Hunt the Moon cp-5

by Karen Chance

  I smiled a little at that, as I was supposed to. “So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that it don’t work. Every time he turns around, somebody or something is able to get to you. And it has him scared. And he’s not used to feeling scared. It’s been so long, I’m not even sure he knows what it is.”

  “Must be nice,” I muttered.

  “I don’t think he’s finding it so nice,” Marco said drily.

  I didn’t say anything, because there was nothing to say. I didn’t know how to reassure Mircea; I didn’t even know how to reassure myself. I was supposed to be this great clairvoyant, but I never saw anything good, just death and destruction.

  I really hoped that wasn’t because that was all there was to see.

  “I’m teaching the new guys how to lose at poker,” Marco said. “Want me to deal you in?”

  I shook my head. “I suck at it.”

  “Even better. They could use a chance to win some back.”

  “So you can take that, too?”

  He stood up with the liquid grace all vampires have, which was always surprising on a man of his size. “That’s the plan.”

  “I’ll take a rain check,” I told him as he helped me up. But I followed him into the lounge.

  Before I moved in, the suite had been used for whales, people with more money than sense who were comped expensive rooms because they lost a hundred times the price at the tables every night. This particular one had been popular because it included a small lounge area off the dining room with a pool table, which the guards had all but confiscated for themselves. They were usually there when they weren’t watching me paint my toenails or something, playing pool or, like now, clustered around a card table.

  Marco rejoined the poker game and I passed through into the kitchen. There was no aspirin to be had, because vamps don’t get headaches. There was beer, but the way my head felt, I was already in for it tomorrow, so I left Marco’s Dos Equis alone.

  I wandered around a bit, because it was too hot to sleep, and found a sofa-shaped hole in the living room window that was trying to air-condition Nevada. No wonder it was hot. A couple of the guards must have heard me swearing, because they stuck their heads in the door and stared at me for a moment, their fire-lit eyes glowing against the dark.

  I went out onto the balcony.

  It wasn’t nearly as large as the one on the penthouse upstairs, which had room for a pool, a wet bar and a dozen or so partyers. But I’d managed to squeeze in a lounge chair and a small side table, and had hung a set of wind chimes from the railing. They were tinkling now in the breeze blowing off the desert. It was hot, but marginally better than the slow roast I’d been doing inside.

  We were too far up to hear traffic, so it was still eerily quiet. But, then, it always was here. The vamps didn’t need to talk aloud and often no one did for hours, unless I asked them a direct question. I didn’t watch TV much, unless it was in my room, and the one time I’d turned on the radio, several of them put on such pained faces that I’d quickly turned it off.

  On a good day, it felt like living in a museum, but not as a visitor. It was more like being one of the exhibits a bunch of silent guards watched in case some bandit makes off with it. Tonight it was slowly driving me crazy.

  After a few minutes, I went back inside, glancing at the clock on the way. It had somehow survived the carnage, and it said nine thirty. I hadn’t slept long at all, then. Technically, it was still too late to be calling anyone, but maybe—

  The phone rang.

  I jumped back, barely stifling a yelp, because my nerves were just that bad. And then I stared at it, hoping someone would pick up in the next room so I wouldn’t have to be all cheerful. But no one did pick up. And then Marco appeared in the doorway, a longneck in one hand and five cards in the other.

  “You gonna get that or what?” he asked, his tone more curious than annoyed.

  I got it. “Hello?”

  “What are you doing up?”

  Pritkin’s irritated voice made me smile and I turned away so Marco wouldn’t see it. “Answering the phone.”

  “Very funny. Why aren’t you asleep? It’s after one.”

  I glanced at the clock again. I guess it hadn’t survived, after all. “It’s hot.”

  “It’s always bloody hot here,” he agreed, to my surprise. I’d never heard him complain about it, but I guessed for someone used to England’s climate, Vegas in August would kind of suck. And thanks to me, his bedroom had a big hole in it, too.

  “Don’t you have anything cold to drink?” he demanded.

  “Beer.”

  He snorted. “You’re going to have a murderous hangover as it is. Call room service.”

  “I could do that,” I agreed.

  He waited. I didn’t say anything, because I wasn’t that pathetic. There was no emergency, and what was I going to tell him? I’m hot and bored and freaked-out, and I want to talk to someone with a pulse?

  Yeah, that sounded mature. That sounded like a Pythia. I didn’t—

  “That the mage?” Marco asked impatiently, like he couldn’t hear every word we uttered.

  “Yeah.”

  “He coming over?”

  “Yes,” Pritkin said, surprising me again.

  “Then tell him to bring beer,” Marco said. “We’re almost out, and the damn room service around this place sucks ass.”

  “He said—”

  “I heard.” Pritkin rang off without saying good-bye, or anything else at all. So I didn’t know why I was smiling as I went to the kitchen to make sure we had enough clean glasses.

  “Damn it,” Marco said. “You didn’t tell him what kind. He’ll probably bring one of those weird English beers.”

  “Ale,” one of the other vamps said darkly.

  “Shit.”

