I could feel my blood surging into him, warm and alive and pulsing hotly. I tried to push him away, but my hands found his shoulders instead, pulling him closer. Mircea locked one hand in my hair, bringing the other behind my hips, melding us together…

And then I was sitting seaside, the green-blue water lapping at my toes, half buried in the sand.

I looked around wildly, disoriented, expecting an attack from someone, somewhere. I rolled over and clutched the beach, trying to present a smaller target, and was momentarily blinded by the sun in my eyes. I froze, sure that someone would use the advantage to sneak up on me, but nothing happened. I blinked for a few seconds until I could get a clear view, but all I saw was sun and sky and sand—and, on the crest of a rocky hill, a small temple slowly crumbling to pieces.

Nothing continued to happen. After a moment, my heart stopped trying to thud its way out of my chest, and my breathing returned to something like normal. I lay there and watched a flock of little brown birds dive in and out of the temple’s roof, where it looked like they had a nest. Other than the waves lapping around my ankles, they were the only things moving on the whole beach.

I finally sat up and, when nothing attacked me, got to my knees. Enough adrenaline had left my brain that I could think again, so I knew who it was that I should be seeing. The being who had once owned my power had shown himself to me before in a similar situation. He seemed to find it funny to pay his visits at the most awkward moments possible.

One of the small brown birds hopped along the sand, its feet making vague indentations that the water quickly filled in again. It ran out to the wet sand when the waves retreated, looking for whatever edible morsel they might have left behind, then raced them for the beach whenever they started back in. It finally tired of the game and hopped over to me, looking for a handout. I blinked and when I looked again, a handsome blond in a too short tunic rested on the sand beside me. For a second I thought he’d crushed the little bird, but then I realized the truth.

“It’s all me, Herophile,” he said, gesturing about. “The waves and the sand and, of course, the sun, although it is easier to converse in this form.”

“My name is Cassandra!” I snapped.

He’d given me the name of the second Pythia at Delphi, his ancient shrine, at our first meeting. It was supposedly some kind of reign title, but I didn’t feel comfortable using it when I didn’t know how to do the job it represented. Not to mention that, as names go, it pretty much sucked.

“Where have you been?” I demanded. “You promised to train me. That doesn’t translate into hanging me out to dry for a week! Do you know how close I just came to screwing everything up?”

“Yes. That’s why I pulled you out of there.” He glanced up from toying with a piece of seaweed. Unlike the last time I’d seen him, he didn’t look like he’d been covered in gold dust. But I still couldn’t see his face, which was merely an oval of light. It wasn’t so much majestic as odd, like talking to an oversized lamp. “You can’t continue this way. Something must be done about the geis—it’s a distraction.”

“A distraction?!” I could think of a lot of ways to describe it, and that wouldn’t have been on the list. “Mircea is dying and I’ll probably be next!”

“Not if you retrieve the Codex. The answer you seek is there.”

“I know that! What I don’t know is where it is or how to find it. Every lead we’ve had has led to a dead end—almost literally with the last one! Or weren’t you paying attention yesterday?”

He finished braiding the seaweed and fastened it around my wrist, bracelet style. “If it was easy, it wouldn’t be a test.”

“I don’t need any more tests; I need help!”

“The help you need, you already have.”

“Then I guess I must have missed it!”

“You will find what you need when you need it. It is perhaps your greatest gift, Herophile. To draw people to you.”

“Yeah, only they all seem to want me dead.”

He laughed, as if my impending demise was the funniest thing he’d heard all day. “I promised to train you. Very well, here is your first task. Find the Codex and lift the geis before it causes more complications.”

“And if I can’t?”

“I have every faith in you.”

“That makes one of us.”

“You’ll succeed; I’m sure of it. And if not”—he shrugged casually—“you don’t deserve your position.”

And then I was back, clinging to strong, bare shoulders, fingers slipping on sweat-slicked skin. Even to someone used to the abrupt way visions came and went, it was a bit of a jolt. Especially since Mircea was still feeding, and it was still amazing.

I’d never felt this connected, this anchored, this close to anyone, and I wanted it to go on forever. Only that’s what it seemed to be doing, I realized after a moment. Despite the fact that my heart was thundering in my ears and little spots were swimming in front of my eyes and my breath was coming in strangled gasps, he wasn’t stopping.

