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 got 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.
But the coronation
would do. It had become a symbol for everything, the whole damn
mess coming to a head, the fast-approaching day when I, Cassie
Palmer, would be presented as the seer of seers to the supernatural
world. Which would probably take one look and laugh their
collective asses off.
Not that I blamed
them. Two months ago—a little less, actually—I’d been a secretary
in a travel agency. I’d answered phones. I’d filed stuff. I’d
picked up the boss’s freaking dry cleaning.
On my days off, I
worked as a tarot reader, because a couple of bucks an hour over
minimum wage doesn’t pay the bills. Only that hadn’t paid them all
that well, either, because people didn’t like my readings. Nobody
really wanted to know the future; they wanted reassurance, hope, a
reason to get up in the morning. At the time, I hadn’t understood
that; I’d thought forewarned was forearmed.
Now I understood why
I hadn’t had too many repeat customers. Now I’d have liked a little
reassurance myself, even if it was a lie. And I really, really
didn’t want to see tomorrow.
Ironic that it was my
job now.
“It’s a formality,”
Pritkin said firmly, watching my face. “You’ve been Pythia since
your predecessor’s passing.”
“Technically. But I
haven’t really had to do anything yet, have I?”
He frowned. “You
haven’t had to do
anything?”
“Well, you know.
Nothing important.”
“You killed a
god!”
I rolled my eyes.
“You make it sound like I dueled him or something. When you know
damn well we flushed him down a metaphysical toilet.”
Pritkin shrugged.
“Dead is dead.”
He tended to be
practical about these things.
Of course, so did I
when the creature in question planned a literal scorched-earth
policy, starting with me. But that wasn’t the point. “I just meant
that no one’s expected me to do anything as Pythia,” I explained.
“But the coronation is coming up, and you know as soon as it’s over
. . . and I can’t even age a damn apple!”
I started to get up,
but that hand tightened on my foot. I wanted to pace, needed to let
off some of the nervous energy that kept me from eating half the
time, kept me from sleeping. And just when I told myself I was
being paranoid and everything would be fine, something tried to
drown me in the goddamned bathtub.
But I didn’t get up.
Because then I’d lose that brief, human connection. A connection
that shouldn’t have been there, because Pritkin wasn’t the
touchy-feely type. He touched me in training, when he had to, and
grabbed me in the middle of crises. But I actually couldn’t recall
him ever touching me just . . . because.
I sat back again. The
damn balcony wasn’t big enough for pacing, anyway.
“And yet, from what
Jonas tells me, you shift with more alacrity than Lady Phemonoe
ever did,” he said, using Agnes’s reign title. “And the power is
the power. If you can use it for one application, it would seem
logical—”
“Yeah, except it
doesn’t work that way. At least not for me.”
“It’s only been a
month, whereas most heirs—”
“Train for years. And
that’s just it. I don’t feel like I’ll
ever catch up. And even if I do, nobody is going to listen to
me!”
“And why not? You’re
Pythia.”
“No, I’m some kind of
. . . of trophy to be fought over. At least that’s how I’m treated.
So if I do get a flash of something, something useful, something
important, who the hell is going to pay attention?”
“The opposition,
apparently. They seem to insist on paying you a great deal of
attention.”
“I’ve
noticed.”
“And you don’t find
that strange? If you’re so powerless?”
I shrugged. “I’m
still Pythia. Killing me would—”
“Would what?” he
demanded. “Say they had succeeded tonight. What would it have
gained them? When the power leaves you at your death, it simply
goes to another host, probably one of the Initiates. There’s no
gain for the opposition there; in fact, they might have reason to
view it as a loss. For the moment, the Initiates are probably
better trained.”
“Thanks,” I said,
even though it was true.
“Then the question
remains: why you?” he asked, leaning forward with that sense of
pleased urgency he always got when debating. I tried not to take it
personally; Pritkin just liked to argue. “Why are they still
concentrating on you?”
“Why have they been
for the last two months?” I countered. “Apollo—”
“Was focused on you,
yes. But only because he had to be. He wanted to use your pentagram
ward as a direct line to your power. It was the one thing that
would allow him to break through the barrier and exact revenge on
those who had banished him.”
