Chapter Twenty-nine
“I’m glad you two are
having such a swell time,” Caleb said, slamming back in a minute
later.
I barely heard him. I
was too busy watching Pritkin, who had slumped over with his head
on the sofa arm, shoulders shaking helplessly, and what looked
suspiciously like tears leaking out from under his closed eyes.
“Not that bad,” he muttered, and then he was off
again.
Caleb looked at him
like he thought the guy might have totally gone around the bend. I
wasn’t sure he wasn’t right, because Pritkin rarely smiled, and he
never laughed. But he was doing it now,
and for a moment, I just absorbed the image. Of all the strange
things that had happened on this very strange day, I thought that
might just take the prize.
And then Caleb was
jerking me out the door.
“Are you lucid?” he
demanded.
“Pretty
much.”
“Good. Then maybe you
can tell me—” He stopped, because a door closed somewhere down the
corridor. Caleb’s head whipped around like a guy’s in a spy movie,
and then he hauled me across the hall and into another
office.
This one had boxes
lining the walls and stacks of files teetering dangerously high on
the only desk. There was also a trench coat on a hook on the back
of the door and he grabbed it, shoving it at me. “Do I want to know
what happened to my T-shirt?”
“It was
wet.”
“And why was it—No,
wait. Don’t answer that.”
“Because I wore it in
the shower!” I said, getting into the coat, which was about five
sizes too big. “We just talked, Caleb!”
“Then talk some more.
Like about what we’re supposed to do.”
“About
what?”
“About the fact that
John may have lost his ever-loving mind, but he’s physically doing pretty damn good
for a guy who was almost dead an hour ago! And people saw, okay? And by now they’ve talked—”
“Talked to
who?”
“How the hell do I know? We had maybe a couple hundred
people on the ground, with most of ’em still there.”
“Why so many? Can’t
you just go with ‘gas leak’ or something?” It was Dante’s default
excuse for the not-sooccasional weirdness that went
on.
“For the restaurant,
maybe. It may even be partly true in that case. But that’s still
leaves us with two wrecked buildings, a trashed parking garage and
four thousand pounds of dragon flesh
bleeding out in the middle of a—”
“Okay, I get it. We
made a mess.”
“A mess? Do you have any idea how many memories, how
many video monitors, how many—”
“I said, I get
it.”
“I don’t think you
do! But right now, I’m not even worried about all of that. Do you
know what has me freaking the hell out? Would you care to take a
wild fucking guess?”
I didn’t say
anything.
“Let me give you some
help,” he said savagely, beginning to pace around the tiny space
between the desk and the door. “I keep going over and over it,
trying to find another explanation. Telling myself I must be crazy.
Telling myself I must be wrong. But two plus two equals four. And
incubus plus human equals—”
“Stop right
there.”
“Like hell I’ll
stop!” He whipped around to face me, surprisingly fast for such a
big guy. “Do you have any idea what’s
going to happen when everyone else does the fucking
math—”
“They’re not going to
do it.”
“Oh, really? Let’s go
through it, shall we? John gets hit with a crap load of dragon
blood, enough to take out a fucking platoon. The usual spells for
stopping shit like that aren’t worth a damn, and every single
person in that car knows what’s what. I do, too, but I’ve known him
a long time, so I’m gonna see to it that he gets back here, even if
it’s only to have the docs hang a damn toe tag on
him!”
“Caleb—”
“I figured that’s
what you were doing, too, and when you ordered those men out, I
guessed you just wanted to give him some privacy in his last
moments. Thought that ‘if you want him to live’ shit was just to
get ’em moving or to give yourself some hope or something. But lo
and behold. What happens?”
“Caleb—”
“You start putting
the moves on what is basically a corpse, and then talking when there’s nobody there,
and then some weird-ass shit starts going down with sparkly light
and heat and John comes back to life and jumps your goddamn
bones—”
“Technically, he
didn’t—”
“And the next thing I
know, he’s doing just fine. He’s fucking dandy. And you’re the one
who looks like a corpse and almost are one—”
“I was
not.”
“And he’s all
energized with creepy, glowing eyes and enough power radiating off
him to take on an army, and there’s only one
way he got it, okay?”
“He could be
possessed by an incubus,” I argued. “He doesn’t actually have to
be—”
Caleb looked
disgusted. “Sell it somewhere else. Everyone knows John is half
demon—it’s not the kind of thing you can hide from the sort of
work-up the Corps does on its recruits. But we didn’t know what
kind. He told us Ahhazu—”
“Imagine
that.”
“—but they’re
minor-level functionaries. They can’t do that kind of shit. And a
demon can’t possess another demon—or a half, for that matter. So
two plus two, okay? His other half ain’t Ahhazu, it’s incubus. And
there’s only one half human, half incubus ever been
recorded—”
“Maybe Pritkin’s
birth wasn’t recorded.”
