Marlowe was looking at me with dawning understanding. He’d been there when the Dark Fey king had given me the commission to find the damn thing, when I’d discovered it contained a way out of the geis. “You found it,” he said softly.

I shook my head. “Not yet. But I know how to get it.”

“You will tell me,” the Consul said. It was not a question. “I will send for it, and if you speak the truth, I will order Lord Mircea released. You will remain here until it is brought to me.”

“You don’t understand,” I said, trying to keep my temper. “It isn’t somewhere, it’s somewhen. I’m the only one who can get it. I’ve been working on it for almost two weeks now!”

The Consul just looked at me. For a moment, I was afraid she’d gone into one of her famous time-outs, which could last anywhere from a few minutes to a few days, but then she blinked. “Why should I believe that you wish to help one of us?”

“One of you?” I threw out my hands in exasperation. “Except for the blood-drinking thing, I practically am one of you!”

Her face broke into the first smile I’d ever seen from her. After one look at it, I hoped it would also be the last. “If that were true, you would be long dead for your defiance.”

Okay. Death threats aside, we were making progress. “If I wished Mircea harm, why am I here?” I asked. “What punishment could I give him that would be worse than what he’s already undergoing? If I wanted him to suffer, I’d just stay away. That’s how you know I want to help.”

“And what do you wish in return?”

Finally, we came to it. “I want Tami freed and the charges against her dropped.”

“Cassie!” I heard Tami’s excited whisper behind me, felt her eyes boring a hole in the back of my neck, but I swallowed the words I knew she hoped to hear.

She wanted me to demand that something be done about those damn schools the mages were running, but I knew better. The Consul might be able to pull a few strings over a single prisoner, but changing an entire area of Circle policy would be overreaching. She didn’t have that kind of authority, and asking for something I knew she couldn’t provide would only make me look like I didn’t really want to help Mircea. I’d already asked for more than I thought I could get—stipulating that the charges be dropped instead of simply that Tami be freed. I wasn’t going to do any better. Not tonight.

“In return, I will retrieve the counterspell and free Lord Mircea from the geis,” I said instead.

The Consul didn’t blink this time. “Done. But you will take one of us with you.”

“I had planned to take Alphonse—” I began, but she cut me off.

“No. A senator.”

I’d been afraid of this. Why settle for just saving Mircea when there was a chance she could get the Codex, too? Only that so wasn’t happening. I hadn’t gone through all this to put that kind of power into vampire hands. Fortunately, she hadn’t specified which senator.

I smiled, and didn’t even try to make it a nicer version than hers. “Agreed.”

Chapter 19

I landed on Dante’s rooftop two weeks in the past, and almost fell off. My feet were on concrete, but the bell of my skirt swung out over thin air. I grabbed the side of a turret hard enough to scrape skin, trembling slightly with the realization that a few inches to the left and I’d have landed on nothing at all. But I hadn’t, I’d made it, and after a moment, I managed to pry my hands loose from the fake rock and look around.

Everything was strangely silent this far up: the traffic noise was muffled and there were no discernible sounds of combat. Everything looked normal, too, with the lights of the Strip glittering in the distance, outshining the star-studded canopy overhead. But a sudden rush of wind from the base of a tower pushed at me, hard enough to shove me back a step, and with it came the smell of gunpowder and ozone. It looked like I’d found the right place.

Moving cautiously back to the edge of the roof, I saw the parking lot spread out below in a panorama of chaos. The blue smoke had mostly dissipated on one side to reveal burned and blasted cars, a number of obviously dead bodies, and Tomas standing in front of a crowd of curious onlookers. He was doing his Obi-Wan impression—these aren’t the droids you’re looking for—while a wererat dragged itself toward the back door, leaving a bloody trail on the ground.

On the other side of the lot, farther from the street, cleanup had begun. It was briefly interrupted by a vamp running across the lot, waving his arms frantically, flames streaming out from the back of his jacket. Mircea moved to intercept, while more vampires emerged from a couple of silver-gray limos parked on the far side of the casino. Mircea brought the crazed vamp under control with a word, and several others jumped him with blankets, putting out the flames. Shortly afterwards, I saw myself, Françoise and a glowing dot that I assumed was the pixie flash out.

