Curse the Dawn (29 page)

“Not for hours.” He paused to kiss me quickly. “Get some sleep.”

“I’ll try.” I was exhausted, but my brain didn’t seem to know how to cut off anymore. When the endorphins wore off, I’d probably be wide awake, staring at the ceiling, thumbing through my ever-growing catalogue of horrors. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.“Do you want some help?” he asked, sitting beside me.

I nodded. Anything to avoid replaying today’s events or seeing Rafe like that again . . . Mircea’s arms slipped around me and a wave of peace flowed over me better than any drug. I hadn’t expected it to take hold so fast. I had a dozen things to talk to him about, to ask . . . and suddenly I couldn’t think of even one. Sleep was dragging at my consciousness, my body going thick and heavy, and I couldn’t make myself open my eyes again.

“It’s over; everyone’s safe,” I heard him murmur. The arms tightened abruptly. “Even you.”

I had no idea what that meant, but I was drifting. Mircea’s hand was running slowly up and down my spine, the other heavy on the back of my neck. I breathed out and let the weight pull me under.

I woke up chained to the bed. “Goddamnit!”

Mircea was standing by the vanity, pulling on another sinfully expensive shirt. This one was crisp and white with French cuffs and unobtrusive links. The tie he looped carelessly around his neck was the perfect shade of gold to bring out the flecks in his eyes. I glared at him.

“I have finally found a way to ensure that you will be here when I return,” he murmured.

“This isn’t funny,” I told him, tugging uselessly on the cuff. It was a little hard to look serious when I was naked and my hair was plastered to my face and I was in a freaking
teepee
, but I was damned if I wasn’t going to try. “I mean it, Mircea! Let me go!”

He gave me a slow smile in the mirror. I hated when he did that. “I will make you a deal,” he said, coming over to the bed.

“I don’t want a deal! I want out of these!”

He ignored me. “I have to fly to Washington briefly on Senate business. I will be back late tomorrow night or the next morning. I would like to know that you are safe in my absence.”

I sighed in frustration. “What do you think I’m going to do? My power is still bottomed out from yesterday, I’m worried about Rafe and, in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t have any clothes!”

“Your clothes are there.” He indicated a matched set of Louis Vuitton luggage sitting by the bathroom. I’d assumed they were his, although they weren’t his style. Probably something Sal had picked up in an attempt to mold me into less of an embarrassment. “And I think a day or so of rest before you meet the Circle would be wise.”

“I agree! So let me go!”

“I have your word that you will stay here until I return, resting and visiting with Raphael?”

“I was thinking about going shopping.”

“As long as you take Marco.” He extracted a credit card from his wallet and handed it to me. It was a platinum AmEx with my name on it. I could probably charge a house, and he wouldn’t care. Of course, I didn’t need a house; I already had a very nice gilded cage.

“I don’t want your money, Mircea. I want to talk about this.” I rattled the cuff. It made an ominous clanking sound, which perfectly fit my mood. “We need to come to some kind of understanding.”

“I agree,” he said smoothly. “You must understand that you are a target.”

“I’ve been a target all my life!”

“Not like this,” he said emphatically.

“What about the Consul? I don’t see you locking her up!”

“I think Kit would like to try.”

“So did he bug her, too?”

“Bug?” He looked momentarily confused.

“The trace charm. Pritkin says I have one from Marlowe
and
one from you!”

“How kind of him to mention it.”

“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,
dulceaƫă?
”

“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.”

“I will make inquiries.” He leaned over and kissed me lingeringly. “Now, do I have your word?”

I sighed. “Yes! Now will you
please
. . .”

He ran his eyes over me, and some heat sparked in their depths. But he undid the cuffs. “Pity,” he murmured, grabbed his jacket and was gone.

I spent the rest of the morning in the pool, swimming laps and avoiding the growing number of masters inside. A steady stream of gold-eyed vampires from Mircea’s Washington estate filtered in all day, replacing Alphonse’s crew. A few curious types stared at me through the living room windows, but none were willing to brave direct daylight to come out and say hello.

I came back into the apartment itself only when Sal returned from a shopping trip. I helped her carry a few dozen packages to her room, and I couldn’t help but notice that some had Augustine’s distinctive blue and silver seal. He was becoming as famous for the boxes as for the contents. Sal sat a large one on the bed and we watched it do its thing. It unwrapped itself and then refolded into an origami dragon complete with tiny, useless wings and little silver flames coming out of its mouth.