  They went back to their game while I washed up. Because, apparently, master vampires would carry out garbage, but they drew the line at dishpan hands. Not that there were a lot, since most of my meals came on room service carts these days.

  I finished up and went to try again to get a comb through my potion-stained curls. I was still working on it when the doorbell rang. I gave up, pulled my hair back into a limp ponytail and went into the kitchen. Pritkin was already there, unpacking a couple of brown paper grocery bags.

  “Foster’s,” he told Marco, who was peering into one suspiciously.

  The vamp looked relieved. “It’s even cold.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “I thought you Brits liked it hot.”

  “Hot beer?” Pritkin looked revolted.

  “That’s the rumor.”

  “Because we don’t drink it iced over, thereby leaching right out whatever flavor you Yanks accidentally left in?”

  “Ooh, touchy,” Marco said, and swiped the beer.

  I looked in the other bag, but saw only a bunch of little boxes. I pulled one out, and it was tea. After a moment, I realized that they all were: peppermint, chamomile, green, black . . . It was like he’d bought out the store.

  “You need something to calm your nerves that isn’t going to knock you out,” he told me.

  “I don’t think tea is going to cut it,” I said drily. “Not with my life.”

  A blond eyebrow rose. “You’d be surprised.”

  He came up with a kettle I hadn’t known we possessed and proceeded to do tea-type things with it. I took an apple out of a bowl and set it on the table. “So you think it was Fey?” I asked, because I hadn’t gotten many details before I passed out.

  “I don’t know what it was,” Pritkin said, looking like the confession pained him. “The Fey do not have a spirit form, yet your attacker was incorporeal. And you were able to give me a description—a fairly good one for so short a glimpse.”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “It matters because if it was Fey, you should have seen nothing.”

  “You saw something,” I said, concentrating. A fragile bubble c
losed over the fruit, no more substantial than the ones the dish soap had left in the sink. And by the look of things, no more effective.

  “I have a small amount of Fey blood,” Pritkin said, glancing at it. “It sometimes allows me to detect when they are near, although it isn’t a reliable skill. In some instances, however, a Fey under a glamourie might look like what I saw—a dark cloud. That’s why I threw the nunchucks to you.” His lips twisted. “That and the fact that I was out of other ideas.”

  “Maybe I have a little Fey blood.” I didn’t really know enough about my family to know what I might have.

  “You don’t.”

  “How do you know? Can you see that, too?”

  “I don’t have to. If you had so much as a drop, the Fey family you belonged to could claim you. And then you wouldn’t have just the Circle and the Senate fighting over you; you’d have them, as well.”

  He was talking about the Silver Circle, the world’s leading magical association, which ruled over the human part of the supernatural community the way the Senate did the vamps. It was used to having the line of Pythias firmly under its protective thumb. That had been fairly easy, as the power of the office usually went to whomever the previous Pythia had trained, and that was always a proper little Circle-raised initiate. Or it was until me. The last heir to the Pythian throne, a sibyl named Myra, had also turned out to be a homicidal bitch, and the power had decided on another option.

  The Circle had been less than thrilled by its choice, but we’d finally come to terms. As in, they were no longer trying to play Whac-A-Mole with my head. Only now they seemed to think they had the right to make sure that nobody else did, either. That was a problem, because the vampires felt the same way and the Senate didn’t share well.

  The last thing I needed was another group in the mix.

  “I have absolutely no Fey blood,” I said fervently.

  “Trust me, they have checked,” Pritkin told me. “And you don’t. But that means you should have seen nothing.”

  “Okay, I get that. I saw it, so it can’t be Fey. But it also wasn’t demon or ghost or human or Were. So what’s left?”

  “That’s the question.” He leaned one hand on the table. “But the fact remains that it was driven off by cold iron. And only one species, to my knowledge, is so affected. Of course, it could have been a coincidence that it chose that precise moment to leave, but—”

  “But that’s a hell of a coincidence.”

  “Yes.” He looked at the bubble, which was shivering as if someone were blowing on it. “What are you doing?”

  The fragile shell burst, dissipating without so much as a pop. I sighed. “Nothing.” Obviously.

  “What were you trying to do?”

  I repressed a sudden urge to pound the fruit into pulp. “Age it,” I said tersely. “Jonas said Agnes could take an apple from a seed to a shriveled mass and back again, running through its whole lifetime in a few seconds.”

  Pritkin took in the apple, which was plump and round and perfect and had a healthy red blush. Just like all the others in the little bowl. Just like I’d never done anything at all. “You’re tired.”

  “And I’m never going to be attacked when I’m tired.”

  He frowned. “Taking yourself to the brink of exhaustion is not a good idea.”

  “So says the man who ran me halfway around a mountain today.”

  “That was before we knew you have a threat that can walk through wards. You should have been safe to recuperate here.”

  Safe. Yeah, like I’d ever been safe anywhere. I turned around and abruptly left the kitchen.

  Chapter Five

  The balcony was still hot and still creepy, the latter mostly due to the sign flickering on and off overhead, not in any pattern, but like it was about to go out. It wasn’t broken; the hotel had a hell theme, and the sign was supposed to do that. Sort of a Bates Motel pastiche, which was usually a little disturbing. But tonight, it fit my mood perfectly.

