Tempt the Stars

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “Don’t be coy. I’ve seen you put less effort into charming countesses—”

  “Who normally require little effort,” Mircea murmured, sipping brandy.

  “—than into that child. ‘Why, isn’t that a pretty painting, Cassie? However did you do it?’” Marlowe mimicked.

  “The colors were quite nice,” Mircea protested, lips quirking.

  Kit didn’t look so amused.

  “What is your interest?” he asked bluntly.

  “She’s a charming child.”

  “She’s a seer.” Marlowe’s eyes narrowed. “The real thing, by all accounts, but that is hardly enough to warrant camping out in the wilderness—”

  “It is less than an hour to Philadelphia.”

  “The wilderness,” Marlowe insisted, looking around disparagingly. “And in any case, if you wanted to see the blasted vamp, why not order him to your court? Why come here at all, much less for almost a year?”

  “Ah. Is that what has your lady ordering you to check up on me?” Mircea asked, settling back into a dark red leather armchair. He still looked amused, although whether he actually was or not was anyone’s guess.

  His companion remained standing, and tensed up slightly. “I needed to ask you about a number of—”

  “Now who’s being coy?”

  Marlowe dropped it. “Well, if she is curious, who can blame her? No one does this.”

  “Many masters visit their servants.”

  “Servants who live in Paris; servants who live in Rome. Not servants who live in the backwoods of Pennsylvania in a dump!” Marlowe gestured around, the small gold earring he wore in one ear flashing in a lightning burst. “What do you expect me to tell her?”

  “That I am attending to family matters that do not concern her.”

  “Oh yes. Yes, that will go over well,” Marlowe said sarcastically.

  “It should. It’s the truth.”

  “And you’re not going to offer any further explanation, any more details,” Marlowe said, prowling nearer to the fireplace.

  “I don’t see why she would expect them,” Mircea commented as I started struggling again. “I am not a newborn who must be tended, and this has nothing to do with her.”

  “Nothing?” Marlowe spun, just before he reached me. And just before he would have gotten close enough for a good look over the screen.

  I swallowed hard.

  I was twenty-four.

  And I was already too old for this.

  “That is what I said.”

  Marlowe pounced. “Then the fact that her mother was Elizabeth O’Donnell, the Pythia’s former heir, is irrelevant, is it?”

  Mircea’s head cocked, and his eyes narrowed slightly. “Now, I wonder. Is the mole in my family or Antonio’s?”

  “I don’t need a mole,” Marlowe said shortly, and drank scotch.

  “Ah, a listening device, then. And yes, it would be simple enough here. Antonio’s mages are not the best.”

  “They’re shite,” Marlowe said bluntly, “and that isn’t the point. You have a line on a possible Pythia—”

  “That’s rather reaching, wouldn’t you say?”

  “No, I would not say! And you didn’t tell us!”

  Marlowe’s tone was as accusatory as the words, but Mircea didn’t look concerned. “As yet, there is nothing to tell. Cassandra’s mother was heir to the Pythian throne at one time, yes, but she was removed—”

  “But not for lack of ability! For consorting with that Roger Palmer character—”

  “Whose capabilities are unknown.”

  “He worked for your servant. You ought to know them well enough!”

  “Yet, nonetheless, I do not.” Mircea’s tone was calm, but then, it always was. More tellingly, his eyes stayed brown. Marlowe wasn’t getting to him. “And as he and Elizabeth are now deceased, we may never do so. Leaving Cassandra’s talents in question.”

  “Yet you decided to meet her anyway.”

  “Would you not have?”

  “And to gain her trust.”

  “Only prudent.”

  Marlowe crossed his arms. And even though I could no longer see his face, the set of his shoulders told a story all on its own. “Only prudent, if you had told us. Only prudent if you hadn’t shown, how shall we say, some persistent interest in the Pythian office before now.”

  I’d been trying to get a hand on the ring of jostling bricks, to force the damned things open. Only to have them slide through my fingers as my head abruptly jerked up. And then even more abruptly jerked down again, when I felt someone’s hand on my butt.

  That heart attack I’d been postponing for a few months now might have taken that moment to show up and say hi, except that the hand was not followed by a crushing blow or the sound of an alarm. But by a second hand on my other hip, and then by a sharp tug. My spine would have liquefied in relief, if it hadn’t been busy being pulled out of my body.

  It had to be Jonas; one of Tony’s guys would have ripped me in two by now. Not that it didn’t feel like he was trying. And worst of all, he was making it hard to concentrate on what the vamps were saying.

  And I wanted to hear this.

  “How many gifts,” Marlowe asked, over the sound of grinding rock, “have you given through the years? How many visits have you made?”

  “Not enough, apparently.” The tone was dry. “We remain as estranged from the seat of power as ever. If the consul would give up a bit of that stiff-necked pride and pay a visit herself, it might do more than any gift—”

  “Do not take me for a fool, Mircea!” Marlowe said, striding forward and bending down, slapping his hands on both arms of Mircea’s chair. “I’ve known you too long! You’re the best ambassador among the senates. No one is questioning that. But you didn’t go in your senate capacity, did you? You went alone, quietly, with no retinue and with no mention in the senate records. You went for you, not for us, and I want to know—”

  “And what I want,” Mircea said, his voice suddenly going flat, “is to know how you manage to run your department when all of your efforts appear to be occupied following me.”

