“What has to be all of us?”

I narrowed my eyes. Mircea knew more about magic than I did, so he’d followed me perfectly well. He just wanted to make me spell it out.

I paused, sure for a moment that I couldn’t get the words out, that they wouldn’t fit past my throat. “The sex thing,” I finally blurted. “It needs to be all of us.” Which was absolutely the most shocking thing anybody had ever said for the long moment before Mircea smiled.

“You know, dulceata?, when I told you that I enjoy a wide range of experiences, I did not expect you to take me quite so literally.” He started buttoning up the shirt. I assumed by the fact that he was getting dressed that I must not have been as clear as I’d thought.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. “I told you, we have to have sex now!”

“No, I believe the term you used for a threesome was ‘the thing.’” Mircea slipped on his suit coat. “I admit to having few reservations about personal relations, but one rule I do try to maintain.” He leaned over and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “If the lady cannot bear to say it,” he whispered, “we don’t do it.”

I pushed him back and glared at him, hands on hips, immediately pissed. “No one made you put the geis on me,” I told him, pushing a finger into that completely clothed chest. The soft, luxurious weave of Chinese silk met my hand, something that didn’t make me any happier. “No one told you to make sex the condition to break it! I’ve been through hell to figure a way out of this and now that I have, you’re playing hard to get?!”

His amusement, if anything, seemed to ratchet up a notch. I guess Sal was right; I didn’t do tough well. “You have to admit, dulceata?, that your story does seem somewhat—”

“Strip,” I ordered.

Mircea stood there by the bedpost, giving me a disbelieving lift of an eyebrow, and a look that clearly said, You did not just order me to take off my clothes. Except that I had, and I gave him a stubborn chin raise in response. Very slowly, he pulled off the suit coat and dropped it onto the bed. His look challenged me to take something off as well.

I tossed my head at him. Fine. After the week I’d had, that didn’t seem like much of a challenge at all. I reached back and unhooked the catch at the top of my dress. Sal had refused to let me visit “the master” in my old sweats, and had cobbled together an outfit for me. One tug had the zipper down on the dress and the satin material sliding over my curves until it was no more than an icy blue puddle around my feet. I still wore a strapless satin bra and panties set, purchased to match the dress, and a corset in white.

The corset was a slightly jarring note, but I hadn’t had a choice. Whoever they’d had patch me up had done a good job, and a glamour had covered most of the assorted cuts, bruises and claw marks. But the fact remained that I don’t heal like a vamp. Underneath the white lace and ribbons was an ugly two-inch-long scar that we’d been afraid would bleed through onto my pretty new dress.

“You are serious.” Mircea was frowning.

I spread my hands. “Yes! Yes, I’m serious! What is the problem?”

He looked torn between exasperation and disbelief. “You know the problem! You explained it to me. And I do not intend to spend the rest of my life bound to the wishes of a—” He cut off abruptly.

“Of a what?” I could feel my temper rising.

He recovered quickly. “Of a young lady who, however charming, knows so little about our world.”

“I’m learning fast,” I said, “and don’t patronize me.” I was pretty sure the word he’d almost uttered had been “child.” And whatever else was true of me, that wasn’t. Not since the age of fourteen, when I’d run away and learned exactly the kind of world I lived in.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, unruffled. “Any more than I would dream of completing such a dangerous spell.”

“We’re not completing it! Two of us would have done that. The fail-safe wouldn’t have worked if we’d had sex in London, because all three of us weren’t there. But here and now, it will override the geis.”

“You can’t be certain of that.”

“Maybe not. But I can be certain that you’ll die if the geis isn’t broken. Would you prefer that to living under someone else’s mastery?”

“I cannot say,” he replied mildly. “Having never had a master. But I did die once. It wasn’t so bad, as I recall.”

“Mircea!”

“Cassie, would you listen to yourself? You expect me to believe that another version of me is in there”—he nodded toward the snare—“and that the three of us must copulate to break the geis despite the fact that one of us is very likely mad?”

“You think I’m lying to you?”

“I have already told you what I think—that you have been deceived. You must—”

“I must do nothing. I’m Pythia. Which, in case you missed it, means I outrank you.”

Mircea caught my hands, which had been trying to get the loops of silk that served as buttonholes on his shirt loose from their toggles. I really wanted that damn thing off. “You are Pythia because we put you there!”

