Curse the Dawn

by Karen Chance

  “I don’t understand what this has to do with your father.”

  “Everything. The only other way to get life energy once you’re dead is to beg, borrow or steal it from someone who already has it. For a ghost, that means cannibalizing other spirits, which they do all the time, or getting it directly from a living donor. The latter is a lot more uncommon unless the spirit is really pissed off or unbalanced, because attacking a living body uses up more energy than it gains.”

  I stopped, having finished Ghost 101 and feeling strangely reluctant to go further. Intellectually, I knew that my father’s crimes weren’t mine, that I shouldn’t feel any guilt over them. But emotionally, it felt like the taint of what he’d done had rubbed off on me, as if it was my fault somehow. I scrubbed my arms. The sun suddenly didn’t feel all that warm anymore.

  “So, like I said, life energy is hard to come by and highly prized. It’s the only thing my father could have offered the spirits who worked for him.”

  “Jonas said he could command them,” Pritkin reminded me. “They may have had no choice.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like that, but I don’t claim to be an expert on necromancy. Some people think that’s what clairvoyants are—minor-level necromancers—but it isn’t true. I can see ghosts and donate energy to the dead, but that’s it. I can’t bring anyone back to life—or any semblance of it. But I do know something about ghosts. And most spirits wouldn’t have been able to go around gathering intelligence without a regular energy draw.”

  “Perhaps some are stronger than others.”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t work that way. Strong, weak, whatever you were in life—when you’re dead, you’re dead. And ghosts use up energy even faster than humans do. Their haunts normally only provide a subsistence. To do extra work, they need extra power. Like I give to Billy.”

  And for the first time, it struck me as perverse that I had such complete power over anyone. I’d always thought of our relationship as a fair trade—I gave something, Billy gave something, and we both benefited from the arrangement. Billy had saved my life dozens of times, just as I had helped to sustain his. Quid pro quo. Only now I wasn’t so sure.

  Was it really equal when one party could walk away from a deal, and the other couldn’t? Billy could live without me. He survived for a century and a half before we met, because his necklace provided the same subsistence for him that most ghosts received from a house or graveyard. But that’s all it was, a subsistence. Without regular donations from me, Billy couldn’t go more than fifty miles away from the talisman, and even within that range, he couldn’t do much.

  What would it be like, I wondered, to be tied to an object that could end up anywhere, dragging you with it? To be too weak to do more than watch life go by—a life you no longer had? How had he lived for so many years with no companionship? Of course, he could talk to other ghosts, if he wanted to take the risk of being cannibalized. But even then, ghost conversation tended to be a little one-sided.

  Like our relationship.

  I decided that maybe I owed Billy an apology, although what I could do about the problem was debatable. He was a ghost; I couldn’t change that. But maybe I could do a little more to show my appreciation for all he did for me. Maybe I could make a conscious effort not to take advantage of him.

  Maybe I could try a little harder not to be like my father.

  “Donating life energy is not a crime,” Pritkin said, obviously still not following me.

  “Depends on where you get it.”

  He frowned. “You use your own.”

  “Because I feed one ghost. Uno. And even then, there are times Billy has to rely on his necklace, because I don’t have anything left to give.” I saw comprehension begin to dawn in his eyes. I looked away before he hit revulsion. “So how much power would a ghost army need? There’s no way one mage could supply dozens, much less hundreds, of hungry ghosts. Just no way.”

  “Dark mages are known to steal power from whomever they can,” he murmured.

  “And now we know one thing they use it for—or used to.” I got up, suddenly finding the stone bench really uncomfortable. “And when a dark mage catches someone, correct me if I’m wrong here, but don’t they usually drain them?”

  “Yes,” he said softly.

  “And draining a magical human—”

  “Kills them.”

  “So my father was a murderer. And if he supplied an army, he was a mass murderer.” Not to mention kidnapper and probably rapist. I walked off a little way, the chimney suddenly getting a lot more interesting. “I’d say that’s pretty dark, wouldn’t you?”

