Claimed by Shadow Page 0,38
wasn't far behind.
"If he didn't intend to help, he could have stepped aside and let the mages have you back at the casino.”
"I could have managed on my own," I said shortly. Even to my ears it sounded sulky, but that didn't mean it wasn't true. I didn't need Pritkin, or anybody else, to come riding to the rescue.
"Yeah, but I thought you were trying to avoid using the power.”
This conversation was starting to irritate me. "Are you just going to sit there and eat, or what?" I asked Pritkin crossly.
He glanced up, a look of distaste on his features. I wasn't sure whether it was for me or the sandwich, so I let it pass. "We worked together before when we had a common cause. We have one again. I am proposing that we join forces long enough to deal with our mutual dilemma.”
"You have a grudge against Tony? Since when?" That was awfully convenient.
"The Circle has issued a warrant for him, but that isn't my interest.”
I crumpled up my sandwich paper and tossed it at the trash. I missed. "Then what is?”
Pritkin took a drink from one of the Cokes Mac had passed around, and grimaced. "I want you to help me recover the sybil called Myra," he informed me.
"What?" I stared at him. It was disconcerting and more than a little suspicious that the first name on my list also topped Pritkin's.
"None of our locating charms have turned up anything. Therefore it is a fair guess that she is hiding in Faerie, where our magic doesn't work. In return for your help, I promise not to take you before the Circle, and to assist you in dealing with your former master.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. "I don't even know where to start. First, you aren't taking me anywhere, and second, why should I help you bring back my rival? So your Circle can kill me and reinstate her? For some reason, that doesn't appeal.”
"The Circle has no plans to put her in your place," he said grimly. "As for the other, do not overestimate your abilities, or underestimate mine. If I wanted to capture you, I would. Even if I refrain, eventually someone else will. The Circle will never stop chasing you, and they have to get lucky only once. You, on the other hand, have to elude all of their traps, with little knowledge of the magical world to aid you. Only with my help can you hope to avoid the fate the Circle has planned for you-and for her.”
"Oh, right. They're going to kill the only fully trained initiate they have. Why do I doubt that?" The Circle might want me dead, but they had every reason to keep Myra alive and well. There was a war on, and they badly needed the help a malleable Pythia could provide.
He glanced at Mac, who was looking dour. "Some of us have noticed a disturbing tendency in the Circle's leadership lately. They seem to care less for our traditional mission and more for power every year. The Silver have always been separate from the Black, not only in how we obtain power, but in what we do with it. I fear the Council has forgotten that.”
Mac nodded. "And now they have a new candidate for Pythia, one of the more docile initiates. If both you and Myra die, they believe she'll inherit." He shook his head wearily, causing a dragonfly on his right shoulder to flutter glittering green wings. "I knew we had some rot at the core, but this is worse than any of us guessed. The power chooses the Pythia. That has been a maxim for thousands of years, because to have the wrong person in that office is to invite disaster. Dark mages are always trying to find ways to slip through time, to remake the world the way they want, and every once in a while one succeeds. Without a proper Pythia on the throne, our entire existence is in danger! The council must be stopped!”
"Uh-huh." I looked into Mac's homely, earnest face and tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. But it was difficult. The world I'd grown up in was run on the carrot-and-stick principle: everything was done to gain reward or to avoid punishment. And the more risky the job, the higher the rewards or the greater the punishment had to be. Considering the risk level Mac was talking about, the payoff had to be out of