Reap the Wind (6 page)

I nodded.

“No, she’s asleep. They all are. You were out almost two hours. Why?”

I thought about waking her up, but then I’d have to explain why. And I couldn’t explain why. I couldn’t risk anybody else finding out that I was planning a jump like that. Jonas would have a fit, and Marco . . . well, then I really would be getting drugged.

I shrugged. “She said something about wanting to talk to me.”

“Probably about Jonas.” That was Marco’s voice, from the doorway. I looked up to find him lounging against the jamb, eyeing the spread on the bed.

“What about Jonas?” I asked, as he strolled over and snared a piece of the roll Fred had lined up for a chaser.

And promptly turned white.

“What the hell?” he gasped, teary-eyed.

Fred grinned. “Teach you to steal a man’s food.”

“You don’t need food! And what the fuck is in there?”

“Ghost pepper,” Fred said, looking satisfied. “It’s called a roulette roll. All the pieces are pretty normal, except for the one that has—hey!” That last was in response to Marco stealing his beer. “I’m drinking that!”

“Not anymore,” Marco told him, and downed it in a couple of gulps.

I grabbed my bottle protectively. “What about Jonas?” I repeated.

“Just that they really got into it when he called earlier,” Marco said, and went to the bathroom for some water.

“Got into it . . . about what?” I called after him.

He came back in carrying both courtesy glasses filled to the brim, and downed them before answering. And then went back for a refill. “Don’t know.”

Wuss
, Fred mouthed.

“I heard that.”

“You don’t know?” I asked skeptically, because of course he did.

But Marco shook his head. “Silence spell. Guess she didn’t want us knowing court business.”

“Rhea can do a silence spell?” I asked enviously.

“Guess so. By the way, Jonas knows you’re back.”

“How?”

Marco came back in still scowling, although whether at me or at the lingering effects of the pepper, I didn’t know. “Don’t look at me like that. You were the one hanging off the side of the damned building because God forbid anyone should know what you’re up to. And you know he has spies everywhere.”

“Some people need to learn to mind their own business,” I said, scowling.

“Couldn’t agree more,” he agreed, without a shred of irony.

Because, of course, I
was
his business, from a vampire point of view. Keeping the family safe was a Very Big Thing in the vamp world. Any master who couldn’t do it lost face—possibly literally—very soon, because he’d be viewed as weak. As would any servant be who let down said master, which Marco clearly had no intention of doing.

Good, I thought evilly. “Tell Jonas I died,” I told him.

“He’ll want to see the corpse.”

“Then tell him I left!”

Jonas was in my black book anyway. Only, unlike Mircea, I wasn’t too afraid to talk to him. I was too pissed. He’d forbidden me to go back in time to rescue my court, and despite the fact that he probably didn’t remember it because of the whole time-change thing, he’d still done it. Not to mention keeping from me the tiny fact that a bunch of my acolytes were bat-shit crazy and possibly homicidal. And what was his reason?

That I already had enough on my plate to worry about.

Yeah, like getting assassinated by enemies I didn’t know I had, Jonas!

Of course, he thought the Circle could protect me. He
always
thought that. Only the kind of things that came after me weren’t always things the Circle had seen before.

Jonas was smart, but he didn’t think I was, and I was getting tired of being treated like a witless wonder. No, I hadn’t been Pythia very long; yes, I was scarily ignorant of some parts of my job. But I was doing my best to remedy that in between planning rescue trips into hell and trying to stay alive! And so far, I’d proven a fairly quick study. If someone had been around to train me, I might have been doing even better.

Someone like my damned court, for instance.

But then, I wouldn’t need the Circle so much in that case, now would I?

Marco’s lips were twitching at whatever emotions had been running across my face. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie. You suck at it almost as much as I do.”

“That’s why I’m the muscle,” he told me.

“I’d like to be the muscle sometimes,” I said wistfully, only to have him reach out and pinch my sad excuse for a bicep.

“I’m thinking no,” he said, grinning now. “But don’t worry; I’ll deal with Jonas.”

He appeared to be looking forward to it.

“Was there something else?” I asked when he just stood there.

“The girls?”

“Shit.” I didn’t know what to do about the girls.

Marco nodded in agreement. “They slept in the living room, in the lounge, in your bed, and in the spare room last night, and we still didn’t have enough space. We were tripping over cots—”

“And then they needed baths,” Fred said darkly. “And we didn’t have enough of those, either. By the time they finally finished, the whole apartment was steamy. And they left their stuff everywhere—”

“They don’t have stuff,” I pointed out.

“—bobby pins and ChapStick tubes and those little things that hold ponytails—what’re they called?”