  “What do you expect?” Marlowe demanded, but he backed off slightly. “You’re her most powerful servant. Of course she is concerned at the thought of you allying yourself with a possible Pythia. It’s the sort of move that could put you in an inviolable position.” He hesitated, and then came out with it. “It’s the sort of move that could allow you to make a bid to replace her.”

  “I have no such ambition,” Mircea said, more evenly.

  “And if you did?” Marlowe asked pointedly. “What would you say then?”

  “If you have already made up your mind to doubt me, why ask?”

  “To give you a chance to explain.”

  “Which I have done. You simply refuse to accept anything I say.”

  “Because it doesn’t make sense! Do you really expect—”

  I lost the thread of conversation again, because the stone around me suddenly heated up, and not like a rock on a sunny day. More like lava. Jonas gave a tremendous, wrenching jerk, and it felt almost like the bricks liquefied for a split second—

  And then suddenly hardened again, leaving me trapped worse than before.

  Way worse. Now my head and shoulders were sticking out, but my hands were stuck by my head like I’d been thrown into the stocks, and my chest was compressed to the point that it was hard to breathe. The stones went back to their former grind a second later, louder than ever, being right in my ear. And allowed me to catch a breath only when the ones directly underneath my chest turned just so.

  Which they did about half as much as I needed.

  “Urk,” I said, staring desperately at the sliver of Marlowe I could still see through the screen.
r />   Hurry up, I thought, but not at Jonas. I could breathe, sort of. I was okay. I was going to be okay. Probably. And I wanted to hear—

  “—control what you believe,” Mircea was saying. “I see many important people, including the leaders of other senates—”

  “And yet every Pythia,” Marlowe said doggedly. “Before she was even crowned, in one case, receives a visit, and not in an official capacity—”

  “Official visits are cold and formal. I do my best work in a more relaxed setting. I cannot charm anyone on behalf of the consul if I do not even know them.”

  “And yet these visits do not appear to be working,” Marlowe pointed out.

  “Do not appear to be working yet,” Mircea said, finishing his drink. “Every Pythia is different—”

  “Including the one you visited before joining the senate?”

  Unlike Marlowe’s other comments, it was said mildly, almost diffidently, a rapier strike instead of a bludgeon. And unlike the others, it landed. Mircea’s eyes flashed amber, bright enough to rival the lightning outside, and Marlowe took a quick step back.

  “You have been busy,” Mircea hissed.

  Marlowe blinked at him, as if he wasn’t used to hearing that tone, either. But he recovered fast. “You have to admit, it looks suspicious—”

  “It would not have, had you not gone looking for it!”

  “It’s my job to look for it. And I have a credible witness who saw you—”

  “Paying a legitimate visit in broad daylight! Else you would have had no witness to worry you.”

  Marlowe blinked again at the implication. But then forged ahead anyway. “I wouldn’t be worried if I knew why you were there. It could hardly have been on behalf of a consul you did not even know at the time.”

  “I never said it was.”

  “Then why?”

  Yeah, I thought dizzily, why?

  And then the stones started to heat up again.

  No! I thought, kicking my legs, trying to get Jonas’ attention. Not yet!

  And got smacked on the butt for my efforts.

  Son of a—

  Another jerk, and this time, I was up to my neck. Which would have been an improvement, except that now I couldn’t breathe at all. There was some agitated grasping going on in a way that would have been overly familiar if I hadn’t been about to suffocate. And either the moon had just gone behind a cloud or the room was starting to dim.

  That wasn’t a great sign, and neither was the blood suddenly pounding in my ears, or the heart fluttering in my chest, or the damned moving bricks, which felt like they were trying to behead me. But the worst part was, I couldn’t hear.

  But it looked like Mircea had recovered, and was back to doing what he always did, soothing frazzled nerves, calming ruffled feathers, getting people to listen. And Marlowe was. The dark eyes were still sharp and still guarded, but his stance had relaxed somewhat, and the intelligent face was thoughtful. He looked like he might be buying it.

  Whatever it was, I thought angrily as darkness flooded my vision, making it impossible even to lip read. Not that I could have concentrated enough with the rocks around my neck suddenly going nuclear. I’d have screamed in pain if I’d had the breath, or flailed around had my arms not been trapped like the rest of me. Only that wasn’t true a second later, when strong hands grabbed me again, and pulled and yanked and heaved—

  And thump.

  And rattle and crash.

  And wheeeeeeeee, loud enough to threaten my eardrums.

  What the hell?

  I pried my nose out of a dusty stretch of carpet and saw Jonas’ grim face looking down at me for a second. And then he said something—harsh, guttural, frightening—and I decided that maybe I’d hit the floor too hard. Because it looked like the room suddenly came alive.

  “Get up!” he barked as an armoire on the far wall threw itself across the room and slammed into the door.

