by Karen Chance
“No. But Mircea seems to have fixated on her being okay. On her having had a decent life. I think he’d accept that—if I could prove it.”
“Yeah, but whatever kind of life she had, it was probably in Faerie. So how do we find out about it?”
I looked up from peeling a clump of cherry red polish off my big toe. “We?”
He looked slightly offended. “I used to be an investigator for some of my past masters. For Mircea, too. I could ask around.”
“Ask Caedmon,” I said, naming the leader of one of the three great houses of the light fey. “The soldiers who took her were wearing Svarestri armor, so he may not know anything—”
“But he’s got spies and informants. You know he does.”
I nodded, thinking of the stunning blond with the easy smile and the ancient eyes that didn’t match it. Caedmon did inscrutable almost as well as the vamps, but he always seemed to know everything. It was worth a shot.
“I don’t see what else we can do.”
There was a knock on the door.
“That’ll be your dinner,” Marco said, because he could probably smell it. He got up. “I’ll keep it quiet, and see what he can find out.”
“Thank you.”
A huge hand smoothed over my hair. “Don’t thank me. Just try to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“That being Pythia isn’t about being alone. It’s the opposite. You have people you can rely on. Stop trying to be the lone wolf and use your pack.”
“Or get eaten without them?”
A thick black eyebrow cocked. “You said it, not me.”
He left.
Rhea came in, barely having to duck under his arm, because there was something like a foot difference in their height. She sat a huge tray down on the table before I could move to help her, and whipped off the lid. And revealed what looked like a family-sized meal.
“Tami said to eat all of it, or she’ll want to know the reason why,” Rhea said breathlessly, sounding like she was quoting. Before biting her lip and looking embarrassed, because people didn’t talk to Pythias that way.
“Well, I can’t eat all this.” A linebacker couldn’t have put that tray away. “Help me out?”
She nodded, because Tami’s wrath was legendary. Fortunately, so were her cooking skills. We divvied up a wonderful saffron-y paella, a bunch of garlic toast, a hearty salad with more toppings than lettuce, and some peach sangria. It was still too much, even for two, but at least my head wasn’t swimming anymore. I finally sat back, feeling stuffed and happy and with a ridiculous fondness for all mankind.
Maybe we could end the war with Tami’s cooking.
Rhea, who had done less shoveling and more pushing shrimps around her plate, still looked troubled. I didn’t ask why; she usually took a while to come to the point, with her innate feistiness having to war with years of being seen and not heard. Feistiness usually won, but you had to give it a minute.
I didn’t mind, having half a glass of sangria left to polish off.
“How can you be so calm?” she finally blurted out.
I was sucking on a peach slice, so took a moment to answer. “About what?”
She stared at me. “About Lord Mircea! He’s basically the same as a rogue acolyte—worse, since he doesn’t have an acolyte’s ability or even an heir’s, he has yours. He’s a rogue Pythia—”
“And you think he needs to be dealt with.”
She leaned over the table. “He must be. Surely, you have to see that!”
“He’s needed for the war, Rhea.” She opened her mouth, but I held up a hand. “I know. I get exactly how bad this is. But losing the war would be bad, too, wouldn’t it?”
“We have an army—”
“One that’s little good without a leader. Not to mention that Mircea can’t go anywhere in time without me—”
“But he could,” she insisted. “With your power—"
“He could shift back in time on his own, yes, but how would he return? I wouldn’t be there to borrow power from—”
“Steal power from!” she said indignantly.
“—so how would he get back? Mircea is a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. He knows he needs me.”
But Rhea didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure? We don’t know anything about this Lover’s Knot spell, how it works.”
“And neither does he. I’m pretty sure you have to have the person you’re borrowing from there to, you know, borrow from. But either way, he can’t be certain, so he couldn’t risk it. He could get stuck, otherwise.”
But Rhea still wasn’t happy. “He knows you’d have to go after him. A Pythia can’t allow someone to remain displaced in time. Every day he was there—every hour—he would be a threat to the timeline. And as soon as you do—”
“If I do. I could send Hilde,” I pointed out. “Or some of the other girls.”
“You should be able to send me,” Rhea said fretfully. “I should be able to shift by now. I should be able to help you—”
“You help me in other ways,” I said, because it was true. Of course, it was also true that it would be really nice if she could shift, which was kind of a prerequisite to doing most of the other Pythian duties. But I didn’t say anything. Rhea looked miserable enough as it was.
“Would it help to see what the cards say?” I asked, and saw her eyes brighten.
I went over to my dresser and pulled out an old tarot deck. It had been bought at a five and dime by Eugenie, my former governess, which explained why it was your standard Ryder-Waite laminated cheapy. It had frayed corners, dirt in the creases, and a recent dunking had left some of the cards a little fuzzy to the touch. There was nothing special about it, except that Eugenie had had a witch enchant it for my birthday one year.
I still hadn’t decided if that was a good thing or not.