“Ponytail holders?” I asked.

He frowned at me.

Marco didn’t, but he leaned against the bedpost and crossed his massive arms. Which was code for I’m-not-leaving–until-we-get-this-sorted, although I was damned if I knew what to do about it. Except the obvious, of course.

“This is a hotel, isn’t it?” I asked peevishly. “Tell Casanova to find rooms for them.”

“I tried, but nobody’s seen him all day. And anyway, you know what he’ll say.”

Yes, I did.

If I hadn’t known that Casanova was a vampire, I would have suspected Ferengi. He loved money like no one I’d ever seen, which meant he hated me because I didn’t have any. But I assumed the Pythian Court was better off. It was a three-thousand-year-old institution that people regularly paid for a glimpse into the future, or at least, it had been once. I didn’t know what it did for money now, but it had to have some, right? And either way, we were going to have to work something out, because this was not doable long-term.

“I’ll talk to him,” I promised.

“That should be fun,” Marco said. But I guess it was good enough, because he left.

Fred didn’t.

He pushed the pea thing over at me again. “Eat it. That way I can tell Rhea you had a vegetable.”

“A deep-fried vegetable.”

“The best kind.”

I gave up and ate it. It was okay. Kind of bland.

“Well?” Fred asked curiously.

“I prefer my vegetables in salad form, preferably covered with Ranch dressing,” I told him. “Or Caesar.”

“Caesar’s good,” he agreed, bundling the remains of our feast into the damp bedspread and pulling it off like a bag. “By the way, when’s that Pritkin guy getting back?”

“Why?”

“’Cause having another mage around might help with the girls. They, uh, they don’t seem to like vamps too much.”

“Soon,” I said. Because it was soon or never.

“Good to know.” Fred hoisted his bag like a greasy-faced Kris Kringle. Then he reached over and impulsively messed up my hair. “Get some sleep, Cassie.”

Get some sleep. Sure. It was what I needed, but the aches and pains in my body and the burn of a wasabi-seared tongue said sleep wasn’t in my immediate future. So I dragged myself off to get a bath instead.

And dear God, it was worse than I’d thought.

My clothes were stiff with brine, my skin was caked with salt and dust, and then I pulled a dead fish out of my bra. And freaked out and flung the thing into the trash, where it lay, staring back at me out of one fishy eye. I stared back, having one of those moments. You know the ones—where you suddenly get confronted by something so bizarre that makes you reexamine what you’re doing with your life.

I’d had a dead fish in my bra.

I’d had a dead fish in my
bra
.

It was only one of the small silver ones that had hitchhiked back from Amsterdam, little more than a sardine, but still. Other people had lipstick-smeared tissues in their trash. Or empty nail polish bottles. Or napkins with cute guys’ phone numbers scribbled on them.

What did I have?

A dead, possibly time-traveling fish.

I threw a tissue over the tiny corpse and got in the shower.

I bet Agnes had never brought back a fish-filled bra. I bet Agnes wouldn’t even have been in Amsterdam in the first place, because she’d have grabbed Pritkin in London. I bet Agnes would have known what to say to Jonas.

Too bad I wasn’t Agnes.

But, somehow, I was going to have to find a way to deal with him anyway. And to figure out what to do with the coven I’d somehow ended up with and didn’t want. And how to handle a bunch of rogue acolytes, and a pissed-off demon lord, and to
get Pritkin back
—

And I was. I was going to do all of it. But not right now.

Right now, I was going to wash my hair.

And I did, and it was glorious. Twenty minutes of soaping away salt and dirt and God-knew-what made me feel a lot better. And reek a lot less of whatever had been in those canals besides water. I even did the girlie stuff I never had time for anymore, the shaving and the plucking and the moisturizing, and felt almost human again by the time I got out and wrapped myself in a big white bath towel.

And swiped a hand across the bathroom mirror. And, despite everything, burst out laughing. Because guess who was scaly now?

Glamouries, the kind you bought out of a box anyway, had two parts: a base coat, which you spread over your face like lotion, and the control to tell it what to do. Rosier had removed the control when he wiped off the little patch, letting the real me shine through, because he knew a nemesis would get Pritkin’s attention better than any femme fatale. But the base of the spell had remained, and was now flaking off in pieces like week-old sunburn.

Or like dried fish scales.

I shuddered a little and started peeling them off in strips, revealing the pale, freckled skin below. It was weirdly therapeutic. Or it would have been, if I’d been able to Zen out. But of course not. I decided that maybe my breakneck pace lately hadn’t been such a bad thing. Too much free time and I started to think about all the stuff I didn’t know how to deal with.

Like that dream earlier.

Because what the hell?

