by Karen Chance
She was falling.
Because Agnes’ rooms were three stories up, and she hadn’t managed to grab the balcony in the half second she’d been beside it.
I was still staring after her, panting with effort and disbelief, when Rhea started screaming. “Lady! Lady!”
My head jerked around to see her holding on to the slumped body of the old war mage, trying to drag him toward me and to wrestle with the auburn-haired acolyte at the same time. It wasn’t working, because the mage appeared to be a dead weight. And because the acolyte had just gotten a knife against Rhea’s throat.
Suddenly, it seemed like everything quieted down. It didn’t; my peripheral vision still showed me cowering mages and shooting wards and acolytes keeping their distance, because they didn’t know how much juice I had left. For that matter, neither did I, but it was going to be enough. It was going to be enough to age her out of existence if she didn’t let go of my acolyte right fucking now.
And then the door slammed open and what looked like a whole platoon of war mages ran in, and I guessed they were ours. Because the auburn-haired witch looked from me to them to the mages in between. And made the executive decision to cover her ass.
“Kill them! They attacked us!” She pointed at her former allies, who had a half second to realize they’d been sold out before the war mages did what war mages do best.
And then Rhea got shoved at me, along with the old man she was still supporting. I didn’t understand why, until the redhead smiled. And tossed the knife even as I grabbed for them, a casual arc of silver in the low light, traced by the bright flash of a ward that didn’t know me, didn’t know me at all. Except as someone unfamiliar who was about to have a weapon.
Only I didn’t.
Because by the time it landed, we were sprawling in the middle of my foyer at Dante’s, me and Rhea and an old man pouring blood from a wound held together only by his own gory hand. While the other was pressing something hard and blood warm into my palm, something I couldn’t see because the gnarled fist had captured mine, the grip surprisingly strong. “Don’t let them—”
“It’s all right,” I said, clutching him, my head spinning from the shift, while Rhea scrambled to her feet and ran for help that was already bursting out of the suite. “You’re safe—”
“No! No one’s safe. Don’t let them . . .” He cut off, blood filling his mouth and choking off his voice.
“Get Marco,” someone said.
“He’s asleep—” Someone else.
“I know that! Go get him!”
The old mage grasped the front of my shirt, pulling me down. “Don’t—”
“Get him up. Get him off her,” someone said.
“Leave him alone.” That was Rhea.
“We need to get him to a doctor—”
“No, we don’t,” she said softly.
I stared down into watery blue eyes. The man was fading, and he knew it. His hand slid down my shirt, falling to the floor, but his eyes never left mine, although I doubted he could see me anymore.
“Get back,” I told the circle of staring men. “Trust me,” I told the mage, trying to sound confident when my hands were unsteady and my breathing was labored, and when I went to wipe the sweat off my brow, I streaked myself with his blood like war paint.
“Cassie—” Someone gripped my shoulder.
I looked up and spied Rico in the doorway. “Get them back.”
He didn’t ask why. But he must have done something. Because a moment later, I and the old man were alone in a widening stain of red, vividly bright against all that cool marble.
I laid him gently on the floor. “It’s all right,” I told him. “I’ve done this before.”
I don’t know if he heard, much less believed me. But the time bubble I summoned popped into existence around him a second later, as pure and perfect as I could have wished, something that had my breath going out in a trembling sigh. Because I hadn’t half believed it myself.
But it had worked. And like a similar one I’d accidentally conjured up a few days ago, it almost immediately began to have an effect. Gray hair lightened with streaks of red, papery skin turned firm and blushed with health, gnarled finger bones straightened and lengthened, back to more youthful versions, age spots receded into nothingness.
And blood continued to pour from the wound in his side, just as warm, just as terrible.
“Why isn’t it working?” I asked, looking up at Rhea, who was staring down at the man in shock, as if she’d never seen him before. And she probably hadn’t, not this version anyway, since instead of ninety he now looked about sixty, maybe younger. Younger, but no better. “Rhea!” my voice snapped. “What am I doing wrong?”
She looked at me, startled, and then her expression softened. “Nothing.”
“But he isn’t healing.”
She shook her head. “No. We—we can manipulate time, but not bodies. We still need healers—”
“But this worked on a vampire just a few days ago!” And it had. Jules, one of my bodyguards, had stumbled into a battle-strength curse that had done its best to erase him right out of existence. Instead, I’d erased it, by taking him back to a time before the spell was laid, making it as if it had never happened at all.
So why wasn’t it working now?
“Vampires aren’t human.” That was Marco’s voice, from behind me. I turned my head to see him, still half dressed, pulling one of the golf shirts he liked over the mat of hair on his chest. “And Jules was cursed, not stabbed,” he added, pushing a vamp out of the way and crouching down beside me.
“That shouldn’t matter! I’m making him younger. I’ve already taken him back before it happened!”
“You’re applying power to him; you’re not sending him back through his life,” Rhea said, looking at me sadly. “You can make him younger or older, but he will still be what he was when you began.”
