by Karen Chance
“No! To warn you! To tell you what I’d seen—”
“So . . . to assist and advise me?”
She had been about to say something, but at that she abruptly shut her mouth. And then opened it again after a minute. “No.”
“No?”
“I wouldn’t dream of advising the Pythia,” she said primly, and I couldn’t help it. I lay back on the bed and laughed again.
God, I was losing it.
“My Lady—”
“Stop it.” I told her when her concerned face appeared above mine.
“Stop . . . ?”
“Stop calling me that. My name is—”
“Lady Herophile.”
“Bullshit.” I decided to borrow Fred’s word.
“What?” Rhea blinked. I guessed Pythias didn’t swear, either, although I was pretty sure I’d heard Agnes on more than one occasion. . . .
“That was the title Apollo gave me, when he was trying to make me into his stooge,” I told her. “I chose Lady Cassandra—”
“I’m sorry! No one told—”
“—but I don’t like that, either. Call me Cassie.”
She just looked at me. But there was suddenly a stubborn tilt to her jaw that hadn’t been there a moment ago. But which had been in full evidence when she’d been putting Fred in his place.
“You’re not going to call me Cassie, are you?” I asked.
“I will call you whatever you like, of course, Lady,” she said, and then seemed offended when I laughed at her again.
“Okay, look. We need to get a few things straight,” I told her. “One. The vampires around here aren’t going to eat you—or the kids. When they’re not here babysitting me, they have courts of their own, with plenty of followers more than happy to provide them with whatever sustenance they need. In fact, Mircea—that’s their master; he’s . . . kind of the big boss, you know? Over the whole clan?”
She nodded.
“He regularly turns away would-be servants because he has too many already.”
“He—people want to get bitten?” She seemed appalled.
She’d obviously never met Mircea.
“Yeah,” I settled for. “Some people do. But you don’t, and they know that, so you don’t need to worry, okay? They are here to defend us. They would have died last night defending us, if need be.”
Rhea looked troubled by that, as if she wasn’t sure what to think. But she didn’t question it. I’d bet the boys were going to get peppered with questions later, though.
Good; give them something to do.
“Second,” I told her, and sharpened my voice. “You are my acolyte. As of now. Later, if you hate it, we’ll see about changing that. But for right now, I need somebody who understands the Pythian position better than I do. And that’s you.”
She nodded, eyes wide and startled, and maybe a little terrified.
Welcome to the club, I thought.
“And third . . .”
“Third, Lady?”
“Third, how the heck do I jump back fifteen hundred years?”
Chapter Nine
“So these were Agnes’ private rooms.” I didn’t switch on a light, although there was a panel by the door. But a couple of sconces on the walls were set on low, plus the city-at-night haze outside of a set of floor-to-ceiling windows gave enough brightness to see by.
And there was plenty to see. Like plush carpets on highly polished floors, what looked like genuine old masters on the walls, and chandeliers overhead, softly chiming in the air-conditioning, of the kind that often cost more than the houses they decorated. And the whole was brought together by a color scheme in pale beige and blue, which along with the dim lighting had a very calming effect.
Or it would have, if we hadn’t been trying to burgle the place.
“Very private,” Rhea agreed softly, coming in behind me and quickly shutting the door. “No one came here except honored guests. And the acolytes, of course.”
The acolytes. Great. “Let’s hope we don’t see any of those tonight.”
“We won’t. They’re at the coronation.”
Yeah, that was the plan. We were a little more than a week back in time, on the night the acolytes were at my coronation in Washington State, watching me duel a demigod. Meanwhile another, later me, was here trying to rob their old boss. My life was weird.
And possibly also short, if they came back early.
“Any ideas?” I asked, glancing at Rhea, who looked like she belonged here in her formal, high-necked white gown. I, on the other hand, looked like a tourist that had somehow wandered in off the street, in jeans shorts and a tee with a picture of the blond Powerpuff chick on it. It showed her lifting weights and declared proudly that I was “Powering my Puff into Tuff.” Of course, it had been a present from Pritkin.
A very, very optimistic present. Especially now, when I wasn’t feeling tuff so much as gnawingly anxious. Being places where I’d almost died tended to do that to me.
I’d better get over that, I thought randomly.
Or my vacation spots were going to start getting really limited.
Rhea shook her head. “It could be anywhere. But she was using a lot, near the end. There should be some . . . somewhere.”
She looked around a little helplessly. Maybe because Agnes had basically had her own apartment on the upper floor of the London mansion that used to be the Pythian Court. There was a bedroom, visible through a doorway to the left; a sitting room, which we had entered into from the hall; and an office on the opposite wall to the right. And those were just the parts I could see.
“Take the bedroom,” I told her. “I’ll check in here.”
She nodded and hurried off, and I started searching the lounge.
It wasn’t easy. There was a massive three-sided sectional with about fifty pillows facing a fireplace. And a wall of shelving with a lot of drawers. And a bar with even more drawers and a ton of glassware. And what we were after was smaller than the average perfume bottle.