It was no big deal, I told my reflection. Just exhaustion mixed with the remnants of a powerful incubus’ spell. That sort of thing was
supposed
to get a person hot and bothered, so the incubus could feed. Or in this case, so he could donate some energy to someone he needed to keep around a little longer.

Pritkin had wanted his damned map back, and if I ended up getting fried by an angry witch, that wasn’t going to happen. But he couldn’t fight her off and be sure of success, because he didn’t know enough about modern magic. So he’d fed me some energy so I could do it for him. And he’d fed me a lot. It wasn’t surprising that it had had some . . . lingering effects.

Like the perma-hard nips it appeared to have left me with.

I peered down the front of my towel, in case I was imagining it, but no. Things were definitely perky down there. Really perky. Uncomfortably perky.

“Stop it,” I told them.

Nothing. Except two happy little nubs that shouldn’t be there because it wasn’t cold in here. Was exactly the opposite, in fact, after my marathon shower, but that didn’t appear to matter to a body that was having incubus flashbacks.

And wasn’t that just all I needed?

“Seriously, cut it out,” I said, frowning.

And then frowned some more, when they listened to me about as much as anyone did. And, okay, this was starting to piss me off. Along with everything else I couldn’t control, I had to include my own body now?

“Damn it!” I said, feeling ridiculous and not caring because there was no one around to see me anyway. “I mean it. Cut it out right—”

“Cassie?”

I jumped, because the voice came out of nowhere, and not from outside the door. It sounded like it was right on top of me, loud and strong and echoing in the small, tile-lined box. I whirled around, staring at the soggy bath mat. And the wet floor. And the walls running with condensation.

And then, slowly, down at my own chest.

“Cassie—”

“Auggghh!” I jumped back, because I could swear that the voice had come from me. And yes, for a second there I was getting
Total Recall
flashbacks, and that’s not something you need when you have a life as freaky as mine.

“Cassie!”

Quaid, start the reactor, I thought hysterically, and grabbed my boobs.

“Cassie!”

“Auggghh! Auggghh! Augg
—”

And then the door was kicked open by a horde of monsters.

Only, thank God, these were monsters I knew.

Things got a little crazy after that, with a dozen vamps flooding into the small space, guns drawn and faces grim. And then confused. And then looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

And maybe I had, because there was no obvious threat. Just me with my tits in my hands, my hair everywhere, and pieces of used glamourie spotting my body. I looked like a zombie stripper.

I swallowed.

“What?” Marco demanded.

I swallowed again. “I—thought I heard someone’s voice.”

“Someone’s?”

“It . . . it sounded like—”

“There!” somebody shouted.

And then glass was shattering and bullets were firing—or maybe that should be the other way around, but who could tell while being knocked to the ground? And then, while reaching back up and grabbing the shooter’s arm, trying to force it down, because the idiot was firing right through the mirror. And on the other side was—

“Hold!” Marco bellowed, before I could.

Suddenly, there was silence.

My ears were ringing so badly, it actually sounded like the vamp was still firing. But although the gun was up, it was pointed at the floor, which appeared to be intact. As opposed to the wall which had held the mirror. And which now held a few shards and a lot of holes.

A lot of holes leading to the hall.

A hall that led to—

“The girls,” I breathed. And then, through the echoing in my ears, I heard cries of alarm coming from the living room.

I shoved a bunch of vamps aside and ran through the bedroom to the hall. Only to stop short at the sight of a dozen spears of light crisscrossing the darkness, where the brightness of the bathroom was leaking through the bullet holes. And highlighting floating dust motes and ruined wallpaper and a bunch of similar wounds on the other side of the hall—which also happened to form one wall of the living room.

And while no expense had been spared on the décor around here, the same couldn’t be said for the drywall. I hiked up my towel and ran across a minefield of plaster and glass, hoping that the bar on the living room side had been enough to stop what the wall hadn’t. And ran into Rhea, coming the other way. She looked as grim as I’d ever seen her, as grim as the night she’d dragged a bunch of little girls out of a house full of homicidal dark mages, while three witches and a clueless Pythia tried to hold off Armageddon.

And then she saw me.

And I don’t think I’ve ever seen more relief on a human face. For a second, I honestly thought she was going to faint. So I grabbed her on my way past. And then we were through, into the lounge and then the living room, where—

Where I sagged against the messed-up wall, feeling kind of dizzy myself, because they were okay.

They were okay.

But only by sheer luck.

I took in the sight of a couple bullet-riddled paintings, a smashed clock, and more wallpaper that was going to need replacing—again. And that was on the far wall of the room by the stairs, which now had a new pattern of lead slugs imbedded in it. Most of them were chest high on me, meaning that they’d missed the girls only because it was night and everybody had been lying down on a forest of cots. And were now sitting up, staring at me and Rhea with wide eyes.

