by Karen Chance
Rhea came over and sat down on the edge of the bed. She didn’t seem to know where this was going, exactly, which was fair because neither did I. But at least she was listening.
“I was thinking that it would be nice to make something like that for the initiates,” I said. “So that they could see their parents whenever they wanted. Like a living picture of home. Of course, I don’t know how many are touch clairvoyants, but you have to figure at least some . . .
“But then I thought that it might be strange, or even a little cruel. To see what they no longer have, and to see it like that, frozen in time. Life isn’t like that; it doesn’t stay the same. No matter how much we may want it to.
“I want the girls to have more contact with their families, so they don’t grow up feeling like orphans. But I don’t think that’s the way to do it.”
“You can grow up beside your family, and feel like an orphan, too,” Rhea said softly. “Unseen, unnoticed, passed over.”
“Like your mother passed you over for an acolyte’s position.”
She nodded.
“Is that why you don’t use the power? You think she wouldn’t want you to?”
“I know she wouldn’t. She said it was because she didn’t want me to be trapped into this life, with all its rules and restrictions. But that wasn’t the reason.”
I frowned, and sat back in my chair, although it was one of those straight-backed torture devices the Victorians loved, so it didn’t help much. I sat forward again. “Then what was the reason?”
Rhea got up, walked to the door like she was going to leave, and then turned around and put her back to it. “The Pythian power is . . . like nothing else. You can change the world with it, literally rewrite time itself. Therefore, the person holding that office has to be . . . extraordinary. Intelligent, thoughtful, measured, a true diplomat. But also a warrior: tough, capable and tenacious, able to fight when needed, even against terrible odds. She has to be strong but gentle, wise but kind, a mother to her initiates and a sage to the supernatural community. She has to be . . . perfect. Simply perfect. One in a billion—”
I couldn’t help it; I burst out laughing. I tried to stop, because it was mean, I knew it was mean, but I simply couldn’t. I laughed and laughed and then laughed some more. Until I was bent over and gasping, with tears running out of my eyes and in serious danger of hyperventilating. For a moment there, I couldn’t breathe.
Rhea helped me onto the bed, concern in her eyes.
“Should I . . . should I go get the Lady?”
I wheezed out something incoherent, but when she tried to go, I held on. “Give me . . . a minute.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” I wheezed a little more, and told myself to stop it before I started off again. Rhea didn’t deserve that. She’d been dealing with a lot lately: her mother being murdered, her father being less than welcoming of the daughter he hadn’t known he had, and the little matter of a war to fight.
It didn’t help that, up until a short time ago, she’d basically been the nursery aide at court, helping to look after the smaller initiates. Her biggest daily worry had been who had the sniffles and who had stolen whose crayons. Then her mother died, her house got blown up, and the new, possibly crazy Pythia made not only an acolyte, but her heir as well. It was enough to make anyone tense.
And me laughing at her wasn’t going to help.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. “It’s just . . . you realize, that if that list you gave me was true, I’d have to turn in my resignation? That every Pythia would?”
Rhea looked taken aback for a moment. “They would not.”
“Would.”
“Would not—” she said, before she caught herself. And frowned at me. “You’re a goddess—”
“Demi, and I mostly took after my father. Who was not exactly a pillar of the community, let me tell you.”
“—and I’m not! I’m nothing!”
“You know that’s not true,” I said, wondering why she couldn’t see the potential that everyone else did. Especially after some recent events where she’d helped to save my butt. “You’re Agnes’s daughter. And Jonas’s, too. You have all the ability you need—”
“I don’t! I can’t do it!” There were two little spots of color, high on her cheekbones, which happened when she was really upset. “I’d screw it all up and kill everyone—”
“—but nobody is going to make you do anything.”
She stopped abruptly and looked at me.
“I never wanted this,” I told her. “I wasn’t like all those acolytes, scrapping and fighting and clawing for the position. I was raised by an asshole of a vampire who exploited the shit out of my gift until I ran away. Then the power found me, plopped itself in my lap, and just refused to leave. I never had a chance to decline.
“Well, that’s not exactly true; I declined a lot, but nobody listened. And for a long time, I was really upset about that. People kept trying to kill me, on a daily basis for a while, and mostly it was because I was Pythia. My enemies tried to kill me, my allies tried to kill me, it was basically open season on Cassie Palmer. I still don’t know how I survived—”
“You’re you,” Rhea said fervently. “You’re special—”
“Hush,” I told her, and she stopped.
“But things changed, somewhere along the line. I don’t know exactly where. I remember staring at some sand that I’d accidentally brought back from an alien world, one of the hell regions. I was in my old bedroom at Dante’s, and it shook out of some alien harem-type pants I had on, because I’d just broken my boyfriend out of hell, and . . . it got to me. It was a big moment for me. Alien sand. It shouldn’t have been there, but it was, so I hadn’t been dreaming, you see?”
Rhea nodded, although her expression said that she still thought she should go get Gertie.
“Or the time I brought a time-traveling fish back in my bra,” I said reminiscing.
