“I guess I’ll have to take my chances,” I said, watching the bright yellow flame leap higher.

“You cannot be serious!” Pritkin made a move toward me, but Mircea knocked him back with a casual blow that staggered him. The mage struggled to his feet, staring at me with anger and confusion on his face.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been more serious in my life,” I said honestly.

He helplessly watched the paper turn brown and crisp up, and I saw it the moment realization hit his eyes. If no one found the Codex, it would slowly unwrite itself, tucked away in whatever burrow the mages had found for it. And if anyone ever did come across it, it would be useless to them—as much so as if he had retrieved and destroyed it himself.

The three of us watched the paper burn to a cinder. Pritkin looked at me, an unreadable expression on his face, as he carefully ground it to powder under his heel. Then he simply turned around and left. A moment later, a flash of blue lit the front of the house like a strobe light, and he was gone.

“I did not make a copy,” Mircea told me quietly. “I can attempt to reproduce it from memory if you like, but it was quite complex.”

“No.” I stared down at the map, my head reeling. “It really wasn’t.”

“Do you know, dulceata?, most of my dates have involved rather less dirt.”

“Don’t complain. You should see this place in two hundred years,” I said, thrusting the relit candelabra at him.

Mircea gingerly took the rack of candles while I got his knife under the gold ouroboros set into the line of skulls. It came out easily; the plaster had barely had time to set. Behind it was a small leather tube embedded in solid rock. With a little work, I got an edge up, and a second later it slid out into my hands. I stared at the limestone-dusted cylinder and could have cried.

Whatever starting point the auctioneer—Manassier’s grandfather, I assumed—had told Pritkin had been a fake. And the copies of the map that were floating around, say with his grandson, were useless to anyone who might stumble across them. Unless you knew the secret, they would just send would-be treasure hunters on a wild-goose chase. Like one of them would me, two hundred years from now.

No wonder Manassier hadn’t minded giving me the map; he’d known it was useless. The real clue had been the drawing at the bottom of the page, a drawing the copies hadn’t had. A drawing the Pritkin of this era had never had time to notice.

I fumbled getting the tube open, my hands numb with equal parts cold and excitement. I finally took the candles back from Mircea and let him do it. A sheaf of parchment emerged a moment later, golden with age but still perfectly legible. “I don’t believe it,” I whispered. All that time, it had been right here. I’d even touched the tiny symbol marking the spot. Touched it, and then run right on by. “I can’t believe it’s over.”

“It isn’t,” Mircea said, scanning a page. He flipped through several others, and his frown grew deeper. “Unless you perhaps read Welsh?”

“Welsh?” I snatched the sheaf from him and a brittle edge flaked off and fell to the ground. The thing was practically disintegrating just from being held. I was more careful after that, but it was easy to see that Mircea was right: the pages were all covered in the same sort of gibberish Pritkin used for taking his notes. I couldn’t read a word of it. “Damn it!”

“It is not one of my languages,” Mircea said before I could ask. “However, there are mages in this period who would be able to translate it, and possibly cast the spell for you.”

I watched as a small curl at the end of a letter slowly disappeared. It had been attached to the final word on the last page—a word that was already unwriting itself. Relax, I told myself sternly. What are the odds that it’s part of the spell I need? I sighed. With my luck, they were actually pretty good.

“We have to hurry,” I said, carefully rolling the brittle pages back together.

“That would not be wise. Engaging the help of mages is always dangerous. I will have to do some checking, to be certain that we contact someone who will not immediately betray us.”

“You’re telling me they’re all as crazy as Pritkin?”

“If they recognized what they were handling, probably,” he said dryly.

I handed the pages back to Mircea and replaced the golden marker in the damp plaster. There was no need to worry about taking the Codex with us; the ouroboros had been undisturbed when Pritkin and I first passed it. All those rumors had been lies: no one else had ever found it.

“I think I know someone who might be able to help, but I have to go back to my time to talk to him.” I just hoped I had the strength to get us back. I grabbed Mircea’s hand—there was one way to find out. “Hold on,” I told him, and shifted.

Chapter 25

Dante’s was as quiet as it ever got when I returned to my time after dropping Mircea at his. So nobody saw me collapse against a wall. Goddamn, I really needed to stop shifting for a while. It felt like my head was about to explode. The throbbing affected even my vision: for a few moments, the whole corridor looked like the inside of a heart—red and pulsating.

