“No good?” The pixie fluttered in front me, her little face gone livid. “It will keep my king from killing you!”

An image of the Dormouse from Alice in Wonderland suddenly flashed across my vision. I looked at the teapot longingly, wondering if she’d fit. Maybe if I pushed.

“I haven’t forgotten our deal,” I told her tersely. “And I don’t respond well to threats.”

“And I don’t make them! You made a deal with him, human. You do not want to find out what he’ll do if you break it!”

I glanced at Pritkin, who was being oddly silent, only to see that he’d gone back to his research. Apparently, thoughts of my possible death at Fey hands weren’t enough to hold his attention. I slammed a hand down on the tabletop just to see him jump. “The Consul already has every magical authority in the book working to try to find a way around this thing! Why do you think you’ll have more luck?”

“Because I must.”

“That’s not an answer!” He just looked at me. “Damn it, Pritkin, I’m Pythia now! I can’t do my job if you keep deciding what I do and do not need to know!”

“If you’re Pythia, then act like it!”

“I’m trying to. And I don’t think that involves waiting around for fate to kick me in the butt yet again! I want to do something!”

The massive volume he’d been working on suddenly leapt up and slammed against the door, leaving a powdery blue stain where it hit. Before I could comment on exactly how useless childish gestures were, the door opened and a gingery head poked in. Nick looked like he thought he might be safer with the free-for-all upstairs.

He cautiously edged in, pushing a room-service cart and skirting the upended book. “It’s stopped. But there has to be a couple thousand of them.” His voice was almost admiring.

“What caused it?” Pritkin demanded.

“Augustine’s best guess is that one of his competitors is trying to rain on his parade.”

I winced at the pun, but Pritkin only looked even more severe. “There’s going to be more of this kind of thing, with the Corps preoccupied with the war.”

“What kind of thing?” I asked.

“Mages with vendettas deciding to take matters into their own hands,” Nick explained.

“The Corps can’t fight the war and police every mage with a grievance, and they know it,” Pritkin finished grimly. “And what’s all this?”

“Lunch. I met a waiter on the way back with the cart.” Nick started sorting through the sandwiches, fruit and cookies. “Would you like something, Cassie? There’s plenty here.”

“Not really hungry.”

“She’ll eat.” Pritkin said curtly.

“I said—”

“If you starve to death it would damage my professional reputation.”

“I eat plenty.”

“The same does not apply should I strangle you in understandable irritation, however.”

“I’ll have a sandwich,” I told Nick. “No meat.”

He came up with a benign-looking egg salad, which he handed over along with a box of apple juice. I eyed him thoughtfully. Unlike his friend, he was still a member in good standing of the Circle. He might be able to find out about Tami for me, assuming it was the Silver who had her. On the other hand, I didn’t know his opinion on the whole magical handicapped debate. He might view them with the same vague embarrassment/lack of interest everyone else seemed to show and not think she was worth asking a few questions. But nothing ventured…

“Since she sheltered you seven years ago, I’m assuming she’s not a teenager, right?” he asked after I’d sketched the problem.

“She was in her late twenties when I knew her, which would make her mid-thirties now. Why?”

“Then she’s way too old for the harvesters,” Nick said, around a mouthful of what I hoped was chicken. “They wouldn’t waste their time, especially not if she was weak to begin with.”

Pritkin caught my expression. “He’s talking about the people who make null bombs.”

Nick nodded. “That’s when—”

“I know what they are,” I said numbly. The bombs were highly prized, as they concentrated a null’s usual effect, stopping all magic in an area for a period of time—including mine. I’d found out about them only recently, as Tami had never brought the subject up. Not too surprisingly, considering that the process required to make a bomb drains nulls of their life force, thereby killing them.

“Don’t worry,” Nick said, slathering mustard on another roll. “Like most mages, nulls come into their full power when they hit puberty, making them as strong then as they’re ever going to get. Harvesters like to get them as soon thereafter as possible, to maximize the amount of life force they have to give. Your friend wouldn’t interest them.”

“Why would the Circle want her, then?”

He shrugged. “Beats me. Unless she was privy to important information of some kind.”

I shook my head. “Tami doesn’t know anything like that.”

