by Karen Chance
“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.”
“But if someone didn’t know them well enough to know that—”
“Then they wouldn’t know why they’re meeting in the first place. They’ve been using the coronation and some other stuff as cover while they hash out the details. Like who gets to lead—”
“And Mircea is attempting to use you as an argument for his consul.”
“ ‘Attempting’ would be the right word.”
Pritkin swallowed a bite of fatty goodness. “Why? You just said—”
“That I’m seen as a vamp-friendly Pythia, yeah.” I shrugged. “But it takes a little more than that. Half the senators aren’t convinced that I know what the hell I’m doing. It’s easy for them to imagine me being under Mircea’s thumb; it’s a little harder for them to believe I’m strong enough to be a real asset.”
“And without believing it, they’re bickering and feuding over leadership instead of doing anything about the war.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Typical.”
I didn’t say anything; from what I’d seen, Circle politics were no different, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue about it. “Anyway, the point is that I’m better off where I am right now—”
“That’s debatable.”
“—but to be able to work with the Senate, I have to be accepted by them, and not as a servant. A servant takes orders; she doesn’t give them. But that’s sort of my job now, isn’t it?”
He looked at me with exasperated eyes, brilliantly green in the harsh lights of the diner. “The former holder of your office gave orders, and they were obeyed.”
“Were they?” I munched crust. It was slightly burnt on the bottom and chewy, with little dough bubbles here and there. Perfect. “How often did Agnes persuade the Senate to do something they didn’t want to do?”
“I’m sure there were any number of times.”
“Name one.”
He scowled.
“Yeah. They might have fiddled around a little, debating some issue they didn’t really give a damn about, and then let her think she’d had a victory. Particularly if they wanted something in return. But to actually give up part of their sovereignty to someone they viewed as being in the Circle’s back pocket?”
“The Pythia is supposed to be neutral.”
“Try telling that to a vamp.” I caught his hand as he reached for more red pepper flakes. “Seriously?”
“What?”
I nodded at his current piece of pizza, which was almost completely red—and not because of sauce. “You’re going to give yourself heartburn.”
“I don’t get heartburn.”
“What? Never?”
“No.”
I let him go. That was completely unfair. I ate antacids like they were candy.
“Anyway, we weren’t at war in Agnes’s reign, so it didn’t matter as much,” I said, digging a half-finished pack of Rolaids out of my shorts. “It does now.”
Pritkin cocked an eyebrow. “And you think that going out for the evening is going to make them respect you?”
“More than staying in would have.” I chewed a couple of tablets while he thought that over.
“It still sounds like something an enemy would do,” he said. “Pushing you, testing you—”
“An enemy would use the information to hurt me,” I pointed out. “Mircea would never do that. At least, he wouldn’t intend it that way. But burying me under a stack of guards, restricting who I can see, where I can go . . . it is hurting me.”
“It’s also safer,” Pritkin said,
looking sour. Probably because he was being forced to agree with a vampire.
“You can say that after the last few days?” I sat back against the seat. “Nowhere is safe. Nowhere has ever been safe. I’ll take reasonable precautions, even unreasonable ones sometimes. But I’m not going to live like a prisoner.”
“It’s only been two months—”
“It’s been my whole life!” I said, harsher than I intended, because nobody got that. Not Mircea, not Pritkin, not Jonas, who would have loved to add a couple dozen war mages to the crowd of guards already milling about the suite. Nobody understood that ever since I could remember, I’d been locked away. Like I’d done some crime I didn’t recall, but kept having to pay for.
It was getting really old.
“You’re talking about that other v—Your old guardian,” Pritkin said.
I nodded and popped another antacid. Tony had that effect on me.
“But you ran away from him.” Pritkin sounded oddly hesitant suddenly, as if he were sure I wouldn’t talk about this, that I’d shut down, shut him out. Maybe because that’s what he’d have done, if the situation were reversed. He was the most closemouthed person about his life of anyone I’d ever met—okay, barring a certain vampire—and while I knew more about him than most people, I didn’t know much.
