent.  The best you can do at present is to stay away from him.”
            I frowned.  It was pretty much the same thing Casanova had said, but I wasn’t buying it.  “I don’t know much about magic, but even I know there’s no such thing as a spell that can’t be broken.  There has to be a way!”  Pritkin’s expression didn’t change, but a momentary flash in his eyes told me I was right.  “You know something,” I said accusingly.
He looked evasive, but finally answered.  I suppose he decided it would be faster to humor me.  “All geasa are different, but most have one thing in common.  Each has built into it a . . . a safety net, if you like.  Mircea would not want to be hoist by his own petard, so he would have designed the geis with a way out of the spell, should something go wrong.”
            “And that would be?”
            “Only Mircea and the mage who cast it know that.” 
            I stared at him, trying to figure out if he was lying.  His words rang true, so why did I get the feeling he wasn’t telling me everything?  Maybe because no one ever did.  “If this is 1888, Mircea hasn’t done anything yet.  There is no geis.  Or there shouldn’t be,” I added, since obviously something was happening.
            “You have a habit of getting into unprecedented situations,” Pritkin said with a scowl.  “I’ve never heard of this particular scenario.  I don’t know what will occur if the two of you spend time together in this era, but I doubt you would like the consequences.”  He adjusted his long coat to minimize the ominous bulges underneath.  “Stay here.  I will look about and see if anything strikes me as unusual.  I lived through this time and am more likely to notice anything out of place than you.  I’ll return shortly and we will discuss our options.”
            He left before I could react, leaving me staring witlessly after him.  Magic users live longer than norms, true, but not enough to look about 35 at a century more than that.  I’d known since soon after meeting him that there was more to Pritkin than met the eye, but this was getting really weird.
            I sat down on one of the steps and hugged my knees, staring at a patch of threadbare carpet.  The minimal outfit was cold and the horns were adding to my headache.  I took them off and stared at them instead.  The gold glitter was starting to flake off in pieces, showing the white Styrofoam beneath.  I felt a little bad about that.  Assuming we ever got back to our time, the girl whose locker I’d burgled was going to have to pay for a new one.  Of course, if I didn’t get back at all, she’d need a whole new outfit.
            I noticed that the stairway was getting colder, but didn’t worry about it until a woman suddenly appeared in front of me.  She was dressed in a long blue gown and seemed as solid as any regular person, but I immediately knew she was a ghost.  That was due less to my keen sense of the paranormal than the fact that she had a severed head tucked under her arm.  The head, which had a Vandyke beard that matched its dark brown hair, focused pale blue eyes on me. 
            “A dashed improvement over Faust!” it said, rolling its eyes up to its bearer. 
            The woman stared at me with no expression, but when she spoke her voice did not sound pleased.  “Why do you disturb us?”
            I sighed as deeply as I could manage with the damn corset cutting me in two.    Just what I needed, a ticked-off ghost.  I was just thankful I hadn’t shifted as a spirit myself, or I’d have a lot more reason to be worried.  I have time traveled before without my body, appearing in another era as a spirit or in possession of someone.  But both states create bigger problems than putting up with an uncomfortable costume for a while. 
            Leaving my body behind means risking death unless I find another spirit to baby sit it while I’m gone.  Since the only one usually available is Billy Joe, this is something I try to avoid.  Especially in Vegas, where all his favorite vices are so near at hand.  The other downside is that traveling in spirit form saps my energy too quickly to allow me to do much unless I possess someone and draw energy from him or her.  But I don’t even like drinking after someone else, much less using their body. 
            After becoming the Pythia’s heir, I acquired the ability to take my own form along for the ride, although that has a downside, too.  One possession resulted in an injury to the woman I was inhabiting–in the form of an almost severed toe–but I’d been able to leave the wound behind when I shifted back to my own body.  But if anything happened to me now, I was stuck with it.  The upside of my current condition was that ghosts don’t have a lot of power over the living.  They can cannibalize other spirits under certain conditions, but attacking a living body usually drains them of more power than they gain.  Still, there was no reason to provoke her. 
            “I’ll be leaving soon,” I said, hoping it was true.  “I have an errand to run and then I’m out of here.”
            “You aren’t in the show then?” the head asked, looking disappointed. 
            “Only visiting,” I said quickly, since the woman’s eyes had started to glow.  That’s not a good sign in a ghost–it means they’re calling up their power, normally just prior to letting you have it.  “Really, I want to leave, but I can’t yet.  Hopefully, this won’t take long.”
