My heart was beating out of my chest, my breath was caught in my throat, my body was tightening around him enough to make us both gasp.

And I still didn't care.

"What are you going to do?" I asked breathlessly. "Bite me?"

And, just like that, his eyes flashed gold, the brown of the man completely eclipsed by the power of the vampire.

"What was it Churchill said about Russia?" Kit asked, almost surreally at this point. "A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma-"

"Why don't you go look it up?" Mircea growled.

"What?"

"Go!" he snarled, and simultaneously swept all the items off the center of the desk, sending books, papers, and the smirking, potbellied pen cup flying.

I'd have liked to have seen the expression on Kit's face just then. Liked to have known how a first-level master took to being ordered about, especially so abruptly. But I didn't.

Because I was busy.

Hitting the polished surface of the desk even before I heard the door click shut, feeling smooth hardness as my hands spread out, trying to find purchase that wasn't there, discovering I didn't need it when a furious master vampire grasped my hips, pulled me to the edge of the desk, and thrust back into me hard enough to make me gasp.

And then to laugh, like the crazy person I was really starting to believe I was, because I'd won. For once, he'd been the one to back down first. For once, I'd actually made the great Mircea Basarab cry uncle.

And then I was the one crying. And thrashing. And screaming as he took me harder than he ever had, harder than he'd ever dared, because human bodies break so easily.

But my body wasn't here, was it? I was nothing more than a figment, a dream, an illusion. And illusions don't break.

But they do feel, and this was raw and savage and everything, everything I'd wanted since that damned dream left me hot and aching and desperately unfulfilled.

Which wasn't really a problem now, I thought deliriously. And then I didn't think anything else. I just wrapped my arms around him and hung on as power slammed through me, into me, over me, a golden haze sinking into my skin that exactly matched the color of a pair of golden eyes.

"Well," I said breathlessly, some moments later.

"Well?" Mircea replied, the voice muffled since his face was currently buried in my hair.

"Well . . . I hope . . . that taught you . . . a lesson," I said, vaguely concerned that there was a flaw in my logic somewhere but too limp to care.

Mircea's head raised. And I saw with some real satisfaction that he was almost as flushed and sweaty as I was. And his throat was working and his eyes were a little crazed. But he wasn't out of breath, because he was a vampire and they didn't technically need to do that.

"I told you, dulceata," he said grimly. "I am not in your head."

"Really? Then what would you call-"

"Any more than I was in your room tonight, or in the shower last week."

"The shower?" I began, confused.

And then I stopped. Suddenly, vividly, recalling a certain incident in the shower that, yes, had been fairly memorable. And which I probably should have thought about more, if I hadn't already had too much to think about.

But it was coming back to me now. Along with the explanation I'd discovered later. Which, come to think of it, didn't really have anything to do with Mircea at all, and- And uh-oh.

"I think," Mircea told me evilly, "that it is time we had a talk."

Chapter Twenty-eight.

"Cedar? You are sure that is how it's spelled?" Mircea demanded, as he hustled me along a crowded corridor.

"I-I'm not even sure that's how it's pronounced," I told him, feeling more than a little flustered. I'd just been dragged off the desk, barely in time to snatch up my crumpled bath towel, and then towed through a door I hadn't noticed on the other side of the room. And then through a fireplace, of all things, and into a cramped little hallway with no windows and almost no light. And then through another fireplace and a room I didn't have time to see before we exited into a wide, brightly lit hallway that didn't feel all that wide at the moment because it was stuffed with vampires.

Masters, by the feel of them. Make that senior masters, I thought, as I stumbled through a body, which was almost impossible to avoid in a press this tight. They deferentially made way for Mircea, but closed up again right behind him, leaving me struggling through a sea of vampires. Or more like a sea of flashing colors and sounds and half thoughts: "-so the masters can gut you with it?"

"I don't care. I want my damned sword-"

"A gun has better range."

"And a sword doesn't run out of bullets!"

"Botas malditos estn demasiado ajustadas-"

The vamps didn't seem to like the situation any more than I did. Some seemed pretty oblivious, but others jumped and flinched and stared around as I passed through them. As if they knew something was happening.

And it was; I just didn't know what.

"What's going on?" I asked Mircea, trying to stay as close behind him as possible, to avoid freaking out any more vamps.