But they weren’t screaming. They weren’t saying anything, after those first, startled cries. Just like they hadn’t last night, even with a house coming down around their ears. But they were pale, and some of the littlest had their faces buried in the nightgowns of the older girls. And I felt my skin prickle with something I didn’t try to define as I whirled around, meeting Marco coming out of the hall.

“Are they . . .” He stopped short at the sight of them, looking relieved.

“Barely!” My voice was shaking. “Who the
hell
—”

“A half-wit. But he said he saw something—”

“Saw something where?”

“In the mirror.”

Anywhere else that would sound really strange. But this was Dante’s, which redefined normal on a regular basis. And while I hadn’t seen anything, I had sure as hell heard.

“Cassie!” That was Fred’s voice, raised to carry. I grabbed the robe and slippers a vamp was holding out and shrugged into them on my way to the kitchen.

And found Fred just standing there, staring at the side of our brand-new fridge. The last one had had an accident, and been replaced with a shiny new stainless steel model. It was usually pretty boring, since none of the kitschy Dante’s magnets they sold downstairs would stick to it. It was a lot more interesting now.

Because there was a man peering out of it.

A man with watery blue eyes, cheeks pinker than mine, and fluffy white eyebrows. Really fluffy, like tiny sea anemones had somehow managed to attach themselves to his face. And a mass of white hair that wafted about like a merman’s in the air currents of the room behind him—a room that didn’t form any part of my suite.

And despite the fact that I’d expected it, despite the fact that there weren’t a handful of people in the
world
who could bypass the wards on this place and pull something like this, I still stared at him in disbelief.

“Jonas?”

“Cassie. I do apologize for the inconvenience—”

“Inconvenience?”

“I did try calling the usual way,” he said, and actually sounded annoyed. Like this was all my fault somehow. “But your . . . associates . . . continued to insist that you were away—”

“I was away!”

“Yes, and we need to talk about that—”

“We need to talk about this!” I told him, throwing out an arm. “You almost got my court killed!”

Vague blue eyes suddenly sharpened. Jonas liked to play the doddering old man when he thought it would get him anywhere, but I knew him a little too well for that now. And it seemed that he wasn’t in the mood anyway.

“I did nothing of the kind. Your vampires overreacted—”

“Something war mages never do,” Marco said heavily, coming up behind me.

“—which should not be surprising considering that they were trained as a vampire’s bodyguards—”

“Like Lord Mircea needs the help.”

“—and to guard his home, not the Pythian Court. They have no experience—”

Marco snorted. “’Cause the mages guarding the court in London did such a great job.”

“Will you please tell your servant to stay out of this?” Jonas asked me sharply.

“Marco isn’t my servant. And he belongs here!”

“Yes. But you do not. Members of the Corps are on their way to move you and your court to—”

“Move?”

“—temporary quarters until we can determine—”

“I’m not going anywhere!”

“—where would be best for . . .” Jonas stopped, and his pink cheeks suddenly became a little pinker. “I beg your pardon?”

“Marco is right,” I told him, furious. “You had guards on the court in London. Guards we found dead when we arrived! They didn’t keep anybody safe—”

“When you arrived?” Jonas asked archly.

But I was in no mood to play games. “You know what happened! You’ve figured it out, or you wouldn’t be here—”

“It was not too difficult to figure out. And the coven leaders you chose to take with you were happy to inform me in any case. Any excuse to deride the ability of the Circle to protect—”

“With reason! Your guards didn’t protect anybody!”

“There were no more than a handful on duty,” Jonas said, frowning. “And most were nearing retirement. The post was a sinecure, an easy assignment for those wounded in battle or with failing magic—”

“Failing?”

The frown grew. “They were there as a courtesy, Cassie. An honor guard. The court wasn’t in danger—”

“The court was just blown up!”

The frown was edging into scowl territory. “A court is useless without a Pythia,” he told me sharply, “and you were not there. Without you, there was no earthly reason to believe that anyone would wish to imperil the lives of a group of little girls—”

“No earthly reason,” I said, trembling, but not with cold. “But there was an
un
earthly one, wasn’t there? And you didn’t tell me.”

“You knew what we are facing; I briefed you on it myself—”

“You told me the old gods were trying to return. You told me I was in danger from them. You didn’t tell me my court was!”

“They shouldn’t have been!” Jonas snapped, suddenly angry. “Those girls were not in jeopardy—until they became bait in a trap for you. Something that would not have been the case had all of you been in our custody from the start!”