“In your—what?”
“Or the time I flushed a weakened god down a metaphysical toilet while riding in a flying car. Or the time I watched the ghost of that same god help to rip another one to shreds. Or the time—well, you get the idea.
“Gertie says that this life changes you, and she’s not wrong. I used to want . . . I don’t know. I don’t think I ever let myself really want things. With a crazed vampire after your blood, that sort of thing doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I used to daydream that, maybe someday, Tony might stop chasing me. Assume I’d died or something, since his people hadn’t found me. And then . . .”
“And then?” Rhea was suddenly watching me intently.
“And then a home, a family. A job where I’d wake up when the alarm went off in the morning, and come home to dinner around the dining table at night. A normal life, you know? No stress, no one trying to kill me, no reason to run. Roots, a permanent home that I could let myself start to love, because I’d be there long term, might even grow old there. Someone to grow old with . . .”
“Don’t you still want that?”
“Parts of it, yes. But I want other things now, too. The world is so much bigger than I ever thought, and I’ve seen so much more of it now. You know, I used to hear that Pythias died young, living maybe half as long as regular magical humans—"
“It varies, depending on how much they use the power.”
“Maybe. Or maybe you’re just seeing the part that they live in this time period. Agnes once told me that she mostly didn’t tell the Circle when she had a mission. She didn’t like having a war mage detachment sent with her. She didn’t need them; they just got in the way. And that was assuming they didn’t start blasting everything in sight.”
Rhea smiled.
“I’ve wondered since, how many years she lived in other eras that nobody knew about?”
Rhea shook her head. “You can’t do that. You can’t just travel with no reason—"
“Like you can’t have a child?”
Her face suddenly shut down. “She didn’t want to. I was a mistake.”
“She told you that?”
“Her whole life told me that. She competed hard to be Pythia, to win out over all the other acolytes. Do you think she wanted to jeopardize that . . . for me?”
I ate the last biscuit, as they called them here, because you can’t put back just one. “I think Agnes did what she wanted. I used to think she was so strait laced, so by the book. Because that’s what she wanted people to see. The perfect Pythia so that nobody ever scratched the surface. But underneath . . .”
“What? What was underneath?”
“What you saw today. She liked that fight. She was good at it—"
“Yes.” Rhea grimaced. “A little too good.”
“—so were you.” That won me startled eyes, but it was the truth. She’d been living out there. “Tell me something, if you leave court, what will you do? Knowing what is out there, how big the world and time really are, what will you do?”
“I don’t know. I never . . . I never thought about it. I was brought up at court; this was the only home I ever knew. Even when I was very young at the covens, I always knew I’d be coming here. I never even thought about leaving it.”
“Yet now you want to?”
Her face crumpled again. “I don’t want to; I have to.”
“Why?”
“I told you why! I know what you want—what you need. We’re at war and you have an heir who can’t shift. Or . . . who can’t do it well.”
“I’d say you did it pretty well.”
“But it’s not just about shifting! Or using the power. It’s about using it well, doing the right thing, making the tough calls—” She bit her lip. “You were right. I am scared. I’m terrified that I’ll fail you, that I’ll fail everybody.”
“Yeah. Been there.”
She looked surprised.
I managed not to roll my eyes.
“I’ve been selfish,” I told her, after a moment. “When I took this job, it was so overwhelming that I didn’t even know where to start. But then you came along, the perfect heir, and it just seemed like finally. Something went right. Something was easy.
“But I didn’t stop to think about what you wanted. And I’m sorry for that.”
Rhea’s hands covered mine. “Lady—”
“But I get it now. People keep telling me how to live my life; how to be and who to love. I’m not going to do the same thing to you. And it wouldn’t work, even if I did. You can’t do a job like this long term unless it’s what you want, not what somebody else wants for you. It’s a terrible job sometimes, the worst in the world. And at others, it’s . . . a revelation. Like nothing else has ever been or ever could be. But it’s extremes that not everyone can live with. You have the ability, Rhea; the question is, do you have the desire to do this?
“I want you to know that I’ll support you, whichever way you decide.”
“Thank you, Lady,” she whispered.
“You’re welcome. Now, get some sleep. We have a job to do in the morning.”
Chapter Thirty
“It’s—it’s not that I don’t think this is a good idea,” Rhea said the next morning, holding a lantern as we descended the basement steps once more.
“Good to know.”
“—but under the circumstances, I mean, well, after the last time—”
“Uh huh?”
“—don’t you think it would be better if, perhaps, I went and retrieved the information you need for you?”
“No.”
“I don’t mind at all, and I’m fairly familiar with—oh,” she said, and stopped on a stair, biting her lip.
“I’m Pythia,” I reminded her. “This is my library. And it is going to give me what I want.”
Gertie had said that I needed to learn to control my power, and this was certainly the place to start. But I needed something else, too, and I didn’t want anyone seeing that information. Not even Rhea.
