Chapter Twenty-two
“You coldhearted son
of a bitch.”
Pritkin looked up
from perusing the stained piece of paper posing as a menu and gave
me what he probably thought were innocent eyes. They weren’t. I
didn’t think that was an expression he was all that familiar with.
“Is there a problem?”
“You feed me tofu
while you’ve been eating here?” I
gestured around at the cracked Formica, orange Naugahyde and grimy
windows of what had to be the greasiest greasy spoon in
Vegas.
“No one eats healthy
all the time.”
“That’s not what you
always say!”
“And do you listen to
what I say?”
“Yes.” He just looked
at me. “Sometimes.”
“Which is the point.
If I told you to eat well merely most of the time, then you’d do it
occasionally at best.”
I started to reply to
that, and then realized I didn’t have one. “So why bring me here
now?”
“Because some days,
everyone needs pizza.”
That, at least, we
could agree on. He ordered for us, which normally would have
annoyed me, but there wasn’t much of a menu to choose from. This
wasn’t so much a restaurant as a dive, and you either ordered pizza
and beer or you went home.
Unless you ordered
ice cream. I decided on a chocolate shake instead of more beer, and
although Pritkin didn’t say anything, his expression was eloquent.
“You’re going to run it off me anyway,” I pointed out.
“Anything else?” he
asked drily. “Onion rings? Pie?”
“They have
pie?”
“No.” It was
emphatic.
I was in too good of
a mood to argue the point. The seat was sticking to my thighs, a
broken spring was stabbing my left butt cheek, and the
air-conditioning, while present, was completely inadequate for
August in Nevada. But I was out. I’d won this round. And tonight,
I’d take what victories I could get.
“Are you going to
explain what’s going on?” he asked, after the waitress left. “When
I tried—”
“Wait a
minute.”
There was an old
jukebox in the corner, with dirty glass and yellowed titles, not
one of which was less than twenty years old. But it had Joan Jett’s
entire repertoire, so I fed it a couple of quarters and punched in
a selection. The sound quality wasn’t the best, but that wasn’t my
main interest, anyway.
“It’s Mircea,” I
said, when I rejoined him. “He’s got this crazy idea that you’re a
danger.”
Pritkin’s jaw
tightened. “I know.”
“You know? Has he
said—”
“He didn’t have to.
But you may assure him that I am no threat in that
regard.”
“I have,” I said
impatiently. “But when these things keep happening—”
“They do not keep
happening. It was one time.”
I frowned. “One
time?”
For some reason, he
flushed. “Of any consequence.”
“Well, excuse me for
thinking they were all pretty important!” Any time something was
trying to kill me, I took it seriously.
Pritkin ran a hand
through his hair, which didn’t need the added torture. “I didn’t
mean to downplay the significance of what occurred—”
“I would hope
not!”
“—merely to assure
you that it won’t happen again.”
“You can’t know
that.”
Green eyes met mine,
with what looked like anger in them. “Yes, I bloody well
can!”
I just sat there,
confused, as he abruptly got up and went over to the jukebox. He
received a glance from a woman in a nearby booth on the way, and it
lingered. He was still in the same jeans as earlier, having just
thrown a gray-green T-shirt over the top. Although you couldn’t see
much of it because of the long leather trench he wore to cover up
the arsenal all war mages carted around.
But he’d somehow
jammed everything under there without noticeable bulges, because
the dark brown leather fit his broad shoulders sleekly. Likewise,
the soft, old jeans hugged a rock-hard physique, and the T-shirt
brought out the brilliant color of his eyes. Pritkin would never be
conventionally handsome; his nose was too big, he missed six feet
by at least three inches and he only remembered to shave about half
the time.
But I didn’t have any
trouble understanding why she was staring.
“This is what you
listen to?” he demanded, his back to me as he perused song
titles.
“It’s ‘I Love Rock ’n
Roll.’ It’s a classic.”
That got me a dark
glance thrown over his shoulder, but he didn’t say anything. He
just dug a couple of quarters out of his jeans and made a selection
of his own. And oh, my God.