But I didn’t mind telling him. In fact, I wanted to, wanted someone to finally get it. “I ran away twice, actually. But I never really got away. Tony was always there, at least in my mind, right on my trail.”
“Because you set him up for what he did to your parents.”
I nodded. “I tried to ruin him, to get him on tax fraud, because I didn’t know how to kill him. It didn’t work, but I knew he’d never forget it, never stop looking for me.”
“And part of you didn’t want him to.”
I had been scraping a fingernail over the label on Pritkin’s empty beer bottle, but I looked up at that. Because until he said it, I hadn’t fully realized it myself. “Maybe,” I said slowly. “Maybe part of me did want that showdown I never got. But I don’t know what I’d have done if he’d come looking for me. I’m not a trained assassin, and even if I had been . . .”
“You’re not a killer,” Pritkin said flatly.
“Sometimes, I really, really wanted to be.”
He didn’t ask, didn’t say anything. But I could tell he wanted to. I hesitated, because I hadn’t planned to talk about this. I never talked about this. But there was no way he’d understand without it.
“Eugenie,” I finally said, and I was proud of myself. It came out pretty steady.
“Eugenie?”
“My governess. Tony told his people that she’d helped me escape, that she knew where I was. But he lied. I knew that even before I saw his face as she lay there in pieces, bleeding out at his feet.”
“He killed her for no reason?” Pritkin asked carefully.
I laughed and ripped the label off. “Oh, he had a reason. He was a miserable, sniveling, cowardly, vindictive bastard who was furious that some little human had come so close to bringing him down. Somebody had to pay for that. Somebody had to bleed. And if it was somebody whose death he knew would hurt me, so much the better.”
And it had hurt, as much as if I’d been there, bleeding myself. But even worse was the crippling fear that had followed. I went from being somebody who had risked everything just to watch him fall to being too scared to leave my own apartment.
“The first six months after I left him were the worst in my life,” I said. “Because he wasn’t keeping me a prisoner anymore—I was doing it to myself. I was so sure he’d find me, so sure I’d end up like Eugenie, that I didn’t do anything. I didn’t go anywhere, except to look for work, buy groceries—just what I had to do. And then I went straight back home. People in actual prison probably have more human contact than I did.”
“But you had a roommate,” Pritkin said.
“That was later. After I started going places again, meeting people . . . after I figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
“That this was my life now. And that I could let some bastard decide how I was going to live it, let fear decide or I could decide. And I decided; I wasn’t going to give Tony that kind of power. I wasn’t going to give him any more of my life.”
“You just woke up one day and stopped being afraid.” Pritkin’s expression hadn’t changed, but for some reason, he sounded almost angry.
I flashed on my performance a day ago, slumped in a sniveling heap on the bathroom floor, and grimaced. “No. I mean, you don’t, do you? At least, I never have. And I kind of think it would have happened by now if it was going to.”
“Then what do you do?” He’d leaned over the table, close enough for me to map the ring of jade around each iris, and the pale amber-green layer that darkened to golden brown around the pupils. There were striations, spokes of gold, and specks of brown and emerald, all of which blended to just green at any distance at all.
Beautiful, I thought randomly—for a second, until he abruptly pulled back and looked away.
“You go on, anyway,” I said, after a pause. “And, yes, you’re scared sometimes. But it’s better than being scared all the time. Better than letting your life be about fear and nothing else. So, no, I’m not going to let them shut me away ‘for my own good.’ I’ll take precautions, as many as I can. But I’m going to live.”
Pritkin ran a hand through his hair. “Yes,” he said brusquely. “You are.”
Chapter Twenty-three
We walked out a few minutes later to find a trio of vamps loitering in the parking lot, next to a shiny black SUV. Pritkin swore, but I wasn’t exactly surprised. I had at least three trace spells on me that I knew about, and two of them were the Senate’s. The point of leaving hadn’t been to get away; it had been . . . well, to make a point.
