by Karen Chance
Somehow.” He looked utterly baffled. “Somehow you managed to tie him to you, to drag him into your fights, to endanger his life again and again. But no more!”
“That’s for the council to decide.”
“It’s not their concern!” Rosier snapped, and pulled on his son’s arm. “Any more than it is yours. Come, Emrys.”
Pritkin didn’t move.
His father made a disgusted sound. “You know how this will end!”
“He doesn’t know!” I said. “None of us do, until the council rules. And my mother said—”
“Your mother hasn’t seen the council in thousands of years! She doesn’t know anything about it! She was lying to you, girl, probably to get you to stop plaguing her life!”
I flinched, because I’d had a similar thought myself. But I didn’t really believe it. And even if it was true, it wouldn’t change anything.
What other choice did we have?
“I don’t know what will happen if we go in front of the council,” I told Pritkin honestly. “But I know what will happen if you go back there, back to that life. And so do you.”
He didn’t look at me—it was almost like he didn’t even hear me—and Rosier smiled.
“Yes, he knows. He’ll be the prince of a great house. You would have him a pauper. He’ll rule a large court, and have influence in countless others. You would have him a servant, running your errands, cleaning up your endless debacles! I will give him a vast kingdom—what would you give him?”
I looked up, so angry I could hardly see. “His freedom!”
Rosier snorted out a laugh. “That hoary platitude. Sometimes I forget what a child you are.”
“It isn’t childish to want to choose your own life!”
“No, it’s criminally naive. The only free person is the beggar in the gutter. And he’s only free to be cuffed about by his betters. Everyone of any substance has obligations. It is time for Emrys to live up to his.”
He pulled on his son’s arm again, and this time, it worked. Pritkin got up. And I grabbed his other arm in both of mine, because this wasn’t happening.
“Pritkin, please. Mother wouldn’t have sent me here if she didn’t think there was a chance!”
Nothing.
“Why won’t you play for that chance?” I said, my voice rising in panic because I didn’t understand this. I didn’t understand any of this!
“You’re better off if I don’t,” he told me, lifting his head.
“What?” I asked incredulously. Because he looked like he meant it.
“Finally, he comes to his senses,” Rosier said, pulling his son away, only to have Caleb step in front of him. “Have a care, war mage! I have taken no oath to spare you!”
“Right back at you,” Caleb said, eyes steady and feet planted.
“You’re as foolhardy as she is,” Rosier snapped. And then kept on talking, which he liked to do as much as his son didn’t. But I wasn’t listening.
“How can you say that?” I asked Pritkin. “How can you just give up?”
“I’m not giving up. I’m accepting reality.”
“What reality? You don’t want to go back there! And I need you—”
“You don’t, as you’ve made clear these past few days. If you can break into my father’s court, fight off the council’s own guards, force a meeting . . ” He ran a hand through his hair. “You’ll be all right, Cassie.”
“No! I won’t be! I need you—”
“Why? What can I give you that others can’t?”
“What?”
Green eyes suddenly burned into mine. “It’s a simple question. You said you need me. Why?”
“I—I told you. This job—”
“Which you’re handling admirably.”
“I am not! I couldn’t even get to my parents without help!”
“There are other demon experts—Jonas for one.”
“But I need you!”
And all of a sudden, Pritkin was backing me around the table. Not like his father had done, in a rush of anger, but slowly, relentlessly. To the point that I kept tripping over chairs.
“Then give me a reason.”
“I . . . there’s so many—”
“Name one.”
“I can name a hundred—”
“I didn’t ask for a hundred; I asked for one. And you can’t give it to me.”
“Yes, I can!”
“Then do it!”
“I . . ” I stared at him, because he looked like there was a lot riding on my answer. Maybe everything. And I didn’t know what he wanted to hear, because I’d told him the truth. There were literally so many things that I didn’t know where to start. How could he not see all the ways he’d changed my life? How could he not know—
But he didn’t. It was in the way he turned his head away, when I just stood there. In the way he closed his eyes. In the small, self-mocking smile that played around his lips that I didn’t understand but knew couldn’t be good.
I had to say something, and it had to be the right thing, and I didn’t know—
Pritkin’s eyes opened, but I couldn’t read his expression. For once, the face that was usually flowing with a thousand emotions was . . . blank. Resigned. He was already distancing himself, already leaving me in every way that mattered, before his body ever walked out that door.
And I didn’t know what to do about it.
“You’re right,” I told him desperately. “I can get others to do what you do. They won’t be as good, but . . . okay. It could work. But it doesn’t matter because no matter how good they are, they can’t replace you. They can’t because I don’t need you only for what you can do. I need you . . . for you.”
I’d learned that the hard way, all week. I hadn’t realized how much I’d relied on his scowls or his shrugs or his grudging looks of approval to help me figure something out—until they weren’t there anymore. Or how I could talk to some people about a lot of things, but only to him about everything.
And how unbelievably valuable that was.
