by Karen Chance
Brown eyes that were shrewder than the outfit would suggest narrowed. “You were expecting another answer?”
“I—well, to tell the truth, I’ve been having a little trouble with some of my . . . associates . . . lately.”
I’d almost said “acolytes,” since that’s who I’d assumed the girls were. I was a new Pythia, and not everybody from my predecessor’s court was exactly on board with the change of command. Five especially had decided that they could do without me, preferably permanently. And since they were on the loose at the moment, it had been a logical conclusion that some or all of them had hunted me down.
Logical but, apparently, also wrong.
Unless my acolytes had adopted one hell of a new dress code.
“Some trouble?” A slender eyebrow went up.
“They sort of want me dead.” It was one of the messes I was going to have to deal with as soon as I got Pritkin back.
Cherry red lips pursed. “Understandable. A rogue is a serious problem.”
“I’m not a rogue.”
That did not appear to go down well. “Whatever you are, you do not belong here.”
“Neither do you,” I pointed out. That outfit was pure Victorian excess.
She smiled gently. “Had you remained in London a little while longer, I would not have had to be.”
Well, that explained that. It looked like the nineteenth-century Pythia had taken exception to my romping through her turf; why, I didn’t know. Nobody had ever said anything before.
“Isn’t the usual procedure to, uh, ignore that sort of thing?” I asked hopefully.
The eyebrow ratcheted up another notch. “Ignore a powerful demon lord intruding into areas he oughtn’t?”
Crap. I should have known. Rosier.
He was just the gift that kept on giving, wasn’t he?
“But no matter,” she told me. “I do enjoy a bit of a chase. But I’m afraid this one is over now.”
I swallowed. Under other circumstances, she’d have been right. I’d have gone back to Victorian Britain without a fuss, on the assumption that I’d be able to talk my way out of this sooner or later. But right now, I didn’t have that option. Even if I could eventually convince her that I wasn’t a dangerous rogue, that Rosier wasn’t currently a powerful anything, and that we should therefore be allowed to go on our way, it wouldn’t matter.
It would still be too late for Pritkin.
The demon who had cast the spell had boasted that it had been selected with my abilities in mind, to make rescue unlikely. As a result, Pritkin’s cursed soul would only pass through each era of his life once. No matter how many times I came back to this year afterward, it would never be here again. And shortly beyond this point, his past became a lot more difficult to navigate, with a lengthy time spent in hell where my power didn’t work well, if at all, and then . . . an early life at a point too far back in time for me to reach.
My hands clenched on his arms. I was drained from a day of time-shifting, demon-sitting, and now Pritkin’s idea of a late-night snack. I was in no shape to challenge a Pythia who, presumably, had a lot more experience on the job than me and had two members of her court with her. Each of whom was like an extra battery pack, giving her a major advantage even if I’d been at full strength.
If I challenged her, I was going to lose.
But I didn’t have a choice. I had to catch Pritkin here. And based on how fast his soul had been going, it could arrive anytime.
Only, looking into the woman’s sharp brown eyes, time wasn’t something I thought I had.
And then Pritkin’s hands clenched back.
I looked up at him, surprised, but couldn’t read his expression. But he didn’t leave me wondering for long. “One kiss before you go,” he rasped.
I blinked at him, not sure I understood, and then at my counterpart. Who sighed and rolled her eyes. “Get on with it, then.”
He got on with it.
But this wasn’t a normal kiss. I knew it as soon as our lips touched, because I’d felt something like it before, although the memory had faded somewhat. Until a spine-tingling, thrumming, heady rush coursed through every cell in my body, and I remembered.
Oh God, yes, I remembered, I thought, groaning and grabbing on to his hair, his shoulders, his butt, trying to crawl up his body as he filled me with life and energy and power, to the point that I found myself laughing against his lips, the feeling so giddy, so effervescent, so light, that it simply had to come out somehow.
“All right,” the other Pythia said dryly. “I think that’s quite enough.”
I didn’t answer, being too busy giggling and holding helplessly on to Pritkin.
“Come along, girl,” she said impatiently.
“No.” It was strangled, because I was desperately trying to keep a straight face.
I failed.
Brown eyes narrowed. “You don’t want to test me, my dear.”
“You know,” I gasped, “I kind of think I do.”
And then I froze her.
The expression on her face as she toppled over really set me off, but Pritkin was already towing me through the door and back into the bar. Where people were starting to move sluggishly as her time spell unraveled. And that included one extremely odd-looking demon lord who scowled in slo-mo when he saw me run through with his son, still doubled over with laughter and strange euphoria and utter disbelief that I’d just done that.
Oh God, I was so dead, I thought hysterically.
And then a sheet of rain slapped some sense back into me.
Pritkin had pulled open the door, which almost resulted in us getting blown off our feet. It looked like the other Pythia’s time bubble extended only as far as this room. Because outside, nature was taking its course in the form of a gale of wind and sleety rain that was only slightly lessened when Pritkin jerked me around the corner and up against the side of the building.