I unconsciously
rolled my shoulders, stretching the skin between the blades, where
my ward had sat ever since my mother put it on me as a child. The
big, saucer-shaped thing had never been pretty, and had somehow
ended up lopsided and droopy, like something a tattoo artist had
done after a late-night bender. But it had felt like a part of
me.
It didn’t now. Ever
since Apollo’s attempt to find a way back into the world his kind
had once misruled, everyone had been freaked out about it. They
were afraid I might be captured with it on my body, allowing our
enemies to use it to drain my power. So it remained in a velvet
case on my dressing table, like a discarded piece of
jewelry.
I’d thought I’d get
used to its absence after a while, the way you get used to a tooth
that’s been pulled. But so far, that hadn’t happened. It was funny;
I’d never been able to feel the ward, which had no more weight than
the tattoo it resembled. But I could feel its absence, could trace
the path where the lines ought to have been, like a brand on my
skin.
“But that also didn’t
work,” I said, because Pritkin was waiting for a
response.
“Which is my point.
His allies have to know that we wouldn’t put the ward back on you.
You’re safer without a direct conduit to your power plastered on
your back. And yet they remain focused on you, despite having a
thousand other targets.”
“A thousand other
targets who didn’t just help to kill their buddy,” I pointed out.
“This could be about revenge.”
“If they knew about
the role you played, yes. But how would they? The Circle contained
any mention of the aborted invasion in the press, to avoid a
general panic. And no one was there at the end but
us.”
“There was Sal,” I
reminded him. She’d been a friend—or so I’d thought—who had chosen
the wrong side. Or been ordered onto it by Tony, my old guardian,
who also happened to be her master. It had cost her her life and
given me one more reason to hate the son of a bitch.
Like I’d needed
another one.
“Yes, but she was
dead before Apollo was,” Pritkin reminded me. “She couldn’t have
told anyone anything. Of course, by now, his associates must have
realized that he was defeated, but there is no way for them to know
that you were the cause.”
I shook my head.
Pritkin knew a lot about a lot of things, but his understanding of
vampires was . . . pretty bad, actually. He’d picked up a few
things from hanging out with me, but the gaps in his knowledge
still showed once in a while. Like now.
“Sal was a master
vamp,” I told him. “Not a very strong one, but still. It carries
certain privileges—like mental communication. I don’t know if she
could contact Tony all the way in Faerie, but she might have told
someone else—”
“Say she did. Or that
they otherwise learned or guessed. If we presume revenge as a
motive, why now? They’ve had all month.”
“The coronation is
coming up—”
“And if they wished
to send a message, they would have waited to attack during the
ceremony itself. Not now, not here, where there was no one to see.
Where, even if they were successful, it could be passed off as a
tragic accident, not a victory for the other side.”
I crossed my arms.
“Okay. What’s your theory?”
“That this might not
have to do with the war at all. That it could be
personal.”
I didn’t have to ask
what he meant. I’d had the same thought as soon as I heard the word
“Fey.” Because in addition to all the people on the other side in
the war—the Black Circle of dark mages, a bunch of rogue vampires
and whomever the god had been buddies with—I’d also managed to make
an enemy out of the Dark Fey king.
I’m just special like
that.
“But there’s no way
to know for certain,” he said, “not without more information. Which
is why I need permission to go away for a day, perhaps
two.”
There were several
things wrong with that sentence, but I latched on to the most
pressing one first. “You’re going away now?”
“I don’t have a
choice,” he told me, searching in his coat for something. “I’ve
already called my contacts here, but given the limited description
we have, they wouldn’t even venture a guess as to what we’re
dealing with.”
“If you’ve already
contacted them, then why do you—” I stopped, a really nasty idea
surfacing. “You’re not going back there!”
“That is exactly what
I am doing. Cassie.” He caught my wrist as I started to rise. “It
will be all right.”
“That’s—Do you
remember last time?” I asked
incredulously.
Mac, one of Pritkin’s
friends, had died defending me on the one and only time I’d
ventured into the land of the Fey. Pritkin, myself and Francoise, a
human woman who had been stuck there for years, had barely escaped
with our lives—and only after I’d promised the Fey more than I
could deliver.