And what he was, was dying, she didn’t add.
Because she didn’t have to.
“But Jules.” I gripped Marco’s arm.
“Way it was explained it to me, you can’t go around changing the components of a spell and expect it to work,” he told me. “And once that curse was cast on him, Jules became a component. But the spell had been cast on Jules the vampire, and when he became Jules the human, it unraveled. Or whatever magic does, I don’t know.”
“But . . . but he was human when he became a vampire, and I removed that—”
“You may have had some help there,” he told me gruffly.
“Mircea.” Marco gave me a nod I didn’t need, because I should have known. Mircea was a five-hundred-year-old senior master with a talent for healing. His power mixed with mine . . . Who knew what it could do? “Then can he—”
“He’s too far away.”
“He was just as far with Jules!”
“But Jules was his—his Child, his blood. This guy ain’t. And none of us has his skill.”
I stared from him to the mage and back again. And read the truth in Marco’s black eyes. He’d been a gladiator once; he knew battle wounds. Both the kind you survived, and the kind you didn’t.
No. No.
The bubble snapped, as useless as the one who’d made it, and the mage touched my arm. I stared down at him, furious and hurting. But I didn’t see any recrimination on his face. Only desperation to tell me something. I bent over him to hear the whispered words. “Heard them talking—”
“The dark mages?”
He shook his head slightly. “Acolytes. Before—” He cut off, choking.
“The acolytes want the Tears.”
A nod.
“What are they planning to do with them?” I didn’t get an answer, and his eyes were starting to go vague.
“His name is Royston,” Rhea told me, kneeling on his other side. “Elias Royston.
”
“Mage Royston. What are they going to do?”
He tried to tell me, but the only thing that came out of his mouth was a gout of blood. It splattered my cheek; I could taste it on my lips.
“Get her away . . .” One of the boys started forward; I didn’t see who. But Marco held him off.
“Elias. What are they planning to do?”
“To bring him back. Don’t let them. . . .”
“To bring who back?” I asked, afraid I already knew. “Elias. Who are they—”
“The old ones. One of the old—”
He went limp in my arms.
“Gods,” I whispered.
Chapter Twelve
Someone had cleaned up the glass in my bathroom, leaving just a new, blank backboard ready for a mirror that hadn’t arrived yet. I was oddly grateful that I couldn’t see what I looked like, couldn’t see the expression on my face. Couldn’t see anything but the bottle the old man had given me, gripped so tightly in my hand.
It was thick, brown, pitted glass, with little ripples I could feel under my fingertips. I held it up to the light and something moved inside, something dense and syrupy, something that didn’t quite obey the laws of physics. It was a little too sluggish here, a little too quick over there, climbing the sides of the container in ways a liquid shouldn’t.
But it had plenty of room, because the bottle was almost empty.
Maybe an eighth of the contents remained, answering one of the questions I’d had: why had the acolytes wanted the potion so badly if they already had it?
Because they didn’t have enough of it.
They’d searched Agnes’ rooms, just as Rhea and I had, but unlike us, they’d found something. Something that had whetted their appetites for more, so they’d called in their dark mage associates to get it for them. And they hadn’t cared what methods they used to do it.
I put the potion down and ran some water in the sink, scrubbing at the drying blood on my hands and face.
“Did I tell you how I lost my daughter?”
I looked up to find Marco standing in the bathroom door, his bulk almost filling it. It took me a second to register what he’d said, because it was so unexpected. And because my brain didn’t seem to be working so well right now.
“No.”
“You remind me of her. Thought so first time I ever saw you. Not in looks; she was dark . . . but in something. Some stupid sense of optimism, maybe.”
It felt like a slap. My body was bruised, but my nerves were worse. I didn’t need this.
“Then I ought to be reminding you of her less every day,” I said, and reached for a towel.
And had my arm caught halfway.
“No. You’re exactly like her. That’s the way she was, too. Never believed it could happen to her; never believed what men can do—”
“I’m more worried about women right now.”
“You’re not worried about anybody! Not enough!” It was savage.
“So where do you want me, Marco?” I asked, pulling away. And grabbing the damned towel because I was dripping all over everything. “Cowering under the bed? Praying that the big bad god of war doesn’t find me? Because I don’t think that’ll work.”
“And this will? Running around exhausting yourself, barely making it back—how many times are you going to try this shit?”
“Until the job’s done.”
“Are you doing your job? Jonas was right about one thing. You’re the only Pythia we got. Putting yourself in danger for no good reason—”
“It’s a good reason.”
“We both know what it is, or should I say ‘who’?”
I’d been drying my face, but at that I looked up.
“Everybody knows what you’ve been doing,” he told me.
“I doubt that.”
“Not the particulars, maybe, but the main point—yeah, I think we got that.”
“Good for you.” I pushed past him and went into the bedroom.