There was intermittent cover under the eaves and the spreading arms of a tree. But unlike the dark shadows along a nearby canal, it was way too close to a window for my liking. A haze of golden light speared the darkness from between the gaps in a pair of old wooden shutters, highlighting random bits of war mage: a cheekbone, a stubbly jaw, one violent green eye.
And a pair of thin lips that opened to say: “Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“My property!”
Oh, right. He wanted his damned map back. “We don’t have time for that,” I told him, sobering up slightly. “We have to get . . . somebody . . . and then get out of here—”
“Give me what I want and I will let you go!”
“I can’t give you what I don’t have,” I told him, distracted, because the gaps in the shutters were from warped boards, not slats, and I couldn’t see much inside. That was worrying, since Pythias weren’t affected by time spells like other people. What I’d flung at her would have bought me fifteen minutes, maybe more, with anyone else. With her . . . I honestly didn’t know how long we had.
But I was betting it came under the heading of not long enough.
Annnnnnd now Pritkin was shaking me again. “I helped you!”
“Yes, after m-mugging me,” I pointed out. Although in fairness, it felt like I’d gotten back more power than I’d given. Like, a lot more.
Which was weird, because he was looking kind of energized himself.
Along with pissed.
“I b-burnt the map,” I reminded him quickly. “You w-watched me—”
“But you’d memorized it, hadn’t you?”
“Look, can we t-talk about this another—”
“You’d memorized it”—low and furious—“and you saw something in there that brought you here!”
“And you know that h-how?”
“Don’t play dumb!”
“Trust me, she
doesn’t have to,” came a cynical voice.
Pritkin’s head jerked up at sight of the specimen that had just joined us. Fortunately, Rosier was still unrecognizable. Unfortunately, it was because he’d somehow managed to fall onto my leftover glamourie.
And I guessed it wasn’t advisable to try to use two at the same time. Because the usually polished demon lord now looked like Popeye, with one bulging eye and one regular, a swollen chipmunk cheek, a bulbous nose, and a couple of shaggy brown things above his eyes that resembled fuzzy caterpillars. Caterpillars that pulled together when Pritkin grabbed his satchel.
“Does nobody in this benighted place have any respect for private property?” Rosier demanded.
I didn’t know what kind of dangerous stuff Rosier was carrying, but Pritkin took one glance at the contents and his already fearsome scowl grew exponentially. He grabbed me around the neck, facing off with Rosier, the bag held tight in the hand that wasn’t busy choking me. “Any closer and she dies!”
“Oh no, stop,” Rosier said lazily.
“I’m not bluffing,” Pritkin snarled. He looked down at me. “And now you’re going to tell me what that thing was.”
“What thing?” I asked, confused. “Look, we don’t have time for—urp.”
“I traced the thieves’ movements,” Pritkin told me, quietly vicious. “I discovered that they’d gone from England, where they stole my property, to Paris, where they sold it, via Amsterdam. I came here suspecting that they might have preferred to hide it well away from the auction site. And what do I find on the very day I arrive? My chief competitor—”
“You have to admit, it does sound damning,” Rosier murmured.
“—trying to eavesdrop on my conversation with their sister!”
“Their—you mean the barmaid?” I asked, strangely relieved. Although that may have been because he’d finally realized he was choking me and loosened his grip slightly.
“Or were you distracting me while your accomplice searched the place?” Pritkin suddenly stared around, as if he thought his prize was about to drop from a tree or something. “That’s it, isn’t it? It’s here!”
“No, I—”
“Then tell me where it is if you want to live!”
And, okay, things suddenly weren’t so funny anymore. Because Pritkin wasn’t kidding. I knew him well enough to know his don’t-fuck-with-me expression when I saw it. Just as I knew I couldn’t give him what he wanted. The map he’d lost had led to something called the Codex Merlini, a book of spells that needed to molder away exactly where it was, since some rather delicate events would later hinge on that. Some delicate, potentially world-ending events.
But I somehow didn’t think that trying to explain that was going to go over well.
And then I didn’t have to.
Half of the wall we were standing against suddenly crumbled in a cascade of rocks and dust and, oh, crap. I got a half-second glimpse of an incensed Pythia standing backlit amid the billowing clouds, parasol at the ready and chin tilted determinedly, and then I panicked. And since there weren’t a whole lot of options, I did what I usually do when terrified and defenseless, and shifted.
But not me.
The power that allows me temporal shifts also permits spatial ones, to a limited degree. Limited in that I have to know where I’m going, which I didn’t, and can see where I’m landing, which I couldn’t. I also couldn’t leave Pritkin with the cursed soul due to arrive any minute, and it’s not like I had a lot of time to think about it and—
And so I shifted her.
“Was that supposed to help?” Rosier demanded, staring at the sight of a waterlogged Pythia rising from the dark and, okay, faintly slimy canal, lavender curls hanging dispiritedly around a by now truly furious face.
For a split second, I just stared back in horror. I’d been aiming for the opposite bank, but I couldn’t see shit and—and damn.
“Run,” I squawked. Only to find out that I couldn’t. Because Pritkin wasn’t letting go, not having managed to follow all of that.
