“The vamp system works because of the bonds that force subordinate vampires to do the will of their masters and require masters to answer for the infractions of their followers. The mages don’t have that kind of setup. And you can’t expect people to—”

“Perhaps if we did, we could coordinate our efforts and stamp out the dark once and for all!” he interrupted. “As it is, they stay one step ahead of us merely by crossing into another coven’s territory, and by the time we get through all the debates and favors and bribes and finally get the needed permission to go after them, they’re gone again!”

He was looking pretty annoyed, with flushed cheeks under all those freckles. I’d have changed the subject, but something was bugging me. “I thought the Circle was the central authority. Isn’t it in charge of the whole magical community?”

“No,” he snapped. “That’s the problem. What we have now is sort of an umbrella organization. Not every coven worldwide belongs to it—we’re especially spotty in Asia—and even those who are members joined at different times and with different agreements.”

“I didn’t know that.” The vamps always talked about the Circle like it was synonymous with mages in general. Of course, in this country it might be. I’d never thought about it being different anywhere else.

“It’s a total hodgepodge!” Nick said heatedly. “Some covens don’t allow searches of their territory at all and others only after receiving definite proof that questionable activity is going on. And, of course, sometimes we don’t have proof, just a gut feeling or a tip from someone they don’t recognize as a legitimate source. And explaining that our sources wouldn’t know the dark well enough to have information if they were legit gets us nowhere nine times out of ten. It would be so much easier if we all answered to one authority.”

“A dictatorship, in other words.” Pritkin had come into the room without my hearing him. I jumped, trying to stand up and whirl around at the same time, and almost ended up on the floor. He caught me, and I tore away as soon as I could find my feet, panting a little, glaring a lot. “I see you made it back safely.”

“It doesn’t have to be anything of the kind,” Nick argued, apparently not realizing that no one was listening to him anymore.

Pritkin looked like he’d just come from a bath; his hair—short and pale blond again—was plastered down in wet strands that disturbed me for some reason I couldn’t quite define. Maybe because it drew attention to his face, like the older, longer version had. Maybe because it made me remember the last time I’d seen it wet, slick with sweat and glistening.

God, I hated him!

“You!” I couldn’t even talk, I had so many things I wanted to say. “You knew!” It was the only thing I could get out, the only words that didn’t threaten to choke me.

“No, I didn’t. At the time, I merely thought you were a competent witch who was attempting to rob me.”

“Don’t lie! You saw me shift!”

“I thought you’d clouded my mind, you or the vampire. My defenses were down, my shields almost exhausted. It seemed a reasonable conclusion.”

“And when we met again? You didn’t recognize me?”

“After so long, no. Not immediately. I had wondered a few times, but I didn’t know. Not until I saw the dress.” He looked over the tattered remains. “It was memorable.”

“More than me, it would seem,” I said tightly.

“Nick, if you could give us a moment?”

“But I’m right in the middle of…” He saw the looks we turned on him and gulped. “Or—or I could go see what’s keeping that coffee,” he squeaked, and headed out the door. He tried to take the page he was working on with him, but I held out a hand and he reluctantly handed it over.

“You found it, then.” Pritkin’s voice held no emotion whatsoever. He’d learned a lot in two hundred years.

“And I’m keeping it.”

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that, Cassie.”

I laughed, and even to me, it sounded bitter. “Oh, it’s Cassie, now, is it? So, let me make sure I have it straight. It’s Ms. Palmer when you’re pretending to be loyal, and Cassie when you’re stabbing me in the back. Good to know.”

Pritkin flinched slightly, but he never dropped his gaze. “You don’t understand what’s at stake.”

“And that would be why, I wonder? Because nobody ever tells me anything?” That last was pretty much a scream, but I didn’t care. I’d known that seeing him again would be hard, I just hadn’t known how hard. I’d been right before. Burying emotions was a hell of a lot better than experiencing them, especially when they felt like this.

“I will tell you what you want to know, if you will promise to hear me out before shifting. If you thought you were a target before, it is nothing to what you will be with that thing in your possession. It must be destroyed!”

