by Karen Chance
“Just dirt,” I said, realizing the extent of it. I was going to have a hard enough time explaining this without looking like I’d been spelunking in the Bat Cave. “I’m going to get a shower,” I told him.
Pritkin didn’t react to this, so I scampered off to the minuscule bath Dante’s allowed its regular guests, which was about the size of my toilet cubbyhole upstairs.
Shit. Upstairs. Where the younger me was presumably hanging out and doing . . . well, whatever I’d been doing three weeks ago.
That was the first time Pritkin had taken me hiking on some god-awful mountain trail in the foothills of the Rockies. The Corps, the official name for the war mage branch of the Circle, used it as a training ground. It had been a memorable experience, mainly because it had rained the night before, turning the whole mountain into a massive mud pit.
Pritkin had made me run the trail anyway.
Of course.
The only good thing was that I’d twisted an ankle near the end, when I fell over a tree root, and had milked it for three days off the hellish workouts. Judging by the state of his boots, this was the first of those days, since I didn’t think he would leave them sitting around for long in that condition. Meaning that maybe Pritkin wouldn’t be going upstairs, and I wasn’t in as bad a mess as I’d originally thought.
Well, assuming I could come up with a reason for breaking into his room looking like a war refugee. The tee, what parts the bricks hadn’t shredded, was streaked with soot, my jeans looked like I’d been auditioning for a role as a chimney sweep, and my hair—what I had left—was dirty and sleep-matted. Not to mention that I had that pale look I always got when I skipped meals.
A siren I wasn’t.
I scowled at myself, wondering where that thought had come from. But it might not matter. For a guy who was so observant about other things, Pritkin never seemed to notice what I looked like.
Knuckles rapped on the door, loud enough to make me jump. “I’m going out.”
I opened it a crack and stuck my head through, since the rest of me wasn’t decent. “Why?” I asked, worried.
“To get some breakfast. What do you want?”
“How do you know I haven’t eaten already?”
He just looked at me.
“Does it have to be healthy?”
The look did not change.
I sighed.
“I asked what you wanted,” he reminded me. “I’ll run it off you later.”
“You already broke my foot!”
An eyebrow went north. “And yet you managed to get in there fast enough.”
I decided that maybe I should just shut up now. “They have cheesy bacon biscuits down at the café, if it’s before eleven.”
Pritkin gave me an odd look. “It’s seven thirty.”
“Well . . . then they should have some.”
He looked like he was going to say something else, but then stopped, eyes narrowing. “Some?”
“I want two.”
“You’ll get one.”
“I didn’t have dinner!”
“You ate with me,” he said, frowning.
Crap.
“Oh. Yeah. Well, one, then,” I said weakly, and slammed the door.
Chapter Six
I kept my back to it until I heard the door to the hall open and close, and then let out a trembling breath. God, I sucked at this. Which was why I ought to make up some excuse, leave him a note, and get the heck out of here before he returned.
So why was I getting into the shower instead?
Maybe because the active part of my brain had noticed something else it wasn’t bothering to share with the rest of me. But it felt important. And maybe I’d figure it out once I’d been awake more than two minutes.
I let the hot water hit me right in the face, and I guess it helped. By the time I’d lathered up my hair, rinsed it off, decided the damage wasn’t too bad, and washed a chimney’s worth of soot down the drain, I’d also chased down that elusive thought. Which proved that my subconscious was smarter than I was.
I’d been thinking that I needed a demon expert to have any chance of reaching Mom. So it had brought me to one. In fact, it had brought me to the one, the guy who knew more about demons than everybody else in the Circle combined.
There was only one problem: Pritkin hated my shifts through time. He was absolutely of the opinion that, if we kept shifting around here and there, sooner or later we were going to mess up something that couldn’t be fixed. He was so convinced that the first time I’d gone back in time to see my mother, when it had been about curiosity instead of abject need, I hadn’t even thought about taking him along. I’d already known what his answer would be.
And considering how that had gone down—demigods crashing the party she was at, trying to kill her—it was probably just as well. Pritkin’s reaction in cases of being shot at was to shoot back, and that wouldn’t have worked on that particular foe. But demons . . . yeah, he knew all about them.
Half of the vials that were so precisely and uncharacteristically arranged in the racks on his bookcase were potions for fighting various varieties of hell-spawn, since that was what he’d done before hitching his star to my unlucky train. He’d probably forgotten more about demon fighting than the rest of the Corps had ever known. In fact, he might know as much about how I could break him out of his current predicament as Mom would, only I doubted he’d be willing to tell me.
Because Billy had been right—Pritkin wouldn’t want me going after him. As badly as he hated his father, and as much as he might be hating his life right now, he wouldn’t want me risking it. I was probably going to be in for a major ass-chewing whenever I found him. . .
Only Billy had been right about that, too, I realized. I wasn’t going to find him. Not without help.
I stepped out of the shower and into the hot air swirling around the bathroom. The mirror was all fogged up, and a swipe across it with my hand only changed that for a second. But a second was enough. It showed me a face still slightly round with baby fat, with heat-reddened cheeks, blond curls plastered to my head, a tip-tilted nose, and big, guileless blue eyes. Sopping wet, I looked about as dangerous as a stuffed rabbit. Sopping wet, I looked . . . well, like somebody who had no business going on some daring rescue.