I just hoped Rhea would know it when she saw it, because I wasn’t sure I would.
I’d only seen it once before, back when I was just some tarot reader the Senate needed to run an errand for them. They’d suspected that some of the Pythian power had come to me, since the old Pythia was dying and my mother had once been her heir. But Mom had been disgraced, I’d never been trained, and they hadn’t been sure that whatever Agnes was leaking would be enough to do the trick.
So they’d sussed out a potion, called the Tears of Apollo, to help me out.
I’d all but forgotten about it since I’d ended up inheriting the whole shebang shortly thereafter, and hadn’t needed it again. But I should have wondered—why have a potion if the Pythia didn’t need it? I guess the answer was: because sometimes she did.
Rhea thought it was possible that we’d find some here, since Agnes had been knocking the stuff back like water the last year or so she lived. She’d been using it to augment her failing strength and allow her to still shift. And if it could boost a dying woman back to something like full power, Rhea thought there was a good chance it could turn me into super Pythia, bestrider of centuries.
Or at least, get Rosier and me back to the sixth century without ripping my guts out.
So I checked every damned pillow, only pausing occasionally to glance at the gorgeous curtains draping the windows. Or the dazzling rock crystal on the bar. Or what looked like one of van Gogh’s sunflower paintings glowing in a splash of moonlight on the living room wall. But the only thing I found was a good start on an inferiority complex.
The place looked like it could have come out of the pages of a magazine. Like the house downstairs, with its formal reception areas and opulent everything. It was impressive when you first walked in, but what would it have been like to live here? With not a th
ing out of place and even the folds of the drapes impossibly perfect?
I thought back to the cheerful mess at Dante’s, with the overflowing ashtrays and the zigzag fridge and the wine stain on the carpet that nobody had ever bothered to clean up because they were waiting for the next Apocalypse. This place smelled vaguely floral. Mine smelled like Marco’s cigars, takeout, and vampire feet. This place was quiet, serene. Mine was chaos on a daily basis. This place was . . .
Oh, hell. This place was Agnes, elegant and intimidating and flawless. It fit her.
It would never have fit me.
I wasn’t a champagne sort of girl. I was more the Bloody Mary type, specifically the kind they served in one of Dante’s bars, with fifteen olives, a bunch of chicken fingers, a cheeseburger, a fistful of onion rings, and a freaking pepperoni pizza, all stuck on skewers on top. It wasn’t elegant, but it got the job done.
Like me, usually.
Usually, but not tonight, because I couldn’t find a damned thing, in either the living room or the adjacent office-of-a-thousand-drawers.
I finally gave up and went to see if Rhea had had better luck.
And immediately felt bad for complaining. Because she was having to go through every pocket in every outfit in a walk-in closet as big as my bedroom. Maybe bigger, I thought, staring down a mirror-lined length of plush white carpeting to a tufted ottoman the size of a couch.
In front of a massive dressing table full of more freaking drawers.
“Shit,” I said, with feeling.
Rhea looked up. Her dark hair was frazzled and lint-filled, and her eyes were red from all the fibers floating around in the air. She looked like she wanted to agree with me.
But, of course, that wouldn’t be ladylike.
Since I’d given up on that a while ago, I said it again.
“Lady Phemonoe had a lot of clothes,” she agreed, as I made the long walk to join her.
“And makeup,” I said, staring at the dresser top. Damn; I knew drag queens at Dante’s who had less than this.
“She used a good deal of it, that last year,” Rhea said quietly. “I saw her without it once, when I brought up some tea. She was . . . haggard.”
“But she couldn’t afford to look like it.”
“The Circle expects . . . a certain standard.” Even from a dying woman remained unsaid.
“Yeah, well, the Circle can go . . .” I caught myself just in time, remembering Rhea’s more refined sensibilities.
But she didn’t seem to mind. If anything, she seemed curious. “You don’t fear them.”
“No.”
“Everyone else does.”
“Everyone else didn’t spend weeks getting chased by them all over creation,” I said, kneeling in front of the behemoth. “They spent the first few months of my reign attempting to kill me.”
“But they failed.”
“Not from lack of trying.”
“And then you helped Mage Marsden retake control and become Lord Protector again,” she said, as if reciting.
“It seemed the best way to get the bounty off my head.” And to get Saunders, his corrupt, homicidal, son-of-a-bitch predecessor out of office.
And goddamn, there were a lot of drawers!
“But he couldn’t have done it without you.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“He couldn’t have!” she said, suddenly vehement. “He didn’t move until he had the Pythia on his side. He wouldn’t have done half the things he’s known for without the Lady’s help, and yet he treats her successor like—” She stopped abruptly and pressed her lips together.
And then she went back to furiously sorting coats.
I looked at her for a minute but didn’t say anything. It felt weird to be defended, to have someone else act like maybe there was something wrong in how I was treated. I’d thought that way myself at times, but everyone else acted like things were fine and I was the one with the problem. Everyone except Rhea.
She actually sounded more offended for me than I was for myself, hence the weird.
