“It’s ‘I Love Rock ’n Roll.’ It’s a classic.”

That got me a dark glance thrown over his shoulder, but he didn’t say anything. He just dug a couple of quarters out of his jeans and made a selection of his own. And oh, my God.

“Johnny Cash?”

“What’s wrong with Johnny Cash?” he asked, sitting back down.

“What’s right about him?”

“Country is based on folk music, which has been around for centuries—”

“So has the plague.”

“—longer than the so-called ‘classics.’ For thousands of years, bards sang about the same basic themes—love and loss, lust and betrayal—and ended up influencing everyone from Bach to Beethoven.”

“So Johnny Cash is Beethoven?”

“Of his day.”

I rolled my eyes. That was just so wrong. But at least “Ring of Fire” covered the conversation pretty well.

I leaned forward and dropped my voice. “I wasn’t trying to be rude a minute ago. I just meant that, to the vamps, a demon seems like the most likely culprit, and Mircea’s decided—”

“Demon?”

“Yes, demon.”

Pritkin frowned. “What do they have to do with this?”

I stared at him. “Well, what are we talking about?”

“I’m not sure.”

I took a breath. “Mircea thinks you’re a warlock,” I said, slowly and clearly. “He’s decided that’s how you’ve lived so long, why you’re as strong as you—”

“Is that what he told you?”

“Yes. Why?”

He looked away. “No reason.”

I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. And after a pause, I soldiered on. “Anyway, that’s why he told Marco to lock you out for the night. He was afraid you’d call up something else—”

Pritkin snorted.

“—while I couldn’t shift away.”

“Yes, I’m sure that was his main concern.”

“Is there something you want to tell me?” I demanded.

“No.” He didn’t say anything else, if he’d planned on it, because the waitress returned with our drinks. He poured beer, tilting the glass to minimize foam, because this wasn’t the kind of place where the waitstaff did it for you. “If you were merely instructed not to see me until tomorrow, why go to these lengths?” he asked, after she left. “Why not simply agree?”

“Because I couldn’t. V—” I caught myself. The jukebox had gone quiet, and I was kind of afraid of what he might select next. So I settled for modifying my language. “They will push and push, to see where your boundaries are. And if you knuckle under once, they’ll expect you to do it every time.”

“Meaning?”

“That if I hadn’t left, next time it wouldn’t have been, ‘It’s only for tonight, Cassie.’ It would have been ‘It’s only for this week,’ or this month, or this year. . . .”

“And they chose to push when they knew you were vulnerable.” He sounded like he expected nothing less.

“They didn’t choose,” I said, frowning. Because Pritkin always assumed the worst about vampires. “They probably thought I’d sleep all night and it would never come up. But it did, and in their society, you can’t afford to ignore a challenge like that. If you do, you’ll be labeled weak, and that’s a really hard thing to undo.”

Pritkin looked confused. “Are you trying to say that Marco wanted you to defy him?”

“This isn’t about Marco. He was just following orders.”

“Then Mircea wanted you to defy him?”

I laughed. “No.”

Pritkin was starting to look exasperated. “Then what—”

“Mircea wants me to do what I’m told. He’d love it if I did what I’m told. But he wouldn’t respect it. He wouldn’t respect me.”

I took a moment to work on my shake, which was thick and rich and headache-inducing cold. I’d sort of given up explaining any vamp to any mage, much less Mircea to Pritkin. But he’d asked, and I owed him one, so I tried.

“Mircea didn’t give that order expecting me to ever know about it,” I said. “But he did give it, and once he refused to rescind it, it became a direct challenge.”

Pritkin’s eyes narrowed. “And you couldn’t ignore it because it would have made you look bad?”

I had to think for a moment about how to answer that. It was surprisingly difficult sometimes to put into words things I had accepted as the natural order since childhood. But they weren’t natural for Pritkin, or for most mages, other than for those who worked for the vampires themselves. And they didn’t talk much.