  Pritkin followed me out. He didn’t say anything, just handed me a cold Coke he’d dug up from somewhere. I guess the tea wasn’t ready.

  I took it without comment, feeling absurdly grateful. I didn’t really want to talk. I’d wanted him here, but I wasn’t sure why. Maybe just to have someone to drink with. Actually, that sounded pretty good at the moment. I sat on the seat of the chaise and he sat on the foot, and we just drank at each other for a while.

  After a few minutes, he leaned back against the railing, like maybe he wanted a backrest, and I shifted my feet over to make room. But I guess I didn’t shift far enough, because a large, warm hand covered my right foot, adjusting it slightly. And then it just stayed there, like he’d forgotten to remove it.

  I looked at it. Pritkin’s hands were oddly refined compared to the rest of him: strong but long fingered, with elegant bones and short-clipped nails. They always looked like they’d wandered off from some fine gentleman, one they’d probably like to get back to, because God knew they weren’t getting a manicure while attached to him.

  There were potion stains on them tonight, green and brown, probably from the earlier encounter. I wondered if they’d wash off skin faster than hair. Probably.

  I laid my head back against the plastic slats and looked up at the horror-movie sign. A breeze blew over the balcony, setting the wind chimes tinkling faintly. It was still hot, but I found I didn’t mind so much.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” he finally asked.

  “How do you know anything is?”

  He shot me a look. “You’re up at one a.m. after a day that would have put most marines down for the count. You’re pale and restless. And something unknown tried to kill you a few hours ago and almost succeeded. Have I missed anything?”

  Actually, yes, he had, but I didn’t want to talk about it.

  I rolled the can around in my palms, trying to cool off, which might have worked if it hadn’t already gotten warm. I put it down, but then I didn’t have anything to do with my hands. And that wasn’t good, because any minute now, they were going to start shaking again.

  I picked up a battered old tarot deck off a side table. “I’m fine,” I told him tersely.

  “Of course you are. You’re one of the strongest people I know.”

  It took me a second to process that, because he’d said it so casually. Like he was talking about the weather or what time it was. Only Pritkin didn’t say things like that. His idea of a compliment was a nod and to tell me to do whatever it was I’d just done over again. Like that was usually possible.

  But that had sounded suspiciously like a compliment to me.

  God, I must look bad.

  I flipped the deck for a while. It was old and faintly greasy, but it felt good in my hand. It felt right.

  Pritkin looked a question at me. “It’s . . . sort of a nervous habit,” I told him.

  He held out a hand, and I passed the cards over. He turned the pack around a few times, concentrating. “It carries an enchantment.”

  “A friend had it done for me as a birthday present, a long time ago. It’s . . . a little eccentric.”

  “Eccentric?”

  I took the deck back. I didn’t try to do a spread—that was just asking for trouble. I merely opened the top and a card popped out—thankfully, only one. Otherwise, they tried to talk over each other.

  “The Moon reversed,” a sweet, soothing voice told me, before I shoved it back into the pack.

  “Was that . . . it?” Pritkin asked, looking a bit nonplussed.

  “It doesn’t do regular readings,” I explained. “It’s more like . . . like a magical weather vane. It gives the general climate for the coming days or weeks.”

  “And what kind of weather can we be expecting?”

  “The Moon reversed indicates a pattern or a cycle that is about to repeat itself.”

  “A good cycle?”

  “If it was, I sure as hell wouldn’t see it,” I muttered.

  That go
t me a cocked eyebrow.

  “I don’t see the good stuff,” I explained briefly. “Anyway, the cards can be read a number of different ways. But normally the Moon reversed points to a dark time, like the dark side of the moon, you know?”

  “How dark?”

  “That depends. From a personal standpoint, it often indicates a time of deep feelings, confusion, long-buried emotions coming to the surface—”

  “And from a larger perspective? A national perspective?”

  “People with dark purposes, order moving into chaos, wars, revolutions, riots.”

  “Fairly dark, then,” he said drily.

  “Usually,” I admitted, before adding the standard disclaimer. “But tarot is an indicator, not an absolute. Nothing about the future is decided until it happens. We create it every day by the choices we make, good or bad.”

  Pritkin’s lips twisted cynically. “But so does everyone else. And not all of them are striving for the same things, are they?”

  “No,” I said, thinking of the war. I picked up my Coke and took a sip before remembering that warm Coke tastes like battery acid. I set it down again.

  “There’s a calendar on the fridge,” I commented, after a while.

  Pritkin didn’t say anything.

  “I don’t know how they got it to stay up there. I mean, it’s stainless. Nothing sticks to that stuff.”

  He drank beer.

  “But it’s there. And I see it every day. Right after I get up, I go get a Coke or whatever, and it’s—” I licked my lips.

  “The coronation.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah.”

  Sort of. In fact, it was a lot of things: problems learning about my power, the refusal of the Senate or the Circle to take me seriously, the lack of any useful visions about the war and now the fact that someone was trying to kill me. Again.