  And had a fist punched through it for its trouble.

  A lamp hurled after it, barely missing my head as I was hauled to my feet, only to shatter against the impressive pile of furniture piling up at the opening. Another lamp lay splintered on the floor—the rattle and crash I’d heard earlier, I guessed—like maybe I’d kicked it when I came loose. But that still didn’t explain—

  “Isn’t that a ward?” I yelled over the unearthly shriek as we ran through a connecting door into the next room, which was shifting and changing as much as the last one. And flinging its contents behind us.

  “Yes,” Jonas said abruptly, flattening us against the wall as a four-poster bed squeezed past.

  “But . . . I thought . . . you took care of them,” I gasped.

  “I did!” Jonas said indignantly. “But when one is forced to exert enough magic to level a small town, one tends to trip even the most inadequate of wards!”

  “Sorry?”

  Jonas didn’t even bother responding to that. He just yanked me through the middle of two overstuffed armchairs that were muscling past and out into the hallway. Only to abruptly jerk me back again.

  I didn’t understand why until the furniture around us suddenly stopped trying to fit through the connecting door and launched itself at the one to the hall instead. We dodged out of the way and then joined the stream flowing out. Only to see a wall of heavy oak pieces, almost ceiling high, trying to bulldoze a path down the hall to the office.

  Trying and failing.

  Maybe because someone on the other side was quickly turning them to splinters.

  We spun back around to see the same thing happening on the other end of the hall, alongside the fireplace room. Antique pieces and old bits of junk were working in a solid mass, twisting and dodging and trying to hold back massive blows from the other side, which nonetheless kept sending pieces flying back at us. A painting of a woman in nineteenth-century dress was getting batted around the surface of the pile, her comically open mouth looking like she was yelling for help as someone did his best to turn the mountain into a molehill.

  And his best was pretty damned good.

  The fat lady is singing, I thought numbly, right before Jonas grabbed me.

  “What is happening?” he demanded, looking pissed that his impressive display of magic wasn’t looking so impressive, after all. “Who is back there?”

  “Mircea,” I admitted, and Jonas cursed.

  “A first-level master? You didn’t tell me one of them would be here!”

  “I didn’t know. And . . . actually . . . it’s two. Marlowe’s with him,” I admitted, glancing behind us. Mircea must have ended up on one side of the hall, when the first wave of animated furniture flooded the corridor, and Marlowe on the other. Which left us caught between the ultimate rock and a hard place, with two furniture dams barely holding back two master vamps and us stuck in the middle.

  With nowhere to go.

  “I suppose it is too much to hope that you can shift, just at the moment?” Jonas asked dryly.

  I shook my head, and he scowled. But he didn’t argue with me. He’d been the lover of the former Pythia, and he knew things about the job that most mages didn’t. Like that the power of the office might be inexhaustible, but the Pythia herself wasn’t. And that a shift, even a spatial one like to get us out to the road, required concentration.

  Something that’s a little difficult to manage after being almost choked to death.

  Instead, he dropped my hand and raised both of his, mumbling a long string of something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and his already wild mane go positively electric. And all the doors to all the rooms between us and the furniture dams to slam open. And the contents start to stream out, like reinforcements going to the front lines.

  “The instant you can, shift us out of here,” he yelled, to be heard over the creak of wood and metal moving in ways the designe
rs never intended, and the high-pitched shriek of the wards. “We’ll have to come back for the other!”

  “No . . . need,” I gasped, trying to will air into my starved lungs.

  “What?”

  I reached up and yanked off the fedora, which was somehow still sticking to the crackling mass on his head, and fished something out. It was a smallish bronze sphere encased in glass, which glowed faintly when I touched it. “Spelled,” I explained breathlessly. “You have to know . . . it’s there . . . or it isn’t.”

  Jonas’ blue eyes moved from the paperweight to my face, going sharp and squinty along the way. “I assume there’s a reason you didn’t tell me about this before?”

  I licked my lips. “Uh-huh.”

  “Pythias!” He threw his hands up in a manner that reminded me eerily of Agnes, my predecessor, who would probably have had some trick to get us out of this. But the most I could do was to slide down on my heels, put my arms over my head to cut the noise, and concentrate on recovering.

  I only hoped I did it fast, because Jonas hadn’t bought us much time. Two first-level masters redecorate quickly, and the rooms were already running out of things to shred. We needed to get out of here.

  “Billy,” I whispered. “The train is leaving the station.”

  I didn’t get anything back, even though I knew he’d heard me. Billy didn’t need ears to pick up on my call; whether he chose to answer it or not was another thing. But he’d sounded eager enough to leave before.

  I started to try again, but Jonas grabbed my arm. “Change of plan. When you can shift, take us back to the office.”

  “What? Why?”

  “We have the orb,” he explained, less than helpfully.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  He looked exasperated. “Yes, but not to take it out of this time stream! The spirit it contains is the only thing keeping the world’s protective barrier in place. To remove it would drop that protection, exactly as our enemy wants!”

  “Then hide it somewhere. Someplace where Tony can’t find it. Then we can look it up when we get back to our—”