“Bullshit. You know damn well who we got—”
“Don’t say
it.”
“—next door, and John
Pritkin ain’t his—”
“I’m warning
you.”
“—name. It’s
motherfucking Mer—”
“Say it and spend the
rest of your life in the Jurassic,” I
hissed.
We just stood there
and breathed at each other.
“You gonna tell me
I’m wrong?” Caleb finally said.
“I’m not going to
tell you anything. Which is exactly what you’re going to tell
everyone else.”
“Okay.” He ran a hand
over his buzz cut, which was too short for him to tear out. Which
was probably just as well, judging from his expression. “Just for
the hell of it, let’s say I don’t want to rat him out. Let’s say
I’ve worked with him long enough that maybe I don’t want to see
what’ll happen after everyone finds out he had another name once.
Let’s say I’m on your side. What the fuck do you expect me to do? I
already told you, too many people saw.
And there’s gonna have to be a report, and—”
“They didn’t see what
happened in the car. They only know—”
“That he’s alive when
he shouldn’t be. And that’s more than enough to pique some
goddamned curiosity!”
“All right!” I said.
“Give me a minute.”
“I hope you don’t
need much more than that,” he said grimly. “We got lucky when we
came in, with almost everybody on shift called out to that disaster
you left. But they’re going to be back soon, plus the first day
crew is going to be coming on and—”
“How
long?”
He glanced at his
watch. “Less than an hour before the day crew shows up. And
probably nowhere near that long before the first groups start
coming back from Disaster City. They’re gonna need to make out
reports before they go off the clock, and that takes—”
“So how long do we
have?”
Black eyes met mine.
“Minutes.”
“Then we had best
make good use of them,” Pritkin said, opening the door behind us.
“And you forgot a silence spell.”
Caleb cursed. “I’m
losing it.”
“With
cause.”
“Damn straight with
cause!” Caleb gazed at his friend, his eyes scanning the familiar
features, as if he expected him to have suddenly sprouted
horns.
“What is it?” Pritkin
asked stiffly.
Caleb didn’t answer
for a moment; then he shrugged. “Nothing. Just never met a legend
before.”
“A legend is merely a
man history decided to bugger,” Pritkin said harshly. “I’m the same
person I always was.”
“Yeah, maybe. It’s
gonna take some getting used to.”
“Then get used to
it.”
“Don’t take that tone
with me when I’m risking my ass—”
“Then don’t look at
me as if I’m a laboratory specimen on a slide!”
“Well, forgive the
hell out of me for being a little fucking traumatized—”
“Will you two
shut up?” I yelled.
They both turned to
look at me. I hadn’t actually intended to shout, but it seemed to
have worked. And Pritkin was right; we needed to figure something
out before Jonas showed up with his fussy little ways and his
too-sharp blue eyes and his seemingly innocent questions, and we
were screwed.
“We need to deal with
this,” I told them.
“I think that’s been
established,” Caleb said nastily. “But unless you
know—”
“What I know is that
people like simple explanations for things. Especially weird
things—”
“According to
who?”
To every vampire I
ever met, I didn’t say, because it wouldn’t have helped. “It’s a
fact of human nature,” I said instead. “People don’t like
complicated answers. They like simple, easy-to-imagine ones.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if you give them two
solutions—a really complex truth or a really simple lie—they’ll
take the lie. It’s just easier.”
“Okay, so what’s our
simple lie?”
“That I did it.” I
glanced at Pritkin. “We’ll say I bubbled you. Like with the
apple.”
“But you can’t do
that yet.”
“So? They don’t know
that.”
“I am fairly certain
that Jonas does,” Pritkin said drily. “We need to come up with
something else.”
“We don’t
have anything else! And we
don’t—”
“What are you talking
about?” That was Caleb.
“A trick,” I said,
glancing at him. “Or, really, it’s not a trick; it’s something
Agnes could do with her power—speeding up time in a small area.
I’ve been practicing—”
“And you can do
that?” he interrupted.
“In
theory.”
He
cursed.
“Look,” I said
impatiently. “The point isn’t whether or not I can do
it—”
“Then what is the
point?”
“That I’m
supposed to be able to do it! That a
real . . . that a well-trained Pythia could do it. And it will be a
lot easier for people to imagine that than a legend coming back to
life and hanging out in their damn cafeteria!”
“If you could do it,” Caleb said. “Maybe so. But you
can’t, and the old man knows you can’t. So how is
that—”
“He knows I
usually can’t, but that’s not the same
thing. I can do it, just not on demand.
But occasionally I luck out and my power works for a change. And
that’s almost always in a crisis or when I’m pissed off
or—”
“Which makes little
sense,” Pritkin said, interrupting me.
I looked at him.
“What?”
“You said it
yourself: you can use the power. You
have proven that on a number of occasions—you prove it every time
you shift. And the power is the power; it doesn’t change. Merely
your perception of it does.”
