Just wear the pretty dresses and smile.

Just behave yourself, little girl.

And I had. I’d done what I was told until I found out what Tony was doing with the information. The people he was hurting. The lives he was ruining. And then I’d gotten out, because I wouldn’t be responsible for hurting or maybe killing other people, even by proxy. Because I wouldn’t be a part of a system I knew nothing about. Because I had had enough.

When had I forgotten that?

The door cracked open, but I didn’t turn around. Somebody came down the steps and a jacket was placed around my shoulders. It smelled like rich spices and dark forests and Mircea. I hugged it around me automatically.

“You said it wouldn’t make a difference,” I said without looking up.

Mircea didn’t pretend not to know what I was talking about. “It did not. This has nothing to do with our personal relationship.”

“Doesn’t it?” I looked up, feeling angry and betrayed and hurt and powerless.

He came around in front, and since I was sitting on one of the higher steps and he was standing on the ground, when he bent over and took my hand, we were almost eye to eye. I remembered something I’d read once, about executives making sure their seats were higher than their subordinates’, so they would have some kind of psychological advantage. Mircea didn’t use tricks like that. Mircea didn’t need them.

“No, it isn’t. We have two relationships, Cassie. You know this. It can’t be otherwise. And this was a professional decision—as was last night’s.”

“Professional,” I said bitterly, staring into beautiful dark eyes. They reflected the gaslight, just like Jack’s. And yet managed to look so very different.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s talk professional,” I said quietly. “A month ago, you promised me you wouldn’t interfere with me doing my job.”

“A month ago, Apollo was dead and I thought the worst was past us.”

“So you lied.”

“No. I said I would try. And I have. But this is not about your job.”

“It’s my coronation!”

“It’s a formality. One that has made me nervous from the beginning.”

To my surprise, he sat down on the wet step beside me, getting his Armani-covered tush wet. I guess he could just go change; this was his home, after all. Not that I’d ever had a chance to see it.

“I would have had you here long before this,” he said, with that uncanny ability of guessing my thoughts. “But we were attempting to make it secure. We knew the coronation would be an obvious target, but it was impossible to forgo it. The people need to see you—”

“Only, apparently, they’re not going to.”

“We had planned for you to be here; all along, that was the intent.”

“Then what changed?”

He looked at me in amazement. “The past week changed. Three attempts on your life in as many days changed! The chance of an attack went from a possibility to a probability to a certainty, and the risk was deemed too high. It was determined—”

“Yes, it was,” I cut him off. “It was determined. Without consulting me, without even telling me—”

“And if we had told you? If we had said, ‘We have decided to hold the ceremony with a doppelgänger in your place for security reasons.’ What would have been your reaction?”

“What the hell do you think?” I said angrily. “I’ve told you a hundred times—it is not okay for someone to die for me!”

“And I have told you that sometimes it is necessary. She is a professional; she takes risks such as this all the time. It is her job—”

“And this is mine!”

We stared at each other, and Mircea’s face reflected the frustration, even some of the anger, that I was feeling. I was surprised he’d let me see it; his facade was flawless when he wanted it to be. I searched his face, wondering if this was a trick, if this was some way to manipulate me into feeling guilty for causing him more problems, for taking him away from his duties, for being a pain in the ass once again.

If so, it was doing a pretty good job. I did feel all those things, along with a nagging suspicion that he had a point. The problem was, so did I. And he couldn’t see that, couldn’t see anything but that little eleven-year-old girl cowering in her room. I wasn’t that person anymore; I hadn’t been for a while now, but I didn’t know if he’d ever be able to see that, to see me—

My thoughts scattered as something knocked me broadside. It wasn’t an attack, or if it was, my own power was doing it. Something like a fist knotted in my being, jerking me, tugging me, trying to drag me somewhere, somewhen else.

Mircea was talking, saying something that probably sounded logical and reasonable and charming all at the same time, and it might have been really persuasive, except that I was a little too busy to listen right then. And then the tug became a heave and the pull became a wrench, and it was like before I became Pythia, when the power had just tossed me around here and there, wherever it needed me to go. And it must be needing something pretty damn bad, because fight as I would, I was losing.