  It was really hard to imagine, because my only actual memory of him was a positive one. He’d been throwing a three- or four-year-old me into the air and hearing me squeal in glee. It was hard to reconcile that man with someone who could kill a person just for gain, for the coin that it would gain him in the spiritual world.

  “If he was a member of the Black Circle,” Pritkin said. “But we don’t know that he was. The Circle chooses to believe the rumors at present because it suits their purpose.”

  “And if it is true?”

  “It doesn’t change anything,” he said urgently.

  “Except that my father was a monster.” I’d never been under the illusion that he was some kind of saint—no one at Tony’s was. But this . . . no. I hadn’t really been prepared for this.

  I felt hands on me, turning me around. The little dagger-shaped links of the bracelet around Pritkin’s wrist slipped over my skin, feeling suddenly oily and strangely heavy.

  I’d acquired it in a fight with a dark mage, when it deserted him for me. Ever since, it had clung to my wrist whether I liked it or not, defeating all attempts to remove it. At the time, I’d assumed that it had simply gravitated to the greater source of power, which due to my new position was me. But what if there had been another reason? What if it had been drawn to the greatest potential for evil?

  “Cassie!” Pritkin’s hands tightened on my shoulders, hard enough to be painful. I looked up, hurt and confused. “My father is a demon lord,” he said crisply. “I win.”

  Pritkin isn’t kind, exactly, or tactful at all, but he still sometimes manages to say the right thing at the right time. I guess if there was one thing he knew about, it was dysfunctional families. It didn’t make things all right—I had a feeling nothing was going to do that for a long time. But it helped. Even with Rosier for a father, he’d turned out okay. Better than okay, I thought, smiling at him.

  “Thanks.”

  He inclined his head. “No problem. But if you mention anything about getting in touch with my feminine side, I will shoot you.”

  And for the first time in days, I laughed.

  “We have to discuss Jonas’ offer eventually,” Pritkin pointed out few minutes later.

  And yes, we did. But I didn’t have to like it.

  We’d been sitting watching Marsden pick things out of his overrun garden. He’d acquired a hat, I noticed, and squashed most of the hair underneath. He looked almost normal.

  “I have a theory about war mages,” I said. “The more powerful they are, the worse the hair.”

  “Cassie.”

  “You could make my day and tell me Saunders is bald.”

  “And you could make mine by facing up to this.”

  I scowled. “I can’t believe I’m actually thinking about joining a coup.”

  “There no longer seems to be much choice.”

  “What happened to wait and see? A few hours ago—”

  “A few hours ago, I hadn’t heard Tremaine’s evidence. A few hours ago, I hadn’t seen the newspaper. Jonas is correct. Leaking that story is a clear-cut sign of the Circle’s intentions. If Saunders had any plans to work with you, he would be suppressing unfavorable press, not assisting it.”

  Yeah. That was the way it looked to me, too. I sighed. “What do you know about Marsden?”

  “He led the Circle ably for many
years. He can be hide-bound and intransigent on certain issues, he prefers to keep his own counsel—to the point of being secretive—and he is prickly and difficult at times—”

  “In other words, a typical war mage.”

  “—but overall, he’s a good man.”

  “Can he win?”

  Pritkin was silent for a moment. “Had you asked me that question twenty years ago, I would have said yes. But now . . . I don’t know.”

  “Your best guess, then.”

  “Jonas’ knowledge is certainly greater, and he has more experience. But his power has waned in recent years. Of the two, Saunders is stronger.”

  “Then wouldn’t it make more sense for someone else to issue challenge?”

  “Only a Council member has the right. Anyone else would be summarily dispatched by Saunders’ bodyguards. And that is assuming anyone could be found willing to take the risk. It is a duel to the death.”

  I swallowed. Wonderful. “So it’s a long shot or no shot at all.”

  “Essentially.”