Other than Mircea, nobody seemed to notice their departure. Most of his vamps were too absorbed in getting the fires under control—when a stray spark can be deadly, you tend to pay attention. I glanced back to the other puddle of activity and saw that everyone there also looked pretty distracted. Tomas was now talking to two cops, while Louis-Cesare propped up the younger version of me so I could argue with Pritkin. It was as good an opportunity as I was going to get.

I shifted behind Mircea. “Miss me?”

His head whipped around and his eyes widened. He glanced at the spot where the other me had just disappeared, then back again. “What is this?”

I gave him a once-over. I hadn’t been able to tell from the rooftop, but he was looking a little rough. His jacket was burnt in a diamond-shaped pattern all along the back, with little tatters of black material fluttering out behind him like Halloween streamers. His hair was half out of its clasp, falling askew over a slice of cheekbone, and he had ash on his chin. At least the shirt looked okay: it was heavy Chinese silk with little toggles instead of buttons, and seemed to have been protected from electrocution by the jacket.

A tiny piece of ash stood out starkly against the cream silk. I reached to brush it off, but he jerked away. “We need to get going,” I said impatiently. It was probably going to be only seconds before someone saw me who shouldn’t.

I reached for him again, but suddenly he just wasn’t there anymore. Damn it! I’d forgotten how quickly vampires could move.

“Who are you?” The voice came from somewhere behind me.

I spun so fast that my skirts tangled around my legs. I stumbled a little, but caught myself before I went sprawling. But my hair came loose from the chic chignon Sal had managed to concoct, straggling into my eyes. I brushed it back and fumbled around on the asphalt, looking for the bobby pins. I’d told her this wasn’t going to work. Elegance and I were not on a first-name basis.

I finally managed to find a couple of pins and stood up, trying to keep hold of them and not spill my overloaded purse. Marlowe had scrounged around the Senate’s treasury and come up with the big bag o’ jewels that was currently trying to pull my shoulder out of joint. “Portable wealth,” he’d explained, when I asked him why I was carrying around a bunch of stones that made the Hope diamond look puny. “In a revolution, people want something that can be easily transported out of the country.” I could argue the ease-of-transport thing, but I wasn’t about to complain. I just hoped it would be enough. Unfortunately, the rocks and my gun hadn’t left room for a hairbrush.

“Do you have a comb?” We probably needed to look respectable for this. The way things stood now, I wasn’t sure they’d let either of us in the door.

When Mircea didn’t answer, I looked up, only to see that he was holding something, and it wasn’t a comb. “What’s that for?”

“For you, if you do not tell me the truth.”

“I already have a gun,” I told him, confused. What did he think I was going to do with that thing? It wasn’t a handgun; it was an M16 assault rifle. The thing was freaking huge.

And it was pointed at me.

“Oh.” I suddenly got the message. I dropped the bobby pins and held up my hands, palms out. But the gun to my chest thing didn’t change. “After what you just went through, it’s understandable you’d be a little spooked,” I said. And, wow, didn’t I wish I’d thought of that earlier. “But I really am here to help. Please, take my hand and I’ll prove it.”

Mircea’s only answer was to move back a few steps. Probably to get a better shot. Behind him, several of his vampires looked up from fire extinguisher duty and saw us. Just great.

“You can drop the glamour,” he told me grimly. “I am not deceived.”

“I’m not using a—” I began, but he did his disappearing act again before I could finish. It took me a moment, but I spied him across the parking lot, over by one of the limos. And, no, letting him drive off somewhere really wasn’t an option.

I shifted, but in the split second it took me to get there, he had vanished. I was about to open one of the car doors, to check inside, when I caught the reflection in the windows of two blurs moving up behind me. I shifted again before the vamps could grab me, landing back across the lot, near where I’d started. I was starting to get dizzy—not a good sign. Especially when we hadn’t even gotten to the damn auction yet.

I looked around, trying to spot Mircea, and almost ran into him. We both shied back, and a quick glance showed me that he’d lost the gun. Maybe he’d remembered that he didn’t really need it to kill me. Or maybe he’d decided to let me get a word in. “Listen,” I said. “I just want to—”

He threw a potion in my face. My mouth had been open, and I choked on an absolutely vile-tasting mess. It was green and oily and globules of it dripped down my chin to land on Billy’s necklace. Wonderful. The thing had so many nooks and crannies that I’d probably never get it clean.