"We've been having a problem with some illegal portals that our enemies have been using to bring in weapons," he told me.

"Portals from faerie?"

He nodded. "Even our allies don't seem to care who they sell to, and it's becoming a problem."

"So you're going to shut them down."

"We're going to try."

"And if they don't like that?" I asked, dodging one swiftly moving form, only to hit another slam on.

"They'll learn," he told me, and pulled me out the other side of the wildly staring vamp.

And then into a knot of several more going in the same direction as us.

The corridor was so small, and they were grouped so tightly that it was like being swamped by a wave at the beach. An unexpected deluge of color and noise and overwhelming sensory assault. And minds and limbs and the electric buzz of a master vampire times five.

"Have you seen the dhampir? Wonder where they're keeping her-"

"It. And who cares?"

"I care. I've never seen one-"

"Which would explain why you're still here."

"Speak for yourself. I could take her-"

"It. And feel free to try."

"Sure. And then have to deal with Daddy? I don't think-"

"So the rumors are true?"

"What rumors?"

"The ones that say she's not just any dhampir. That she's actually-"

"Cassie! In here."

That last was Mircea's voice, and a second later, I found myself being pulled through a door into a tiny room. With nothing in it. And that included master vampires, thank God, because I'd been about to drown out there.

But this . . . this was nice. Or calm, at least. We were in what I guessed was some kind of reception room, although it wasn't very welcoming, without so much as a picture on the wall or a single chair, and then we were through a door on the far side and into- "Don't step on the rugs," Mircea told me. "Just in case."

"Just in case what?"

I didn't get an answer. Because the room's only occupant had just looked up from a small desk to scowl at us. Or at Mircea, I supposed, since his eyes passed right over me to fix on his colleague.

"Are you through with your little fit?" Marlowe asked acidly.

"No. Cedar. What do you know about it?"

"The tree?"

"No. The spell. We think that's how it's pronounced."

"'We'?"

Mircea looked at me. "I only heard it once," I said awkwardly.

"But if you had to guess?"

"Say-duh? Say-drr? SAY-der? I'm not real sure. I was kind of-"

"Who are you talking to?" Kit demanded, getting up. His eyes swept over me again but didn't stop. I pulled my bath towel a little higher anyway.

Mircea repeated my variations on a theme. "Some type of ancient magic," he told Kit. "I need everything you have on it."

"You realize we're leaving in less than an hour?"

"Then you'll need to hurry, won't you?"

Kit scowled harder, but then he got that constipated look a lot of vamps used when they were communicating mentally.

Mircea threaded his way expertly through the carpets. I followed, a little gingerly, because the floor was slick, highly polished marble tile, and the slippery little rugs were everywhere. They were odd-looking, partly because none of them matched, partly because most weren't more than a couple of feet wide, but mostly because they were the only attempt at decor.

Mircea's office had lacked the stamp of his character, but at least it had been fairly attractive. This . . . was not. It didn't have a plant or a picture or a pillow. It didn't have a single chair other than the one Marlowe was sitting in. It didn't have much of anything, despite being a fairly large room, just the small rolltop desk, a hell of a lot of carpets, and- And a couple utilitarian cabinets along the far wall.

A record scratched in my head.

I was still staring at them a moment later, when a fat little vamp with a bad black toupee came bustling in through the door carrying an incongruously modern-looking electronic pad. "Type of magic?" he asked without preamble.

Kit looked at Mircea. Mircea looked at me. Kit scowled again.

"Mircea. Is there something you want to tell me?" he demanded.

"Um," I said, trying not to look at the cabinets, "that depends. What kind of magic did the gods use?"

"What?" Mircea asked sharply.

Kit scowled harder. "I said-"

"Not you," Mircea told him brusquely.

And caused the curly-haired vampire to flush almost as red as his coat. "Mircea-"

"Well, what did you think it was?" I asked, a little defensively. Because Mircea wasn't looking happy.

"An extension of your power, some new facet you were exploring. But you're telling me the gods are involved?"

"The gods?" Kit asked, his voice going up. "Mircea, what the hell-"

"It-it was mostly demons," I said, hoping to defuse the situation.

Annnnnnd made it worse.

"Demons?" Mircea repeated, frowning.

"Um-"

"What kind of demons?"

"Well, sort of . . . a little of all kinds. It was the demon council-"

"The council?"