But I’d ended up where I needed to be, in the hallway leading to the research room. And Nick was there, his nose stuck in a book as usual, looking as scholarly as I really hoped he was. “Cassie!” He stood up abruptly, looking alarmed, and it occurred to me that maybe I should have gone for a quick shower first. But that could wait; the Codex couldn’t.

Limestone dust sifted out of my hair onto the table as I spread out the parchment sheets, pushing books off everywhere in the process. “Can you read this?” I demanded, ignoring Nick’s squawks. “It’s important!”

He settled down after a moment, scholarly curiosity taking over, and quickly scanned a few lines. “Welsh,” he mused, “an especially antiquated, if not to say peculiar, variety.”

“But can you read it?”

“Oh, yes, I think so. In time. It isn’t one of my chief languages, you know, but I have had some—”

“I need it now, Nick.” I gestured at the scattered sheets. “Somewhere in there is the spell to lift the geis, and it would be extra nice to get it before Mircea goes completely around the bend.” Or before it managed to disappear.

Nick suddenly stilled, not moving, not even breathing, and for a second it was creepily like what a vamp could do. “This”—he stopped and swallowed—“this is the Codex, isn’t it? You found it.”

“Yeah, only it doesn’t do me much good since I can’t read it.” He just sat there, so I nudged him with a toe. “Now, Nick.”

“Right, right.” He came back to life with a vengeance, sifting through the pages rapidly, looking for the right spell. “This may take a while,” he muttered. “There are hundreds of spells here and I don’t see an index…oh, wait.”

“You found one?”

“Better.” His bangs flopped in his eyes and he pushed them impatiently back. “I may have found the spell.”

“You’re serious?” I stared at him, scarcely daring to hope. The damn geis had thwarted me at every turn for weeks; it was almost impossible to believe that I might be free of it in a few minutes.

“This may take some time, Cassie. You can, uh, go get changed if you want.”

Yes, I definitely needed to freshen up. My hands were covered in small bruises, my nails were cracked and there was dirt pressed into the grooves of my palms. My hair was a frazzled mess and I was covered in dust from the brief spelunking trip. But Nick was just going to have to deal with me in all my witchy glory, because no way was the Codex leaving my sight. No freaking way.

He got a good look at my expression and gave up, going back to translating duty. I sat down opposite him and peered into the ubiquitous little china pot. But only a vague floral scent remained. I put a call in to the kitchens for some coffee, figuring both of us could use it, and concentrated on not falling asleep until it got there.

“How much do you know about the Circle, Cassie?” Nick asked suddenly.

I yawned. “Other than that they want to kill me? Not a lot.”

“Yes, I am aware that you have had your differences in the past.”

“And present. Is there a point, Nick?” I wanted translation, not conversation.

“Well, yes, actually. It’s just that, I thought you should know—you’re not alone. There are many of us who have been growing dissatisfied with the Circle for some time. Only we don’t all agree about the remedy. Some of us see the whole system as the problem, not simply the group in power at the moment. We view the war as a chance to change old ideas, to remake it, in fact, into something closer to the type of government the vampires have. Then there wouldn’t be little groups of megalomaniacs making crucial mistakes for everyone.”

Actually I thought that pretty much summed up the Senate. “You mean, with one person in charge?”

“Not necessarily. Just a more centralized authority, with better oversight of everyone’s activities and more checks and balances on their behavior.”

“There aren’t a lot of checks and balances on the Senate,” I pointed out. “None, in fact.”

“Yet it works! Instead of elections turning into popularity contests, you have the best people appointed for each position by a concerned, capable leader.”

“I don’t think I’d describe the Consul quite that way,” I said dryly. “She got her position by being the strongest and the craftiest, full stop.”

“But she rules well. People respect her.”

“People fear her!”

“All strong leaders are feared by the ignorant,” Nick commented, patently not listening to a word I said. “We could learn a great deal from the vampires, if prejudice did not stand in the way.”

I laughed; I just couldn’t help it. The mages seemed to have a seriously warped view of the vamps. Pritkin saw them as evil incarnate, while Nick was determined to set them on a pedestal. He didn’t look too pleased at my amusement, though, so I tried to explain while he looked up a particularly obscure word.