  I stared at the chimney and wished my head didn’t hurt. “Saunders will be at a reception the Senate is giving tomorrow,” I finally told him.

  Pritkin’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know that?”

  “Because I’ll be there, too. Mircea arranged it. The Senate has some plan to get me confirmed, only nobody’s telling me what it is. I guess they think Saunders is less likely to try something in front of them.”

  “That could work,” he said thoughtfully. “If Jonas challenges there, not only will Saunders’ entourage hear it, the Senate will as well. There will be no way to refuse, and a cover-up will be impossible.”

  “Yeah.” The only question was how the Senate would take having me bring a fight into the middle of their big party. Even if by some miracle this all worked out . . . I winced. It wasn’t going to be pretty.

  “You think the Senate will object to having us there?” Pritkin asked, watching me.

  “Us?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “You don’t really think I would let you and Jonas go alone?”

  “Afraid you’ll miss out on some of the crazy?” He just looked at me. “I’ll take care of the Senate,” I told him. “They want this finished as badly as we do. You just keep the Circle from trying anything.”

  “Ah. The easy job, then.”

  “Pritkin, haven’t you figured it out yet? We don’t get the easy jobs.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Marsden was elbow-deep in flour when we went back in, shaping homemade dough with a wooden rolling pin. “I’m making lasagna for lunch,” he told us, “if you’d like to stay?” My borrowed stomach rumbled embarrassingly despite the fact that it had just finished breakfast. I stared down at it in annoyance and Marsden laughed. “I take it that’s a yes?”

  Pritkin went back upstairs for his weapons while I sat at the table and listened to Marsden’s stories about Agnes. Highly unlikely stories. “She was messing with you,” I told him. “She did not date Caesar.”

  “I admit, I found that one a little hard to swallow—”

  “She couldn’t have shifted that far back,” I explained. “It would have killed her.”

  “Oh, I assure you, she could. She traveled even farther than that for us on more than one occasion.”

  “I don’t see how. The farthest back I’ve gone was the sixteenth century, but that was in spirit. I don’t know if I could make it that far with my body.”

  The rolling pin hit the table top as loudly as a gavel. “You’ve gone back in time with your body?” He looked outraged.

  “Uh, yeah?”

  “For what possible reason?”

  “Because I can’t stay anywhere long enough to get anything done when I’m in spirit form. I’m like a ghost with nothing to haunt—my energy gives out after a few hours and I have to shift back. Not to mention that trying to do anything without a body is really—”

  “But you can have your pick of bodies! You’re Pythia. You can possess anyone you choose! That is the reason you have that power, to make time shifting less perilous!”

  I didn’t reply, but I thought about Agnes’ shoulder wound. It seemed like she hadn’t told Marsden everything. She probably hadn’t wanted to worry him, but obviously she’d taken her body along from time to time. Maybe there were missions where possessing someone was just too dangerous. Getting the person she was possessing shot might screw up the very time line she was trying to fix. Or maybe she hadn’t liked possessions any more than I did.

  “And how do you know that, Jonas?” Pritkin demanded from the stairway, his old coat draped over his arm.

  “Lady Phemonoe mentioned it,” Marsden said, grabbing a knife and cutting board and laying into some onions.

  “Odd that she never told anyone else,” Pritkin said, handing me his boots. I took them gratefully. Summer in Britain was a lot different than July in Nevada, and my toes were cold.

  Marsden looked a little shifty. “Yes, well, we worked together a long time and . . . she trusted me.”

  Pritkin’s eyes narrowed. “Enough to spill age-old secrets?” “We didn’t have in-depth discussions. It was just a . . . a slip of the tongue, here and there.”

  “A slip of the tongue?” Pritkin repeated, and something about the way he said it made Marsden go all pink.

  “John!”

  “Jonas, are you blushing?”

  “It’s hot in here!” Marsden said testily. “You might have installed some proper ventilation.” He’d opened a window, but most of the fragrant steam had chosen to hang around.