Something had been bugging me, more and more, every time I thought about it. Especially now that Gertie had cleared away some underbrush. Because I thought she was right about the first and the third attacks, which could be blamed on the Pythian power playing with my shiny new vamp abilities.
But not the second.
No, the second was something else altogether.
I wasn’t the best researcher in the world, but I was going to figure out what had happened in that bath, and this place was going to help me!
“Well, yes, of course,” Rhea said diplomatically. “But it could give it to you through me, you see?”
I crossed my arms and looked at her.
“You don’t see.” Her shoulders slumped slightly, sending the lantern’s light splashing the ancient stones.
“It’ll be all right,” I told her, and tried to sound more optimistic than I felt.
I guess it worked, because Rhea nodded, and we prowled down a few more steps. Or, at least, I did. Rhea walked like a normal person, if a worried one.
She was going to mangle her lip if she kept that up, I thought.
I, on the other hand, was concentrating on battening down my senses. All of them, as I should have done the first time I came here. Only no one had told me this place needed a metaphysical hazmat suit!
“Put out the lantern,” I whispered, as we reached the bottom, and Rhea obligingly did so. We stood there in the darkness for a moment, waiting for our eyes to adjust. When I was finally able to see her worried features again, I risked a peek around the corner.
The room was dark and quiet. Well, mostly. There were some ominous flickers here and there, but nothing alarming. The strobe effect was nearly gone, with just a few, weak bubbles of illumination playing over the walls that I had to squint to make out. As if the lava lamp had run low on batteries.
“I don’t think they use batteries,” Rhea whispered.
I glanced back at her. “What?”
“Lava lamps. I had one as a girl, that I picked up in Tottenham Court Road. A pink one.”
I stared at her.
“It plugged into the wall,” she added helpfully.
I stared some more. “Did you . . . did you just read my mind?”
“What?”
“Lava lamps! How did you know I was thinking about them?”
“B-because you said?”
“I did not!”
“I—you—just a moment ago—"
Her eyes were huge, and I realized that I’d grabbed her shoulders. I pried my fingers loose and leaned back against the wall, swallowing. “Sorry.”
“You . . . you did speak out loud, Lady, I promise—”
“Yeah, I do that sometimes without realizing it. Bad habit,” I told her, breathlessly. “I’m just a little nervous.”
“Understandable.”
I was suddenly really grateful that Rhea was here and not Gertie. Who would have smacked me upside the head and told me to get on with it already. And she’d have been right.
I peered around the corner again.
Still dark; still quiet. There were a few signs of movement that I hadn’t noticed before, maybe because my eyes were now completely dilated. Odd squares of light, like single pages out of a book or unusually bendy T.V. screens, glowed weakly here or there. But I couldn’t make anything out on the surfaces, and unlike last time, they seemed to be having trouble sticking to things. They fluttered around, brushing up against columns or peeling off walls, only to waft gently to the floor like fallen leaves.
Harmless.
I took a deep breath.
“Okay. Let’s try this again,” I said, smiling reassuringly at Rhea, and stepped off the last stair.
And a dozen standing candelabras suddenly flared to life.
They’d been littered around the walls behind the pillars, but in the darkness, I hadn’t seen them. I almost didn’t see them now because of the glare, and because the room was suddenly filled with those strange, glowing images, whirling into the air lik
e paper in a windstorm. Only they weren’t flying randomly. They were banking around, they were flowing together, they were coming straight at—
Holy shit!
I yelled, Rhea dropped the lantern, and I stumbled back onto the stairs, causing the candelabras to abruptly go out. Not that it mattered, because the glowing shit storm had just crashed into me. I flapped my hands around my head, swatting at the swirling mass of images like I was trying to fend off a swarm of angry bees. Which is what they felt like, screaming nightmares at me as I pounded back up the stairs, all the way to the main floor again, where I staggered out, slammed the door, and stood with my back to it, breathing hard.
Before realizing that Rhea was still down there.
Shit!
I opened the door and pulled her through, then slammed it shut again. And stamped on some mad escapees that were fluttering against the carpet. A few acolytes or older initiates paused on their way up the staircase to watch me, but I ignored them. I was too busy killing a glowing page with a tiny dragon on it that was trying to set my foot alight!
I put out its fire—permanently—and looked up to find Rhea staring at me, too. But she didn’t say anything, which was one of the best things about her. She knew when to talk, and when to say nothing at all.
Unlike me.
“Option two,” I told her grimly, and she mangled her lip some more.
~~~
The stairs, I decided, were the problem. Something about those damned things alerted the cases that there was someone available for them to torture. So, okay, then. No stairs.
I materialized as far away as I could get, shifting beside one of the dark corridors on the other side of the big room. And immediately hugged the wall, breathing as quietly as possible with my heart trying to hammer out of my chest. The stones behind me were cold, and I could see my breath in front of my face, but nothing attacked me, nothing moved.
Nothing at all!
I stayed put for a moment anyway, just in case, but there weren’t any more weird flutterings. There weren’t any more lava lights. Just pulsating darkness, the still, quiet room, and the tiny clouds I was exhaling in relief.