I stared into his eyes, wondering how to get through. I sucked at emotional stuff; I always had. It was easier to make a joke or some stupid quip than to try to put into words emotions I was never supposed to have. Emotions that were dangerous to have, because they left you vulnerable and I’d learned early that vulnerability was a very bad thing.
When I’d heard that my governess had been murdered by Tony, I hadn’t cried. It had felt like someone had twisted a knife in my gut, but I still hadn’t, because I knew she’d hate it. Knew she’d view it as weakness. “Tears are useless,” she’d told me a hundred times. “Don’t cry; act!”
And I’d tried. I’d tried. Because mostly I agreed with her. But now I didn’t know what actions would help, and I didn’t have the words.
I didn’t have anything.
“You called me admirable,” I told him miserably. “But I’m not. I mess up all the time, and not all of them are things I know how to fix. The Pythia is supposed to have all this power, but there’s plenty I can’t fix! And some days, most days lately, I just feel like . . . like I’m going to explode. And there’s nobody around to tell me I’m being stupid or to bring me terrible coffee or to make me run a marathon until I’m too tired to worry about it anymore. Or just to listen—”
“To your unending babble?” Rosier snarled, turning away from Caleb. “If you want a confidant, buy a diary! My son is meant for better things!”
I met Pritkin’s eyes. “Yes. You are. But you asked. And I don’t know how to say it right; I don’t know what you want. I just know I need you, I need you, I can’t do this without you—” I was crying now, as I hadn’t for Eugenie, as I hadn’t for myself. But I couldn’t help it because I was screwing this up, I was getting this all wrong, and he was going to leave—
“Oh, spare us,” Rosier said, sounding disgusted, but I barely heard him. All I could see was Pritkin’s face. All I could think was that this might be the last time I ev
er saw it.
And that was enough to do what an army of demons hadn’t, and send me into a full-blown panic. “You can’t go! You can’t!”
Hard hands tightened over mine. “Cassie—”
“Just try. You just have to try.”
“It isn’t that simple. Even if—” He stopped.
“Even if what?”
“Cassie, the council . . . it isn’t like a human court, with rules and procedures and some semblance of justice. They are arbitrary and capricious at best, and at worst . . . they’re the definition of chaos.”
I blinked at him. Because I’d heard that word before. “Mother said chaos is like jumping off a cliff, not knowing what’s at the bottom,” I told him. “But she didn’t seem to think that was so bad. I didn’t understand what she meant then, but I think . . . maybe I do now. Sometimes there are no guarantees. Sometimes, if you want something badly enough, you just have to jump.”
Pritkin still didn’t move, but something shifted in his face as he looked at me. I wasn’t sure what it was, but his father didn’t seem to like it. At all.
“Fine,” Rosier said flatly. “We’ll do this the hard way.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
The hard way turned out to be pretty damned hard.
“Shit!” Caleb cursed as the door blew open and the bar was swarmed by a mass of familiar blue-robed guards. Who looked like they remembered us, too. And no way could the two of us take on that many.
But then Pritkin grabbed Rosier and threw him into the first wave. Who staggered back into a table full of the locals, sending mugs and arcs of hell juice flying. And knocking a bunch of dusty, gray-garbed patrons to the floor.
That didn’t seem to bother the guards too much, who were busy thrashing back to their feet, more than one of them drawing those damned curved blades. Until a gnarly, lumpy, gray-green limb, less like a hand than a proboscis, snaked out from under one of the patrons’ cloaks. And crumpled the nearest sword like tinfoil.
And okay, that works, I thought, right before guards and furniture started flying.
I had to hit the disgusting floor to avoid a chair, which splintered against the wall behind me in a hail of bits. But by then I was under the table, grabbing Casanova and the bottle he was still holding. “Give me that!”
“Getcherown,” he slurred, and grabbed it back. And blinked around blearily, before focusing on the veiled guard who had just dove after me. Only Casanova apparently thought he was also after his precious hell juice.
So he bonked him on the head with it.
“Was’ goin’ on?” he demanded as the guard slumped over, leaving us with a view of struggling legs and flashing blades. And a gray-green fleshy lump that appeared to be eating a chair.
“Bar fight!”
“Oh. I haven’t been in one of those in—” A curved sword cleaved the table clean in two. “And now I ’member why.”
We scrambled back as the sides fell away, leaving us staring at a massive blue-robed warrior, his blade sheened with black blood. I stared at him and he stared back, and underneath the veil he wore, I saw him smile. Because we didn’t have any weapons and Caleb and Pritkin had been jumped by half a platoon and the closest cover was a pillar a few yards behind him, which might as well have been on another planet—
And then the sword was slashing down and there was no time to scream, no time for anything except shifting or dying, and I couldn’t shift and I knew I couldn’t—
And I didn’t.
At least, not us.
I knew that because a second later, we were still sitting in the same puddle of spilled hell juice, inside the same cleaved-in table, in front of the same murderous guard. But the pillar that had been over there . .
Was now over here.
With a wicked-looking blade stuck halfway through the middle of it.
“What did you do?” Casanova screeched, his voice reaching into the falsetto. Maybe because the tip of the blade had stopped inches away from his crossed eyes.
