here." I held out the black box. "The Consul ordered you locked up so you wouldn't, um, run amok or…or anything."
"Basically?" Mircea repeated dryly.
"Well, yeah, pretty much. But I think I know why the counterspell won't work. Because the geis was put on two of you—one in the current timeline and one in the past. But since only one of you is present whenever we try the spell, it doesn't think you're all there. So to speak."
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's like with the Graeae," I explained impatiently. "I accidentally set them loose and we've been trying to trap them again ever since. Only it seems they register as one person for the sake of any magic used on them, and if one of the three is missing, the spell won't work. So they just make sure that they are never all together anymore. Then we can cast the spell all day and nothing will happen."
"Let me see if I understand," Mircea said, pulling on another of Ming-de's little gifts. "You believe the geis views the two of me on whom it was placed as one person."
"Because you are."
"But because I hold the spell in two separate timelines, if it encounters only one of me, it does not view me as a complete person, and therefore will not work?"
"Exactly. We all have to be present at the same time—two of you and one of me, because I had it placed on me only once, but you had it done twice. Once by the mage who initiated the spell and once by me. At least, I hope I have that figured right, because if we need another me this is really going to get complicated."
"Going to?" Pritkin muttered.
"That would be why, in Paris, your dress did not harm me," Mircea mused, ignoring him. "Because, linked as we were by the geis, it saw us as one. And, of course, it would not harm its owner."
"Well, two-thirds of its owner, but yeah, that's it."
"I am in there, am I?" Mircea slipped onyx cuff links into the French cuffs on his shirt and eyed the box skeptically.
"We can let you out," I said dubiously, "but I don't think…that is, I'm not sure how you'll react. Marlowe said he couldn't control you, there at the end…"
"Can we get on with this?" Pritkin demanded.
Mircea ignored him, but he gave me back a frown. "Has it not occurred to you that the mage has deceived you? Perhaps in an attempt to get into this very room, past security, to assassinate me in a vulnerable position?"
"Do mages frequently do that?" I asked, surprised.
"A few dark ones have tried. After what happened to the last one, I have had a reprieve for some years." He glanced at Pritkin. "But perhaps the lesson has been forgotten, and must be taught again."
Pritkin leapt up from his chair. "If I intended to harm you, I have had more than enough time already!"
Mircea bared his teeth in an expression that in no way resembled a smile. "Feel free to try."
I refrained from throwing something, but it was close. I'd known bringing Pritkin was a bad idea, but after the debacle with Nick, I hadn't dared to trust anyone else. Not to mention that he was the only one who knew the spell. It had to be him, and it had to be now.
"I honestly don't know how much time you have left," I told Mircea quietly. "If we do nothing, the spell will run its course and you'll die anyway."
"The spell was never designed to kill," he reproved. "Not in its wildest permutation."
"No, but it can drive someone mad! And then the Consul will do the killing for you."
Mircea paused, his eyes sliding to the snare. He regarded it for a long moment, expressionless. I guess it would be a little weird—okay, a lot weird—to imagine yourself trapped in there when you were standing right beside it. "The Senate has many experts at its disposal. Surely they can find a solution."
"That's already been tried. Do you think the Consul would have had you imprisoned if there was an alternative?"
"But would not this counterspell remove the geis from me, as well as from your Mircea? And thereby change time?"
"No, we don't think so." It was one of the things I'd asked Pritkin before we left. "It's being cast on the three of us, to break the bond we all share. But it can't affect anyone who isn't here, which includes the Cassie of this