"Other than the huge bounty they put on my head?"

"Huh. Maybe we need to make the point a little more obvious."

"Any more obvious and I'll be dead." Sal turned to pick up her champagne and a very rude phrase flashed across her backside. I scowled at it, but I wasn't going to lower myself to fight with a piece of fabric. "I haven't had any problems because they don't know where I am."

Sal paused to tip the last of the exhausted-looking bellhops. He'd just dumped a trunk big enough to conceal a body in the middle of the living room floor. And considering who it belonged to, it just might. "Honey, everyone knows where you are!" she said, as soon as he'd left. "I mean, come on. What do you think we're doin' out here?"

"Planning to beat up Casanova?"

"Other than that."

"I don't know. Rafe called you—"

"And we usually jump when he snaps his fingers," Sal said, rolling her eyes. "Alphonse's come to suck up to the new boss. And since he ain't around, you'll do."

"Uh-huh." Alphonse sucking up to me was about as likely as the earth suddenly deciding to change direction, just for a switch.

"You really don't get it, do you?" Sal looked genuinely puzzled. "There's a war on. Everybody's choosing sides. The smart ones are aligning themselves where the strength is. Like with Mircea. Like with you."

"What about Tony? He's your master."

"And I never fully appreciated how much I hated that little toad until he was gone."

"But if he comes back—"

"I'll kill him," Sal said, sounding as if she'd relish the opportunity.

"You can't. As your master—"

"He won't be my master by then. Mircea will."

Things suddenly made a lot more sense. "You want Mircea to break your bond."

"When this thing's over, we intend to still be standing—and on the winning side," Sal confirmed, shooting me a look out of suddenly shrewd blue eyes. "Not dead fighting for a man we both despise."

Wonderful. Yet another group who was depending on me, expecting me to somehow miraculously make everything right again. I decided that maybe I'd been better off alone; fewer people to disappoint that way, fewer things to screw up. "If I'm so powerful, why can't I keep those two downstairs from killing each other?"

Sal picked up the phone and handed it to me. "You want them to stop horsing around, tell them."

"Just like that."

"Exactly like that."

I looked at her blankly, but she just snapped her gum at me so I told the phone that I would like to speak to Casanova. It told me that he was rather busy at the moment. I said I'd really appreciate it if he could make the time. It asked if I would like to leave a message. Sal grabbed it out of my hand with a disgusted look. "Get your ass in there and tell him that the reigning Pythia wants to talk to him," she snapped.

So much for my disguise. If the Circle didn't already know where I was, they probably would soon. "Do you have any idea what you just did?" I demanded, feeling a migraine coming on.

Sal punched me on the arm. "You're Pythia. Start acting like it!"

I refrained from rubbing my now sore arm and glared. She glared right back. Casanova came on the line, sounding a little breathless. "What?"

"Are you through?" I asked him. "Because maybe I'm insane, but I could have sworn we were here because your master is about to go out of his mind, thereby forcing the Consul to kill him, and do I even need to bring up what happens to both of you in that case?"

Alphonse grabbed the phone, not that he needed it—vampire hearing was more than good enough to make any phone conversation a conference call. "What's the plan? We gonna break him out?"

"That would be good," I agreed.

"Rafe said you saw the master a couple days ago. If you got in then, why do you need us now?"

"Because the wards almost certainly recorded that little visit!" I said impatiently. "They'll be expecting me to try again. And the last time I removed someone from the Consul's control, she used a null bomb to trap me."

"I heard about that. Didn't believe it, though."

"Oh, null bombs exist," I assured him. "And the Consul's got a stash of them." I'd seen it for myself, and although I doubted that she wanted to use up any more of a very expensive, very scarce resource on me, the fact remained that I'd made her look bad. It hadn't been intentional, but vamps rarely cared about such trifles. And messing with the reputation of someone who ruled partly through the fear she was able to inspire was a very big deal.

"I meant I didn't believe you could pull it off," Alphonse clarified.

Neither had I. I decided it wouldn't be prudent to mention exactly how much luck had been involved. In a world where reputation was all-important, I didn't have much of one to trade on. Alphonse remembered me as Tony's tame little clairvoyant, something that was not going to convince him to do a damn thing. Thinking of me as someone gutsy enough or crazy enough to go up against the Consul would be a much better image.

Fortunately, both Alphonse and Casanova needed me to ensure that Mircea stayed alive and well. Until the geis was lifted, I could trust them. To a point. Probably.

"I think I know how we can do it," I said.

Casanova had been making spluttering sounds in the background. I thought someone had been choking him, but I guess not, because he suddenly piped up. "Okay then. You're insane. This explains a lot about you."

"Insane and the boss's girlfriend," I reminded him sweetly.

It's probably just as well I don't speak Spanish.

Thankfully, by the time Sal received word back from the Consul that she would see us, it was almost dawn. That wouldn't have bothered the head of the Senate, as she'd long since ceased to be bound by the sun cycle, but Alphonse and company weren't in that league. So I had a day's reprieve before I found out if my plan was going to work. And since I'd already screwed up my sleep cycle, I decided to use it for other things.

Nick was holding the fort when I got to the research room. He had his nose buried in a huge, dusty old tome, but looked glad to take a break. "There's been no word on your friend, Tami," he told me before I could say anything. "Not that I have the same level of access anymore, as a fugitive from justice."

I squirmed slightly. "Yeah. Sorry about that." Someone should have warned him that I tend to have that effect on mages.

"It had to happen sooner or later. The system is antiquated, but the Council refuses to see that."

"And here I just thought they were a bunch of power-grubbing asshats."

"That, too," Nick said dryly, shutting the cover of his book. It had a familiar symbol embossed on it, silver scales bright against the worn green leather.

"The ouroboros," I said, and was immediately sorry when his face lit up with the delighted air of a fanatic who has found a kindred soul.

"I didn't know you were interested in magical history, Cassie."

I hadn't been, before the Codex came along. Now I didn't have much choice. "Symbol of eternity, right?"

He nodded enthusiastically. "That's one interpretation. The snake—or dragon in some depictions—eats its own tail, thus sustaining its life and ensuring an eternal cycle of renewal." He flipped to the frontispiece, an almost translucent sheet covered with the image from the cover rendered in bright jewel tones. "This one was copied from an Egyptian amulet, dated to 1500 B.C., but it was also known to the Phoenicians and the Greeks, the Chinese and the Norse…really, it's the ultimate archetype. There's hardly a culture that didn't know it in some form!"

"How interesting." And it was, sort of. But I didn't have time for a magical history lesson. "Have you seen Pritkin today?"

I was too late; Nick was already buried in another book. "It's also one of the oldest protective symbols in the world, possibly the oldest. Not to mention the most widespread. The Aztecs believed that a giant serpent resided in the heavens as protection for Earth until the end of the age. The Egyptians had a similar myth. Both cultures thought that when the ouroboros' protection failed, the age of man would come to an end."