I stared at the blade, and then out the window, which was still shuffling like a deck of cards. And thought maybe I knew. “This is the Shadowland,” I hissed as the guard started trying to pull his blade out.
“So?”
I grabbed Casanova’s head and turned it toward the window. “So you can think things how you want them!”
“But . . . but that’s just about how it looks.”
“You sure?” I said as the frustrated warrior gave a roar and punched the stubborn post.
Which promptly moved a foot backward and smashed into his face.
And punched him back.
“See what you mean,” Casanova said as the guy fell on his ass, an imprint of the day’s specials stamped onto his forehead.
And then several more guards rushed to their buddy’s aid. And had the table halves slung at their heads by a rapidly sobering vampire. And then we were rolling and yelping and crawling along the filthy floor, trying to keep the bar’s pillars between us and the guys trying to kill us.
But that’s a little hard when you’re rattling around between wildly shuffling pieces of wood, like a pinball in a particularly aggressive game.
Or make that impossible. A pillar suddenly appeared in the space right in front of me, causing me to almost break my nose. Casanova banged into another, fell back into a sprawl, and had a third slam into being between his legs.
An expression of mingled pain and fury came over his wine-flushed face. And then an unfortunate guard decided to hit a vamp while he was down, and lunged for him. And got batted back toward the door like a baseball when Casanova jumped up, grabbed a chair, and started swinging.
“Shift us!” he yelled.
“I can’t!”
“What?”
“My power is acting up—”
“What?”
I jumped to the side to avoid a guard who came sliding by on his back. And then again to miss the creature chasing him. And then had a third start a weird dodging dance with me, his sword and the pillar I was somehow keeping in front of me as a shield.
Because it looked like Rosier’s oath not to kill me didn’t extend to his people.
And, okay, this was no time for an explanation of the difficulty of using my power outside earth. Or the fact that I was having problems with it even back home. Or the fact that I didn’t understand what those problems were. There was only one thing that mattered right now, with Casanova staring daggers at me because I couldn’t twitch my nose and get us out of every possible situation.
“I can’t shift, damn it! Think of something else!”
But Casanova didn’t want to think; he wanted to bitch at me. “You came to hell with no way to get out? Are you insa—”
He broke off as three guards jumped him, apparently mistaking constant whining for weakness.
But Casanova wasn’t weak. He preferred to let other people to deal with his problems, preferably while he stood around and informed them about what they were doing wrong. But when it came down to it, he was perfectly capable of throwing down—and to the side, and through a window—as the guards quickly learned.
“Make for the bar,” he yelled at me. “The bar!”
And yeah, the massive old looked-like-oak-butprobably-wasn’t rectangle was the only cover available, except for flimsy tables that broke when you looked at them. But the bar seemed a long way away, and we were fast running out of pillars. And then I was out, as the one in front of me was finally hacked in two, and a blade came slicing at my jugular.
And missed.
Because the guy holding it lurched and staggered back, which made no sense.
Until I noticed that he was suddenly a lot shorter.
“Ha!” Casanova said, having just pulled the rug out from under him Shadowland-style, and wished away a large hunk of floor.
And then a customer was thrown into him and they staggered into me and we all went down. I hit a table and bounced off, only to get knocked to my knees by somebody’s el
bow. And then to the floor by somebody’s knee. And then my chin hit down hard, and when I looked up, dazed and hurting—
It was to see a bloody and thrashing Pritkin being dragged toward the door.
He was surrounded by what had to be a dozen demons, while Rosier and half a dozen more fended off Caleb. And suddenly, I got it. The old adage about possession being nine-tenths of the law must hold true for the demon realms as well, because Rosier was going to take him.
And then defy the council to violate his sovereignty and come take him back.
Our eyes met for an instant across the bar, and triumph flashed across his. Because we both knew they weren’t going to set a dangerous precedent for the daughter of an old enemy. Once Pritkin went back into his father’s realm, he wasn’t coming out again.
Pritkin must have realized that, too, because he was fighting hard. But he had no weapons and one of his arms was dangling uselessly at his side and the other had five guards hanging off it—who suddenly staggered back, screaming, when a fireball erupted around Pritkin’s shielded arm and set their robes ablaze.
But a bunch of reinforcements were streaming inside, despite the fact that the odds were already ridiculous. Six of them grabbed tabletops to use as shields and jumped Pritkin and the rest ran to help Rosier. Which left him able to turn toward his son and lift a hand—
And the fire abruptly went out.
Pritkin still had his own shields up, at least for the moment, but it didn’t matter. The guards had obviously had enough of trying to drag a reluctant demon lord anywhere, and with the extra numbers, they didn’t have to. They just hoisted him up, off the floor, and there were too many for even him to fight, and he was almost out the door—
So I did the only thing I could.
And moved it.
Specifically, I moved it onto the ceiling, which was the only place I could think of that might help. But that appeared to have surprised the guards, who were still trying to use it to come in. And who ended up falling through the roof instead, and onto the ones surrounding Pritkin.