But Rosier had and he grabbed his satchel back and took off. Leaving me behind, because nobody had ever accused him of being noble. But for once, I thought he had the right idea.
“You want . . . the Codex?” I asked Pritkin, panting from lack of air and utter, utter terror. “Because you just let it get away. He has it!”
And, okay, that worked, I thought, as Pritkin started after the fleeing demon lord. Sort of, I amended, as he jerked me along for the ride. But that was okay; that was good, even. I just had to keep them close and keep him from killing Rosier and keep an eye out for the damned soul while I was at it.
Well, and one other thing, I amended, as the gnarled old limbs of a tree exploded into flower as we passed.
I turned around while still running, watching through pelting rain as the massive trunk shrank, old bark became new, twisted limbs straightened and flowered and hung heavy with life. It would have been beautiful, except for the knowledge that a blast of reverse time like that wouldn’t do me the same good. Would, in fact, age me right out of existence.
Good thing she couldn’t see me any better than I could her, huh, I thought, right before something like the sun suddenly flooded the area all around us. Something exactly like, I realized, staring up at the darkened sky. And at a patch of icy slush the size of a house that had just been replaced by clear blue skies and fat, happy-looking clouds.
Damn, I didn’t know we could do that, I thought, as the light of another day shone down around us, out of some type of time portal I didn’t understand because I didn’t understand much about this job. But if the idea was to turn a searchlight on us, it was doing okay, I thought, and jerked Pritkin into the shade of a nearby bridge.
“What the—” he began, staring upward at the shimmering beam that was sparkling off the water, and throwing moving shadows of tree limbs onto snow-covered streets as it started moving around, looking for us.
“New magic?” I said weakly. And received a frown in return, because Pritkin isn’t stupid.
But before he could work it out, something like a speedboat tore out from under the bridge, drenching us with freezing spray.
I hadn’t seen who was driving it, but I guess Pritkin had. Because he swore and dragged us down a rusty ladder into a small dinghy, which seemed kind of useless since it had no form of propulsion that I could see. Outboard motors didn’t exist in 1794.
But magic did. At least, I assumed there was some sort of spell involved when we zipped out into the canal, so fast that it sent me tumbling into the stern and had the prow of the boat leaping out of the water, barely touching the waves. But we were doing better than Rosier, who I saw when I scrambled back to my feet, just ahead of us.
He was in another speeding boat, courtesy of his big bag o’ tricks, I supposed, but whatever he was using must not have come with instructions. Or steering. Because he was weaving back and forth along the narrow waterway, his boat hitting other boats and the high brick walls of the canal and basically anything and everything in his path, making his frantic face and waving arms kind of superfluous.
Yes, I knew he was in trouble.
But then, so were we.
Because the makeshift searchlight was now chasing us, flowing along the sides of the canal like bright water. The portal looked like an oval of colored film imposed over the black-and-white landscape around us, some avant-garde cinematography about youth and age. Behind us, skeletal trees became green, snow melted into leaf-strewn streets, people strolled along the shore enjoying a bright spring day.
And then stopped to stare through the portal at us, including one guy who ran into a tree.
I stared back as time boiled along a line just behind us, bisecting day and night. And summer and winter. And the bottom of our boat, sending me scrambling frantically into the front and Pritkin cursing and somehow incr
easing our speed.
It worked, sort of. We jumped ahead, all but flying now, with a sound like the crack of a mighty whip. Or, I realized a second later, like half a boat splintering and breaking and falling away.
I stared behind us through my wildly flying hair as what had been the back of our boat was swallowed by that other day, bobbing and listing and then sinking in bright spring sunshine. And realized that we weren’t going to be any better off soon. Half a boat doesn’t float well, and only our crazy speed was keeping us momentarily above water.
I looked around frantically, trying to spot Rosier, planning to shift us onto his vessel, which at least was still in one piece. But it was dark ahead, even without the glow from behind obscuring my vision. And the sleety half rain, half snow was coming down harder now, making it almost impossible to—
And then Rosier made it easy by crashing headlong into the back of a barge.
It sent him hurtling out of his craft and through the air, and I grabbed Pritkin and shifted even before he landed. We ended up right beside him, which would have been impressive—if I’d remembered to leave our broken craft behind. But we were still clinging to the sides, so our boat had come, too, and for a second there, it was skipping along the long, unladen surface of the barge, right beside a falling, cursing, and rolling demon lord. And then Pritkin reached out and grabbed his father. And I shifted us again, about a second before we would have plowed into the back of the captain’s cabin.
So we plowed into one of the small bridges that spanned the canals instead.
That actually wouldn’t have been so bad, since our little half craft had managed to land on top. But then we kept right on going. I screamed and grabbed Pritkin, who was clutching Rosier in a death grip but manfully keeping silent. Unlike the elegant demon lord, who was yelling right along with me as our momentum carried us across the narrow span, which was little more than a brick arch sans railings.
And off the other side.
And into a patch of bright sunlight and the front of a larger boat being guided along by a still-dripping Pythia.
“Well, hello,” she said, smiling at me evilly, as I looked up from a pile of demon.