            “The other said the same,” she intoned, her dark hair starting to blow gently about her face as her power rose.  “But after poisoning the wine, she did not go.  Now you are here.  This must stop.”
            “She?”  I didn’t like the sound of that.  “The only person I brought with me is male.  Maybe you’ve seen him?  About 5’8, blond, dressed like the Terminator?  Sorry,” I said, as her forehead wrinkled slightly.  “I mean, he’s wearing a long topcoat over a bunch of weapons.  He’ll be back soon and we’ll get this sorted out.”
            “It is not the mage that concerns us,” the ghost said sternly.  “You and the other woman are the threat.  You must leave.”
            “She is somewhat territorial, I fear,” the head said, looking sympathetic.  “We’ve been here such a long time, y’see.  This land belonged to my family long before they built a theatre on it, and it sustains us.”  He gave me a cheerful leer.  “’Tis more fun these days.  The demmed Roundheads closed all the theatres, as well as the pubs, the whorehouses, and all besides that wasn’t a church.  They even prohibited sports on Sunday!  They were kind enough to behead me before I had to live through that.  But we triumphed in the end, didn’t we?”
            “Uh huh.”  I was barely listening.  Every ghost I’ve ever met wants to tell me the story of his life, and if I hadn’t learned how to nod and smile while thinking of other things, I’d have been driven crazy a long time ago.  And I had a lot to mull over.  
            From the little I had managed to discover about my position, mostly from rumors Billy Joe overheard, the set up worked like this: if someone from my own era was messing with the timeline, the ball was in my court.  It was my problem, and I’d have to fix it.  But, if someone from another time was trying to interfere, that was the province of their Pythia.  If that was true, the interference that had brought me here should have come from my lifetime.  But the only person I knew who could skip around between centuries was in no position to do so.  Billy had checked with some of his ghostly contacts and assured me that the wounds I put in Myra’s spirit form would have manifested as physical injuries as soon as she returned to her body.  And there was no way she’d have healed damage like that in a week. 
            But, if the woman the ghosts had mentioned wasn’t Myra, she could only be another Pythia.  Maybe my power had gotten confused, or I’d been called in as help on a
difficult problem.  Since I didn’t know how this gig worked, anything was possible.  I stood up eagerly.  If I could find her, I could plead for a little professional courtesy and get her to send Pritkin and me back where we belonged. 
            “Can you show me this other woman?  Maybe I can convince her to leave and to send me home, too.”
            The woman looked unsure, but the head seemed happy to help.  “Of course we can!  She’s not far,” it babbled cheerfully.  “She was in one of the boxes earlier.”
            The man’s enthusiasm seemed to help the woman decide, and she nodded brusquely.   “Quickly then.”
            The ghosts followed me down the stairs, politely not passing through me, then led the way to the box beside Mircea’s.  I parted the curtains and peered inside, but it was empty.  Onstage a woman in a green medieval gown with huge, red-lined sleeves was gesturing dramatically.  I barely noticed her.  My eyes fixed on Mircea, who was staring at the elaborate gilt frame of the stage instead of the actress, with the fixed gaze of someone who isn’t really seeing it.  I felt the same.  One look at him and everything else suddenly seemed irrelevant.  I had been bespelled before, but it had never felt like this.  Then, I’d known it was fake, I just hadn’t cared.  But even knowing this was due to a geis, it still felt unbelievably real.  I could hate that he’d done this to me, but I couldn’t hate him.  The very thought was absurd. 
            “There,” the ghost pointed a finger in front of my face.  “The wine has already been delivered.”
            She indicated a tray with a bottle and several glasses that sat on a small table behind the seats occupied by Mircea and the blonde.  “What are you talking about?”  I forced my eyes to look at the ghost instead of Mircea, and something like rational thought returned.  “Are you telling me that bottle is poisoned?”
            “She said she would stay until it was consumed, but perhaps her power was insufficient.”  The ghost looked pleased for the first time.  I could almost hear her thinking, one down, one to go.
            I ignored her, my panic at the thought of anything happening to Mircea so overwhelming that I could hardly bear it.  I ran out of the box and collided with Pritkin, who had been standing there looking annoyed.  He steadied us both or we would have ended up on the floor.  “Let go!”  I batted at his hands, which were gripping my upper arms painfully.  “I have to get in there!”
