by Karen Chance
That spell, of course, did not affect the acolytes, who all promptly shattered it around themselves, emerging back into real time like goddesses stepping out of a mountain of ice. Time shards spilled across the floor and then promptly vanished, being reabsorbed into the current temporal stream. And the girls—if you could call them that when there wasn’t one under a hundred—curtsied at me.
One did more than that. Annabelle waved and then squealed delightedly when she spotted my cat. She scurried over, as fast as her fuzzy slippers would allow, because the girls looked like they’d been rousted out of bed, too. And the abrupt movement after the general weirdness of the court was enough for Tom. He arched his back, hissing and spitting, something that did not seem to bother her at all.
“Oh, what a pretty boy!” she cooed, bending down to get a better look. “Isn’t he a pretty boy? Yes, he is! Yes, he is!”
“Annabelle, you’re making a fool out of yourself,” Hilde said, with a sigh.
“But he’s so pretty!” Annabelle looked up at me. “Is he yours?”
“I—yeah. Sort of. His previous owner died—”
“Oh! The poor baby!” she scooped him up, cuddling him in a way that should have gotten her a face full of claws, but Tom appeared to be a pretty smart cat. He’d already figured out which side the bread was buttered on. He looked at me smugly from inside the pudgy arms of his newest servant, as if to say ‘See? This is how I should be worshipped.’
“He’s so poor and scrawny though,” Annabelle said worriedly. “Just skin and bones and fluff.”
And two tuna sandwiches and most of our milk, I didn’t say, because she was already carting him off. “Come, sweet boy. I’ll get you some nom noms.”
“Annabelle! We are in the middle of something,” Hilde said irritably.
“Yes, something that’s over now,” Annabelle pointed out, and mouthed ‘sorry’ at me as she left. Her two cats immediately followed her out, to be sure not to miss out on any nom noms. Of course, that hardly even put a dent in the chaos. Rico remained frozen halfway through an impressive leap toward Rhea, although not entirely. A slowdown wasn’t the same thing as a time stoppage, because the latter was damned hard and I was already pooped. But it wasn’t far off. Which was why the long tails of Rico’s black silk shirt were fluttering out behind him almost like a cape—or like the best slow-motion capture of a superhero ever, framed against the starry night sky.
A bad boy Superman, I thought, admiring the Mediterranean complexion, well-muscled body and sleek, dark hair. The fangs were a little jarring, as were the currently glowing, golden eyes, but he wore them well. He made an interesting contrast to Rhea’s fresh-faced innocence, but then, opposites do attract . . .
“Lady Cassandra,” Hilde said heavily, bringing me back to earth. “How kind of you to join us. I thought you were ‘sleeping’.”
There were almost visible quotation marks around that last word, because Hilde had been hinting more and more openly that she knew about my little time cheats. She didn’t seem to approve, although she’d never said anything outright, probably because Pythias always did this sort of thing. I didn’t know what the problem was, but it wasn’t the one I was dealing with right now, so I ignored it.
Around here, you picked your battles.
“You mean you hoped I was,” I said, finally walking forward. And having to duck under some gently falling vamps in the process, who Rico had literally thrown off him and who were wafting gently toward earth. “What are you doing to my acolyte?”
“What had to be done,” Hilde said, indicating with a gesture the figure of Rhea, still huddled on the ground with her hands over her head because she couldn’t break free of the spell.
I sighed.
“She’s still learning,” I pointed out.
“On the contrary, that is precisely what she is not doing.”
“Hilde—”
“You have worked with her,” Hilde said, relentless. “I have worked with her. Every acolyte here has worked with her. She is not getting better.”
“She can’t even shift, Lady,” another one said timidly. I didn’t know which, because I was still glaring at Hilde.
“And shocking the shit out of her is going to help?”
“Possibly. It remains to be seen.”
“You are not going to torture my acolyte! That is not how we do things here!”
Hilde looked at the others, who had the grace to appear at least vaguely uncomfortable. Which they damned well should! Seriously, what the hell?
“Leave us,” Hilde said, and they fled, looking relieved.
“What the hell do you call this?” I demanded, reaching for Rhea to pull her out of the time spell.
But Hilde caught my arm. “Tough love.”
“This isn’t going to make her love it, Hilde!” I said, furious. “She already has some kind of mental block against using the Pythian power; you know that. So, your solution is to make her hate it more?”
“My solution is to keep her alive. Mollycoddling isn’t going to do that—”
“And this will?”
“As I said, that remains to be seen. But something must be done. She cannot continue in the position she holds if she cannot manage the simplest of spells.”
“She knows plenty of spells,” I argued. “She can protect herself with conventional magic; you’ve seen that—”
“But can she protect you? For that is her job as your heir, among many others.”
“I don’t need protection!”
“Until one day you do. When the day comes that you need her, and she fails you, how do you think she will feel then, Cassie? How much pain will that cause?”
I started to say something, but then caught sight of Rhea’s face, underneath her protective arms. She looked tragic, probably because it was women that she considered friends who were attacking her. But also defeated; this had been going on all month and the repeated failures had worn her down.
