“I figured we might as well get the mutiny phase of our relationship out of the way early.” Besides, I didn’t think Radella had been kidding about the closet. “Let’s go find Jimmy before he sells them the Brooklyn Bridge or some—”

“Speak of the devil,” Billy said, as someone who looked an awful lot like Jimmy ran out the back door.

I started forward after a surprised pause, hardly believing my luck. If I could get to him before he reached his car, we could talk without encountering anyone else or possibly being overheard. But then the door slammed open and a blonde ran out, looking around wildly.

“Wait, there’s some bimbo with him,” Billy cautioned. The blonde caught sight of Jimmy and took off after him, hiking up her low-cut black top as she went. Billy whistled appreciatively. “She’s gonna fall right out of that thing if she ain’t—”

He stopped abruptly, squinting across the lot, and I did the same, a vague feeling of unease creeping up my spine. The energy-conscious halogen lights didn’t help a lot with visibility, but I saw enough to make my stomach fall. “I think we have a problem,” I said numbly.

“Hey,” Billy said, eyes wide. “I think that bimbo is you! I can tell by the shape of your—”

“Do you realize what this means?” I managed to shriek in a whisper. I hadn’t figured out until that moment that I’d brought us back to the night I first saw Dante’s—not a time I was real interested in reliving.

“Yeah.” He glared at me. “Of all the times to come back to, why in the hell—”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I hissed. “Casanova told me the last shipment of slaves left for Faerie on this night. If we can’t get Jimmy to talk, I thought we might overhear the incantation being used!”

“If we were in the right place at the right time, yeah. But this ain’t it.”

“You think?” My first visit to Dante’s hadn’t gone well. In fact, it had gone about as spectacularly wrong as humanly possible. There had been too many near misses, too many times that I and a lot of other people could have died had things gone slightly differently. I needed to find the team and get out, fast, before any of us changed anything.

Jimmy and the other me disappeared into the lines of cars, and the back door slammed open yet again. Pritkin and a couple of vamps appeared, and I froze. My eyes might be having trouble making out the action, but theirs certainly wouldn’t be. And if they glanced over here and saw me, it could distract them from the task at hand. Which, among other things, included saving the other me’s life.

I didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t blink. The black tank top and jeans I’d decided would be appropriate for the night’s activities would help make me harder to spot. But they could smell me from this distance, even in a parking lot filled with gas fumes and garbage. One of the vamps paused, lifting his head slightly as if scenting the air, and I swallowed thickly. It was Tomas, my onetime roommate, who had had six months to get my scent down cold. If he sensed me…

But he didn’t. The three men ran into the rows of cars and a few moments later all hell broke loose, with gunshots, screams, and someone setting a car on fire. I took off for the back door at a dead run. And skidded to a halt a couple of seconds later when the very last person I wanted to see appeared in my path.

I managed to catch myself before careening into him, but it was a close thing. I hastily scrambled back a couple of steps just to be on the safe side. “You’re not supposed to be here!” I said accusingly.

One perfect eyebrow formed itself into an equally perfect arch. “Then we have something in common, dulcea.”

Chapter 11

I stared at Mircea in shock. “You’re supposed to be downtown!” The version of me who’d just chased Jimmy across the parking lot had escaped from MAGIC earlier that night. And although its wards had allowed me to be tracked into the city, no one had been sure exactly where I’d gone. While Tomas, Pritkin and a vampire named Louis-Cesare came here, Rafe and Mircea had gone to Tony’s main offices. Or so I’d thought.

“I was. I left Raphael there, in case you made an appearance,” Mircea said, his eyes narrowing slightly. “May I ask how you knew that?”

“Probably wouldn’t be best,” I said, wishing hysteria was a luxury I could afford.

Mircea just stood there, looking ridiculously model-pretty with his tousled hair and faintly amused mouth, his rich black suit perfectly showcasing his—objectively speaking—extremely attractive body. I didn’t know if he did it deliberately, but his clothes always seemed to run just a little snug around the biceps and thighs, drawing my attention where it absolutely had no place being. Not to mention that Mircea in black looked like sin. The only saving grace was that at least it wasn’t leather—and why was I even going there?

He held out a hand. It was a silent invitation, but it made my stomach flip. My stomach was an idiot.

I jumped back, almost stumbling over my own feet. “Don’t touch me!” The last time I’d encountered Mircea in the past, the geis had leapt from me to him, starting this whole mess by doubling the spell. Would I triple it if he got close enough now? Because I didn’t think either of us could survive that.