“Johnny Cash?”
“What’s wrong with
Johnny Cash?” he asked, sitting back down.
“What’s right about
him?”
“Country is based on
folk music, which has been around for centuries—”
“So has the
plague.”
“—longer than the
so-called ‘classics.’ For thousands of years, bards sang about the
same basic themes—love and loss, lust and betrayal—and ended up
influencing everyone from Bach to Beethoven.”
“So Johnny Cash is
Beethoven?”
“Of his
day.”
I rolled my eyes.
That was just so wrong. But at least “Ring of Fire” covered the
conversation pretty well.
I leaned forward and
dropped my voice. “I wasn’t trying to be rude a minute ago. I just
meant that, to the vamps, a demon seems like the most likely
culprit, and Mircea’s decided—”
“Demon?”
“Yes,
demon.”
Pritkin frowned.
“What do they have to do with this?”
I stared at him.
“Well, what are we talking about?”
“I’m not
sure.”
I took a breath.
“Mircea thinks you’re a warlock,” I said, slowly and clearly. “He’s
decided that’s how you’ve lived so long, why you’re as strong as
you—”
“Is that what he told
you?”
“Yes.
Why?”
He looked away. “No
reason.”
I waited, but he
didn’t say anything else. And after a pause, I soldiered on.
“Anyway, that’s why he told Marco to
lock you out for the night. He was afraid you’d call up something
else—”
Pritkin
snorted.
“—while I couldn’t
shift away.”
“Yes, I’m sure that
was his main concern.”
“Is there something
you want to tell me?” I demanded.
“No.” He didn’t say
anything else, if he’d planned on it, because the waitress returned
with our drinks. He poured beer, tilting the glass to minimize
foam, because this wasn’t the kind of place where the waitstaff did
it for you. “If you were merely instructed not to see me until
tomorrow, why go to these lengths?” he asked, after she left. “Why
not simply agree?”
“Because I couldn’t.
V—” I caught myself. The jukebox had gone quiet, and I was kind of
afraid of what he might select next. So I settled for modifying my
language. “They will push and push, to see where your boundaries
are. And if you knuckle under once, they’ll expect you to do it
every time.”
“Meaning?”
“That if I hadn’t
left, next time it wouldn’t have been, ‘It’s only for tonight,
Cassie.’ It would have been ‘It’s only for this week,’ or this
month, or this year. . . .”
“And they chose to
push when they knew you were vulnerable.” He sounded like he
expected nothing less.
“They didn’t choose,”
I said, frowning. Because Pritkin always assumed the worst about
vampires. “They probably thought I’d sleep all night and it would
never come up. But it did, and in their society, you can’t afford
to ignore a challenge like that. If you do, you’ll be labeled weak,
and that’s a really hard thing to undo.”
Pritkin looked
confused. “Are you trying to say that Marco wanted you to defy him?”
“This isn’t about
Marco. He was just following orders.”
“Then Mircea wanted you to defy him?”
I laughed.
“No.”
Pritkin was starting
to look exasperated. “Then what—”
“Mircea wants me to
do what I’m told. He’d love it if I did what I’m told. But he
wouldn’t respect it. He wouldn’t
respect me.”
I took a moment to
work on my shake, which was thick and rich and headache-inducing
cold. I’d sort of given up explaining any vamp to any mage, much
less Mircea to Pritkin. But he’d asked, and I owed him one, so I
tried.
“Mircea didn’t give
that order expecting me to ever know about it,” I said. “But he
did give it, and once he refused to
rescind it, it became a direct challenge.”
Pritkin’s eyes
narrowed. “And you couldn’t ignore it because it would have made
you look bad?”
I had to think for a
moment about how to answer that. It was surprisingly difficult
sometimes to put into words things I had accepted as the natural
order since childhood. But they weren’t natural for Pritkin, or for
most mages, other than for those who worked for the vampires
themselves. And they didn’t talk much.
“It wouldn’t have
made me look bad,” I finally said. “It
would have made me look like what he was treating me as: a favored
servant. Someone to be petted and pampered and protected—and
ordered around. Because that’s what servants do: they take orders.