She didn’t smile so much anymore, I thought, remembering the shining eyes of the girl who had come here a couple months ago. Even with Rico, she didn’t. She wore the weight of someone who was out of her depth and didn’t know what to do about it, and it disturbed me that I was the one who had put her there.
Hilde looked at me kindly, but implacably. “It may be time to ask yourself, Cassie. Do you want her in this position for her benefit, or for yours?”
I didn’t have an answer for her. It was one of a whole host of things I didn’t know, because this job didn’t get easier as you went along, like I’d expected. It actually seemed to be getting harder, which was a problem since I was already giving a hundred and fifty percent. Literally.
I turned around and went back to bed.
Chapter Seven
A callused hand dragged slowly up my thigh, the rough patches catching here and there on the smoothness of my skin. I stretched and pressed back against a column of heat, with all the fascinating contrasts of hard and soft that indicated a male body. A familiar one.
Like the hand, which found its way to my stomach, and started teasing circles around my belly button. I squirmed, feeling a little ticklish, and it moved up to grip the softness of a breast. I heard my breath intake, and then release on a sigh as the warm palm engulfed me, somehow sending both calm and excitement coursing through my body. It squeezed and released, squeezed and released, before beginning to tease the tender nipple into hardness.
The exhale was more of a moan that time, and I felt myself try to press further forward into that touch, while the rest of my body was still pushing the other way. It felt awkward and strange, until the grip suddenly tightened, and I was pulled back hard. Sandwiching me between the strong hand and arm in front and the firm body in back, and ripping another sound out of me.
Some part of me knew that I was sleeping, that this wasn’t real. But it was being overruled by the parts of me that didn’t care. Which was most of them. Particularly when that same hand smoothed down my stomach agai
n, but didn’t stop there this time. It slid roughly over ribs and hipbones, to the smooth skin between my thighs, following the crease of my leg to even more tender parts below.
And then clenched in possession.
I gasped, and pressed backward, harder this time, and felt part of him jump in response.
I tried to turn to face him, wanting to kiss, to touch, but he wouldn’t let me. Instead, he pushed my legs farther apart and began to pleasure me with talented, wicked fingers. He knew exactly how to touch me, how to shudder my limbs and shake my body, how to send golden warmth streaming down every vein. Until I squirmed and writhed and cried out, half in desperation, and half in release, and barely noticed him turning me onto my stomach.
Rough hands smoothed over my back, down to the crease of my buttocks and back up again. Then they did it again, slowly, firmly, until I felt like I was melting into the bed. Like my bones had liquified, and I was no longer a woman at all but just a mass of pure sensation. I didn’t know how that was possible from a simple massage, but right then, I didn’t care. I sighed, and snuggled down, releasing all of the day’s tension in a shuddering sigh.
God, yes, that was exactly what I—
A door slammed open, jarring me awake.
I sat up, staring at the sunlight streaming through my balcony windows, because for once the curtains were back and fully open. And then I grabbed my alarm clock, which had definitely not gone off, and quickly understood why. It wasn’t plugged in.
My sleep fuzzed brain just looked at the dangling chord for a moment, uncomprehending.
And then I noticed Tami approaching the bed, holding a tray.
It was the heavy silver kind that they mostly don’t make anymore, because who wants to waste precious metal on embossed pomegranates and clusters of silver grapes? But Tami had a serious love for the antique dishes left behind by the penthouse’s previous occupant, and used them all the time, despite the fact that they weighed a ton and couldn’t be put in a dishwasher.
“W-what happened?” I asked, trying to get my sleep fuzzed brain to concentrate on something other than the freaking dishes.
“Nothing. You slept in.”
She put the tray down on my bedside table, and then walked off to grab a chair.
As usual, she was looking like a cross between an African supermodel and an Egyptian queen, with a thousand tiny braids that clacked together when she moved, because there were tiny glass beads on the ends. They complemented the softly draped top she was wearing, in a fresh summer green, and wide legged, white pants. She had gold eyeshadow on today, probably to coordinate with her strappy gold sandals.
She looked fresh faced and pulled together, with her makeup newly done and her eyes bright and sharp, because morning was her favorite time of day. Although I wasn’t sure how much morning was left, judging by the angle of the rays streaming in. And, damn it, I’d overslept!
I threw back the covers and started to get up, only to have an arm thrown in my way. “Not a chance. And if you shift on me, I swear to you, I will make your life hell.”
I slowly sank back against the pillow.
“There, isn’t that nicer?” Tami asked, sitting on her chair and picking up a plate. “Now, is this one of those days when you like hash browns or hate them?”
“I always like hash browns,” I said confused.
“That’s such a lie.” She doled out some potatoes from a silver serving dish. And then piled on a couple of sunny side up eggs, enough bacon for a lumberjack, and three pieces of heavily buttered toast.
“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” I asked, when she slid the mountain of food in front of me.
“No. You do that well enough yourself.”
Crap.
“This is an intervention, in case you were wondering,” she added, helping her own plate.