Mircea must have finally noticed something wrong, because he grasped my shoulders. “Cassie! Cassie, what—”

“Fair warning,” I told him through clenched teeth. Because his hands were gripping my arms, and if I went before he let go, he was coming along, like it or not.

“What?”

“Fair warning!” I yelled, trying to pull away. Because I didn’t know where my power was taking me, but judging by the intensity of the pull, it wasn’t going to be anywhere fun. “Let go!” I told him, but his hold merely tightened, fingers digging into my flesh.

And the next moment, we were gone.

Chapter Thirty-five

Time twisted, colors ran and the bottom fell out of my stomach. And the next thing I knew, I was bouncing on the lap of a tuxedo-clad man in the back of one of London’s iconic black cabs. I stared at him and he stared back, brown eyes big and astonished. After a second, I leaned back and checked him over.

His tux didn’t tell me much, but the wide-eyed woman clinging to his arm was wearing a cute bob and a flippy little piece of chiffon that practically required rouged knees. “Twenties?” I guessed, because for some reason my time sense was seriously messed up.

“Sixties,” Mircea told me, staring out the back of the cab as it crept along through a snarl of traffic.

I adjusted my position so I wasn’t actually straddling the speechless guy’s leg. “How do you know?”

“Because they didn’t have miniskirts in the twenties.” He nodded at a nearby giggle of girls in tiny outfits.

“Are you sure?”

“Believe me, dulceață, the advent of the mini is forever emblazoned on my mind.”

I scowled; it would be. But under the circumstances, I preferred some confirmation. I poked the girl, who jumped and gave a little screech. “What year is it?” I asked, but she only stared at me.

“Che anno è?” I tried.

Nada.

“En quelle année sommes-nous?”

Uh-uh.

“What are you doing?” Mircea asked.

“I don’t think they speak English.”

“I think it more likely that they are merely startled.”

“Okay. But they’ve had time to get over it now.”

“N-nineteen sixty-nine,” the woman finally whispered.

I frowned. “Then why are you dressed like that?”

“We’re on our way to a fancy dress party, if you must know,” her date said, finally finding his voice. “Now, who the hell are you and how did you—”

“There!” Mircea cried, pointing at something in the crowds outside.

“Thanks for the ride,” I told the partygoers, as we climbed over them to get out of the cab.

Outside, snow was swirling down out of a black sky, gilded by the lights that poured out of shop windows and glittered from stacks of multicolored signs. It looked vaguely like Times Square, except it was more of a circle, with a tipsy Cupid presiding over what looked like the Christmas rush. Hanging nets of illuminated stars hung across every street, swaying lightly in the wind. A wreath dangled drunkenly off a nearby lamppost. And half the people filling the sidewalks and dodging the street traffic were carrying shopping bags.

I looked at Mircea. “Is this—”

He nodded. “Piccadilly.”

That meant nothing to me, except that this was where my mother had dropped us off on our last little trip into time. And now, for some reason, we were back. And so was she, judging by the Victorian coach that was lying on its side across one lane of traffic, causing a major jam.

The horse was still in place, bucking and rearing at the smell of smoke from the burnt-out hulk behind it. My heart clenched; why I don’t know. I was still alive, which meant my mother had to be, too. But I didn’t see her or the kidnapper or anything else in the rapidly growing crowd.

But I guess Mircea did, because he grabbed my hand and took off.

“I think I left a shoe in the cab,” I told him, struggling to keep up as we wove through the human obstacle course at a breakneck pace.

“Considering how often that happens, perhaps you should consider ankle straps.”

“They’re dangerous.”

He tossed a disbelieving look over his shoulder. “That is what you consider dangerous?”

“You can break a foot.”

“And we wouldn’t want that,” he said, sweeping me up in his arms as we came to the entrance to a tube station.

I stared around as we were swallowed up by London’s steamy underbelly, but I didn’t see anything but coat-clad torsos, all of which appeared to be in a hurry. Finding one hustling couple in the wall-to-wall crowd wouldn’t have been easy at any time. But doing it while being buffeted by pointy elbows, harassed mothers and kids with the hyperactive look of the overly sugared was pretty much impossible.