But that isn’t how one of his equals would have
responded.”
“But he wouldn’t have
tried that with one of them.”
I snorted. “Of course
he would. They do this kind of thing all the time, testing each
other, seeing if there are any chinks in the other person’s armor,
any weaknesses that maybe they didn’t notice before. And if they
find one, they’ll exploit it.”
“It sounds as if
you’re talking about an enemy, rather than a . . . friend,” he said
curtly.
I shook my head.
“It’s part of the culture.”
“That doesn’t make it
right!”
“It doesn’t make it
wrong, either. It’s how they determine rank. If you knuckle under
to some other master’s demands, especially without a fight, then
you’re accepting that he or she outranks you. And afterward,
everyone else will accept that, too.”
“But you’re not a—”
Pritkin caught himself. “You’re not a master.”
“But I have to be
treated as one.”
“Why?” He looked
disgusted. Like the idea that any human might actually want to fit
into vampire society was unfathomable. For a moment, I thought
about telling him just how many humans were turned away each year
by courts much less illustrious than Mircea’s. But somehow, I
didn’t think it would help.
“Because there’s no
alternative,” I said instead, as our artery-clogging pepperoni
pizza was delivered. It was New York style, which meant the pieces
were so big I had to fold one over to eat it, and a trickle of
grease ran down my arm. I sighed happily.
Pritkin started
working on his own meal, but to my surprise, he didn’t drop the
subject. “Explain it to me.”
“There are only three
types of . . . us . . . as far as they’re concerned,” I said, in
between bites. “Servants, prey and threats. There’s no category for
ally or partner, because that requires viewing us as equals, and
they just don’t do that.”
“They are allied with
the Circle, at least for the duration of the current conflict,” he
argued.
“Yeah, well. Words
have different meanings to different groups,” I
hedged.
“And what does ‘ally’
mean to the Senate?” Pritkin demanded predictably.
I hesitated, trying
to think of a phrase that wasn’t “cannon fodder.” “Let’s just say I
don’t think that they’re planning on a real close
association.”
“They had better be,”
he said grimly. “We need strong allies. We have enough
enemies.”
There was no arguing
that.
“My point was that,
right now, I’m seen as an especially useful servant, like the
humans who guard their courts during the day or cast their wards
for them. And as long as I follow orders, accept restrictions and
do what I’m told, that’s how it’s going to stay.”
“Then defy
them!”
I gestured around.
“What does this look like?”
He shot me a look.
“You’re eating pizza. That is hardly defiance.”
“It is by their
standards.”
“I meant, get out.”
He gestured sharply. “Tell them to go to hell. You could
go—”
“Where?” I demanded.
“To the Circle? Where who knows how many of Saunders’s buddies are
still hanging around? To my lovely court?”
“You’re going to have
to set up your court sooner or later.”
“Later, then. After
the alliance.”
I reached for the
grated cheese, and he frowned. But I guess my health wasn’t the
cause, because what he said was, “What alliance?”
“Of the six senates?
What Mircea’s been working on all month?”
“What does that have
to do with you?”
I shrugged. “Having a
vamp-friendly Pythia is the trump card in his argument. It’s
something the vamps have never had. They’ve always felt like they
were on the outside of the supernatural community, that the Pythia
was part of the Circle’s arsenal, not theirs.”
“And now they think
the opposite.”
“They’re coming
around.” They knew Mircea. And when they looked at me, twenty-four
and fresh off the turnip truck, I doubted they had any trouble
believing that he could wind me around his little finger. That
wasn’t a problem for me as long as it helped us get the
alliance.
And as long as he
didn’t start believing it, too.
“But if you were
suddenly removed?” Pritkin asked. “If you were killed, for
instance?”
I shook my head. “I
know what you’re thinking, but that can’t be it.”
“Why not? You said it
yourself—you are the only Pythia the vampires have ever felt was
theirs. Your replacement would likely come from the Circle’s pool
of Initiates—”
“Which wouldn’t make
them happy. But they’re not talking because of me. They’re here
because of the war and because Apollo showing up scared the shit
out of them. I’m just something to sweeten the deal.”