“Damn it, Tami! I don’t—”
“Have any jam? Here,” she handed me a dish—silver, of course—with half a dozen little jars in it. “With the hotel closed, they have tons of this stuff just lying around. Room service sent up a few cases, in case we could use it.”
“There’s no orange marmalade,” I pointed out, after pawing through it.
She rolled her eyes. “You’ll live,” and popped the top on a strawberry jam.
I ate jam on toast. And then half a pig’s worth of bacon. And then eggs and the damned hash browns that I no longer had room for, but had to eat now that a big deal had been made about them. Tami had also brought a basket of pastries, including an apple danish that was leaking cinnamon goodness all down one side, but I couldn’t. I honestly couldn’t.
It made me resentful.
“You unplugged my clock,” I accused.
She picked up the danish and deliberately took a big bite. “Uh huh.”
“Why? Now I missed—”
“Nothing. I cancelled all your appointments for the day.”
“What?” I stared at her. “Tami! I have court today—”
“Not anymore.”
“Some of those people waited weeks! You can’t just—”
“Oh, can’t I?”
And, suddenly, she was looking less the supermodel and more the queen, with narrowed eyes, flushed cheeks, and an expression that said I had stepped in it. Big time. Which I didn’t understand since I’d just woken up!
“Do you know what I overheard the other night?” she demanded.
“Uh, no?”
“Two of your acolytes came into the kitchen for a late-night snack. I was in the butler’s pantry trying to find the damned milk, and they didn’t see me. But the door is louvered, so I could hear them.”
“Hear them say . . . what?” I asked, pretty sure that I didn’t want to know.
She savagely ate danish at me. “Two words: time stealing.”
Shit.
“Look,” I began, but she wasn’t having it.
“You know, I wondered why you’d go to bed in one pair of pjs, and then I’d see you at the fridge half an hour later in another. But I thought, hey, maybe she was just hot or something. But no—”
“It’s no big deal. I just—”
“No big deal? Your schedule is so tight that you have to resort to playing games with time, just to satisfy everybody, and yet you still walk around like a zombie ‘cause you haven’t slept in—”
“I did sleep! I just slept—”
“Because I made sure you did! Like I shovel food at you, but you still lose weight ‘cause it’s hard to keep up with regular meal times when you don’t know what day it is, huh? My God, girl, I was starting to think you had cancer or something!”
“I’m fine. I needed to lose a few pounds any—”
“You did not!” The flush was becoming more prominent. “And here I wondered how you’d go to bed late and be up early, sit for ten hours listening to other people’s petty problems, play games with the girls and then attend a council or senate meeting for half the night, only to wake up and do it again! I was amazed at your stamina, told everybody I don’t know how she does it, I’d have hit the wall weeks ago. Only to find out that you fucking did!”
The last comment had been accompanied by a coffee cup being slammed down onto the tray, hard enough to rattle the now mostly empty dishes.
“But you being you, that wasn’t good enough,” she continued. “You decided to keep on hitting the wall, over and over again. Killing yourself to keep up with a schedule that no one could manage—”
“That’s not true,” I said stubbornly. “Other Pythias—”
“Other Pythias didn’t do this!”
“They did! Where do you think I got the idea?”
“That’s not what your acolytes said.”
Tami sat back in her chair with the remains of the danish, enjoying every flaky bit. And equally enjoying lecturing me, because she was winning. And she knew it.
“They said that, sure, some Pythias cheated a little bit, once in a while, either because it was crunch time or because th
ey didn’t want the damned Circle knowing all their business. They’d shift back, reclaim some time, and look all innocent if questioned—”
“Guess they didn’t have you for an inquisitor.”
She ignored that. “The point is, it was only done when there was an emergency—”
“Tami!” I looked at her in disbelief. “Ever since I became Pythia, it’s been an emergency. I live in an emergency—”
“Yeah. Only you can’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” She leaned forward and put a hand on my arm. “Everybody wants a piece of you, all the time, but you can’t give it to them. They’ll take and take, until there’s nothing left. That’s how people are—”
“You don’t get it!” I said, thrashing my way across the big bed and getting up, because I was starting to feel trapped.
“Then explain it to me.”
I glared at her, because the last thing I wanted this early was to bare my soul, but I knew Tami. Had known her off and on since I wasn’t any older than the group of magical runaways that she’d all but adopted. In fact, I’d been among them once, plucked out of a very scary shelter by a woman who I’d learned to look to for guidance and advice. But she couldn’t help me now.
I only wished she could!
“You know the Tears of Apollo?” I asked, referring to a potion that the Circle made for the Pythias, to increase our stamina.
“Sure. The stuff old man Marsden wanted to play games with.”
I nodded. Jonas Marsden, head of the Silver Circle and Rhea’s estranged father, and I had had some issues, when I first became Pythia. He’d wanted a compliant little puppet who would do what he said, and I . . . wasn’t one. There was still some tension there occasionally, but we’d mostly made up.
But he hadn’t restricted the amount of potion just for that reason.
“I . . . was taking too much of it,” I admitted. “Like, a lot too much.”
Tami frowned. “What are you saying?”
I looked up and met her eyes, because if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. “For a while there, I was sort of addicted.”