Mircea didn’t notice. His eyes were wide open and brighter than I’d ever seen them, the rush from combat still humming behind them like electricity. He was utterly concentrated and strangely young-looking, and when he finally raised his head to tell me he was through, I grabbed him by the shirt and kissed him, hard.

It wasn’t a great effort. I got the angle a little off and our teeth clicked together and we both tasted like adrenaline. I didn’t care. My fists clenched in his shirt, crushing the heavy silk, and I couldn’t seem to make them let go. And I needed them to because I couldn’t hit him until they did and I really, really wanted to hit him. I was furious suddenly, completely livid. Because he’d almost died, damn it, and I hadn’t been able to do anything, and he’d almost died.

Mircea didn’t object, didn’t try to pull away; instead he drew me closer, close enough to hear his heart beat, close enough to feel him breathe. He took charge of the kiss, slowing it down, until it was all warmth and sweetness and inevitability. His hands glided up my back and into my hair, combing through my curls and making me shiver. I’d never known that anyone could kiss in English, kiss in apologies, but apparently he could. I wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, but it felt right. Like he should be sorry for scaring me like that.

He didn’t kiss fair, and he didn’t kiss all at once; he kept giving it up and taking it away until I thought I’d die of frustration. I felt like screaming, but didn’t have the breath to waste, and when I thought I would go completely insane he finally made a quiet, hungry sound and met me in the middle. And it was suddenly all panting, groaning need rising between us like steam.

I could feel the geis react, faint tremors humming just beneath the skin, symptoms of an imminent explosion. And I didn’t care. I had somehow never noticed the tensile strength of his body, of those hands, lean and strong and achingly gentle. A flash of what it would feel like, pressed down beneath his weight, sent heat spiraling through me. I wanted that. Wanted everything.

And then he broke away, looking shocked and a little wild, like he hadn’t during the fight, when it would have made sense. I looked at him, with the rumpled hair and the dirty face, and wanted to kiss him again. Not because of a compulsion, but because he already tasted familiar, because I wanted more of the warmth that seemed to bubble up through my skin whenever we touched.

But I couldn’t. This Mircea was two weeks behind the times, so to speak. For him, the geis had just woken up. But the more contact we had, the faster it was going to grow. Putting my Mircea through even more hell.

I jerked away, and he let me go. But his puzzled gaze shifted from me to Françoise and Radella. “Is there something you wish to tell me, dulceata??”

I glanced at Françoise, but she gave me one of those French shrugs that I’ve never been able to interpret. Great. I looked back at Mircea and swallowed. “I don’t feel well,” I told him honestly. “Can we talk a little later?”

After an almost imperceptible pause, Mircea nodded. He stood up, still staring at me while issuing orders, sending the vamps who had shown up far too late scurrying around like frightened ants. I sat on the ground and watched them, wondering what they were doing until I saw that one of them had some kind of industrial vacuum. He started sucking up the remains of the mages who’d been hit by the Lot’s Wife spell. Another followed him, tossing shoes and other non-sand-like bits into a large-size garbage bag.

I no longer hurt anywhere, but I still felt exhausted and slightly removed from everything. Mircea must have hit me with a suggestion, the vamp equivalent of an all-night bender. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to try to shift again just yet.

Another vamp had started breaking apart the two withered corpses. They were so old that their bones snapped easily, brittle like dried sticks. They made a crunching sound as he shoved them into a garbage bag. I watched them, the shiny gloss of the suggestion dulling my reaction. I knew they must have been killed by a spell meant for me, but at the moment it didn’t seem all that important. The vamp managed to get both of them into one bag. It looked like he’d brought the good kind, because it stretched but didn’t break.

Another vamp suddenly ran screaming across the parking lot. He’d managed to set himself on fire trying to extinguish the Pinto. Mircea looked disgusted, but he moved off to help. He’d have probably done as much even if the guy hadn’t belonged to him. He was a senator, and had to uphold the Senate’s unofficial motto: always clean up your mess.

I felt a slight twitch of pain in my wrist, the kind that said the suggestion might be weakening and maybe I should think about finding some aspirin. But I didn’t move. I slumped there watching the stuff that never makes it into movies because it’s not exciting. It’s just people doing a job. After the action comes the fire extinguishing and the street sweeping and the explaining to families that somebody isn’t coming home. Only that last wouldn’t happen here. No one knew who the dark mages were or where to find them. If the man I’d killed had a family, they wouldn’t know anything was wrong until he just never came back.