“But if someone
didn’t know them well enough to know that—”
“Then they wouldn’t
know why they’re meeting in the first place. They’ve been using the
coronation and some other stuff as cover while they hash out the
details. Like who gets to lead—”
“And Mircea is
attempting to use you as an argument for his consul.”
“ ‘Attempting’ would
be the right word.”
Pritkin swallowed a
bite of fatty goodness. “Why? You just said—”
“That I’m seen as a
vamp-friendly Pythia, yeah.” I shrugged. “But it takes a little
more than that. Half the senators aren’t convinced that I know what
the hell I’m doing. It’s easy for them to imagine me being under
Mircea’s thumb; it’s a little harder for them to believe I’m strong
enough to be a real asset.”
“And without
believing it, they’re bickering and feuding over leadership instead
of doing anything about the war.”
“Pretty much,
yeah.”
“Typical.”
I didn’t say
anything; from what I’d seen, Circle politics were no different,
but I wasn’t in the mood to argue about it. “Anyway, the point is
that I’m better off where I am right now—”
“That’s
debatable.”
“—but to be able to
work with the Senate, I have to be accepted by them, and not as a
servant. A servant takes orders; she doesn’t give them. But that’s
sort of my job now, isn’t it?”
He looked at me with
exasperated eyes, brilliantly green in the harsh lights of the
diner. “The former holder of your office gave orders, and they were
obeyed.”
“Were they?” I
munched crust. It was slightly burnt on the bottom and chewy, with
little dough bubbles here and there. Perfect. “How often did Agnes
persuade the Senate to do something they didn’t want to
do?”
“I’m sure there were
any number of times.”
“Name
one.”
He
scowled.
“Yeah. They might
have fiddled around a little, debating some issue they didn’t
really give a damn about, and then let her think she’d had a
victory. Particularly if they wanted something in return. But to
actually give up part of their sovereignty to someone they viewed
as being in the Circle’s back pocket?”
“The Pythia is
supposed to be neutral.”
“Try telling that to
a vamp.” I caught his hand as he reached for more red pepper
flakes. “Seriously?”
“What?”
I nodded at his
current piece of pizza, which was almost completely red—and not
because of sauce. “You’re going to give yourself
heartburn.”
“I don’t get
heartburn.”
“What?
Never?”
“No.”
I let him go. That
was completely unfair. I ate antacids like they were
candy.
“Anyway, we weren’t
at war in Agnes’s reign, so it didn’t matter as much,” I said,
digging a half-finished pack of Rolaids out of my shorts. “It does
now.”
Pritkin cocked an
eyebrow. “And you think that going out for the evening is going to
make them respect you?”
“More than staying in
would have.” I chewed a couple of tablets while he thought that
over.
“It still sounds like
something an enemy would do,” he said. “Pushing you, testing
you—”
“An enemy would use
the information to hurt me,” I pointed out. “Mircea would never do
that. At least, he wouldn’t intend it
that way. But burying me under a stack of guards, restricting who I
can see, where I can go . . . it is
hurting me.”
“It’s also safer,”
Pritkin said, looking sour. Probably because he was being forced to
agree with a vampire.
“You can say that
after the last few days?” I sat back against the seat. “Nowhere is
safe. Nowhere has ever been safe. I’ll take reasonable precautions,
even unreasonable ones sometimes. But I’m not going to live like a
prisoner.”
“It’s only been two
months—”
“It’s been my whole
life!” I said, harsher than I intended, because nobody got that.
Not Mircea, not Pritkin, not Jonas, who would have loved to add a
couple dozen war mages to the crowd of guards already milling about
the suite. Nobody understood that ever since I could remember, I’d
been locked away. Like I’d done some crime I didn’t recall, but
kept having to pay for.
It was getting really
old.
“You’re talking about
that other v—Your old guardian,” Pritkin said.
I nodded and popped
another antacid. Tony had that effect on me.
“But you ran away
from him.” Pritkin sounded oddly hesitant suddenly, as if he were
sure I wouldn’t talk about this, that I’d shut down, shut him out.