Marco followed. “Listen to me. You lose people in war, all right? You need to come to grips with that.”
I jerked open a dresser drawer. “I need? I’ll ask you the same thing I asked Jonas: what the hell are you saving me for? To trot me out when Ares shows up, and say hey, here’s our champion? Because that’s not going to work. I’m not humanity’s get-out-of-jail-free card!”
“I never said—”
“You implied it. Everyone’s always implying it.”
“Everyone is trying to keep you safe!”
“I’m not safe!” I turned on him. “None of us are safe! We’re all in this together, and if the gods come back, vampire or mage or Pythia or whatever isn’t going to matter!”
“If they come back. We don’t know—”
“We know. Rhea saw. She saw him come back, and not half dead like Apollo—”
“Rhea saw,” he repeated. “Why didn’t you see? You’re Pythia, not her.”
“I don’t know. I don’t see much anymore. Maybe the power is used up with all this shifting.”
“Or maybe there’s nothing to see. Maybe she’s wrong—”
“And if she’s not?”
“All the more reason for you to stay here, and not waste yourself—”
“I can’t stay here!” I slammed the drawer shut.
“You need to calm down.”
“I am calm! I just want to know what you or Jonas or anybody thinks I’m going to do for you if Ares comes back. Here’s a clue—I’m going to die, just like everybody else. Keeping me in reserve is no different from . . . keeping a queen in reserve on a chess board because you’re scared to lose her. Know how best to lose her? Lose the game!”
“We’re not playing a game,” Marco said as I started back for the bathroom.
“No, we’re not. But life involves risk.”
“Yeah, but maybe I don’t want to risk you.”
“Maybe it’s not your call.”
“Maybe I don’t want to see another girl I love lying bloody and broken in the damned road!”
I turned toward him and saw the agony on his face. Like it had just happened. Like all those years hadn’t mattered at all.
“She was eight,” he told me.
“You don’t have to do this.”
I might as well not have spoken. “I was away on a training exercise with the troops. She and her mother were back home, on the farm with my brother. He had a gimp leg and couldn’t serve, but he could wield a sword—I’d taught him that.
“And stupidly believed it would be enough.
“I still don’t know what happened. Never did. Just came back to a burnt-out farmhouse and the crisped body of my brother, still clutching that damned sword. And my wife and daughter in a ditch across the road, as if they’d been running away but hadn’t made it. And neither of them had been spared.”
“Marco—”
“Do you understand what I’m telling you? They were dead and worse than dead, and there was nothing left for me but burying the bodies! I don’t want to bury yours!”
“You won’t.” I barely got the words out.
“No, I won’t. I won’t have it. I won’t be there. You’ll die in some damned other place, in some other time, where I can’t reach you—”
“I’m not an eight-year-old child, Marco—”
“And you’re not your mother, either!”
It stopped me again, but not because of the violence. “I know that.”
“Do you?” He grabbed me, so lightning fast my eyes couldn’t track the movement. And the next thing I knew, I was over by the closet, facing the full-length mirror on the inside of the door. And a wild-eyed barbarian with tangled hair, blood-flecked skin, and a clenched fist.
It took me a second to realize it was me.
The stomach
of my T-shirt was completely drenched, parts of it were singed, and there was a bloody handprint on one shoulder. I stared at it, at the deep impressions where Mage Royston had gripped me so hard at first. And then at the elongated marks trailing down the front, as his strength failed.
A pulse started pounding in my head.
“Four months ago you were answering phones and making copies at a travel agency.” Marco grated. “I don’t care whose blood you have; you’re twenty-four. An untrained magic user with a damned tenuous grip on your power. And a sitting duck if you run out of it!”
For a moment, I saw myself through his eyes. Saw that girl I’d been for so long, small and weak and alone, huddled in the dark so the big bad things didn’t find me. Marco was right. That was who I’d been, who I’d been my whole life.
But it wasn’t who I was.
I wasn’t my mother, and I never would be. But I wasn’t that girl anymore, either. I looked in the mirror, and my own eyes stared back, but they weren’t the ones I was used to. They should have been clouded with fear, with uncertainty; should have been darting around, looking for the nearest exit, getting ready to run. Instead, they were angry, steady, defiant.
I wasn’t my mother.
I wasn’t even Agnes.
But I was Pythia.
I heard Marco curse. And slam out of the door a second later, because he could read expressions, too. He almost ran into Rhea coming in.
She flattened herself against the door frame, getting out of his way, and then stayed there, as if unsure whether she should come the rest of the way in or not. And yeah. I guess even human ears had been able to pick up that little discussion.
Right then, I didn’t care.
“I can’t use my power where I want,” I told her bitterly. “I can’t save who I want. What exactly can I do?”
She raised her eyes from the bloody bottle I was still holding up to mine. “Make an old man’s last moments free from torture? Give his death meaning? These are not small things, Lady.”
I stared back at her until her face started to blur. “Then why doesn’t it feel like enough?”
