by Karen Chance
“Go help him,” Tami said, and pushed him toward the lounge.
“Tami,” I said ominously.
“And finding somewhere with enough room wasn’t exactly easy,” she added, like nothing had happened. Tami had a lot of practice with chaos. “Not one safe enough, that wouldn’t absolutely embarrass you to live in—”
“I don’t embarrass easy.”
“—and that wouldn’t embarrass the office of Pythia, when you had people in—”
“Nobody comes here!”
“Nobody comes here ’cause a certain group wouldn’t let them in,” Tami said, eyeing the nearby vamps. “But they can’t hide you away forever. I know, I know,” she said, holding up a hand. “People were trying to kill you. But you still have to function.”
“She has a point,” the girl with the pink hair said, from a nearby sofa, with a baby on her lap.
“So, let’s review, shall we?” Tami persisted, holding up a finger. “One, you needed a safe place to come back to. And if a whole army of dark mages couldn’t get in here the other day, I think this is about as safe as it gets. Unless you wanna live in a bunker—”
“There’s an idea,” Marco said, crossing massive arms and scowling at us. Probably because he was going to have to sell this idea to the boss. “About the only thing we haven’t tried—”
“Didn’t work out in the desert, did it?” Tami asked, referring to the old supernatural UN, which had, in fact, been a lot like a bunker. One that was now a glass slick in the sand.
Marco’s mouth closed, and he scowled some more.
“Two, accessibility,” Tami steamrollered on. “People have to be able to see you. To petition, ask advice, etc. This place is in the middle of Vegas. Doesn’t get much more accessible than that.”
“Nobody is asking me for advice, either,” I pointed out.
“Well, they might be, if they could get to you!” Tami looked exasperated. “Look. I’m not saying let the whole world in. But there are people who need to see you and who you need to see. You’re Pythia. That has responsibilities attached.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’m trying,” she said seriously. “You aren’t a vamp possession, to be locked away in a safe until they call. You’re an independent agent and you have a job to do. And everybody is just going to have to learn to accept that,” she said, looking at Marco.
Who, to my surprise, didn’t say anything.
“Three,” Tami said. “Her Highness decided when she moved in here that it was too small and shabby, and that she couldn’t possibly be expected to live in such squalor—”
“I doubt she put it quite like that,” I murmured, still looking at Marco.
“She put it exactly like that—tell her.” Tami grabbed Fred in passing, who had a phone stuck to his ear.
“Okay, yeah,” he agreed. “But you know English isn’t her first language—”
“She’s lived here for a couple hundred years!”
“But she don’t get out much.”
Tami rolled her eyes. “My point,” she said stubbornly, “is that her people spent most of the last two months gutting the whole floor and rebuilding it to make room for her most-needed servants. Who apparently number in the double digits and don’t like sharing. It’s perfect!”
“But it isn’t ours,” I pointed out. “We can’t just move in—”
“Why not? The consul’s in New York—”
“Where her house was just destroyed! She’ll probably be back any day now—”
“—and isn’t that what she did to you? Just came in, kicked you out, and took it?”
I opened my mouth, and then closed it again.
Because sort of.
“And never even bothered to talk to you about it, right?” Tami persisted. “So, basically, you could say that you’ve been graciously allowing her to live here—”
One of the vamps choked back a laugh.
“—in recognition of the fact that she had a bigger household than you. But now that you have your court, you’ve decided to take it back.”
I hesitated. It was damn tempting, especially after everything she’d pulled. But I kind of thought our relationship was bad enough.
“Listen to me.” Tami took my hand, the one that wasn’t curved under an increasingly heavy little girl butt. “It’s like you said to Jonas’ secretary the other day: you can move your court anywhere you choose. He wants you in London; the vamps want you here. Think she’s going to kick you out only to see you run into the Circle’s waiting embrace?”
Marco came over and took the sleeping child. “The kids have been running around the casino all day, laughing and looking for things to decorate their rooms,” he said gruffly. “The place is closed, so Casanova doesn’t care, just so long as they’re returned when and if.”
“Undamaged?” I said, looking at the expensive paintings worriedly. Because I was pretty sure I’d last seen them in the vault, part of an investment portfolio the old owner had put in place. And my decor tended to have a really short shelf life—
“Cassie?” I looked up, to see that Marco’s dark eyes had gone soft, maybe because the little girl had snuggled into his huge neck.
“What?”
“They’ve been laughing.”
I blinked at him, remembering the grubby, traumatized kids I’d helped to rescue from their burning, about-to-explode house, just a few days ago. Nobody had been laughing then. I’d wondered if they ever would again.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, spotting Rico, who had just come in. “Rhea?”
“Good. You want to see her?”
“Yes, but . . . there’s someone else I need to see first.”
* * *
There was a small party at Pritkin’s bedside: Hilde, Abigail, and Rian, the latter sitting off to one side, along with Billy Joe. Who was looking green.
More so than usual.
“You all right?” I asked, putting an arm around him.