“But she knows someone,” Pritkin pointed out. At my bewildered look, he sighed. “The Circle doesn’t know where you are—the fact that they were willing to put a steep bounty on your head says as much. Perhaps they are attempting to lure you into coming to them.”

“You think they took her because of me?” The sandwich, which hadn’t been great to begin with, was suddenly tasteless.

“It’s possible,” Nick agreed, warming to his buddy’s suggestion. “Half the Council was in attendance when you flashed in, told off the Consul, seduced Mircea and stole Tomas out from under her nose.”

“It didn’t happen like that!” I said, appalled. And it hadn’t. The Consul had been in the middle of torturing a friend of mine to death when I made a desperate attempt to rescue him. It had worked, a fact that still amazed me, but for a while there, I’d been in serious jeopardy—not to mention scared out of my mind.

Nick shrugged. “Well, that’s the story that’s been going around.”

“If they are trying to persuade you to try another foolhardy rescue, they would need to find someone you would consider worth the effort,” Pritkin pointed out. “But Tomas remains in Faerie, and is therefore unreachable. Your parents, as I understand it, are deceased, and your childhood friends are vampires protected by the Senate.” He thought for a moment. “Or ghosts. But even the Circle can’t harm the dead.”

For a minute, I just stood there, blinking stupidly. What did it say about my life, when even my enemies had trouble finding anyone close to me? I hadn’t seen Tami in seven years. Had it really been that long since I’d had a friend vulnerable enough to act as hostage to fate? I guess it had. Except for Tomas, and that was anything but a reassuring thought. I vividly remembered the sickening twist in my stomach when I’d realized why he had been scheduled for such a horrible and demeaning death, maybe because I was suddenly experiencing it all over again.

The Senate had had a lot of reasons for wanting Tomas dead, but the execution had been made a public spectacle mainly in the hope that I would come after him. And I had, right into the middle of a room half filled with their allies from the Silver Circle. Who had apparently been paying attention to the lesson. Had they immediately started looking for a replacement for Tomas? Had I doomed Tami the moment I freed him?

“If the Circle has her, can you find out?” I asked Nick.

“I can try,” he said slowly, apparently just realizing that this might be a sensitive subject. “But if they want you to come after her, surely they’ll publicize the fact that they have her.”

“Not necessarily.”

“But—”

“Whatever memo they sent out about Tomas, I didn’t get. I only stumbled over him by chance, after the execution had already begun.” He’d still been alive because he was a vampire, and not easy to kill. Tami didn’t have that advantage.

“Be that as it may,” Nick said seriously, “the Council was given an up-close view of the kind of power the Pythia wields. They aren’t likely to forget it. If they are setting you up, they’ll take precautions. Which would make any attempt to rescue her extremely—”

“You aren’t going to rescue her.” That, of course, was Pritkin.

“Not without some idea where she is,” I agreed. When I’d gone after Tomas, the Senate had exploded a null bomb so I couldn’t just shift in, grab him, and shift out. It was a good guess that the Circle had their own stash of the nasty things, waiting to ensure that any rescue attempt I made ended with me being the one needing rescuing. If I was going to do this, I needed a plan. And forming one required knowing where she was.

“I’ll do what I can,” Nick promised. “But about the Codex, I still say we ought to check with Saleh.”

“Who’s Saleh?” I asked, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

“It’s too risky!” The glare Pritkin sent Nick would’ve melted glass.

“I’m Pythia,” I reminded him. “Breathing is risky.”

“Saleh deals in information. Esoteric, hard-to-get, valuable information,” Nick informed me, despite Pritkin’s steadily reddening face. “The problem is his price.”

“I can come up with the money,” I said, thinking about Billy and roulette wheels and big payoffs.

“He doesn’t deal in money,” Pritkin snapped, cutting off whatever Nick had been about to say. “Only in favors. And you don’t want to risk owing him one!”

“I’ll decide that!”

“We could at least talk to him,” Nick offered mildly. I kept hoping his low-key attitude would rub off on his buddy, but so far no luck.

“If he knows something, I’ll get it,” the pixie said, fingering her tiny sword. It would have sounded comical, except that I’d seen what the thing could do.