I scowled, unconsciously imitating a certain war mage I knew. But while on him the expression was fierce, even terrifying, on me . . . mostly it made me look constipated. I sighed.
But unlike last night, when I’d been feeling helpless and battered and a lot like giving up, today my lack of badass credentials didn’t seem so important. Because considering what I was up against, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I could have been the biggest, baddest mage of them all, could have been a master-level vampire—hell, I could have had an army of both—and it wouldn’t have made a difference.
Because I didn’t see any of them just waltzing into hell, either.
In fact, I wasn’t so sure that being me wasn’t an asset right now. Because Billy might have been wrong about one thing—I didn’t think Rosier was expecting me. Why would he be? Everyone else I knew underestimated me, and always had. Everybody else looked at me and saw the fluffy bunny in the mirror; well, almost everyone. But, despite his age, I didn’t get the impression that Rosier had his son’s insight, or much of anything else. And even Pritkin, when he wasn’t running me up mountainsides or pushing me off cliffs, still sometimes acted like I was spun glass and might break.
But I hadn’t broken.
I wouldn’t break.
I didn’t have that luxury.
And neither had Agnes. I looked in the mirror again, and decided that I didn’t look any more delicate than she ever had. Maybe less, in fact. She’d been all of five foot two in her stocking feet, with a heart-shaped face and porcelain skin and a little-girl air about her that I was coming to believe she’d deliberately cultivated. So that people would underestimate her.
And then she shot them in the butt.
<
br /> I let one finger run over the faint scar she’d given me, which thanks to a certain vampire’s healing ability was far less prominent than it should have been. Just barely a dimple now, no big deal. But the thing was, I didn’t think she’d been aiming for my butt at the time.
At the time, she’d been after a Guild member, one of a secret sect of crazies that wanted to alter time to their own ends, and she hadn’t been playing around. She also hadn’t had a problem going after him alone, without the war mage escort she’d been entitled to. She’d told me they often caused more problems than they solved by shooting everything in sight, and given what I’d seen in my brief acquaintanceship with the Corps, I had no reason to doubt her. But I thought most people chasing a dangerous dark mage would still have wanted one or two along, just in case.
Agnes hadn’t even told them she was going.
So, yeah, if she’d started to lecture me about taking chances, I’d have had a few things to say right back. And then I’d have asked her what she’d have done in this situation. Only she probably wouldn’t have told me because she’d refused to talk to me, in case I gave her some hint of the future that might cause her to mess it up.
But if she had been willing to talk . . . I think I knew what she’d have said. What she’d have done. Now I just had to figure out—
The bathroom door blew open before I could finish the thought, in a swirl of comparatively cold air. And before I could yelp, I found myself jerked out and slammed against the wall of the entryway. That left me facing the bathroom door, where clouds of steam were billowing out, like the place was on fire.
It was kind of appropriate, considering that they were framing the face of a livid half demon.
A second later, my hands hit the wall beside my head, which might have left me indecent, since they were clutching the bath towel I’d been in the process of wrapping around myself. Only I didn’t let go. So the towel ended up being spread out as my hands were, forming a wet, clingy barrier in front of me.
Which, unless it was a lot more magical than it appeared, wasn’t going to be enough.
Because Pritkin was looking pretty damned homicidal.
“They were out of cheesy biscuits?” my mouth said, because my mouth is an idiot.
“Who are you?” he demanded, getting in my face. “What are you?”
“What?” I said, staring up into furious green eyes.
“I’m not playing games,” he warned, his voice low and flat and dead. “If the next words out of your mouth aren’t a confession, they will be your last.”
My brain froze up at that, because it had seen what Pritkin could do in a rage. But my mouth—my stupid, apparently unconnected-to-brain-matter mouth—began panicking. And running a mile a minute.
“Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! It’s me! You know it’s me! It’s like—God! Why would some crazed assassin come in here and use your shower? Do people do that? Especially when it needs cleaning that bad? I mean, you need to let housekeeping in here occasionally or stop brewing potions in there or something, because the creeping crud is going to kill you a long time before the bad guys have the chance and don’t slam me against the wall like that! It hurts! I can explain, I promise, only I can’tifyoukillmeohGod!”
The last was in response to a couple of enchanted knives slipping out from inside Pritkin’s old gray hoodie, the one he used on jogs because his battered leather trench would look a little weird. But he needed something to cover the arsenal of illegal and would-be-illegal-if-humans-knew-about-them weapons that went everywhere he did. These two rose on either side of his face, underscoring the fact that he didn’t have to let me go in order to gut me, a thought that stopped even my mouth’s inane babble. Maybe because it was too busy shrieking.
“Stop that!” he said as the slamming recommenced, which of course only made me shriek harder. And try to shift away, only that didn’t work because Pritkin was holding on to me. Which meant he came, too.
