Claimed by Shadow Page 0,15

spend the rest of my life salivating over him like some teenager with a rock star. I was not a groupie, damn it!

Pritkin gave me a little shake and I eyed him without favor. On the only other occasions when I had been dragged back in time, the trip had been triggered by proximity to a person whose past was being threatened. "I have to tell you," I said frankly, "if someone is trying to mess with your conception or something, I'm not feeling a pressing need to intervene.”

His face, normally ruddy anyway, flushed a deeper shade of red. "Get us back where we belong before we change anything!" he spat.

I didn't like being given orders, but he had a point. And the fact that I had a strong urge to run down the hallway and throw myself into Mircea's arms was another good reason for getting out of there. I closed my eyes and concentrated on Casanova's office at Dante's, but although I could see it clearly, there was no rush of power sweeping me towards it. I tried again, but I guess my batteries needed a recharge because nothing happened.

"There might be a slight delay on this flight," I said, feeling queasy. All sorts of fears began crowding my brain. What if there was a time limit on the ritual that the former Pythia had forgotten to mention? What if I couldn't shift again, period, because the power had gotten tired of waiting for me to seal the deal and had passed to someone else? We could be stuck whenever this was permanently.

"What the bloody hell are you talking about?" Pritkin demanded. "Take us back immediately!”

"I can't.”

"What do you mean, you can't? Every moment we spend here is a danger!”

Pritkin was shaking me again and I think he was getting worried, because his voice had roughened. I had no sympathy-whatever he was feeling was nothing compared to my mood. Wasn't my life messed up enough without having to handle the Pythia's responsibilities, too? Couldn't whoever was running this show let me deal with a few of the items on my personal problem list before dragging me off to sort out other people's? It wasn't fair and I'd about had enough. If I was supposed to do something, fine. Bring it on.

"Let me spell it out for you," I told Pritkin, shrugging out of his grasp. "I didn't bring us here. I don't even know where here is. All I know is that I can't shift us out, either because the power has decided it doesn't like me anymore, or because it wants me to do something before I leave." I was betting on the latter, since I didn't think landing at Mircea's feet had been an accident.

Pritkin didn't look like he believed me, but I didn't care. I turned away from him, intending to find out whether Mircea had any bright ideas, but Pritkin's hand clasped around my wrist in a viselike grip. "You aren't going anywhere," he said grimly.

"I have to find out what the problem is and deal with it, or neither of us will be going anywhere," I snapped. "So, unless you can tell me where we are and why we're here, I don't see much choice but to go exploring, do you?”

"We're in London, in late 1888 or early 1889.”

I raised an eyebrow. I hadn't seen any clues to help narrow things down, other than the woman's clothes-Mircea's were standard formal wear that could have come from any period in a wide span of time. It was a little disconcerting to learn that Pritkin was a connoisseur of women's fashion. I said as much and he actually growled at me before thrusting a piece of paper into my hands.

"Here! Someone dropped this." I looked away from his perpetual glower to peruse the yellow and black flyer he'd given me. It showed a man staring up a hill at three old crones. They sort of reminded me of the Graeae, only they had better hair. It informed me that it was a souvenir of the Lyceum Theatre's performance of Macbeth, beginning December 29, 1888.

"Okay, great. We know the date. It's a start, but I don't see it getting us too far." I tried to pull away again, but he stopped me, this time with words.

"The more you feed the geis, the stronger it will become. Not to mention that prostitutes in this era wear more clothes than you currently have on. You can't go anywhere