Karen Chance: Claimed by Shadow

"No, it's a two-way street, one of the spell's big drawbacks in most people's opinion." Casanova leaned forward, apparently enjoying lecturing me. "Think of it as an amplifier on a stereo: every meeting edges it up a notch. You have to give it something to start with, but once it's up and running, you're on the path to obsession with each other whether either of you likes it or not.”

I turned away so he wouldn't see my expression, and tried to ignore the hard knot in my chest and the tight ache in my throat. I didn't know why I felt so betrayed. It wasn't as if I had ever completely trusted Mircea. I knew that no master vampire, especially a Senate member, fell into the category of nice guy. He couldn't have achieved his current position by being anything less than ruthless. But I would have given odds that he wouldn't do something like this. Tony, yes; that I could see, but I'd foolishly believed that his boss was different. Stupid. Who did I think had trained him?

I looked back to find Casanova carefully expressionless. "You're saying this is dangerous.”

"All magic is dangerous, chica" he told me gently, "under the right circumstances.”

"Don't hedge!" I didn't need my feelings spared, I needed answers. Something that would help me figure a way out of this.

"I'm not hedging," he insisted. A woman let out a high-pitched scream and his eyes shifted to a spot behind me. "Damn!”

I looked over my shoulder to see that my three roommates had decided to take up darts, despite the fact that the bar was not actually equipped with a board. While I'd been distracted, Deino had positioned herself at one end of the bar and Pemphredo at the other, while Enyo stood in front blowing toothpicks at the hapless bartender. Before we could make a move, Enyo blew another mouthful of tiny projectiles, leaving the poor satyr looking like a very unhappy pincushion. The woman screamed again as a forest of little red dots sprouted on his chest, and Casanova gestured for her companion to take her away. He went to rescue his employee and I followed to rescue him. The girls sometimes listen to me-when they feel like it-although I get the impression that I'm considered a spoilsport.

Casanova sent the trembling bartender on a much-deserved break, while I placated the girls by fishing some cards out of my purse. It's a standard tarot deck I received for a birthday present years ago that is charmed to act as a sort of metaphysical mood ring. It doesn't do specifics, but its forecasts of the overall climate surrounding a situation tend to be eerily accurate. I was not happy to see the card that poked up from the deck as soon as I touched it.

Despite the common misconception, the Lovers rarely has anything to do with finding a soul mate or even having a good time. The Two of Cups normally indicates that romance is on the way, but the Lovers is more complex. It points to a looming choice, one that will involve temptation and pain. And, like the depiction of the card in my deck- Adam and Eve being thrown out of Eden -the final decision will have huge consequences for everything that follows. Needless to say, it has never been one of my favorites.

While I confiscated the remaining toothpicks and gave the girls their new toy, Casanova arranged for another bartender. Finally, we rendezvoused back at our table. "It all depends on your point of view," he said, picking up the conversation as if nothing had happened. I suppose he'd dealt with worse over the centuries than a few bored grandmas. "Of itself, the geis is harmless. But then, so was Melusine's-as long as it wasn't broken. Your version merely causes devotion to one person. If nothing interferes with that relationship, both of you live happily ever after.”

The fact that I might not want to live, happily or otherwise, in a magically induced state of mind was obviously not important. "What if something does interfere?”

Casanova looked faintly uncomfortable. "Love is a many splendored thing, as I have cause to know. But it has its ugly side, too. If anyone or anything is perceived as posing a threat to the bond, it acts to remove that threat." He saw my impatience and elaborated. "Say a person, nonmagical obviously, was to take an interest in you. A norm would be unable to sense the geis, so the warning would go unheeded.”

"What would happen?”

"It would depend. If the bond was new and the two of you had not spent much time together-if the amplitude, in other words, was set on low-maybe nothing. But the higher the volume, the more the interference would be resented. Eventually, one or both of you would move to eliminate the threat.”

"Eliminate? You mean, as in kill?" My jaw dropped. Mircea must have been out of his mind.

"It probably wouldn't come to that," Casanova assured me, and I felt my stomach unclench slightly. "Most suitors would exit quickly enough when you started screaming abuse, or your lover began threatening them.”

Great, I thought as my stomach went back to its former knotted state. I could go cuckoo's nest at any moment, thanks to Mircea's idea of insurance. "But what if the originator of the geis wanted someone to seduce me?”

It wasn't an idle question. Mircea had sent a vampire named Tomas to befriend me when the Pythia's health began to fail. Lady Phemonoe, the Pythia better known to me as Agnes, had realized she was dying and had begun the rites that would free the power to go to a successor. And that had started a whole new ball game. Agnes could initiate the ancient ritual, but only I could complete it-by losing the virginity Mircea had guarded so carefully. He had designated Tomas to take care of that little item for him to avoid getting caught in his own trap. Mircea had been born before the notion of a woman choosing her sexual partners was fashionable, and Tomas was the servant of another master vampire and expected to follow orders. So, of course, neither of us had been consulted about any of this.

Tomas was one of those rare vamps able to mimic the human condition so perfectly that we lived as roommates for six months without me guessing what he was. We became close, although not as close as Mircea would have liked. I was reluctant to involve anyone in my crazy life and thought I was protecting Tomas by keeping him at a distance. But all it had done was force Mircea himself to have to stand in for the ritual.

As it turned out, we had been interrupted before the main event, something I'd been grateful for once my head cleared a little. Completing the ritual meant that I would be stuck as Pythia for life-a no-doubt extremely abbreviated period of time considering how much of a target that made me. Not that my life expectancy at the moment seemed all that great, either.

"The originator of the geis can lift it for a particular person," Casanova confirmed. "I've heard of instances when the spell was used on heiresses by their guardians, to ensure that they remained chaste until appropriate suitors were selected. The devotion aspect of the spell was supposed to guarantee that they would happily accept whomever was chosen.”

I didn't like Casanova's expression. "What happened?”

He fumbled getting another cigarette out of a slim gold case. Considering how graceful his movements usually were, I had a feeling I wasn't going to like the answer. "The geis fell out of favor because it tends to backfire," he explained, lighting up. "Sometimes it worked, but there were cases when girls committed suicide rather than marry someone other than their guardians.”

At my appalled expression, he hurried to explain. "It is a very difficult spell to cast properly, Cassie. Devotion can mean so many things. The geis is designed to ensure loyalty, but how many human emotions do you know that have only one facet? Loyalty easily transmutes to admiration-for why, do you think, would I be loyal to someone who is not, in some way, admirable? Admiration becomes attraction, attraction grows into love and love usually leads to the desire to possess that which is loved. You follow?”