It slowly waddled to the edge of the bed and toppled off while Sal held up what I originally thought was a burlap sack. “This is for you. It’s going to solve these wardrobe slips you keep having.”

I regarded it warily. “Does Augustine know you bought it for me?”

She grinned. “Worried?”

“A little.” I had enough problems without my skin turning blue or whatever he’d dreamed up this time.

“Relax. He thought it was for me.”

“And you think it’ll fit?” Sal was three inches taller than me and built like Mae West.

“Just try it,” she prompted. “It’s the new thing.”

It didn’t look like a new thing. It looked like an old thing: a plain slip dress and jacket made out of coarse brown fabric. But it had been a nice thought. I pulled it on over the bathing suit and turned to look in the mirror.

I blinked a couple of times, because what I was seeing didn’t make sense. I was suddenly wearing an elegant little cover-up in a deep blue that complemented one of the bands in my suit. It had a drawstring neckline, a mesh body and flippy little skirt. It was actually cute.

“It’s called a wardrobe-in-one,” Sal told me, opening more packages. An origami lion prowled to the edge of the bed before leaping off. It was soon followed by a paper eagle, which unfolded foot-long wings and soared to the top of the dresser.

“I don’t get it,” I told her, watching the dragon emerge from under the bed, a large dust bunny in its claws.

“The idea is an outfit that can morph along with the wearer’s needs, allowing you to go from work to shopping to evening with no need to change clothes.” She ran the hem of the cover-up through her fingers, her eyes narrowing. “I thought he was using some kind of glamourie, but this actually feels like different fabric.”

“It’s really cool,” I told her, and then bit my lip. “It must have been a lot, though.” She’d already bought me several outfits, none of which had been cheap. And it wasn’t like I could return the favor. I assumed that the Pythia usually received some sort of salary, but—surprise—I hadn’t been getting a check. And Mircea’s shiny new credit card was staying on his dresser where it belonged.

“We hicks have to stick together. Especially around here.” She shot a glance out the door. At first, I didn’t see anyone there, but then I noticed the edge of a finely pressed pant leg peeping past the door frame. One of Mircea’s masters was loitering in the hall.

He wasn’t there to eavesdrop—he could have done that from across the apartment—and besides, he’d stuck a leg out so we’d know he was there. Why he wanted us to know, I had no idea. But I could feel my cheeks reddening as my blood pressure soared. Maybe Mircea didn’t mind tripping over people all day, but I hadn’t had five hundred years to get used to it. And it was getting old fast.

I stomped over to the door and poked my head out. And immediately wished I hadn’t. It was Nicu, the one master I’d already had a run-in with. Of course.

“Yes? Can I help you with something?” I asked.

Those flat gold eyes met mine and held, but there was no attempt to overwhelm me this time. “You are the master’s woman,” he said. And stopped.

I didn’t intend to discuss my personal life with a guy I barely knew. Besides, there was no point. From Nicu’s perspective, I was Mircea’s woman because Mircea said so. My feelings were irrelevant.

I sighed. “And?”

“Your bodyguard is not here.” He sounded disapproving.

“Marco’s shift starts at sundown,” I said, not getting his point. Assuming he had one. Maybe this was the ancient master version of small talk. “I’m not planning to go out until then.”

“I will guard you until he arrives.”

I tried to remember Marco’s lecture and be diplomatic. “That’s great. Really. But, um, there’s only Mircea’s people here, so I don’t think—”

“There are others,” he said, cutting me off. Apparently, this manners thing worked only one way.

“What?”

“You are in a room alone with the traitor’s child.”

I still didn’t get it, but then Sal was there, smiling coldly. “He means me, Cassie. Because the toad who made me betrayed his master and joined the bad guys. Leaving me and Alphonse—and the rest of Tony’s old stable—under suspicion.”

“Mircea’s going to change her as soon as he gets the time!” I told Nicu heatedly. “Just like he did for Rafe!”

I may as well have saved my breath. Nicu just crossed his arms and settled back against the wall, those coinlike eyes fixed on Sal. He’d obviously said his piece and he was done.

“Come on.” Sal tugged on my arm, getting me away from Nicu before I said something stupid. “Don’t you want to see what I bought for me?”