Claimed by Shadow

"Well, it certainly wasn't my first choice!" She looked pissed. "This is supposed to be my bonus life, my time to enjoy myself for a change. I left you intending to return to my body, to gather strength to migrate into a nice German girl. She was supposed to die in a rockfall-a hiking accident- and I was all set to take her over-”

"Take her over?" I don't know what my face looked like, but Agnes let out a laugh.

"She was going to die, Cassie! On the whole, I think she'd have preferred sharing a life with me to that!”

I felt dizzy. "I don't get it.”

Tomas spoke up suddenly, startling me. "One to serve, one to live," he murmured.

Agnes shot him a less-fhan-kind look. "I don't know where you heard mat, but just forget it.”

"Then it's true," he said, apparently stu

"Which is how it's going to stay." Agnes said emphatically.

It was my turn to look back and forth between the two of them. "Will somebody please tell me what is going on?”

"There is an old rumor," Tomas said, ignoring Agnes' frown, "that the Pythia is rewarded at the end of her service with another life-a type of compensation for the one she gave up to her calling.”

I closed my mouth, which kept trying to hang open in shock. For a moment, I just stared at Agnes. "Is that true?" I finally managed to ask.

"Do you want to get out of here or not?" she demanded.

"Just tell me!”

She sighed and threw up her hands again. I didn't know if that was a regular habit, or if it just happened a lot around me. "Okay, long story short-yes, it's true. We find someone slated to die young, and cut a deal with them. We possess them and feed off their energy, and in return we help them to avoid whatever catastrophe was about to occur.”

"That's horrible!”

"No, it's practical. A shared life is better than none at all.”

"But if you can do it once," Tomas said slowly, "why can you not continue to do it life after life, century after century?”

"That's why I hate vamps," Agnes said to the room in general. "They're so damn suspicious!”

"But can you do it?" Tomas asked.

"Of course not!" she snapped. "Think it through! Once our time in service is over, the power migrates to someone else. Without it, we have no way of knowing who is going to die, and therefore no way of choosing another body. It's a onetime deal.”

Tomas gave a short laugh. "You expect us to believe that no one has ever tried to cheat death? To live through many lifetimes by taking whomever they wanted, whether they were doomed or not?”

Agnes shrugged. "That's one of the many duties of the reigning Pythia-to make sure it doesn't happen that way.”

I shook my head. This was happening too fast, all of it. My brain just couldn't keep up. "But why Françoise?”

"I told you-I didn't have a choice! I started to return to my body but discovered that I'd wasted too much energy helping you. I hadn't pla

"But I could have taken you back with me!" Agnes had helped me fight off Myra. If it wasn't for her help, I'd probably be dead already. I would certainly not have refused to give her a lift.

"If you recall, Cassie, you were in the middle of a room full of hungry ghosts. They were bent on devouring every spirit in sight! I couldn't risk it. Once time started up again, I had to get out of there fast. So I went into the only person I knew of in that time who was near death and might be willing to cut a deal.”

"And did she?" Françoise wasn't just any old norm: she was a witch, and from one very memorable trick I'd seen her perform, a powerful one. And it looked to me like she was fighting.

Almost as if she'd heard my thoughts, Agnes made another grimace and clutched her stomach. "In a ma

"How did you end up here?" Tomas asked before I could demand something a little less nebulous.

"I'd pla

"They kidnapped you for sale to the Fey," he reasoned. And you have been here ever since? But that was centuries ago!”

"Years, actually," Agnes corrected.

"Time runs differently here," I reminded him. Marlowe had said it, but I hadn't realized just how big the difference could be. "You're saying you've been here continually, ever since we left France?”

Agnes nodded, then held up a hand to stop me when I tried to say something else. "If you've seen us since, don't tell me about it. Françoise can hear us, and she doesn't need to be influenced by knowing what will happen in her future.”

Her future, I thought dizzily, but my past. She'd killed a dark mage at Dante's a week ago, helping me escape. Or, rather, she was going to kill one… My head was starting to hurt.

"Do you want to get out of here or not?" Agnes demanded.

"Yes, but we're going to talk later," I told her. Maybe by then I'd have sorted some of this out and be able to think straight.

"If there is a later," she said ominously. "Don't forget the wards-I went to enough trouble to get them for you." She grabbed the lantern and, in a swirl of skirts, vanished down the hallway. Tomas and I looked at each other, then hurried to follow her, Tomas still pulling on the clothes she'd brought and me stuffing wards into every pocket I could find.

We turned at the end of the hall to ascend a long flight of stairs that was only occasionally lit by low-burning torches. At the end was another thick oak door, but it opened easily at the barest push from Françoise. Pritkin, Billy and Marlowe stood around a large round opening in a wall of rock, beyond which a mass of color shifted in a kaleidoscope of light.

"Is this all of them?" the pixie demanded, barely bothering to glance at us. "The cycle is almost complete.”

Billy looked nervous. "Cass, do you think I'll keep this body once we go back?”

"We're going back?”

"As soon as that thing cycles to blue. But we'll only have about thirty seconds to get through at the right destination. We're getting off at Dante's, but the Senate is next on the rotation, so we have to jump quick before it turns red.”

I found it hard to keep up. "Why are we leaving?”

"Because you're going to retrieve something for me." A deep baritone echoed off the walls. I slowly realized that what I had taken to be a pillar draped in material was actually the biggest leg I'd ever seen. I looked up, and kept on doing so for a ridiculous length of time. A face as large as a searchlight beamed down at me from the shadowy vastness of the hall. The ceiling had to be thirty feet high, yet he was bent over slightly as if it cramped him. I did a double take, then just stared.

The huge head lowered itself to get a better look at me. Frizzy brown hair obscured much of it, leaving a bulbous nose and blue eyes the size of softballs visible. "So this is the new Pythia.”

"We had to deal with the king," Billy explained in a low voice. "Our runes are used up until next month. Pritkin tried to caste Hagalaz and it didn't work-it just got a little colder and we ended up with a puddle of slush. Null bombs are great, but only against magic, and we're seriously outnumbered here. The Fey don't need mumbo jumbo to hit us over the head. We need more weapons and some allies or the only thing we're going to do here is die. Marlowe's agreed to cough up the weapons from the Senate's stash when we go back.”

"How generous of him. What's the catch?”

Marlowe, for once, didn't have a glib reply. Instead he simply stood there staring at me, looking flabbergasted. Then he slowly sank to one knee. "The Senate is always delighted to aid the Pythia," he finally said, after several tries.