“Cassie,” I said, taking the long lighter away from him.
Horatiu did not object. He’d put a bundle of wood and newspaper on the floor, and now he proceeded to crumple up a few paper balls to get the fire started. Since he managed to lob them more or less in the actual fireplace this time, I just sat on the edge of the hearth and watched him. He looked strangely fragile for a vampire, I thought, noticing the thinness of the white hair, the age spotted skull clearly visible underneath, and the heavily veined hands.
Not that appearances necessarily meant anything, but still. It made me want to help him. I fed kindling into his hands so that he didn’t have to search for it, and won myself a smile in return. “There’s a good girl,” he told me. “And now, a couple of nice, fat ones.”
I handed over a few of the larger pieces of wood and he arranged them in a pretty good stack, well balanced and leaving plenty of room underneath for air. I idly watched him, marveling at how sure and swift the movements were, now that he knew where he was, because he’d probably built thousands of fires in his day. But I didn’t really see him. I was seeing something else, namely Mircea disappearing from my side earlier, because he’d correctly assumed that he’d never catch the fey by any other means than the Pythian power.
So, he’d used it, immediately and decisively, without any hesitation at all.
The question was: would he do it again?
Or, no, that wasn’t the question, I thought cynically. Knowing Mircea, the question was: when would he do it again? And how far would he push it next time? And was there anything short of killing him that I could do to stop it?
Because I couldn’t kill him. That was what I was supposed to do as Pythia, to anyone who threatened the time line. The first real conversation I’d had with Agnes, my predecessor, had been while she stalked a time traveling weirdo, who turned out to be my father, through a dank cellar back in the 1600s. But she’d had a modern gun with her, and I’d had no doubt whatsoever that she’d have used it.
Mainly because she’d already d
one so, when she shot me in the butt.
She didn’t shoot dad—she’d ended up capturing him instead—but if that hadn’t been feasible? Yeah, she’d have nailed him right between the eyes. Agnes was kind of a bitch.
But that was the job sometimes, and right now, it was my job. But I still couldn’t do it. And not just because of sentiment.
Mircea wasn’t exactly crazy—I’d seen what that looked like, and this wasn’t it. But he wasn’t exactly sane right now, either. He was heading into the most dangerous part of a vampire’s life, the part that had tripped up even the most powerful, and explained why there were so few truly ancient vamps around.
Four, five, even six-hundred-year-old masters? Sure. They weren’t exactly a dime a dozen, but there were plenty of them to be found.
But a thousand years old? Two thousand? Even older?
Not so much.
It shouldn’t have mattered, of course. Vampires weren’t like humans—well, most vampires, I thought, checking out Horatiu. Who had found the lighter where I’d put it down, but was trying to light the fire using the wrong end.
I turned it around for him, and the newspaper caught, bringing a satisfied smile to the old face. Horatiu looked every one of his years, but that was because changing people who were sick or very, very old was not advised. It frequently caused complications. But as long as the change went well, most vamps increased in power with age, so why weren’t there plenty of very old vamps around?
Because of what Mircea was currently dealing with.
There was no word for it, because it was the elephant in the room in vamp society that no one talked about. The sort of thing they often didn’t admit even to themselves, much less to prospective recruits. That “eternity” really meant more like five hundred years or so, until the natural tendency of vampires toward obsession began to catch up with them, and they started to fixate on something, to the point that it took over their whole world.
Since masters have enemies, that was a dangerous proposition, and explained why so many ended up being taken out by a rival. It wasn’t that they didn’t see the signs; they just didn’t care about them. They didn’t care about anything except for their obsession.
And Mircea’s obsession was Elena.
“You’re the pretty little blonde, aren’t you?” Horatiu asked suddenly, jolting me out of my thoughts.
“I—well, I’m blonde,” I said, tucking a strand of the evidence behind my ear.
The other part of his question was debatable at the moment. I could hear a shower running farther back in the suite, where Mircea was probably cleaning up. I needed to do that, too, as well as get a move on, before I had to cheat again by time shifting in order to meet all my obligations.
But for some reason, I just sat there.
Until a gnarled old face poked within an inch of mine, and vague blue eyes squinted at me. “Hm, yes. Pretty,” he decided, looking me over. “But sad, too. Why are ye sad, girl?”
“I . . . I’m not,” I said, caught off guard, and then again when he laughed literally in my face.
“Liar.” He slowly sat down on the hearth, feeling around behind him for the bricks before he did so, and then tapped my knee. “Trouble between you and the master, is there?”
“No,” I said reflexively.