The thought hit like a narrow, very sharp knife, slid right between the ribs. All the pieces of myself that I didn’t talk about, didn’t think about, came rushing back. And for a minute, I saw another scene.

Mac, a friend of Pritkin’s and briefly mine, had followed me into Faerie and died there to protect me. I still had nightmares about it, my mind showing me surreal images of his hands pressed to the trunk of a tree, the bark growing liquid and pushing up between his fingers. It flowed over his wrists, paralyzing him as it surged up his body until skin, hair, everything, was covered with the same monotonous, uniform gray. Like a shroud. I usually woke up in a sweat, my heart pounding, when it covered his face.

When there was nothing human left.

It hadn’t happened quite like that, but I couldn’t complain about my brain’s editing process; the reality had been worse. I was sick of being the person who got people killed. I’d sworn it wasn’t going to happen anymore, and yet here I was, not just the reason for it but the actual instrument. A man was dead tonight, and I’d done it. I’d killed him.

My mind was horrified, sickened, disbelieving. But my emotions appeared to be taking a break. I wasn’t trembling, wasn’t ill, wasn’t, seemingly, anything. The most I felt was kind of numb. Just numb. Despite the fact that the mage hadn’t been my only casualty.

Billy might have thrown the Lot’s Wife, but I’d donated the energy that made it possible. At the very least, that made part of the responsibility mine. But those deaths didn’t seem as real, somehow. I’d seen magic all my life, but it wasn’t the same. Vampires were magical creatures, but the ones at Tony’s had mostly used speed, strength and a lot of human weapons to kill. Some of what they did could be pretty spectacular, not to mention gruesome, but at least it made sense. Unlike an innocuous little ball that could drain five people of life in a matter of seconds. The gunshot, though, was something else. I’d seen the expression on the man’s face, watched the blood well up between his fingers from a wound I had caused. No. There was no denying that one.

And beyond the guilt and the pain and who knew what else I was going to feel when Mircea’s comforting numbness faded, I’d also probably completely screwed up the timeline. A lot of people were dead who weren’t supposed to be. Or were they?

It was really hard to think, and, ironically enough, time-travel paradoxes aren’t my best thing. But there were a few oddities I was starting to notice. Like, if this wasn’t how things were meant to play out, why hadn’t I met Mircea the last time I was here? And why had I seen only two dark mages that night instead of the dozen or so who’d apparently been hanging around? If Mircea and I hadn’t fought them off before, who had? Because I hadn’t seen anyone else volunteering.

“Cassie. We should go,” Françoise said gently.

I looked at her blearily. She appeared to be bouncing up and down without actually lifting off the ground, and all her edges were blurry. I decided that was probably me. “How did it go?”

She grimaced. “Don’t you remember?”

I thought back for a minute, to my experiences here two weeks ago. “You were captured. I remember freeing you, but that’s about it.” I hadn’t really wanted to know what a bunch of witches and a pixie were doing locked up in one of Dante’s lower levels. I’d run across them while here on other business and helped them get away, but I hadn’t asked a lot of questions. “I’m a little fuzzy on details,” I admitted.

“Zee mages, zey thought I was one of zee slaves, who ’ad escaped,” Françoise explained. “Zey locked me up, and when Radella tried to ’elp me, zey captured her as well.”

“Did you get it?”

She nodded gravely. “I was in the second group. I over’eard the spell when the others were sent. I was to go next, but zen ze news came that you were ’ere—ze other you,” she explained helpfully. I nodded. “Zey closed ze portal and left us, because everyone was told to drop what zey were doing and find you.”

Yeah, I bet. Tony had wanted me pretty bad. I suppose his goons thought they could finish the slave run later. I was suddenly viciously glad that they’d been denied that much, at least.

“I should never ’ave left you,” Françoise said mournfully.

“I want to see the damn rune before I go anywhere else with you people,” the pixie put in, crossing her tiny arms.

“Why?”

“Because you’re all completely insane!” Radella snapped. Her eyes were on the vamps, who were kneeling beside the diamond pattern on the asphalt, debating whether it was worth trying to scrape anything out of the cracks, or if a new paving job would be easier.

“Because I could ’ave ’elped you,” Françoise said, looking at me like she wondered if maybe I’d gotten hit in the head. Which I had, as my throbbing jaw was busy reminding me. I’d forgotten about that until just now. Oh, yeah. That suggestion was going south pretty fast.