“I’m only suspected of being a dark mage because you people told everyone I was!” I said furiously.
Until recently, the Circle had been headed by a mage named Saunders, who had been cooking the books in favor of himself and his buddies. And he hadn’t wanted a Pythia in place who wasn’t firmly under his thumb, in case she outed his little moneymaking scheme. So while his operatives were busy trying to hunt me down, he was planting nasty stories in the press about my family background.
It didn’t help that most of them were true.
“And we did our usual good job,” Slick said proudly. “Everyone now knows that your mother was a ruined Initiate, your father was a dangerous dark mage and that you yourself have received absolutely no training for the position you hold.”
“I wouldn’t say
“It will be the triumph of my career to bring you back from that. But I will. Make no mistake.”
He disappeared into the walk-in closet, leaving me staring at Jonas. “You have got to be kidding.”
“Niall is a bit abrupt, I grant you—”
“A bit?”
“But he does have a point, Cassie. Your public image”—Jonas shook his head, causing the alien hair to waft about luxuriously—“it would be difficult to imagine how it could be worse, you know.”
“Then why haven’t you guys worried about it before?”
“Because we were waiting for things to cool down,” Niall told me, emerging with a heap of my clothes. “The public has a very short attention span and they forget details easily. Trying to eradicate or even amend their impression of you right after the story broke would have been impossible. Now it’s merely impractical.” He threw my clothes out the door.
“Hey!”
“Considering the damage, I would prefer another fortnight to pass, at the very least, before the ceremony,” he said, going back for another load of my belongings. “But I was told that we were at war and it couldn’t wait.”
“I just bought that!” I said, snatching an off-white slip dress out of his hand.
“For what?” he demanded.
“If you must know, I have a date tonight!”
“Really?” Jonas looked delighted. “May I ask with whom?”
“Mircea,” I said, only to see his face fall.
“Ah.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing, nothing. None of my business, after all.”
“Well, it is
I looked down at the dress. It had a draped front and little spaghetti straps, but no sparkles, sequins or any decoration at all. Unless you counted what looked like the vague outline of tree branches that swayed across the silk, like shadows on a wall. It was beautiful and tasteful and one of my favorite purchases.
“And just what is wrong with this?” I demanded.
“On the hanger? Nothing. On you?” Slick looked me up and down and shook his head.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Two words: ‘foundation garment,’ ” he said, and snatched it back.
“There are such things as strapless bras, you know!” I told him furiously.
“And do you own one?”
“That’s also none of your—”
“That would be a no, then,” he said, and swept out.
I was about to chase him down and possibly beat him to death with a shoe—assuming he’d left me one— when Jonas piped up. “Of course, there are those who will agree with Niall,” he said diffidently.
I narrowed my eyes. “What is this?”
He took off his thick glasses and polished them on an already rumpled sleeve. Maybe they really were dirty, but it looked like a stalling tactic. Like he knew I wasn’t going to like whatever he’d come to say.
“This is my pointing out, however clumsily, that when one is Pythia, personal relationships are often . . . tricky.”
“Like yours was with Agnes?” I asked archly. Because Jonas and the former Pythia had apparently been an item back in the day.
“Yes, in fact. That was why we kept it a secret, from all but a few very close associates. Had we openly been a couple, people might have thought that she was under the influence of the Circle.”
“People already thought that,” I pointed out. “They think that about every Pythia.”
“No, they suspect. Which is a very different thing.”
“So you’re saying what? That I can’t date Mircea?” I asked, and heard someone outside smother a laugh. I suspected Marco.
Jonas apparently heard it, too, because he shot an irritated glance in the direction of the living room. “No, dating can be spun as savvy intelligence gathering on your part. Or as an attempt to bring the vampires into a closer alliance with the Circle. Or as a way of showing your impartiality toward the species.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“There isn’t one. As long as your liaison doesn’t become more . . . permanent.”
My hand went unconsciously to the marks on my neck, the two little scars that were the physical manifestation of Mircea’s claim. Because we were already about as permanent as it got. Wedding rings could be taken off, just as marriages could end in divorce, annulment or separation. But the marks I wore, I would wear for life.
Diamonds might not be, but a vampire’s claim? Now, that was forever.
“A formal claim is about as permanent as it gets,” I admitted, not really wanting to get into it, but not seeing an alternative. I’d known this was bound to come up sooner or later.
“A formal claim?” Jonas sounded as if he’d never heard the term.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, wondering for something like the hundredth time how the different supernatural groups had survived this long when they knew almost nothing about each other. And, frequently, what they did know was wrong. It was no wonder they were at each other’s throats half the time.
“It’s sometimes used to bind nonvampires to a vamp family,” I explained.
“For what purpose?” Jonas asked narrowly.
“For a lot of purposes. Say there’s a particularly strong magic user that the family has relied on for a while to do its wards. They want to make sure he stays around, that some other family doesn’t steal him away. But they can’t just absorb him, because mages lose their magic when Changed.”
“It is also illegal!” Jonas said hotly.
“Not if the person involved agrees to it. But—”
“As if any mage in his right mind—”
“—but if the mage can’t be Changed,” I said, talking over him, because I wasn’t in the mood for that particular conversation today. “Then the next-best option is a claim. It makes him a formal part of the family, and vampire laws don’t allow poaching from other people’s families.”
It also had another use, being the method traditionally used for marriages between two highly ranked vampires. It united them and their families but left them as equals, with neither having to be blood bound to the other. But if Jonas wanted to know about that, he was going to have to do his own damn homework.
Jonas frowned. “Then why haven’t I heard of this before, if it’s so common?”
“I didn’t say it was common,” I said, taking an armful of my clothes back where they belonged. “It isn’t.”
“And why not, if it’s so useful?”
“Because a master vampire is accountable for his family members, whether claimed or Changed. Their actions reflect on him, and he’s answerable for them to the Senate. But someone who has been claimed doesn’t have the blood tie to him that ensures obedience, giving him a lot less control over that person’s actions.”
“But senior-level masters within a family can also challenge their sire, can they not?” Jonas asked, surprising
