When Billy got up close, Marlowe flinched and stepped back. It took me a moment to realize why: stars are essentially millions of tiny suns. That probably explained the faint, disco-ball effect that the dress seemed to be throwing on the cavern floor, shedding a puddle of tiny prisms all around the hem.

"Cassie?" Tami was looking at Billy in disbelief, and I decided that switching back would make more sense than trying to explain at this point. Possession was not a skill I'd had when she knew me.

I slipped back inside my own skin and Marcello sighed in relief. Apparently, he hadn't enjoyed the cohabitation any more than I had. "About time," Billy muttered as he headed straight for my necklace. The tone clearly said that I'd be hearing about this later.

"It's okay, Tami," I told her, ignoring both of them. "I know you didn't do anything wrong. This is just a mix-up."

Marlowe laughed. "Mix-up? I don't think so." He'd apparently recovered from the singeing, although I noticed that he stayed a little farther back than before. There were tiny burn marks on his hose, the size of pinpricks, that I could swear hadn't been there earlier. "She's guilty as hell."

Tami had recovered enough from the initial shock to send him a pretty good glare. It looked real familiar, maybe because I'd been on the receiving end of a carbon copy very recently. "Jesse! He's your son, isn't he?" I would have gotten it before, only she hadn't had a kid of her own when I knew her. Or, at least, she hadn't mentioned one.

Tami's head jerked back to me. "Where is he? Is he all right? Are the others—"

"They're fine. They showed up a few days ago. I have them somewhere safe."

"Oh." She visibly sagged, and for a moment I thought she was going to end up on the floor. But she recovered in time to give me a hug that forced whatever air Augustine's contraption had left me out of my lungs. "Thank you, Cassie!"

"It's no big deal," I gasped. "You did the same thing for me once, if I remember. Although next time it would be kind of nice to get, oh, a phone call? You knew where I was."

"But not what you'd say. And it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."

"You know me better than that!" I couldn't believe she'd actually thought I'd say no.

"I used to know you better than that," she corrected. "But times change. You got out of that life. Made a new start. And besides, paranoia is a damned useful quality." We said the last together, laughing in spite of everything, because it had been the Misfit mantra that Tami had drilled into our heads practically every day.

Tami quickly sobered, however. "I was so worried, Cassie…the war mages wouldn't tell me anything, and I didn't know…Jesse's smart, but so many things could have gone wrong and I—"

"Nothing went wrong." I grinned ruefully. "Except that he wouldn't tell me anything, either. Not that it surprises me now. He's his mamma's boy. Only I didn't know you had a son."

"I didn't plan to get pregnant. When I found out, I hid it, and when Jesse was born…I had a talk with his father and he agreed to take him. His wife couldn't have kids, and he somehow persuaded her to swear the baby was hers. We thought that, as long as Jesse took after him and didn't show any signs of, of anything, he could get an apprenticeship one day, have a normal life. But when he was eleven—" she swallowed. "There started to be all these fires."

It took a second before it hit me. "He's a fire starter? Wow, that's really…rare." I caught myself, but it didn't fool Tami.

"And really bad," she said, her mouth twisting. "It put him straight on the Circle's shit list, and they locked him up. His father spent two years petitioning to get him out, hired good lawyers, did all the right things. But they finally had to tell him it was hopeless. Something else, something minor, yeah, maybe they could have helped. But not for Jesse." Her eyebrows drew together. "And I wasn't going to put up with that shit!"

"You got him out."

Her chin jerked up. "Hell, yeah, I got him out. They always treat us nulls like we're useless, but when I walk up to a ward, it damn well goes down! But he'd been in there two years! He told me all kinds of things, how they live—like they're in prison—how nobody ever touches them—like they're contagious—and the rumors."

"What rumors?"

"You haven't heard? The Circle is talking about starting mandatory operations, as soon as the kids are old enough."

I frowned. "For what?"

"To make sure they can't reproduce, can't pollute the precious gene pool, even if they somehow get loose!"

"It's a charge the Circle denies," Marlowe put in mildly.

Tami whirled on him in a fury. "The goddamned Circle wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the ass!"

Only Tami wouldn't think twice about telling off a master vampire in front of half the Senate, I thought, as Marlowe backed up a step. He raised his hands, mouth quirking in a smile he mostly managed to conceal. "I never said I believed them."

"But why are you here?" I asked. "I mean, I know you broke the law, but it wasn't anything that serious." Locking up a den mother in the most secure prison they possessed seemed a little overkill, even for the Circle.

Marlowe arched an eyebrow at me. "Blowing up half a dozen of the Circle's educational facilities isn't that severe? Oh, but I forgot to whom I was speaking."

I frowned at him, and then the rest of what he'd said registered. I transferred my frown to Tami. "Wait a minute! You're the Vixen Vigilante, aren't you?"

She scowled, running a hand over her creased skirt. "Do I look like a vixen to you?"

Considering what she'd been through, I thought she looked pretty good. But that didn't mean I agreed with what she was doing. "What on earth were you thinking?"

"I was thinking I needed to get my son away from those SOBs! But after I broke Jesse out, he begged me to go back in for some friends of his. And then they had friends and then the friends had friends…And sometimes wards weren't the only obstacles, especially once they figured out I could get past them. They started rigging booby traps, so I started carrying explosives and…it snowballed."

"Oh." I blinked, finding it hard to reconcile the crazed vigilante with the woman I'd known. Of course, she was probably having a similar problem with me.

"But the Circle set a trap and I fell into it, and now they want me to give up the names of everyone who's been helping me find homes for the kids. And I won't." She glared some more at Marlowe. "I don't care what you do to me. You damn vampires can drain me dry and I won't tell you a goddamned—"

"That's not why you're here," I told her, jumping in. A show of spirit was one thing; insulting the Senate was something else. I'd already done enough of that for both of us. "I want to see Mircea," I told Marlowe, pulling Tami behind me.

"He's indisposed."

"You already said that. I still want to see him."

Marlowe's expression blanked with that creepy speed the vamps sometimes showed. "No," he told me seriously. "I don't think you do."

"Where is he?" Alphonse demanded. He and Sal had been prudently keeping to the background, but they came forward now. One of the Senate guards moved to intercept, but Marlowe made a gesture and he let them pass.

"He had to be moved to a more secure area." Marlowe shot me a look. "I have need of every operative right now; I do not have the men to keep Lord Mircea safely confined."

"Confined?" The word didn't make sense in context with Mircea. He was a first-level master. They went wherever they damn well pleased. "What are you talking about?"

"He attempted to leave, I assume to find you. But he was not in full control of his faculties. We did not know what he might do if he escaped into the human population in such a state." Marlowe grimaced. "He was…displeased…to have his wishes denied. I have six men in critical condition who can attest to that fact."