  “That’s a bit tricky with stone walls,” Pritkin said dryly. “And you’re evading the issue.”

  Marsden glanced at me. “Do you know, I think I need more basil. Cassie, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  “Oh, I’d mind,” I said, planting elbows on the table and looking at him expectantly.

  He sighed and added the onions to a pot on the stove, showing us his back in the process. “She was . . . we were . . . good friends, as well as colleagues.”

  Again, it wasn’t so much what was said, as how he said it. “Wow.” I was impressed. “You and Caesar—”

  Marsden threw some mushrooms in a colander a little harder than necessary. “Yes. Well. As you say. But that isn’t the point, is it? The point is that you’ve been doing it wrong, child.”

  “Yeah. Imagine that. And with all of thirty seconds’ training, too.”

  “You’re fortunate to still be alive!” he said sternly. “Do you have any idea how many diseases you could have encountered in the past? How many times you might have eaten foods that, while perfectly safe for the people of the time, would be deadly to you? And that is assuming the dark mage you are chasing doesn’t kill you first!”

  “Does that happen a lot?” I asked nervously. “Mages slipping through time?”

  “It takes an extraordinary amount of power, and few are able to raise or to control so much. Most who try end up dead long before you need to worry about them. Leaving you free to deal with other responsibilities.”

  “Such as?”

  Marsden went ninja on some garlic. “Any number of things. We’ve already discussed the petitioners who will expect you to see the future for them and give advice.”

  “Seeing the future is . . . problematic.”

  “Nonetheless, people will want you to try. Along with presiding over the Pythian Court and supervising the initiates, it is a Pythia’s primary duty.”

  “I know I’m going to regret asking this, but the Pythian Court is what, exactly?”

  “A court of mediation for high-level disputes among the supernatural community. For example, if the Clan Council of the Weres were to have a dispute with the vampire Senate that they could not work out themselves, they might bring it to you in an effort to avoid bloodshed. The Pythia can best judge these cases because she alone can see how the dispute will end if it is not resolved.”

  I swallowed. Great. Something else I did
n’t know how to do. Not that it made a difference in this case. Half the supernatural community wanted me dead and the other half thought I was their little pawn. Neither group was going to listen to a damn thing I had to say.

  As for the initiates, I couldn’t imagine a scenario that would have me seeking them out. Myra had been bad enough; I didn’t need a whole court waiting for me to kick off. Or trying to help me do so.

  I looked up to see Marsden staring at me suspiciously. “Please tell me this isn’t the first you’ve heard of all this,” he said.

  “Okay, I won’t tell you.”

  His knife thwacked into the cutting board hard enough to wedge there. He left it, glaring at Pritkin. “You should have brought her to me before this! She needs training!”

  “I might have, if you had mentioned you could provide it.”

  “I would have, if you had mentioned that you were running about with the new Pythia! You used to keep me informed about such trifles!”

  “Wait a minute.” I grabbed Marsden’s wrist, to keep him from trying to chop something else. “You can train me?”

  “Not as Agnes could have, no. I can tell you what I saw and observed over a period of decades, but I don’t have your power. I can’t help you with things like possessions.”

  “I hate possessions.”

  “You seem to be holding up to this one fairly well.”

  “This is a body swap, not a possession.”

  “Semantics,” he said offhand.

  “No. It really isn’t,” I said flatly. “There’s no one else inside my head and no one is getting hurt.”

  Marsden looked at me impatiently. “I’m sorry if you find the idea distasteful, but we’re talking about your life!”

  “No, we’re talking about someone else’s.”

  “This is exactly why you need training. The other initiates don’t question the necessity for occasional unpleasant acts.”

  Yeah, I bet they didn’t. The Circle liked to get them young and brainwash them from childhood. They’d probably walk into a fire if the Circle told them to and never even question it. But that wasn’t my style. And if Marsden and I were going to work together, he had to understand that.