The deck almost jumped into my hand, and a card popped out, already happily burbling. “The Hanged Man shows a man suspended upside down in a tree. This is the card of seeing things from a different perspective. It tends to come up in a reading when old thought patterns and enmeshed ideas are holding the querent back, and a fresh way of looking at the world is needed. It is best embodied by the old saying: “What got you here won’t get you there.” If you want to make real progress now, you will need to stand old concepts on their head, and see new possibilities in longstanding situations.”
The card continued on, because they were all as long winded as hell, but I was no longer listening. The cards were merely a novelty item, but they’d proven eerily accurate in predicting the overall climate of a situation. Except for today, apparently.
Try as I might, I couldn’t see anything helpful in that advice. I already had a new situation—that was the problem! And the cheeky little bugger on the card, grinning at me from his ridiculous pose, wasn’t helping.
I shoved him back in the deck, and looked up to find Rhea watching me. “Is something wrong, Lady?”
I didn’t tell her to use my first name again. I’d given up. “No. Just wasn’t very useful.”
Of course, I didn’t know what would be. Any decision I could make regarding Mircea looked like a bad one, which brought up the other meaning of the card, the one that the deck might have told me had I given it time. Because the Hanged Man also appeared when a person felt stymied, with no clear direction, needing information or guidance they didn’t have.
Guidance, I thought. And then I was the one biting my lip. And thinking of my current mentor, if you wanted to call her that.
Crap, I thought. She was going to tear me a new one for this. But maybe, just maybe, she might have some advice, too. She’d forgotten more about the Pythian job than I was ever likely to know.
Damn it.
A soft hand covered mine. “Lady, are you sure—”
I forced a smile. “Yes, everything is fine. In fact, I just had an excellent idea.”
Rhea smiled back, the doubt clearing from her eyes. �
�That’s wonderful! I knew you would think of something.”
I kept my smile from wavering—just. “Pack a bag for a few days,” I told her. “We’re taking a trip.”
Chapter Fifteen
Of course, we didn’t go that night. I was whipped and still had a job left to do. Two of them, in fact. Not to mention that I had court in the morning, because some people had been really unhappy about the sudden cancellation, and a few of them were powerful enough to make a stink.
My new appointment secretary, Françoise, had talked me into a final session, the last before the invasion, to get them off our backs, and it was going to be a madhouse. I had a backlog of petitioners longer than my arm thanks to the war, and to a summer spent running for my life instead of sitting on my ugly throne, pontificating. Sometimes, I missed the running.
Other times not so much, I thought, concentrating.
“What are you doing?”
“Auggghhhh!”
A ghost had just appeared in my face, causing me to grab it by the throat and shake it, because my nerves were just that bad. So much so that I didn’t recognize my long-time companion, Billy Joe, until he screamed back at me. “Are you crazy? Let me go, woman!”
I let him go, prizing my hand out of his insubstantial flesh, and staggered back against the wall. “You scared the hell out of me,” I told him.
“I scared you? And what the hell is this?”
I realized that Billy had gotten tangled in my current project, which wasn’t something that would have bothered a normal person so much, but ghosts are not normal. They are also not used to being detained—by anything. For someone who could float through walls, suddenly finding himself enmeshed in a glimmering golden net was freaking him out.
“Get it off! Get it off!”
“Stop thrashing!” I said, calmer now that I’d had my second heart attack of the day. Or was it third? “Stay still and I’ll help you.”
But Billy was panicking, and either didn’t hear me or didn’t care.
“What the fuck?” he screeched, holding up a ghostly arm, which looked like he’d dipped it in especially rich taffy, the kind that stretched but didn’t break. He looked like a bug caught in a web, which wasn’t far from the truth, and wasn’t going to get better if he kept fighting it!
I finally gave up and just collapsed the whole thing, releasing him and ruining twenty minutes of hard work. But at least he stopped screaming. And stared at the golden mess now sagging limply from my doorframe in confusion. “What is that thing?”
“Time ward. Or it was.”
“What?”
“It’s something I’ve been practicing, but I’m not very good at yet.”
“Don’t they have a certificate or something, that you’re required to get before they let you do this stuff?” he demanded.
“Yeah, it’s called being appointed Pythia,” I said, and started over.
Billy levitated a little way off in a lotus position, like a cowboy Buddha, and watched me. After a while, he lit up a ghostly cigarette, obviously bored. It went well with the red ruffled shirt, the gunslinger hat, and the western jeans he wore, which were all part of the persona that a scared Irish boy had put together once upon a time to try to fit in with his new homeland.
That hadn’t worked out so well, and neither had his chosen profession of card shark, which had resulted in a deep dive into the Mississippi. In a sack. Tied up.
Fortunately, things had gotten better after death, and he’d finally found his place in the world at the Pythian Court. Coming from a big, catholic family. Billy felt right at home with a bunch of kids running around, especially when many of those kids could see him. It had been a revelation for a guy who had spent many decades virtually alone at the bottom of a river. Or with no one to talk to but me, after I stumbled across the necklace he haunted in a pawn shop, years ago.
We’d been the not-so-dynamic duo ever since, because Billy was not what I would call the most energetic ghost in the world. He spent more time perving around showgirl locker rooms or playing cards with me than he did terrorizing anyone. It was why we got along. Most ghosts were crazy; Billy was just . . . kinda lazy.
