Claimed by Shadow

'Her vampire master put her under a duthracht. It is conflicting with the Pythian Rites, which have yet to be completed,' Pritkin said curtly.

'Oh, bloody hell.' Mac sat down on his stool, looking shell-shocked.

'Answer me!' If I'd dared to touch Pritkin, I'd have shaken him within an inch of his life.

'I don't know enough about the rites to say for certain if there is a way out at this point,' he said unhelpfully. 'The ceremonies are held within the Pythia's court, and there are few records kept on anything connected to the office.”

'What about witnesses?' I hoped I didn't sound as frantic as I felt. 'The ritual was done for Agnes once, right?”

'That was more than eighty years ago. And even if any witnesses still live, they would be of little use. Most of the ritual is carried out privately. The only people who know the complete procedure are the Pythia and her designated heir.”

' Myra.' Great, I was back where I'd started. 'What about the geis then?”

'You are already doing what you can by staying away from Mircea. That will at least slow down the process. There is no other remedy, other than having it removed.”

'Then how do I do that?”

'You don't.”

'Don't give me that! There has to be a way.”

'If there is, I don't know it,' he told me, sounding tired. 'If I did, I would tell you. Unless the ritual is completed, it will continue to draw you to men, but the geis will oppose any except Mircea. And it will likely grow worse over time. The duthracht is spiteful when it's opposed.”

'But… but what about Chavez?' I asked desperately. 'He touched me and nothing happened. I didn't go writhing all over the ice rink!”

'You were at the ice rink? Why?' Pritkin was back to looking pissed. I couldn't have cared less.

'To get that.' I gestured at the duffle. 'I didn't want to take it into Dante's.”

'So you left it unattended in a public arena, where anyone might pick it up?!”

'It was in a locker,' I said sullenly. 'And can we get back to the point? I felt something start to build when Casanova touched me. It was nothing like what just happened, but it felt-I don't know. Like it could get bad fast. Only he dropped my hand before it flared. But Chavez didn't affect me at all, and that was later. So if you're right and the reaction is strengthening, shouldn't it have been worse?”

Pritkin looked uncomfortable. 'I don't know.”

'The only reason I can think of,' Mac mused, 'is that the geis determines the amount of threat by reading the interest level of any prospective partners, and reacts accordingly. Casanova was likely somewhat attracted to you and this Chavez wasn't. Casanova was therefore identified by the geis as the wrong match and as a potential problem, and warned off. But Chavez, although also the wrong one to complete the bond, was not interested in you, and therefore was not perceived as a danger.”

Mac looked pleased with himself, while Pritkin and I stared at each other in mounting panic. As if by mutual consent, neither of us made the obvious connection. I did not want to go there. Ever.

'Of course,' Mac continued obliviously, 'when there's a mutual attraction, the reaction is stronger because the warning is going both ways…' He trailed off awkwardly.

'Okay.' I put a hand to my head, which had started throbbing in time with my pulse. At this rate, I was going to be the youngest person ever to die from a stress-induced stroke. 'How do I deal with this thing?' I asked Mac, because Pritkin was busy trying not to look horrified.

Mac scratched his stubble-coated chin. 'Usually, there's a way out built into these things, especially the duthracht. It has a habit of causing chaos, and I can't imagine anyone putting it in place and not giving himself an escape route. But only two people are likely to know what the safety net is.”

'Mircea and whoever cast the spell.”

He nodded. 'And the mage was doubtless someone disavowed who was under the vamp's protection. He isn't going to risk losing that to help you, even if we could figure out which of the hundreds of rogue mages-and that's just the ones in this country-Mircea used. Of course, there aren't a lot with that kind of skill, outside of the Black Circle. But that doesn't help greatly. Say we could narrow it down to a few dozen, we'd still have to find him or her, and if that was easy it would have been done long ago.”

'Is there anything that can slow this thing down, make the reaction less… extreme?' I asked Mac, but it was Pritkin who answered.

'Once we cross into Faerie, it may not be an issue. Like the rest of our magic, the geis should not work well there.' He was still apparently admiring the blank wall. 'I, er, think this would go more smoothly if you waited elsewhere. Mac can look at your ward when he finishes with me.”

I didn't argue. I grabbed another Coke, scooped my weapons into the duffle and left, taking it with me. It was a measure of how shaken Pritkin was that he didn't object.

I sat on a rickety stool at the counter and thought things over. There was little I could do, except to avoid attractive men until I could get into Faerie. I hoped Pritkin was right and the effects would be less there, maybe enough to buy me time to find Myra. It wasn't a great plan, but it was the best I could do. I drank my soda and looked around for something, anything, to keep my mind off the image of a mostly naked Pritkin getting a sword carved into his taut gold skin.

I sat out front for more than an hour, leafing through a couple of huge black binders filled with tattoo designs. There was everything from voodoo veves to Indonesian tribal designs, but most were traditional magical symbols and Native American totems. I figured out pretty fast from the descriptions under the photos that all of Mac's designs came with some sort of supernatural benefit. I didn't see the sword he was doing for Pritkin among them, but maybe it was a special order.

The two volumes were divided into categories and levels. First, someone selected the main thing they wanted the tattoo to do. Some were for protection, with specialties for cuts and abrasions, blood loss, fire damage, head trauma, poison and frostbite, among others. The length of the list made me wonder why anyone wanted to be a war mage. It also made me curious why, before today, Pritkin hadn't had any tattoos. There were some that sped up healing, but although I'd seen him heal almost as fast as a vamp, he hadn't been wearing them. Unless they were somewhere I hadn't seen. I dragged my mind away from that image and quickly flipped over a few more pages.

There were also a lot of offensive spells, with a division between stuff like better vision and enhanced hearing and a whole list of nasty things to do to your enemies. I didn't linger over that section, not wanting to know what the Circle's war mages had in mind for me. I also found out that not everyone could get every tattoo. What kind and how many you could have depended on your level of magical ability. The images drew their power partly from the natural world, so they worked to a limited degree like talismans, but they also fed off a person's innate magic. It sounded sort of like a hybrid car that used electricity to extend the gas mileage. There was a long, complex chart in the back of the books for assigning yourself a range from which to choose. I didn't completely understand it because I'd never been tested for that sort of thing. Magical children are usually graded by ability early, so they can be shunted towards an appropriate apprenticeship, but of course, Tony had already known what he had planned for me.

I discovered that there were limits to what even a powerful mage could support. Someone with a snow leopard tattoo to aid her in moving silently and a spider for help in weaving illusions, for example, had to subtract a certain number of points from her powerbase for the energy those two enhancements used up. Unless she was very strong, she probably wouldn't be able to support another major improvement. It was all very complicated, even with the chart, and I finally lost interest. None of this helped me figure out how to get past whatever block the Circle had put on my ward.

Pritkin finally emerged, looking pale and a little ill, and I took his place in back. I didn't mind Mac checking on my problematic protection. He and Pritkin needed me alive until they reeled in Myra, so he had a vested interest in fixing it if he could. I was a little worried about the geis acting up, but apparently I wasn't Mac's type. I didn't get so much as a twinge from the hellish thing, even when I removed my tank top. I wasn't wearing a bra, but I held the shirt in front of me and Mac's hands were as impersonal as a doctor's.

'Can I ask you a question?' He was poking at my back with something that resembled an extremely fuzzy pipe