“You’re telling me they’re all as crazy as Pritkin?”
“If they recognized what they were handling, probably,” he said dryly.
I handed the pages back to Mircea and replaced the golden marker in the damp plaster. There was no need to worry about taking the Codex with us; the ouroboros had been undisturbed when Pritkin and I first passed it. All those rumors had been lies: no one else had ever found it.
“I think I know someone who might be able to help, but I have to go back to my time to talk to him.” I just hoped I had the strength to get us back. I grabbed Mircea’s hand—there was one way to find out. “Hold on,” I told him, and shifted.
Chapter 25
Dante’s was as quiet as it ever got when I returned to my time after dropping Mircea at his. So nobody saw me collapse against a wall. Goddamn, I really needed to stop shifting for a while. It felt like my head was about to explode. The throbbing affected even my vision: for a few moments, the whole corridor looked like the inside of a heart—red and pulsating.
But I’d ended up where I needed to be, in the hallway leading to the research room. And Nick was there, his nose stuck in a book as usual, looking as scholarly as I really hoped he was. “Cassie!” He stood up abruptly, looking alarmed, and it occurred to me that maybe I should have gone for a quick shower first. But that could wait; the Codex couldn’t.
Limestone dust sifted out of my hair onto the table as I spread out the parchment sheets, pushing books off everywhere in the process. “Can you read this?” I demanded, ignoring Nick’s squawks. “It’s important!”
He settled down after a moment, scholarly curiosity taking over, and quickly scanned a few lines. “Welsh,” he mused, “an especially antiquated, if not to say peculiar, variety.”
“But can you read it?”
“Oh, yes, I think so. In time. It isn’t one of my chief languages, you know, but I have had some—”
“I need it now, Nick.” I gestured at the scattered sheets. “Somewhere in there is the spell to lift the geis, and it would be extra nice to get it before Mircea goes completely around the bend.” Or before it managed to disappear.
Nick suddenly stilled, not moving, not even breathing, and for a second it was creepily like what a vamp could do. “This”—he stopped and swallowed—“this is the Codex, isn’t it? You found it.”
“Yeah, only it doesn’t do me much good since I can’t read it.” He just sat there, so I nudged him with a toe. “Now, Nick.”
“Right, right.” He came back to life with a vengeance, sifting through the pages rapidly, looking for the right spell. “This may take a while,” he
muttered. “There are hundreds of spells here and I don’t see an index…oh, wait.”
“You found one?”
“Better.” His bangs flopped in his eyes and he pushed them impatiently back. “I may have found the spell.”
“You’re serious?” I stared at him, scarcely daring to hope. The damn geis had thwarted me at every turn for weeks; it was almost impossible to believe that I might be free of it in a few minutes.
“This may take some time, Cassie. You can, uh, go get changed if you want.”
Yes, I definitely needed to freshen up. My hands were covered in small bruises, my nails were cracked and there was dirt pressed into the grooves of my palms. My hair was a frazzled mess and I was covered in dust from the brief spelunking trip. But Nick was just going to have to deal with me in all my witchy glory, because no way was the Codex leaving my sight. No freaking way.
He got a good look at my expression and gave up, going back to translating duty. I sat down opposite him and peered into the ubiquitous little china pot. But only a vague floral scent remained. I put a call in to the kitchens for some coffee, figuring both of us could use it, and concentrated on not falling asleep until it got there.
“How much do you know about the Circle, Cassie?” Nick asked suddenly.
I yawned. “Other than that they want to kill me? Not a lot.”
“Yes, I am aware that you have had your differences in the past.”
“And present. Is there a point, Nick?” I wanted translation, not conversation.
“Well, yes, actually. It’s just that, I thought you should know—you’re not alone. There are many of us who have been growing dissatisfied with the Circle for some time. Only we don’t all agree about the remedy. Some of us see the whole system as the problem, not simply the group in power at the moment. We view the war as a chance to change old ideas, to remake it, in fact, into something closer to the type of government the vampires have. Then there wouldn’t be little groups of megalomaniacs making crucial mistakes for everyone.”
Actually I thought that pretty much summed up the Senate. “You mean, with one person in charge?”
“Not necessarily. Just a more centralized authority, with better oversight of everyone’s activities and more checks and balances on their behavior.”
“There aren’t a lot of checks and balances on the Senate,” I pointed out. “None, in fact.”