Which I obviously hadn’t done, or they wouldn’t be here.
It was late or, to be more accurate, really early, and the lot was dark. A lone streetlamp leaked a watery yellow puddle in one corner, illuminating cracked pavement and a sagging chain-link fence. But alongside the building, most of the light came from the flickering sign outside the diner. It cast a ruddy tint across the vamps’ faces, enough for me to see that they weren’t looking too happy.
That was especially true when Pritkin strode over and grabbed one of them by the collar. It was the good-looking blond who had complained about the phone. I guess babysitting me was his penance.
Or maybe that was being slammed against the side of their SUV.
“Are you trying to get her killed?” Pritkin snarled, about the time a brunet got him in a choke hold.
“Break his and I break yours,” the brunet said matterof-factly. “And I know who’s gonna recover first.”
Instead of answering, Pritkin pulsed out a small section of his shield. It was only a vague blue iridescence against the night, as filmy and insubstantial-looking as a soap bubble. But the brunet’s arm flew off his neck like he was giving a salute.
The blond didn’t struggle; his expression clearly said it was beneath him. He looked at me, past Pritkin’s shoulder. “Would you call off your pit bull? Please? I just bought this suit.”
“And they’ll bury you in it if you don’t answer me!” Pritkin told him harshly.
“Too late,” the vamp said, baring glistening white fangs.
“Stop it!” I said. “Pritkin, they’re just standing there.”
“And putting a neon sign over your head in the process!”
I didn’t understand that, but apparently the blond did. “What do you take us for?” he sneered. “Amateurs?”
“Well, technically, I am,” a mousy little vamp said. He was perched on the hood of the SUV, feet drawn up, watching the scene with big eyes.
Everybody ignored him. He kind of looked like he’d expected it.
“Did anyone follow you?” Pritkin demanded, giving the blond a shake.
“Bite me!”
Pritkin didn’t seem to like that answer, judging by the way the blond’s eyes suddenly bulged. He rotated them at his buddy. “Are you just going to stand there?”
“What do you want me to do?” the brunet asked in Italian.
“Shoot him!”
A muscular shoulder rose in a shrug. “Won’t get through the shield.”
“Then help me drain him!”
“Girl might object.”
“Yes, the girl might!” I said in the same language.
The dark-haired vamp looked mildly surprised. “Your Italian is not so bad.”
“I grew up at Tony’s court,” I reminded him.
He grinned, a sudden flash of white in a handsome olive face. “That would explain the accent.”
Pritkin was starting to look apoplectic, which experience had taught me usually precipitated pain for someone. “Would you please answer him?” I asked.
The vamp stole a cigarette from the blond, who was in no position to object, and took his time lighting up. He was tall, with black hair cut short to minimize a tendency to curl, judging by a few at his neck. That wasn’t so odd—a lot of the younger vamps wore their hair short, including plenty of those who belonged to Mircea. But they didn’t also have five o’clock shadow or a tribal tat decorating one bicep, or dress in jeans and tight black muscle shirts.
“We’re new—we flew in last night,” he finally said, taking a drag. He blew out a breath and regarded Pritkin through the smoke. “Mage, why would anyone follow us when they don’t know who we are?”
Pritkin thought about that for a beat and then finally released the blond. The vamp took his time straightening up, brushing out the wrinkles in his silver-gray suit. Then he looked at me. “You need him on a leash,” he said viciously.
“Would somebody please explain what is going on?” I asked.
“What is going on is that your safety depends on no one knowing where you are,” Pritkin told me, still glaring at the vamps. “And considering how we departed, no one should. We exited directly into a ley line, under cover of the hotel’s wards, and didn’t leave it until halfway across the city. No one saw us—a fact that does little good if someone leads your enemies straight to you!”
