“But I couldn’t think clearly. All I saw was some creature bearing her away and I—”
“Mircea!”
He finally stopped, a little startled, and looked at me. “I think I might have an idea,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“You let him go?” Rhea stared at me.
We were out back of the Pythian Court, eating a late lunch under the spreading branches of a massive oak tree. The court was in central London, but you’d never know it from here. The oak shaded almost the entirely of the cobblestone courtyard, with its wrought iron furniture and tinkling fountain, and the high stone walls were draped with vines, some of which had started—a little optimistically, in my opinion—to flower.
They were the only reminder of spring, with the watery, late afternoon sunlight filtering down through the leaves still feeling more like winter. But the lamb stew and crusty bread that Rhea had liberated from the kitchen were warm and filling, and the peace was appreciated. I watched a couple of little birds fight over some scraps I’d tossed them, and wished I hadn’t brought the whole thing up.
“Mircea had to get back to the war,” I said briefly. “We’re invading in less than a week—”
“And you think he’s up to it?” Rhea asked.
Judging by her expression, she definitely didn’t.
“Now I do,” I said, and drank beer.
Rhea had been buttering a slice of bread, but at that, she paused. I almost saw the cogs turn, and sighed inwardly. This wasn’t going to go well, was it?
“What . . . did you do?” she asked slowly.
“What Gertie told me to. She said a Pythia takes initiative—”
“What kind of initiative?”
“In this case? To buy some time.”
The little birds had both grabbed the same piece of crust and each were determined to have it. I tossed them down another, but they were so fixated on that one, that they couldn’t see the new opportunity that had landed right beside them. Like some other groups I know, I thought.
“The vampire senates are like a bunch of vipers,” I told Rhea, “each looking for any chance to lord it over the others. Right now, they’re especially on edge, because they’ve just been welded into one uber senate for the war. That’s thousands of years of animosity, mistrust and, in some cases, hatred, suddenly forced to work together. And the only glue keeping it all together is Mircea.
“So, right now, I’m keeping him together.”
I kicked some fallen leaves at the little birds, who broke apart and stared around in surprise. And then each of them discovered that, suddenly, there was enough to go around. There was probably another metaphor in there somewhere, but I was too full of stew to care.
“What do you mean, keeping him together?” Rhea asked, still holding her half buttered piece of bread.
“Mircea isn’t running around the timeline just because he wants to,” I explained. “He’s being driven by a compulsion, a kind of vampire obsession. It happens to the older ones sometimes, when they fixate on a particular thing—”
“He’s mentally unstable?”
“—until they achieve that thing, whatever it is. For Mircea, it’s about rescuing his wife, or at least determining that she was okay, and lived a good life. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” Rhea dropped the bread entirely, which probably wasn’t a good sign. “Lady, he’s stealing your power to look for her! And if he is also dangerously unstable—”
“He isn’t. Not anymore. That’s kind of the point.”
“Not anymore?” Rhea frowned. “But he just shifted back to Romania—”
“Yes, but something happened since then.”
I ate stew, even though I was already full, hoping she’d drop it.
She didn’t drop it.