I gave a sudden push. He ended up sprawled on the bed. “Dulceata?—”

“I have the title because I’ve damned well earned it! Stop assuming that I’m the same little girl you left at Tony’s. I’m not.”

“Mages are treacherous,” he said stubbornly. “And this one has obviously—”

I stopped him by placing one foot on the edge of the bed, between his legs, while balancing on the other. I didn’t spend much time in four-inch heels, and I wasn’t sure how long I could stay there. “Take it off,” I ordered, nudging his inner thigh with the toe of my shoe. I’d let Sal talk me into ice blue satin heels with a strap around the ankle and toes studded with crystals in a starburst pattern. I’d thought they were a little much, but for some reason she had absolutely insisted on the shoes.

“A pretty thing. Much nicer than your last footwear selection.”

I gently nudged him again, and this time I didn’t hit his thigh. He breathed in sharply. Mircea could pretend all he wanted, but at least one part of him wasn’t completely indifferent to my proposition. “Cassandra,” he began, his tone menacing, and I repressed a grin. Okay, now I knew I was getting to him.

The shoe continued its work, moving in circles that grew bigger with every sweep, grazing but never quite touching. Just a little encouragement, though it didn’t feel like he needed much. “It’s too risky,” he told me stubbornly. “If you’re wrong—”

“I’m not wrong.”

“You don’t know that. You admitted it yourself.”

I nudged him again and his eyes dropped to half-mast. “I thought family were the only ones you can trust. So trust me, Mircea.”

He didn’t answer, but his hand slowly closed around my ankle, then smoothed down over my heel to the spike. He stroked his thumb over the silken material, up and down, until I started to feel a little giddy. I was beginning to understand why Sal had pushed for the shoes.

“I told you to take it off,” I repeated. I could already feel my leg going wobbly. Mircea managed to get the tiny jeweled buckle around my ankle undone one-handed and slipped the pump off. Then his lips were on my foot. It wasn’t something I’d expected, and it caught me off guard. The feel of his tongue dragging along my arch, was enough to make my toes curl and my breath catch.

“What about the other you?” I asked, while my brain could still form sentences.

“What about him?” he murmured, before his teeth closed over my heel. He bit down, a fairly gentle nip, but my knee buckled from the sensation. I twitched and wobbled, and had to grab the bedpost to keep my balance.

“Damn it,” I muttered.

Mircea grinned at me, unrepentant, and pulled me down beside him. “The mage did not curse me earlier. Did you not wonder why?”

I stared at that beautiful face. It was close enough to kiss, but I didn’t think that was what he had in mind. “He wants to help.”

“Perhaps. But is it not equally possible that he has arranged a trap?”

“He has no reason to—”

“Tensions have been rising between us and the Black Circle for some time. They would love nothing better than to strike a preemptive blow. And what could be better than killing a Senate member and the new Pythia, all at once? He made sure to exit the room—”

“Because you threw him out!”

“—something he could have easily anticipated. Once we are alone, he would expect curiosity to compel us to open the box, and thereby spring the trap on ourselves. And once the general alarm was raised, he could slip away in the confusion.”

And I thought I was paranoid. “That isn’t—” I stopped, because he wasn’t listening to me anymore. He looked up and, for a moment, his gaze was somewhere else.

“The mage is becoming difficult for the guards to handle. I will return shortly.” He rolled off the bed and headed for the door.

“Mircea!”

He looked at me over his shoulder, his face grave. “I will not kill him, Cassie. But I will have the truth of this—of a lot of things. One way or the other.”

I watched him go, wondering how things could possibly have gone so bad so fast. I’d known Mircea distrusted mages—all vamps did—but I’d foolishly assumed that a life-or-death situation would override that. And it probably would have, if he’d believed that was what we were facing. But he’d convinced himself that Pritkin was a dark mage assassin and I was the naive dupe he’d conned into helping him. If I needed his cooperation, I was toast.

For the fail-safe to kick in, I needed only two components: proximity and sex. I was pretty sure I still had the former. Mircea wouldn’t want anyone interfering in family business, so he would almost certainly question Pritkin here, in his suite. From what I’d seen, it was pretty extensive, but not any more so than a large house. Which meant that they were somewhere nearby.