“Let go, Mircea,” I said as clearly as I could, considering the fangs in my throat. Nothing happened, unless you counted the tightening of his hand on my hip, fever-hot even through the material. “Mircea! Unless you plan to kill me, let go!”

I pushed as hard as I could, not caring at that moment if the movement tore my neck, just wanting him off. My hands were at an awkward angle on his shoulders and my strength was no match for his, but something about the action seemed to get through. He stopped.

I could feel the hesitation in him, need warring with whatever reason he had left, and for a long moment I really didn’t know which would win. Then slowly, as if he were moving underwater, he pulled back, his teeth sliding out of me cleanly.

“Cassie…” He looked dazed, and his voice was rough and cracked a bit at the edges. “I thought you were a dream.”

I stared at him dizzily. “I think maybe I am.”

He stared at me, swallowing harshly, the feverish glitter of his eyes even brighter, like an addict who has had a fix. “Then my dreams are improving.”

I kissed him, a quick tangling of tongues, heat and softness. “We’re working on a solution.”

“I know.” He paused and looked around the room, as if he was expecting to see someone or something. When he didn’t, he fell back, a shudder shivering through him as he pulled away.

“You know? How?” The only answer was the tightening of his muscles under my hands.

He closed his eyes, blocking out my face. “You must go, Cassie.”

It was good advice, but it made no sense that Mircea was giving it to me. I knew why I was doing my best to avoid completing the geis, but he had no reason to do so. It would get him out of his current torment and gain him a valuable servant. There was no downside.

“You don’t want to complete the geis?” I asked slowly, sure I was missing something.

“No.” His fists clenched in the sheets, hard enough that the knuckles showed white. “I want you to leave!”

“I don’t understand—” I touched his shoulder, not thinking, my own mind still muddied from the spell, and he flinched like I’d slapped him. He jerked away from me, all the way to the other side of the bed, and sat there facing the wall. “Go, Cassie! Please.”

“Yes, all right.” Something weird was definitely going on, but I didn’t have time to figure it out. There was a crack like a gunshot, and I jumped, then realized that no one was shooting at me. The hand Mircea had curled around the huge bedpost had snapped it in two like a twig.

In the next heartbeat, I was flying, the room swallowed by darkness behind me. I blinked hard, trying to clear my vision, and when I looked again I was back in the bar. The bartender gave a sudden start at the sight of me and fled to the back room.

I stared blankly after him, then caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the bottled liquors. It reflected wide eyes, flushed cheeks and a kiss-swollen mouth. I put a hand to my neck, and it came back red. I stared at the blood on my palm, and tried to say something. I failed.

Rafe handed me a napkin and I pressed it to my throat, Mircea’s kiss still throbbing on my lips. Already, the lack of his touch was a fierce ache behind my ribs, as if he’d left fingerprints on something deeper than skin. “Now do you understand?” Rafe asked softly.

I slowly nodded. That had been no vision. I’d unconsciously shifted, straight to Mircea’s side. And if I’d lost that much control, how much worse must it be for him? The geis wouldn’t kill him, I realized; it would drive him mad. And to stop hunger like that, sooner or later a person would pay any price.

Even take his own life.

Chapter 5

Crystal Gazing is not the supernatural community’s most respected journalistic voice. Its tagline, “All the news that’s not fit to print,” pretty much says it all. But, once in a while, its scandal-hunting reporters turn up a story that the more respectable papers reject as mere rumor. And even more rarely, that rumor turns out to be true.

But so far, although there was a lot of speculation about the identity of the new Pythia, no one had managed to come up with my name. It was only a matter of time, but I was grateful for any reprieve. And the lack of new information had allowed juicier stories to bump that one to the back pages. Today’s screaming headline concerned an unknown woman who’d been raiding the Circle’s facilities, although as usual, the article was short on facts and long on terms like “vixen vigilante” and “fetching fanatic.” I silently wished her luck. Her activities might account for why no one had yet managed to track me down.

My break was over, so I stuck the rag in my locker, getting ready to go back to work. My current time-killing activity involved Casanova’s never-ending search for new ways to make a buck. He’d somehow conned an up-and-coming fashion designer into renting one of the overpriced shops in the gallery. Part of the deal had been space for a fashion show at the beginning of each new season, along with the services of the showgirls as models and enough casino grunts to handle the heavy lifting. I, of course, was one of the grunts.