He looked up smiling. And then made a face. “Got a sour stomach.”
“Billy. You’re a ghost. You don’t have a stomach.”
“Well, I got a sour something.” He gave what could only be described as a yack. I moved back a few feet.
Rian continued quietly reading a book. She looked the same as usual: calm, serene, beautiful. I wondered if anyone had told her. “Rian,” I said. “I just . . . uh . . . I wanted to say—”
“We’ll talk later,” she said, smiling. “Your friends have been waiting for you.”
I walked over to the bed. I hadn’t been to visit Pritkin this whole time. He’d been at Caleb’s for a while, because hell wasn’t safe for him, even now. Then here at the hotel, after Caleb had to return to work. And neither of them was exactly hard to get to. But I hadn’t been able to bear it.
And now it was exactly as bad as I’d feared.
The eyes that were usually hard and angry, or narrowed cynically, or wide in alarm—or occasionally, warm or playful or amused—were now closed, the too-light eyelashes almost invisible on the badly stubbled cheeks. Nobody had apparently thought to shave him, and he was halfway to a respectable beard.
I looked over my shoulder. “Has he remembered anything?” I asked Rian.
“He hasn’t woken up yet.” She saw my expression. “This isn’t a spell anyone is supposed to survive. But once you applied the countercurse—”
“He applied it,” I said, biting my lip. And looking back at him. “What if he pronounced it wrong? What if the rain smeared a word? What if—”
“Cassie. Give it time.”
I didn’t say anything. But I felt like I’d given it enough time. I felt like I’d given it a world of time. I wanted to shake him, to see those eyes open, to—
I sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Jonas
was in here earlier,” Hildegarde informed me, without preamble. “Someone ratted you out.”
I looked up. “What did he want?”
“To know what happened to your war mage. To know what was going on. To ask us where we all went off to, and what we did, and what we knew—a thousand things!”
“We didn’t tell him anything,” Abigail said.
“Damn right.” Hilde’s silver curls bobbed angrily. “He knows better than to question an acolyte about a mission! That’s for the Pythia to tell him—or not—as she chooses!” She looked at me severely. “You’re going to have to rein him in.”
“I could use some help with that,” I said honestly.
Hilde looked pleased for a moment. And then she frowned. “It was quite exciting, I must admit. But this . . . frankly, it’s usually seen as a job for the young.”
“I met the young,” I said dryly. “They almost killed me.”
“Good point.”
Abigail was glancing between the two of us, but not looking like she wanted to volunteer. At all. They both looked like they’d had a bath and a meal, but her eyes were still wider than when I first met her.
Yeah, I thought.
This life does that to you.
“You have a family,” I remembered.
She nodded emphatically. “I really have to get back. But I could stay for a week or so, help you settle in?”
“You’ve done enough,” I told her. “I’m very grateful.”
She teared up suddenly. And then rose in order to drop the most perfect curtsy I’ve ever seen. “It is an honor to serve,” she whispered. And glanced at Hilde, who was looking off into space. And gave her a little kick.
“What? Oh yes. An honor,” Hilde said. “You know, the main problem with Jonas is that he’s simply used to too much access. Got spoiled, what with his relationship with Lady Phemonoe. He needs a few more degrees of separation, to remember that access is a privilege, not a right. . . .”
Billy made another yacking sound, and then a hurk. Abigail looked at him in alarm, and took Hilde’s hand. “Perhaps we could discuss this later?”
“Oh yes.” Hilde squinted at me and then patted my hand. “I’ll be upstairs, in case Jonas comes nosing about again, all right?”
I nodded. She appeared to be looking forward to it.
They left.
I looked back down at the bed, where Pritkin had yet to so much as stir. “The Pythias took his memories,” I told Rian. “They said they had to, or it would have changed time. But he’s supposed to get them back.”
“I’m sure he will.”
God, I envied her serenity! On a number of levels.
“I did have a question, if you feel like answering,” she said, after a moment.
“What?” I looked back at her. “Sure.”
I expected something about Rosier, because I knew they’d been close. But it wasn’t what I got. “Your ghost told me what happened. Well, some of it. One thing, though, I didn’t understand.”
“One thing?” I didn’t understand half of it, and I’d been there.
She nodded. “The killing blow, the one that destroyed Ares. It was made by Arthur, was it not?”
“Yes.”
Her head tilted. “But that is what I find odd. As I understand it, he was part human and part water fey. Yet he wielded a fire weapon?”
“It was more like he boomeranged Ares’ own power back at him.”
“Yes, but how did he do that? For that matter, how did he wield Excalibur at all? I know it’s a little point, but it bothered me. I wondered why Nimue would even give the sword to him in the first place.”
I thought about it for a moment, and then laughed, suddenly remembering Rosier’s description of the ugliest man he’d ever seen. Almost inhumanly so. “If I was going to guess,” I told her, “I’d say Arthur had some fey on both sides. It also might explain why his symbol was a dragon.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
Billy hurked and coughed and made a strange hnnnz sound in his throat that was just . . . really off-putting. I sighed. What the hell did you do for a sick ghost? I’d never even heard of such a thing.
