Claimed by Shadow

focused pale blue eyes on me.

'A dashed improvement over Faust!' it said, rolling its eyes up to its bearer.

The woman stared at me with no expression, but when she spoke her voice did not sound pleased. 'Why do you disturb us?”

I sighed as deeply as I could manage with the damn corset cutting me in two. Exactly what I needed, a ticked-off ghost. I was just thankful I hadn't shifted as a spirit myself, or I'd have a lot more reason to be worried. I have time traveled before without my body, appearing in another era as a spirit or in possession of someone. But both states create bigger problems than putting up with an uncomfortable costume for a while.

Leaving my body behind means risking death unless I find another spirit to babysit it while I'm gone. Since the only one usually available is Billy Joe, this is something I try to avoid. Especially in Vegas, where all his favorite vices are so near at hand. The other downside is that traveling in spirit form saps my energy too quickly to allow me to do much unless I possess someone and draw energy from him or her. But I don't even like drinking from the same cup as someone else, much less using their body.

After becoming the Pythia's heir, I acquired the ability to take my own form along for the ride, although that has a downside, too. One possession resulted in an injury to the woman I was inhabiting-in the form of an almost-severed toe-but I'd been able to leave the wound behind when I shifted back to my own body. But if anything happened to me now, I was stuck with it. The upside of my current condition was that ghosts don't have a lot of power over the living. They can cannibalize other spirits under certain conditions, but attacking a living body usually drains them of more power than they gain. Still, there was no reason to provoke her.

'I'll be leaving soon,' I said, hoping it was true. 'I have an errand to run and then I'm out of here.”

'You aren't in the show, then?' the head asked, looking disappointed.

'Only visiting,' I said quickly, since the woman's eyes had started to glow. That's not a good sign in a ghost-it means they're calling up their power, normally just prior to letting you have it. 'Really, I want to leave, but I can't yet. Hopefully, this won't take long.”

'The other said the same,' she intoned, her dark hair starting to blow gently about her face as her power rose. 'But after poisoning the wine, she did not go. Now you are here. This must stop.”

'She?' I didn't like the sound of that. 'The only person I brought with me is male. Maybe you've seen him? About five eight, blond, dressed like the Terminator? Sorry,' I said, as her forehead wrinkled slightly. 'I mean, he's wearing a long topcoat over a bunch of weapons. He'll be back soon and we'll get this sorted out.”

'It is not the mage that concerns us,' the ghost said sternly. 'You and the other woman are the threat. You must leave.”

'She is somewhat territorial, I fear,' the head said, looking sympathetic. 'We've been here such a long time, y'see. This land belonged to my family long before they built a theatre on it, and it sustains us.' He gave me a cheerful leer. ' 'Tis more fun these days. The demmed Roundheads closed all the theatres, as well as the pubs, the whorehouses, and all besides that wasn't a church. They even prohibited sports on Sunday! They were kind enough to behead me before I had to live through that. But we triumphed in the end, didn't we?”

'Uh-huh.' I was barely listening. Every ghost I've ever met wants to tell me the story of his life, and if I hadn't learned how to nod and smile while thinking of other things, I'd have been driven crazy a long time ago. And I had a lot to mull over.

From the little I had managed to discover about my position, mostly from rumors Billy Joe overheard, the setup worked like this: if someone from my own era was messing with the timeline, the ball was in my court. It was my problem, and I'd have to fix it. But if someone from another time was trying to interfere, that was the province of the Pythia from that person's time. If that was true, the interference that had brought me here should have come from my lifetime. But the only person I knew who could skip around between centuries was in no position to do so. Billy had checked with some of his ghostly contacts and assured me that the wounds I put in Myra 's spirit form would have manifested as physical injuries as soon as she returned to her body. And there was no way she'd have healed damage like that in a week.

But if the woman the ghosts had mentioned wasn't Myra, she could only be another Pythia. Maybe my power had gotten confused, or I'd been called in as help on a difficult problem. Since I didn't know how this gig worked, anything was possible. If I could find her, I could plead for a little professional courtesy and get her to send Pritkin and me back where we belonged.