But I hoped he was feeling perky today, since I had a job for him.
I finally stood back to admire my handiwork, which once again looked like a glittery, golden spiderweb stretched over my door. My trainer could make a web that she could throw, like a fisherman’s net, but I didn’t have that kind of finesse yet. Which was too bad, because it would have really come in handy today.
Pythia stuff was hard.
“Now that you’re done,” Billy said, in his I’ve-been-patient-look-how-patient-I’ve-been voice, “I reiterate: what the fuck?”
“Language,” I said automatically, because some of the girls around here could hear him.
“Nobody’s in here but you and me, and why do you need another ward?” he demanded. “And how did that thing catch me?”
“Ghosts are ruled by time, too,” I reminded him. “At least on this plane.”
“So?”
“So a time ward fixes a person in time rather than space, but since they’re two facets of the same thing, it also fixes them in space. Or something.” I was still getting the theory down. “Anyway, it’s the only ward that works on everyone.”
“And you need a universal ward because?”
I told him.
“You really think a fey assassin is coming here?” he demanded, when I was finished. “He’d have to be crazy!”
“Anyone would have said the same about HQ. Who breaks into an underground warren full of crazy war mages?”
“Somebody who can’t get in here?”
I shot him a look. “Now you sound like Pritkin.”
“Maybe he’s right. It’s not like everybody and their dog haven’t been trying to assassinate you since day one. And with the war heating up—”
“Why waste time on me?” I finished for him, deciding that my ward, although a little lopsided, would have to do. I went over to the bed and started turning it down.
“Because you’re Pythia?”
“Exactly. I can’t go into Faerie. My power doesn’t work there, meaning that I’m not very important for the next phase of the war. You’d think our enemies would be more worried about people helping with the invasion.”
“People like Pritkin.”
I nodded. “And it was his room. Which is why I need a favor.”
“Oh, boy.” Billy put out his cigarette on his boot. “Here it comes.”
“You’ll get a draw,” I told him, talking about the energy boosts I gave him, to increase his range. “A big one.”
“Now I know I’m not gonna like it.”
I got in bed and sat back against the pillows. “I don’t like it, either, but I don’t know what else to do. Pritkin won’t listen to me—”
“Well, your name is Cassandra. Wasn’t she that chick who went around prophesying, only nobody paid her any attention and they all ended up dead?”
I scowled. “Not the time to bring that up!”
“So, I’m guessing you’d like a different name.”
“I’d like a different outcome. One that doesn’t involve Pritkin’s insides being on the outside!”
“Why worry about it?” Billy asked, looking at me slyly from under his hat. “You could just go back in time and save him. I mean you do that now, right?”
Of course, Billy knew what I’d been up to. His scheduled draws had been thrown off by my crazy schedule, and nothing matters more to a ghost than the energy that keeps him going. He’d figured it out almost immediately.
Lazy didn’t mean dumb.
Annoying, on the other hand . . .
“I don’t do that,” I said crabbily. “I never did that.”
“Then what were you doing?”
“Nothing! Except letting myself sleep and work at the same time, if you get me.”
“Not really.”
Maybe I was going to have to r
evisit that dumb comment, I thought.
“I wasn’t rewriting history,” I explained. “I’d go to a senate meeting overnight, because that’s when they hold them, just after I’d already had a long day. Then I’d pop back to shortly after I left and sleep through that same night. But all I was doing was sleeping, not changing anything.”
“So, you’re telling me if Pritkin got gutted by some fey, you wouldn’t save him?”
I glared at Billy. “Why are you harping on this?”
“Why are you evading the question?”
Damn it, sometimes . . .
“I’m not evading! I’m trying to avoid it becoming an issue!”
“Just wondering where the line is here,” he said. “You told Pritkin that you’d have been willing to go back and warn the Circle about that assassin. But that’s changing time, ain’t it? And then there’s Mircea—”
“I don’t want to talk about Mircea.”
“I don’t blame you. I always said that vampire was trouble, but did you listen? Maybe I should be called Cassandra.”
“You’d need a frillier shirt.”
Billy looked down. “This is plenty frilly. This was the frilliest they had.”
“Are you trying to tell me something?”
“After all this time?” he grinned. “Naw, I like girls. I was just a metrosexual before it was cool.”
“A Wild West Beau Brummel.”
“The Mississippi wasn’t exactly the Wild West, and you’re changing the subject.” He sat down on the bed, which meant that he floated slightly over top of it. “Where’s the line, Cass?”
“Where it always was,” I said, and Billy shot me a look. “It is! It’s just . . . things aren’t so simple, these days.”
“Were they ever?”
“Kinda, yeah. I used to just have to worry about keeping me alive. Now . . . I’m responsible for so many other people.”
“Bullshit. Unless you mean those little girls you got out there, that’s bullshit, Cass.”
I frowned at him. “It’s not bullshit. I’m Pythia—”
“And that don’t make you god, okay? You aren’t responsible for the universe, you’re responsible for the timeline. And, damn, isn’t that enough?”