Claimed by Shadow Page 0,117
about to occur.”
"That's horrible!”
"No, it's practical. A shared life is better than none at all.”
"But if you can do it once," Tomas said slowly, "why can you not continue to do it life after life, century after century?”
"That's why I hate vamps," Agnes said to the room in general. "They're so damn suspicious!”
"But can you do it?" Tomas asked.
"Of course not!" she snapped. "Think it through! Once our time in service is over, the power migrates to someone else. Without it, we have no way of knowing who is going to die, and therefore no way of choosing another body. It's a onetime deal.”
Tomas gave a short laugh. "You expect us to believe that no one has ever tried to cheat death? To live through many lifetimes by taking whomever they wanted, whether they were doomed or not?”
Agnes shrugged. "That's one of the many duties of the reigning Pythia-to make sure it doesn't happen that way.”
I shook my head. This was happening too fast, all of it. My brain just couldn't keep up. "But why Françoise?”
"I told you-I didn't have a choice! I started to return to my body but discovered that I'd wasted too much energy helping you. I hadn't planned to have to freeze time-that's not an easy trick, especially after a jump of more than three hundred years! I found that I didn't have enough left to jump the centuries one last time.”
"But I could have taken you back with me!" Agnes had helped me fight off Myra. If it wasn't for her help, I'd probably be dead already. I would certainly not have refused to give her a lift.
"If you recall, Cassie, you were in the middle of a room full of hungry ghosts. They were bent on devouring every spirit in sight! I couldn't risk it. Once time started up again, I had to get out of there fast. So I went into the only person I knew of in that time who was near death and might be willing to cut a deal.”
"And did she?" Françoise wasn't just any old norm: she was a witch, and from one very memorable trick I'd seen her perform, a powerful one. And it looked to me like she was fighting.
Almost as if she'd heard my thoughts, Agnes made another grimace and clutched her stomach. "In a manner of speaking.”
"How did you end up here?" Tomas asked before I could demand something a little less nebulous.
"I'd planned to get back to Cassie before she left that century, once I was in possession of a body to keep the spirits away. But the damn dark mages showed up.”
"They kidnapped you for sale to the Fey," he reasoned. And you have been here ever since? But that was centuries ago!”
"Years, actually," Agnes corrected.
"Time runs differently here," I reminded him. Marlowe had said it, but I hadn't realized just how big the difference could be. "You're saying you've been here continually, ever since we left France?”
Agnes nodded, then held up a hand to stop me when I tried to say something else. "If you've seen us since, don't tell me about it. Françoise can hear us, and she doesn't need to be influenced by knowing what will happen in her future.”
Her future, I thought dizzily, but my past. She'd killed a dark mage at Dante's a week ago, helping me escape. Or, rather, she was going to kill one… My head was starting to hurt.
"Do you want to get out of here or not?" Agnes demanded.
"Yes, but we're going to talk later," I told her. Maybe by then I'd have sorted some of this out and be able to think straight.
"If there is a later," she said ominously. "Don't forget the wards-I went to enough trouble to get them for you." She grabbed the lantern and, in a swirl of skirts, vanished down the hallway. Tomas and I looked at each other, then hurried to follow her, Tomas still pulling on the clothes she'd brought and me stuffing wards into every pocket I could find.
We turned at the end of the hall to ascend a long flight of stairs that was only occasionally lit by low-burning torches. At the end was another thick oak door, but it opened easily at the barest push from Françoise. Pritkin, Billy and Marlowe stood around a large round opening in a wall of rock, beyond which a mass of color shifted in a kaleidoscope of light.
"Is this all of them?" the pixie demanded, barely bothering