Touch the Dark
Page 37

Mircea was looking at me with exaggerated longing, and I smiled. "You could always join me." The minute I said it, I wanted to take it back. A clear head was impossible around him, and I wanted whatever abilities I had to be sharp. But I needn't have worried. Mircea looked for a moment like he was considering it, then smiled and shook his head.
"You are kind to offer, dulcea, but I am also quite comfortable here." He glanced at Tomas. "Perhaps later."
Louis-César planted himself in front of me while Tomas walked Pritkin back to his place by the door. The Frenchman appeared slightly stressed. From what little I'd observed of him, that was probably the equivalent of anyone else throwing a fit. "Mademoiselle, I need your attention for a moment, if you please. I know that you are tired and that this experience has been difficult, but please try to concentrate." I felt like pointing out that I hadn't been the one getting us off topic, but thought better of it. "Do you recall the name Françoise?"
I looked at him warily. So we were back to that again. "Yes."
"Please explain why you thought that name would convince me to spare you."
I looked at Tomas. He nodded curtly. "I have told them what I know, but I did not understand much of what we did. I only know that—"
"Be silent!" Louis-César ordered him sharply. "We cannot afford to have anything you say influence her." He turned back to me, and his eyes were a dark blue-gray like gathering storm clouds over the ocean. "Please tell me."
"Fine, but then I want to ask a few questions, okay?"
He nodded, so I went through it all, how he'd touched me and I'd somehow ended up in the castle, skipping over exactly where I was and what we were doing when I first arrived. "They burned her to death, but there was nothing I—we—could do. We had to stand there and watch it happen. Then I came back and you said something about wishing I hadn't had to see that, and you called her Françoise. Don't you remember?"
Louis-César looked faintly green. "No, mademoiselle, that is not how I remember our short time in this room. Neither does Mircea, nor Raphael. You fainted while I was attending your cheek, and when you awoke, you were upset and disoriented for a time. We attributed it to your recent experiences. You did not mention anything about a woman named Franchise. I was given a tour of the dungeons of Carcassonne once, it is true, but as far as I am aware, no one died that night." He closed his eyes for a moment. "It was quite horrible enough without that."
"I didn't dream it!" I was getting more confused by the minute. "You're saying you never knew anyone by that name?"
"One." Louis-César's voice was quiet, but his eyes could have ignited a match. "A young gypsy, the daughter of one of the guards at the castle. She worked as a servant, I believe in order to save for her wedding to some young man."
"What happened to her?"
He looked sick. "I never knew. I assumed her father thought we were becoming… too close, and had her sent away. I had something of a reputation in those days, and Françoise was one of the servants who regularly attended me. But I never touched her. I do not want a woman in my bed who is not there willingly. And a servant would have had little choice if I had… made advances. I would not have put her in such a position."
"Then why did someone want to kill her?"
He sat down on the edge of the sofa as if I'd punched him. "Because I was fond of her. I gave her a necklace—a mere trifle—because she had no jewelry and such beauty should be adorned. And twice I gave her money—again, trivial sums only, as my own resources were not great in those days. I thought only to help with her wedding expenses, and to repay her for her kindness. She must have told someone, or else they saw her wear the necklace and guessed…" He said the last as if talking to himself.
This wasn't helping. "Why would someone kill her just because you liked her? Who hated you that much?"
He leaned over, elbows on his knees, and his hair hid his face. "My brother." The voice was chokingly bitter. "He did worse to frighten me into submission through the years."
"Can you tell us anything else about that vision, Cassie?" Mircea's face was very serious. "Any detail could be vital."
"I don't think so." I thought about it—I hadn't been in the best mental state for making observations at the time—but I'd covered pretty much everything. "Except that the jailer used a weird name for me—us, I mean. M'sieur le Tour, or something like that."
Louis-César jerked as though I'd struck him. "Is that significant?" Mircea asked him.
He shook his head. "No. It is only—I have not heard that name in a great many years. I was called that once, although not usually to my face. It translates as 'the man in the tower'; I was often imprisoned in one. It had other meanings, too, at times," he added softly.
I glanced at Mircea, who looked grave but didn't comment. "Tell us about the second vision, dulcea."