We ended up over by the window, something that didn’t help my dignity, since my bare butt was now pressed firmly against the glass. Welcome to Vegas, I thought hysterically, wondering if I was flashing half the parking lot. And then wondering why I cared considering I was about to be killed by my own bodyguard.
Or maybe not.
Pritkin didn’t let go, but the knives stayed on the other side of the room. Considering how fast they could remedy that situation, it didn’t make me feel that much better. But potential death is better than imminent death, and I’d take it.
Only now it looked like I had some ’splaining to do.
“You just shifted us,” he accused.
“Of course I did!” I said feverishly. “What was I supposed to do? Stay put and get skewered?”
“You’re a Pythia.”
I stared at him. “Duh!”
“Or some Pythian initiate pretending to be one!”
“Oh, for—Myra’s dead,” I reminded him. My rival for the Pythian power had tried to kill me, but had ended up shredded in my place. I hadn’t done it, but I hadn’t wasted a lot of tears over her memory, either.
“There are other initiates,” Pritkin reminded me as he pressed closer, his eyes narrowed on my face.
I shivered. But not because of the words. But because my bare ass against the air-conditioned window had just caused me to break out in full-body goose bumps.
At least that’s what I told myself.
I tried to move back, but there was nowhere to go. I was already flat against the damned window. And the sensation of slick cold on one side and hard heat on the other was . . . distracting.
Like those eyes on me, with an intensity that prickled over my skin, making me itchy and jumpy. Or like the heat of his body radiating through the wet towel, or the strong fingers digging into my skin, or the hot breath on my face. At least, I assumed that was why my breathing had sped up and my head had gone swimmy and I was suddenly oddly grateful that my hands were trapped beside my head.
Because they really wanted to run themselves through his hair.
Pritkin was saying something, something I should probably be paying attention to since he was looking a little . . . stressed. I suppose it was due to suspicion or anger or the kind of frustrated rage I seemed to call up in him sometimes. But it didn’t look that way. Or, rather, it did to my brain, which was now wide awake. But to my body . .
My body cheerfully informed me that he felt really good pressed against me like that, all hard muscles and smooth contours and ominous bulges. My body liked the air of barely leashed strength and caged mayhem he was giving off. My body thought he smelled really good, like heat and coffee and electricity.
My body was going to get me killed.
And okay, this was an unexpected complication. In a situation that was already complicated enough. But it wasn’t exactly surprising.
Pritkin and I had been together a lot lately and he was half incubus. Hell, he was the son of their king, or whatever the creature’s title was. It would have been odd if I didn’t feel something occasionally. And that was without the memory of his last night on earth, when he’d given me energy the only way an incubus could.
I closed my eyes, but that only made it worse, shutting out distractions and allowing me to relive what I’d been trying really hard to forget. The familiar voice a sibilant whisper in my ear, the small of his back slick with sweat, the surprisingly soft hair brushing my body when he took control. And moved over me.
“Stop it,” Pritkin grated, his voice somehow cutting through the fog. But he didn’t let go. I suppose he was afraid to, because a Pythia or one of her senior initiates could shift without him if there was no contact. But that left us stuck together, and that was becoming really, really—
Awesome, my body piped up enthusiastically.
“I told you, cut it out!” Pritkin said, sounding pissed.
“You first,” I snarled, snapping my eyes open to glare at him, because he wasn’t exactly helping.
Of cour
se, neither did that.
He must have been jogging, probably his usual early morning ten-mile warm-up before coming to torture me. At least, I assumed that was why the rock-hard abs were outlined by a damp khaki T-shirt, the thin old sweatpants were clinging in all the right places, and the sleeves of the hoodie had been pushed to his elbows, showing the flexing muscles in his forearms. And then there were those hands and those eyes and that mouth . .
I shivered again, a full-on shudder this time, and he cursed. But that didn’t seem to matter. Because it had come out like a growl, and my body liked that, too. My hips shifted automatically, pressing us together, and I gave a little gasp because it felt so good.
And then gasped again when I was abruptly released.
It was fast enough that I almost lost my grip on the towel. I had to grab it in a hurry and then I just stayed there, breathing harder than technically necessary and still flat against the infernal window. Because he was too close to go anywhere without bumping up against him again.
And I didn’t think that would be a great idea.
Pritkin had moved off a few paces, but he hadn’t turned his back on the dangerous creature that had invaded his room and his life. So I was able to see the flush on his skin and the anger on his face. Anger that, for once, I completely didn’t deserve.
“What the hell was that?” I demanded shrilly.
“My abilities are triggered by strong emotion,” he said stiffly. “Whether mine or another’s.”
Incubus powers. No wonder I felt . . . like I felt. “No! I meant that,” I said, waving the arm that wasn’t busy keeping covered what little dignity I had left. “All the slamming and the knife waving and the . . . that. What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” Accusatory green eyes met mine. “Other than the fact that the trace charm I have on you pinpoints your current location—five stories above our heads.”
Damn. I should have thought of that. The vamps weren’t the only ones who kept a tracking spell on me. Pritkin had his own to help him locate me in emergencies. But like all spells, it had to be renewed. And he hadn’t been around to do that lately.