But I wasn’t taking him to any necromancers—that was for sure.
“I can give you a draw after breakfast,” I said.
“I don’t want a draw. I want this thing out of my throat!”
“What thing?” I asked warily.
And got some more hurking sounds in reply.
I wanted to ask him where he’d gone off to, on the battlefield. One minute he’d been there, right beside me, and the next he was gone. Not that he could have helped; we were both tapped out. But still . . .
I wondered what he’d been up to.
“Just remember,” Rian told me. “Whatever else happened, Ares is dead.”
“But Jo isn’t. Not completely.”
“But she’s just a ghost. What can a ghost do?”
“You’d be surprised.”
And then there was a slight stir on the bed.
I scrambled up and leaned over, to find green eyes open and staring back at me. Awake and aware. And alive.
For a moment, I just looked at him. I couldn’t seem to say anything. And for once, neither did he.
“We were warned that it might be a while, before he gets his voice back,” Rian told me. “In fact, all the senses are likely to be a bit . . . askew . . . for a few days. The spell is somewhat disorientating.”
Yeah, I bet.
I sat down on the bed, and Pritkin managed to grab my arm, after several tries. He tugged me down to him, and for a moment I felt guilty, because I was kind of relieved that I’d have a few days to sort out what to say to him. After everything we’d been through, I honestly had no idea.
But apparently, I was the only one.
“I remember,” he said, in a hoarse whisper.
I met his eyes, and from only a few inches away, they were . . . intense.
I swallowed. “Um. You remember . . . what, exactly?”
He smiled. And I swear, it was the evilest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Everything.”
Oh boy.
But then Billy saved me.
Hurk, hnggg, hnggg, hnggg! Yak yak yak yak.
And then Billy coughed up Rosier.
Conclusion
Rian and I were heading downstairs, both because Caleb had shown up to relieve her, and because she had a demon lord to escort back to hell. A very wrung out, very tired, very subdued demon lord. Who was getting told.
“Your father kept everyone in line through power,” she said severely. “Power you helped him acquire, but which he never thanked you for. You have done equally well through diplomacy, shrewd dealing, and sheer audacity. How are you not his equal when you did more with less?”
Rosier didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure he could. But Rian didn’t seem to care.
“For centuries, all I’ve heard was ‘I need a son,’ ‘I have to have more power,’ ‘I need a son to help me.’ But all that while, you were handling things perfectly well without one! And speaking as one of your subjects, may I say that I quite prefer the life we have now to the stories I’ve heard about your father’s era?”
Rosier managed to look meek.
“And may I assume, after everything you’ve been through, that you’ve learned something? And that Pritkin is no longer to be required to live under the sword of Damocles? May I tell him that he is free and able to choose his own path from now on?”
Rosier appeared to stiffen slightly at that, and to grow a backbone—or whatever the wispy steam version was. Until those dark eyes flashed, and she shot him a look of utter scorn. And he gave what sounded like the faintest of sighs.
And folded.
“I’m going to pick up Casanova for lunch,
and afterward take Lord Rosier home,” Rian told me, shifting her pale blue Birkin bag to her other arm so she could punch the elevator button. “If you need me, Carlos can get you in touch.”
She air-kissed me, and stepped onto the elevator.
“I think I am going to enjoy the next few weeks,” she told Rosier. “There are any number of things I’ve intended to say to you.”
Rosier somehow managed to give off the appearance of alarm, despite being basically a whiff of smoke. One Billy had enveloped as he had me once, before he utterly dissipated. And had sustained him with his own life force until Rosier could accumulate enough sticking power to keep from fading.
He was going to owe him big-time, after this. I briefly wondered what kind of gift you got a ghost. And then I thought of Billy and Rosier, and the sheer amount of mayhem the two of them could cause together, and decided I didn’t want to know.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Rian said, placing a delicate Jimmy Choo in the elevator doors. And digging around in her purse. “Lord Mircea sent this for you.” And she pulled out a flat, rectangular package. “But strangely, it was delivered to John’s room.”
“To . . . Pritkin’s?” I asked, getting a bad feeling about this.
Rian nodded distractedly, wrestling with the air conditioner currents for her lord and master. “I was asked to pass it along.”
“Thanks,” I said, my mouth dry. And watched her leave.
The package was expensively wrapped, of course, in gold and white stripes. There was also a card. No salutation, just a single line in a beautiful, flowing script.
Perhaps the lady would like to reconsider?
I looked at it for a long moment. And then tore the paper off all at once. Like a Band-Aid, I thought grimly, wondering why Mircea had sent me a book.
Until I saw the title. I stood there in Dante’s hallway, holding a beautifully illustrated copy of Le Morte d’Arthur. The most famous book ever written about King Arthur . . . and his court.
Mircea, I thought furiously, looking back at Pritkin’s room and crumpling the note in my hand.
And then I shifted.
What’s next on