I couldn’t have shifted to save my life; I was having a hard time even standing up. But Pritkin didn’t know that. It gave me an advantage, a lever to finally pry some answers out of him. But for the life of me, I couldn’t work up much enthusiasm about it.

“I’ve spent my whole life playing games,” I told him quietly. “It’s the vamp’s favorite pastime. A whisper here, a wink there, a clue that may or may not go anywhere and may or may not have been dropped on purpose. I’m tired of games. I just want someone to tell me the truth. Haven’t I earned that much yet?”

Pritkin closed his eyes briefly, and swallowed, a brief bob of his Adam’s apple up and down. I searched his still-youthful face, trying to peer behind the mask. To see a thousand years of experience. But there was nothing.

I’d grown up around creatures who never showed their age, at least not physically. But you could always tell the older ones, and not just by the aura of power they gave off. There was a gravity to them, like air took on extra weight when they entered a room. As if everything about them was somehow more: deeper, brighter, richer.

He opened his eyes, but I didn’t look away. I scrutinized him, trying to keep the Consul in mind, the way she felt, the way she drew all eyes without seemingly doing a thing. I watched a faint blush spread across his cheekbones as I continued to inspect him, and mentally shook my head. No. No way was he that old.

Which left the sojourn in Hell. He’d said that much of his younger years had been spent there, but also that he’d just got back in 1793. Which was crazy. If he’d disappeared from history because he had, in fact, disappeared from earth, then he’d left in the early Middle Ages. And if he’d only just returned…a thousand years on earth would scar a person; what would a millennium in the demon realms do?

How would it be, I wondered, to be snatched into a world you knew nothing about, where your only use was as a trophy? Some kind of freakish experiment for your father to show off? And what had Pritkin done to get thrown out anyway? How exactly did someone get tossed out of Hell?

“Rosier tried to kill you so that you couldn’t do what you have just done—retrieve the Codex and with it a spell known as the Ephesian Letters,” he finally said.

Maybe it was because I was tired, or under the strain of being near Pritkin and not being able to touch him, to hit him, to run my hands through his hair and make it stand up, damn it, but I was having a hard time following. “What?”

“They were words carved into the ancient Temple of Artemis at Ephesus—”

“Nick told me what the Ephesian Letters are,” I said impatiently. “Why does anyone care about an old spell?”

“Because of what it can do. What, in fact, it did do, thousands of years ago.” Pritkin sat on the edge of the table. “What it will continue to do, if no one ever casts the counterspell that I foolishly wrote down. Merlin the wise, indeed.”

“Then I was right. You are Merlin.” I found it hard to take in, despite all the evidence. Pritkin was just…Pritkin. Not some legend out of another time.

“Myrddin, in fact, not that I used the name for long. A French poet thought it sounded obscene and changed it. Fair enough; he changed everything else.”

“Then the stories aren’t true? There was no Camelot, or Lancelot or Arthur—”

“Oh, there was an Arthur, after a fashion. And I can see his face, if he read half the things written about him! That rumor about his sister alone—he’d have cut out someone’s heart for that one.” He thought for a moment. “Or she would. Frightening woman.”

“So you’re what, like a thousand years old?” I still didn’t believe it.

“Not…precisely. I was born in the sixth century, but did not manage to live even one normal life span before Rosier came to claim me. And time in the demon realms runs differently from here, much like in Faerie. Only more so. I was there, as far as I can tell, barely a human decade. But when I returned”—he shook his head, and there was still wonder on his face—“the world had changed.”

“When I met you in Paris, you told me that you’d only just come back. Was that when you returned?”

“More or less. I had been back a few years by then, enough to learn my way around to some degree, but not enough to keep from being pickpocketed by a spell that hadn’t even been invented in my day but was old hat in the eighteenth century.”

“By Manassier’s grandfather.”

“Yes. He and an associate were living in that nebulous world betwixt and between. The Circle had rejected them for unbecoming conduct—and, I suspect, gross incompetence—but they didn’t have any skills wanted by the dark. They made a precarious living relieving naive country bumpkins of their worldly possessions and, whenever possible, draining them of their magic. They couldn’t get past my shields to make the latter possible, but they did manage to make off with the Codex.”