            “I told you to stay away from him.  Do you want to become completely besotted?”
            “Then you do it,” I said, deciding he might be right.  I wanted to go in that box way too much for it to be a good idea.  “There’s a bottle of wine in there, and I think it may be poisoned.  You have to get it!”  I didn’t know if poison would kill a vamp, but I didn’t intend to find out.
            He tried out his usual glare for a second, then his face changed and I knew I was in trouble.  “If I do this, do you swear to speak with me for as long as I wish without
shifting times, attempting to kill me or placing any spells, curses or other impediments in my way?”
            I blinked at him.  “You want to talk?”  We never talked.  Stabbed, shot at and tried to blow each other up, sure, but never talked.  “About what?”  I asked nervously, but Pritkin only gave me an evil smile.  He had me over a barrel and he knew it.  “Fine.  Whatever.  We’ll talk as long as you agree not to try to kill me, imprison me or drag me off to the Circle–or anybody else.  And you don’t get an indefinite time, either.  One hour, take it or leave it.”
            “Agreed.”   To give him credit, he didn’t waste time once the bargain was struck, but immediately let me go and slipped past the curtain.  For several minutes I waited anxiously, but nothing happened.  Finally, I couldn’t stand it any more and went back to the empty box so I could at least see what was going on.  It wasn’t good.
            On stage, a skinny Macbeth with a drooping moustache was starting the dagger-of-the-mind soliloquy, while in the box, Pritkin had a real dagger at his throat courtesy of the blonde.  She was being shielded from the audience by Mircea, who stood behind her, but my box was closer to the stage and I could see them clearly. 
            Before I could think how to help Pritkin, things got worse when Mircea started to open the bottle.  His eyes were on the mage and there was a slight smile on his lips.  I didn’t like that look.  Mircea has always been a strong believer in letting the punishment fit the crime.  If he’d decided that Pritkin was trying to poison them, he was fully capable of forcing the entire contents of the bottle down the mage’s throat and waiting to see what happened. 
            Normally, Pritkin might have been able to get out of this kind of thing on his own, but he was trying not to call attention to what was happening.  I sympathized with his dedication to the whole integrity of the timeline thing, but getting killed over it seemed a little fanatical.  I was Pythia, at least temporarily, and I wasn’t willing to go that far.  Normally I wouldn’t lose much sleep over Pritkin’s death, but he had gone into that box because I asked him.  If he died, it would be partially my fault.
             I sighed and raised my wrist.  A dimly glowing dagger practically jumped out of my bracelet to hover over my arm.  It was fairly buzzing with excitement over the prospect of a fight, but I wasn’t sure this was a great plan.  Among other things, I had a feeling that it might decide to stab Pritkin instead of shattering the bottle.  They had a history and, as far as I knew, had yet to fight on the same side.  
            “Take out the bottle only,” I told it sternly.  “Don’t attack the mage–you know how he gets.  I mean it.”
            I got a faint bob of what I hoped was agreement, before it was off.   It flew over the balcony, straight for the bottle, which Mircea had just raised to Pritkin’s lips.  It shattered the thick glass easily, causing dark red wine to cascade over the mage’s coat and splash Mircea’s formerly pristine white shirt.  Mircea whirled around, the bottle’s neck still in hand, and saw me.  He opened his mouth as if to say something, then stopped and just stood there, looking dazed. 
            Unfortunately my knife didn’t follow his example, but decided to ham it up.  Onstage, Macbeth was asking if this was a dagger he saw before him.  My flashing, luminescent knife dipped and swooped over the startled crowd, causing gasps and even a few screams, before coming to a halt in front of the actor’s stunned face.  It bobbed up and down for a minute, as if taking a bow, then flew back to me.  Thunderous applause broke out all over the theatre, drowning out the rest of the actor’s lines. 
            As soon as the attention hog melted back into my bracelet, I felt the disorientation spread over me that indicated a time shift was coming.  “Grab my hand, quick!” I yelled at Pritkin.  “Takeoff is any second.”
            He had used the moment of distraction to jerk away from the blonde.  She was between him and the way out, but he got around that problem by vaulting onto an unused seat and launching himself across the divide between boxes.  He almost slipped on the edge, but I caught his hand.  The next minute, we were once more spinning through time.
          
                                
                                Look for Claimed by Shadow on April 3, 2007!