It was like some kind of slapstick sketch—Monty Python in a dungeon—but it wasn't funny. Because that particular spell was exhausting, and normally used as a last resort, since there wouldn’t be enough magic left for many more after it. I stared around, looking frantically for the real Pritkin, before abruptly realizing: he was me.

The hand clutching the stone of a doorway in front of my face was a familiar one. It didn’t match the blunt instrument that Pritkin often pretended to be, looking more like something that should belong to a pianist or an artist. Sun bronzed and slender, with just a smattering of fine golden hairs that caught the light of the fey’s torches, it was like the rest of the man—surprising.

And dead, if he didn’t get out of there. The fey were running his copies through left and right, although some of them were holding their own. A handful of crazy-haired mages had banded together and were ambushing individual fey, lobbing spells and stabbing them wildly—and further screwing up time.

“No!” I thought, horrified, and all the Pritkins looked up.

The one whose eyes I was currently seeing through started, and then cursed inventively. “What are you doing in my head?” he demanded.

“Looking for you?” I said, confused at the fury in his voice, and then the implication hit. I wasn’t a telepath; I couldn’t do this.

But someone else could.

“Son of a bitch!” we said together, before the scene suddenly popped.

“Damn it, Mircea!” I glared up at the vaguely harried looking vamp, although whether that was because we were still dodging arrows or because he’d just seen the same thing I had, I wasn’t sure. But I was sure about something. “I’m borrowing your abilities, aren’t I?”

Mircea had set the rows of carcasses swinging behind us, throwing off the fey’s aim, but it wasn’t enough. A couple of arrows slammed into the dead deer we’d just dodged behind, and another took off one of my fake dog ears. Mircea’s hand grabbed my exposed head and tucked it closer into his chest.

“Perhaps we could discuss this another time, dulceață?”

“Don’t dulceață me! You know full well—”

He threw open a door at the end of the room and ducked inside.

“—that we had a deal!”

“One I am perfectly willing to uphold,” he said, slamming the door and smashing his arrow-riddled back against it. The abrupt motion caused the pointy tips of the weapons to suddenly erupt from his torso, ruining the fine lawn of the shirt he wore under all that velvet. He winced but otherwise didn’t seem to notice. “Once we are finished here,” he added.

“It looks like we’re finished now!”