'Can you show me this other woman? Maybe I can convince her to leave and to send me home, too.”

The woman looked unsure, but the head seemed happy to help. 'Of course we can! She's not far,' it babbled cheerfully. 'She was in one of the boxes earlier.”

The man's enthusiasm seemed to help the woman decide, and she nodded brusquely. 'Quickly, then.”

The ghosts followed me down the stairs, politely not passing through me, then led the way to the box beside Mircea's. I parted the curtains and peered inside, but it was empty. Onstage a woman in a green medieval gown with huge, red-lined sleeves was gesturing dramatically. I barely noticed her. My eyes fixed on Mircea, who was staring at the elaborate gilt frame of the stage instead of the actress, with the fixed gaze of someone who isn't really seeing it. I felt the same. One look at him and everything else suddenly seemed irrelevant. I had been bespelled before, but it had never felt like this. Then I'd known it was fake; I just hadn't cared. But even knowing this was due to a geis, it still felt unbelievably real. I could hate that he'd done this to me, but I couldn't hate him. The very thought was absurd.

'There.' The ghost pointed a finger in front of my face. 'The wine has already been delivered.”

She indicated a tray with a bottle and several glasses that sat on a small table behind the seats occupied by Mircea and the blonde. 'What are you talking about?' I forced my eyes to look at the ghost instead of Mircea, and something like rational thought returned. 'Are you telling me that bottle is poisoned?”

'She said she would stay until it was consumed, but perhaps her power was insufficient.' The ghost looked pleased for the first time. I could almost hear her thinking, One down, one to go.

I ignored her, my panic at the thought of anything happening to Mircea so overwhelming that I could hardly bear it. I ran out of the box and collided with Pritkin, who had been standing there looking annoyed. He steadied us both or we would have ended up on the floor. 'Let go!' I batted at his hands, which were gripping my upper arms painfully. 'I have to get in there!”

'I told you to stay away from him. Do you want to become completely besotted?”

'Then you do it,' I said, deciding he might be right. I wanted to go in that box way too much for it to be a good idea. 'There's a bottle of wine in there, and it may be poisoned. You have to get it!' I didn't know whether poison would kill a vamp, but I didn't intend to find out.

He tried out his usual glare for a second, then his face changed and I knew I was in trouble. 'If I do this, do you swear to speak with me for as long as I wish without shifting times, attempting to kill me or placing any spells, curses or other impediments in my way?”

I blinked at him. 'You want to talk?' We never talked. Stabbed, shot at and tried to blow each other up, sure, but never talked. 'About what?' I asked nervously, but Pritkin only gave me an evil smile. He had me over a barrel and he knew it. 'Fine. Whatever. We'll talk as long as you agree not to try to kill me, imprison me or drag me off to the Circle- or anybody else. And you don't get an indefinite time, either. One hour, take it or leave it.”

'Agreed.' To give him credit, he didn't waste time once the bargain was struck, but immediately let me go and slipped past the curtain. For several minutes I waited anxiously, but nothing happened. Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore and went back to the empty box so I could at least see what was going on. It wasn't good.

Onstage, a skinny Macbeth with a drooping moustache was starting the dagger-of-the-mind soliloquy, while in the box, Pritkin had a real dagger at his throat, courtesy of the blonde. She was being shielded from the audience by Mircea, who stood behind her, but my box was closer to the stage and I could see them clearly.

Before I could think how to help Pritkin, things got worse when Mircea started to open the bottle. His eyes were on the mage and there was a slight smile on his lips. I didn't like that look. Mircea has always been a strong believer in letting the punishment fit the crime. If he'd decided that Pritkin was trying to poison them, he was fully capable of forcing the entire contents of the bottle down the mage's throat and waiting to see what happened.

Normally, Pritkin might have been able to get out of this kind of thing on his own, but he was trying not to call attention to what was happening. I sympathized with his dedication to the whole integrity-of-the-timeline thing, but getting killed over it seemed a little fanatical. I was Pythia, at least temporarily, and I wasn't willing to go that far.