But it was a nice weird.
I got busy, too, but the only interesting thing I found was a strip of paper tucked into the lining of a drawer. It was a group of pictures, actually, old and black-and-white and all in a row, the kind photo booths give. And while the faces staring back at me were familiar, they were so changed from the ones I knew that I barely recognized them.
Agnes had freckles; I’d never noticed them before under the war paint. And Jonas . . . I grinned in spite of everything, even in spite of last night. Because who could be furious with that?
He was standing behind Agnes, as if they had both barely fit in the little booth. And while she was trying to look prim and proper and posed for the camera, he was making a face behind her head. And with his shock of crazy hair even crazier than usual and his Coke-bottle glasses making his already large eyes huge . . . it was pretty damned funny.
Agnes caught him in the second pic, and grabbed him by the towel he had slung around his neck, as if threatening to strangle him.
Or not, I thought, grinning. Because the third image showed that his face had been dragged down to hers, abruptly enough that his glasses were half askew. And yet he didn’t seem to mind.
“Who knew the old guy could kiss like that?” I asked Rhea, passing her the picture.
She stared at it, as if needing to adjust her mental image. I didn’t have the same problem, since there hadn’t been much there to start with, at least not about Agnes. All I really knew for sure was that she’d been the perfect Pythia and had dated Jonas for decades.
It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I ought to know more than that.
“Where was she from?” I asked.
Rhea looked up. “Lady Phemonoe?”
I nodded.
“Pittsburgh.”
“Pittsburgh?”
“Yes, why?”
The Pythia from Pittsburgh. “Then why did she have an English accent?”
“She was trained here. The previous Pythia was British, and had her court here. When Lady Phemonoe was identified, or Agnes Wetherby as she was known then . . .” She broke off at my expression. “Is something wrong?”
Agnes Wetherby, the Pythia from Pittsburgh. “Nothing.”
Rhea gave me a little side-eye, but then she continued. “She was brought here as an initiate, at the age of six—”
“Six?”
“Yes, it was very late,” Rhea said, agreeing with a point I hadn’t been making. “But her parents were somewhat influential and fought the process. They managed to hold it up for more than two years.”
“Fought it?” I looked down at the picture in her hand, which suddenly seemed less happy. “You mean girls like Agnes are forced to be here?”
“It’s considered an honor to be selected,” Rhea said carefully.
I shot her a glance. “Did you look at it that way?”
She didn’t answer.
I went back to looking at the photo, trying to imagine what it would have been like to suddenly lose everything so young. To leave your family, your home, your friends. And come to a place where everything was different, from the food you ate to the clothes you wore to the people . . .
“It’s better than the alternative,” Rhea said, after a moment.
“The alternative?”
“The schools the Circle operates. The ones for magical humans with dangerous powers. They call them—”
“I know what they call them.”
I also knew what they really were. The “education centers” were little more than prisons for people with abilities the Circle didn’t like. People like my father, who had been a necromancer but had somehow managed to avoid them. People like me, because I’d inherited his power, not with dead bodies but with spirits. Which wer
e dangerous only to my sanity, when a passel of bored ghosts wouldn’t shut up already. But which would have been enough to have me locked away, possibly for life.
Only it seemed like that might have happened anyway.
“But clairvoyants aren’t dangerous,” I pointed out. “And I’ve seen plenty on the outside, hanging around, doing readings—”
“You’ve seen plenty of charlatans, Lady,” Rhea corrected gently. “Real clairvoyants are rare, and those powerful enough for the court rarer still.”
“But we’re not dangerous,” I repeated. “We’re not firestarters or jinxes or dark mages—”
“Knowledge is always dangerous, and there are always those who fear it. The Circle worries about what we might know about them—their numbers, abilities, plans—and what we might tell others. Unless . . .”
“Unless you’re brought up to think that the sun shines out of their . . .” I caught myself, but Rhea nodded, ducking her head so I wouldn’t see her smile.
I didn’t smile back. She didn’t know it, but she’d just added another problem to my growing list. A big one. Or more accurately, a bunch of little ones that added up to a big one, because I hadn’t actually planned on keeping my court.
I’d intended to talk to Casanova about getting the girls some rooms, yes, but that was temporary, so they’d have real beds to sleep in and enough bathrooms while I figured out what to do with them. And so they’d be away from me. Because shit happened to me.
Shit happened to me all the time.
But even without the safety thing, the plain fact was that I managed to screw up my own life on a regular basis; I didn’t have any business being in charge of anyone else’s. Especially in the middle of a freaking war. Peacetime, sure, run Cassie’s school for talented tots or whatever, but now?
Uh-uh. They needed to go. They needed to go back to their families, as soon as I figured out who they all were. They also probably needed major therapy after the last couple days, but that could be dealt with once they were safely away from me.
Or that had been the plan, anyway. But now I learned that I wouldn’t be sending them home, I’d be sending them to jail, and I somehow didn’t think Jonas would be willing to talk parole right now. And damn it, I didn’t need this!