I nodded, trying to ignore the fact that my little tarot cards had been even more on the ball than usual. I decided not to mention it. Louis-César had said the name wasn't important, and I didn't want them taken away. "Fine, but I don't understand it, either. Normally I See what once happened or what's about to happen, but it's like watching TV. I observe, and that's it."
"But not lately."
I shifted uncomfortably. I hadn't had time to process what had been happening yet myself, so how could I explain it to someone else? "It's been… different in the last day or so. I don't know why. Maybe because I was in someone else's body when I shifted the second time. That's never happened before."
"You never possessed anyone before tonight?" It was Pritkin's voice, and it was laced with skepticism. I wanted to ignore him, but I also wanted to know what was going on.
"No. I don't know how I did it, but when Billy Joe slammed into me…"
"Billy Joe is your familiar's name?"
"I don't have a familiar," I snapped. "Once and for all, I'm not a witch, okay? I am not a demon; I am not the freaking bogeyman! I'm a clairvoyant. Do you know what that is?!"
Maybe it was because I lost my temper, or maybe the bracelet remembered him and held a grudge. But without warning, twin knives, looking as gaseous and insubstantial as Billy after a wild night out, appeared in front of me and flew straight at him. They didn't look real—it was more like light had been carved into shapes—but they worked well enough. I didn't mean to hurt him, but the bracelet apparently thought otherwise, for the daggers plunged deeply into his chest. He screamed and I instinctively shrank back. The daggers came with me, flying back across the room to disappear into the bracelet.
"I'm sorry!" I watched, appalled, as two bright red wounds bloomed on his chest. "I didn't know it would do that!" I looked at the thing on my wrist in shock. It shouldn't have been able to harm a mage, but it had sliced through his shields like they weren't there.
"Where did you get it?" Mircea looked at my bracelet with interest.
"I, uh, sort of found it, recently."
"It deserted the dark mage for her!" Pritkin's voice had roughened with pain, and he was looking at me with hate. I really couldn't blame him this time. "Dark weapons are fickle; they always go to the greatest source of power, in order to increase their own." He grimaced and dropped to his knees. "She is dangerous, evil!"
Pritkin's chest, as messed up as if he'd been hit with real weapons, was gushing blood. I stared at him in horror, not quite believing what I'd done. I didn't like him, but killing him had definitely not been any part of my plan. He tore open his shirt and dragged in a lungful of air. He let it out slowly, muttering something. Within a few seconds, the gashes in his chest began to close over. So much for being all for the humans—he healed as fast as a vamp.
His lip curled. "So, sybil, you say you are human. Yet you wield a dark weapon, one that steals power from its opponents and turns it against them. Dark witches fight for you, and this night I saw you do something even a dark mage could not have done. The Black Circle itself does not have the power to steal someone's body, much less that of a mage who was warded against such things!" He grabbed the door latch and hauled himself to his feet.
"I didn't steal—"
He cut me off with a savage gesture. "But I have seen something similar before, a creature who takes others' lives and uses them for its own." He tried to push past Tomas but didn't get anywhere. That seemed to piss him off, and he shouted at me over Tomas' shoulder. "It is the darkest of magic, only available to the vilest of demons! The Circle was right to send me to you. They knew I would realize what you really are. How many lives have you stolen, sibyl?! How many murders has it taken to sustain your miserable existence?"
I stood up, and Louis-César didn't try to stop me. "My name is Cassie Palmer! I have a birth certificate to prove it. I don't go around stealing bodies. I am not a freaking demon!" I looked at Mircea, who was watching the whole scene like most people would a particularly entertaining movie. "Why do I have to keep saying that?"
He shrugged. "I have been saying it for years, dulcea, and no one believes me."
Pritkin took advantage of my momentary distraction to have a fit. Out of nowhere, his bevy of magical knives came streaming right at me. I wasn't expecting the attack and stood there like an idiot, with my mouth hanging open. Tomas moved like lightning but caught only two of the weapons. Two more dodged around his flailing arms to zero in on me. I didn't have time to think, much less do anything to protect myself. I felt my ward flare but didn't know if it could deal with enchanted weapons. A second later, I still didn't, because the knives were sticking out of the golem's torso, vibrating with the impact. I stared at it in incomprehension, until it dawned on me that Pritkin must have forgotten to withdraw his order for it to protect me. He bellowed for it to move out of the way, but by then Tomas had grabbed him.