Maybe because that’s what he’d have done, if the situation were
reversed. He was the most closemouthed person about his life of
anyone I’d ever met—okay, barring a certain vampire—and while I
knew more about him than most people, I didn’t know
much.
But I didn’t mind
telling him. In fact, I wanted to, wanted someone to finally get
it. “I ran away twice, actually. But I never really got away. Tony
was always there, at least in my mind, right on my
trail.”
“Because you set him
up for what he did to your parents.”
I nodded. “I tried to
ruin him, to get him on tax fraud, because I didn’t know how to
kill him. It didn’t work, but I knew he’d never forget it, never
stop looking for me.”
“And part of you
didn’t want him to.”
I had been scraping a
fingernail over the label on Pritkin’s empty beer bottle, but I
looked up at that. Because until he said it, I hadn’t fully
realized it myself. “Maybe,” I said slowly. “Maybe part of me did
want that showdown I never got. But I don’t know what I’d have done
if he’d come looking for me. I’m not a trained assassin, and even
if I had been . . .”
“You’re not a
killer,” Pritkin said flatly.
“Sometimes, I really,
really wanted to be.”
He didn’t ask, didn’t
say anything. But I could tell he wanted to. I hesitated, because I
hadn’t planned to talk about this. I never talked about this. But
there was no way he’d understand without it.
“Eugenie,” I finally
said, and I was proud of myself. It came out pretty
steady.
“Eugenie?”
“My governess. Tony
told his people that she’d helped me escape, that she knew where I
was. But he lied. I knew that even before I saw his face as she lay
there in pieces, bleeding out at his feet.”
“He killed her for no
reason?” Pritkin asked carefully.
I laughed and ripped
the label off. “Oh, he had a reason. He was a miserable, sniveling,
cowardly, vindictive bastard who was furious that some little human
had come so close to bringing him down. Somebody had to pay for
that. Somebody had to bleed. And if it was somebody whose death he
knew would hurt me, so much the better.”
And it had hurt, as
much as if I’d been there, bleeding myself. But even worse was the
crippling fear that had followed. I went from being somebody who
had risked everything just to watch him fall to being too scared to
leave my own apartment.
“The first six months
after I left him were the worst in my life,” I said. “Because he
wasn’t keeping me a prisoner anymore—I was doing it to myself. I
was so sure he’d find me, so sure I’d end up like Eugenie, that I
didn’t do anything. I didn’t go anywhere, except to look for work,
buy groceries—just what I had to do. And then I went straight back
home. People in actual prison probably have more human contact than
I did.”
“But you had a
roommate,” Pritkin said.
“That was later.
After I started going places again, meeting people . . . after I
figured it out.”
“Figured what
out?”
“That this was my
life now. And that I could let some bastard decide how I was going
to live it, let fear decide or I could decide. And I decided; I
wasn’t going to give Tony that kind of power. I wasn’t going to
give him any more of my life.”
“You just woke up one
day and stopped being afraid.” Pritkin’s expression hadn’t changed,
but for some reason, he sounded almost angry.
I flashed on my
performance a day ago, slumped in a sniveling heap on the bathroom
floor, and grimaced. “No. I mean, you don’t, do you? At least, I
never have. And I kind of think it would have happened by now if it
was going to.”
“Then what do you
do?” He’d leaned over the table, close enough for me to map the
ring of jade around each iris, and the pale amber-green layer that
darkened to golden brown around the pupils. There were striations,
spokes of gold, and specks of brown and emerald, all of which
blended to just green at any distance at all.
Beautiful, I thought randomly—for a second, until
he abruptly pulled back and looked away.
“You go on, anyway,”
I said, after a pause. “And, yes, you’re scared sometimes. But it’s
better than being scared all the time. Better than letting your
life be about fear and nothing else. So, no, I’m not going to let
them shut me away ‘for my own good.’ I’ll take precautions, as many
as I can. But I’m going to live.”
Pritkin ran a hand
through his hair. “Yes,” he said brusquely. “You are.”