“Meaning
what?”
“That if you can use
it under duress, you should be able to use it all the time. You
should be able to use it at will.”
“But I can’t. I told you before: once in a while I get
lucky, but most of the time—”
“Then perhaps you
have been trying too hard. Did you not tell me that Lady Phemonoe
said the power would teach you, that it would show you what it can
do?”
“Yes, and I keep
waiting—”
“And it has been
showing you things, has it not? Or did Niall somehow teleport
himself to that desert?”
“Niall?” Caleb
asked.
“Jonas shouldn’t have
told you about that!” I said, flushing.
“He didn’t do it to
embarrass you,” Pritkin said. “But as an example of your
progress.”
“Niall Edwards?”
Caleb persisted.
“I’m not making
progress!” I said furiously. “I haven’t made any in
weeks!”
“Not since the last
crisis.”
“What does that have
to do with—”
“Niall
I-fell-asleep-at-the-beach-and-that’s-why-I’mlobster-red Edwards?”
Caleb asked.
Pritkin ignored him.
“In a crisis, you forget to tell yourself that you can’t do
something. You forget your anxieties and your fears, your
nervousness and your self-doubt, and you reach for your power. And
it responds. It has been doing so since the first. I believe you
have always been able to do what you need to do. You simply have to
learn to get out of your own way, so to speak.”
“If it was that easy,
do you really think Initiates would need years of
training?”
“There’s more to
being Pythia than manipulating the power, Cassie. You’ve primarily
been dealing with that end because you’ve had no choice. From the
beginning of your reign, we have been at war. I doubt Lady Phemonoe
fought as many battles in her entire time in office as you have
already done. But that is not normally the case, and a Pythia in
peacetime has a number of other functions—”
I didn’t say
anything, but Pritkin cut off anyway. I guess my face must have
spoken for me. “You can do this,” he
said simply.
I just stared at him.
I wished that were true. I really, really did. But the fact was, I
wasn’t Lady Phemonoe, beloved Pythia. I wasn’t even Elizabeth
Palmer, heir extraordinaire. I was just Cassie, ex-secretary, lousy
tarot reader and allaround screwup.
And coronation or
not, I had a terrible, sneaking suspicion that I always would
be.
“This is all very
interesting,” Caleb said. “But can we get back to the—” He broke
off when a door slammed somewhere down the hall. Booted footsteps
started coming our way, a lot of them, echoing loud on the cheap
laminate tile. “They’re back,” he said, pretty
unnecessarily.
Pritkin looked at me.
“What are we going with?”
I spread my hands.
“What I said. It’s all we’ve got.”
“Then we got
nothing,” Caleb said. “Speeding up healing might work on a cut or
bruise or broken bone. But something like this? If you sped up
time, it might speed up his healing, but it would also speed up the
action of the corrosive. He’d just die faster!”
“But not if she
slowed it down,” Pritkin said thoughtfully. “You can
say—”
“I can say?”
“Well, I can’t be
seen here in perfect health,” he pointed out impatiently. “Not for
a few days, until I could reasonably have been expected to heal.
And Cassie is hardly up to an interrogation at the—”
“So you guys sneak
out the back, and what? I stay here and lie my ass
off?”
“Yes. Is there a
problem with that?”
“Is there—” Caleb
broke off, face flushing. “Oh, hell, no. Why would I
possibly—”
“Good. Then all you
need to say is that Cassie slowed down time around the car, except
for you and her.”
“Which would have
made you die slower and nothing more!”
“Not if you used the
opportunity to clean out the wound.”
“With what? That stuff eats through everything it
touches!”
“But some things take
longer to dissolve than others,” Pritkin said, looking pointedly at
Caleb’s shabby old leather coat.
Caleb clutched a
lapel possessively. “No.”
“Have you a better
idea?”
“Yeah! I’ll say we
used your damn coat!”
“You can’t. Too many
people saw the shape it was in. There wasn’t enough left to work
with by the time—”
“Well, we’re not
using mine!” Caleb said angrily.
“I’ll buy you another
one—”
“I don’t want another
one! I’ve had this coat for twelve damn years—”
“Then perhaps it’s
time for an upgrade,” I pointed out, grabbing a
sleeve.
“Like hell! I just
got it spelled the way I like—”
“I’ll help you spell
a new one,” Pritkin told him, tugging at the back.
“Get off
me!”
“Caleb,” I put a hand
on his arm. “Please?”
He looked at me and
his lips tightened. “You’re damn right you will,” he told Pritkin.
“And none of those little pansy-ass spells, either. I want the good
stuff.”
“You can make me a
list.”
“Fuckin’ A I’ll make
you a list,” Caleb muttered, and stripped off his coat. “You know,
legend or not, you’re still a royal pain in my ass.”
Pritkin nodded
approvingly. “Now you’re getting the idea.”