Somewhere nearby, people were yelling and Pritkin was swearing and a couple of terrified-looking wererats scurried past, dripping blood on the asphalt. “We must go, dulceata?,” Mircea said mildly.

The fact that he was still using the pet name he’d given me years ago, meaning “dear one,” was probably a good sign, but I doubted it was going to last. I needed to get gone, but I really didn’t want to shift in front of him—it would tell him a lot more than I wanted him to know. But I couldn’t exactly outrun him, and I sure couldn’t let him get close enough to touch me.

“Cassie.” Mircea looked at me reproachfully when I continued to ignore his outstretched hand.

But, I thought, desperately backing away, the screwup had come in an era before the geis was cast. That Mircea hadn’t had it, so the spell had leapt from me to him to complete itself. But this Mircea did have it, had both strands, in fact, so he should be immune. Right?

“Cassandra!”

“I’m trying to think here!” I told him as he started toward me.

“You can think at MAGIC, where it’s safe.”

“You know,” I said savagely, “considering how often I hear that word, it’s amazing how frequently I end up almost dead!”

“That will not happen tonight,” he said firmly, and took my hand. I stared at him in horror, waiting for the electric sizzle that would tell me I’d just managed to kill us both. But other than the faint tingle the geis always gave off, there was nothing.

Nothing except a sweet, cloying odor, like flowers on the verge of rot. Where had I smelled that before? Mircea said what I suspected was a very bad word in Romanian and abruptly pulled me behind him.

“Cass, you know the last time we were here, how a couple of dark mages showed up for the party?” Billy asked, his voice quavering slightly.

“Why, what does that have to—” I looked around Mircea’s coat to see a group of dark shapes silhouetted against the street lights. “Oh.”

“I’m thinking maybe I missed a few on the recon,” Billy said, looking freaked.

I did a quick count. “A few?” I squeaked. “Eight is not a few!”

In the distance, a blue cloud started to spread over the parking lot. I remembered that—Pritkin had employed some kind of tear gas in combat and almost choked us all to death. It had been no fun inside, my lungs burning for hours afterwards; of course, it wasn’t currently a thrill a minute on the outside, either.

“The seer goes with us, vampire,” one of the mages said.

I expected Mircea to try to talk him around, to use some of the famous charm that had made him the Consul’s chief negotiator. I guess the mages did, too. Because they looked really surprised when the speaker suddenly went flying through the air.

He landed in the power lines overhead, snapping one of the bigger ones on impact and getting caught on several of the smaller. A hiss of electricity stuttered wildly around his body for a moment, then he plunged toward the ground, only to be snatched back up again by a line that had gotten tangled around one foot. He bounced a couple of times before starting to swing slowly in space, dangling upside down by an ankle like the Hanged Man in my tarot deck.

“That was unwise,” the nearest mage told Mircea calmly, right before a wall of scorching hot air slammed into us. It lifted me completely off my feet and threw both of us back against the fencing. I missed the spine-shattering post, but it felt like some of the links might have become permanent additions to my anatomy.

Mircea was back on his feet in a blink, and two mages spontaneously caught fire. They put it out almost as quickly, however, and by the time I had crawled out of the metal net, they’d responded with a blistering ball of electric blue and white. It drove Mircea to one knee, but he caught it, hands sizzling audibly, then lobbed it back at the sender. The mages’ shields deflected it into the power lines above, causing a pulse of electricity to run along them like blue fire. The streetlights popped in a long line like firecrackers, and a pulse of energy exploded against the hanging mage, sending him spiraling the rest of the way to earth with a power line snapping and stuttering around him.

The electrocuted mage was twitching slightly against the ground, like he might still be alive. Then I got a good look at his face, which was slack-jawed, with open, glassy eyes and a blackened tongue, and decided no, probably not. One of his colleagues apparently reached the same conclusion, but instead of mourning his friend, he elected to use him. He animated the corpse with a gesture, raising it vertically until it looked like a scarecrow in a windstorm, all jumping limbs and dangling, jittering feet, hovering just above the ground.

I glanced from the dancing corpse to the widening blue cloud, but enough flashes, rumblings and muffled gunshots were coming from inside that I felt marginally safe from having our fight overheard. It was the only thing I felt safe about, especially when a metal trash can came flying at our heads. It stopped in midair, about a foot from my nose, then reversed course and flew apart, razor-sharp fragments peppering the line of mages like shrapnel. Shrapnel that did not, it appeared, make it through their shields.