“It wouldn’t have made me look bad,” I finally said. “It would have made me look like what he was treating me as: a favored servant. Someone to be petted and pampered and protected—and ordered around. Because that’s what servants do: they take orders. But that isn’t how one of his equals would have responded.”

“But he wouldn’t have tried that with one of them.”

I snorted. “Of course he would. They do this kind of thing all the time, testing each other, seeing if there are any chinks in the other person’s armor, any weaknesses that maybe they didn’t notice before. And if they find one, they’ll exploit it.”

“It sounds as if you’re talking about an enemy, rather than a . . . friend,” he said curtly.

I shook my head. “It’s part of the culture.”

“That doesn’t make it right!”

“It doesn’t make it wrong, either. It’s how they determine rank. If you knuckle under to some other master’s demands, especially without a fight, then you’re accepting that he or she outranks you. And afterward, everyone else will accept that, too.”

“But you’re not a—” Pritkin caught himself. “You’re not a master.”

“But I have to be treated as one.”

“Why?” He looked disgusted. Like the idea that any human might actually want to fit into vampire society was unfathomable. For a moment, I thought about telling him just how many humans were turned away each year by courts much less illustrious than Mircea’s. But somehow, I didn’t think it would help.

“Because there’s no alternative,” I said instead, as our artery-clogging pepperoni pizza was delivered. It was New York style, which meant the pieces were so big I had to fold one over to eat it, and a trickle of grease ran down my arm. I sighed happily.

Pritkin started working on his own meal, but to my surprise, he didn’t drop the subject. “Explain it to me.”

“There are only three types of . . . us . . . as far as they’re concerned,” I said, in between bites. “Servants, prey and threats. There’s no category for ally or partner, because that requires viewing us as equals, and they just don’t do that.”

“They are allied with the Circle, at least for the duration of the current conflict,” he argued.

“Yeah, well. Words have different meanings to different groups,” I hedged.

“And what does ‘ally’ mean to the Senate?” Pritkin demanded predictably.

I hesitated, trying to think of a phrase that wasn’t “cannon fodder.” “Let’s just say I don’t think that they’re planning on a real close association.”

“They had better be,” he said grimly. “We need strong allies. We have enough enemies.”

There was no arguing that.

“My point was that, right now, I’m seen as an especially useful servant, like the humans who guard their courts during the day or cast their wards for them. And as long as I follow orders, accept restrictions and do what I’m told, that’s how it’s going to stay.”

“Then defy them!”

I gestured around. “What does this look like?”

He shot me a look. “You’re eating pizza. That is hardly defiance.”

“It is by their standards.”

“I meant, get out.” He gestured sharply. “Tell them to go to hell. You could go—”

“Where?” I demanded. “To the Circle? Where who knows how many of Saunders’s buddies are still hanging around? To my lovely court?”

“You’re going to have to set up your court sooner or later.”

“Later, then. After the alliance.”

I reached for the grated cheese, and he frowned. But I guess my health wasn’t the cause, because what he said was, “What alliance?”

“Of the six senates? What Mircea’s been working on all month?”

“What does that have to do with you?”

I shrugged. “Having a vamp-friendly Pythia is the trump card in his argument. It’s something the vamps have never had. They’ve always felt like they were on the outside of the supernatural community, that the Pythia was part of the Circle’s arsenal, not theirs.”

“And now they think the opposite.”

“They’re coming around.” They knew Mircea. And when they looked at me, twenty-four and fresh off the turnip truck, I doubted they had any trouble believing that he could wind me around his little finger. That wasn’t a problem for me as long as it helped us get the alliance.

And as long as he didn’t start believing it, too.

“But if you were suddenly removed?” Pritkin asked. “If you were killed, for instance?”

I shook my head. “I know what you’re thinking, but that can’t be it.”

“Why not? You said it yourself—you are the only Pythia the vampires have ever felt was theirs. Your replacement would likely come from the Circle’s pool of Initiates—”

“Which wouldn’t make them happy. But they’re not talking because of me. They’re here because of the war and because Apollo showing up scared the shit out of them. I’m just something to sweeten the deal.”