“We made a deal,” I
whispered furiously. “If you go back, they’re going to expect you
to honor it. And you know we can’t—”
“I’m not going to
court. I’m merely slipping in to speak with some old
contacts.”
“And if they catch
you?”
“They
won’t.”
“But if they do?”
“Listen to me. The
ability to possess someone is a rare talent, even among the spirit
world, and few manage it so easily. This thing, whatever it is,
must be very powerful.”
“Yes,
but—”
“If I don’t know what
it is, I cannot fight it. Neither can you.” He pressed something
into my hand. “But this may help.”
I looked down at a
small, gathered bag made out of linen. It had a red thread wrapped
around the top, with enough length to allow it to be used as a
necklace. Only nobody would bother, because the thing reeked like
old Limburger.
“A protective charm,”
Pritkin said unnecessarily, because I’d worn something like it once
before. Only I didn’t recall it being much help the only time I’d
run up against the Fey.
I didn’t recall
anything being much help.
“If this creature is
so powerful, you think this will stop it?” I demanded.
“No. But it will buy
you time. Seconds only, but that is all you need to shift away.
Keep your servant on watch when you sleep; when you’re awake, keep
your shields up at all times. You’ll know if an attack comes. If it
does, shift immediately—spatially, temporally, I don’t care. Just
get out. It cannot hurt you—”
“If it can’t find
me,” I finished dully.
“I’ll be back as soon
as I can manage it. And then we’ll formulate a plan for killing
this thing.”
I stared at the
little sachet, talisman, whatever it was in my hand. It felt heavy,
like there might be something made of iron in there. And faintly
greasy, as if some of the contents were sweating through the
material. Or maybe that was my palm.
“And if I order you
to stay?” I asked, after a few moments.
Pritkin didn’t say
anything. I looked up but I couldn’t see him very well. He’d leaned
forward, out of the sign’s bloody light, and only a little filtered
in from the lounge. But when he finally answered, his voice was
calm.
“I would stay. And
protect you as best I can.”
And possibly get
killed in the process, because he didn’t know what he was fighting.
It wasn’t said aloud, but it didn’t need to be. I’d felt that thing
go after him. I might have been the chief target, but he’d been on
the list somewhere, too.
And that wasn’t
acceptable.
But neither was the
alternative. I hugged my arms around myself and stared out at the
night without seeing it. I was seeing another face instead, the
cheerful, scruffy, laughing face of another war mage, one who
hadn’t come back. One who would never come back.
I didn’t realize
Pritkin had moved until he crouched in front of me. Green eyes,
almost translucent in the darkness, met mine. “I wouldn’t be going
if I didn’t think you would be all right,” he told me. “It is
doubtful that this thing will try the same approach again, now that
it knows—”
“I’m not worried
about me,” I whispered viciously. And as soon as I said it, I knew
it was the truth. Apparently, the surefire antidote for your own
fear is concern for someone else.
Pritkin looked
surprised, the way he always did at the idea that anyone might
actually care about him. It made me want to hit him. Of course,
right then I wanted to do that anyway.
“Nothing is going to
happen,” he repeated. “But even if it did, you don’t need me. You
don’t need—”
“That isn’t
true!”
“Yes, it is.” He
looked at me and his lips quirked. “You can’t fire a gun worth a
damn. You hit like a girl. Your knowledge of magic is rudimentary
at best. And you act like I’m torturing you if I make you run more
than a mile.”
I blinked at
him.
“But I’ve known war
mages who aren’t as resilient, who aren’t as brave, who aren’t—” he
looked away for a moment. And then he looked back at me, green eyes
burning. “You’re the strongest person I know. And you will be fine.”
I nodded, because it
sounded like an order. And because, all of a sudden, I believed it.
And because right then I couldn’t have said anything
anyway.
We stayed like that
for a moment, until Pritkin stood up, as if something had been
decided. And I guess it had.
I got up and walked
him to the door.
“You never told me
what you’re going to do,” he said, pausing on the
threshold.
“About
what?”
“The bloody
heat.”
The question
surprised me, because for a while, I’d forgotten all about it. Like
the sweat trickling down my back, and the soap scale drying on my
skin.
You’re the strongest person I know.
I looked up at him.
“I thought maybe . . . I’d go take a bath.”