Tempt the Stars (33 page)

“But I suppose I shall have to now, if I am returned, that is. Won’t I?”

“Um,” I said, and stopped. Because I knew how Pritkin argued. I ought to; it was his favorite hobby. Which would have been fine, except that he was better at it than me. And right now he was going in for the kill.

I could tell because of the voice, which had gotten faster and sharper, but also because of the expression. He’d moved slightly, leaning toward me, with one elbow resting on the counter propping up the hand he’d tucked under his chin. It was his boyish look, which he got when he was pleased, and that usually meant that someone else was about to be in trouble. And there was only one someone else here.

Someone who was employing tactic number two hundred and fifteen in dealing with irascible war mages, and changing the subject.

“I was wondering about something you said earlier, too,” I told him, after finishing off my beer. “You said you don’t come here by choice. Does that mean you don’t miss anything about it?”

Normally Pritkin got annoyed when I changed the subject on him—or when I tried. Because half the time, he called me on it. But he didn’t this time, and he didn’t seem upset. He even smiled slightly, a strange little half smile that I didn’t like at all.

“What would I miss?”

“I don’t know. Your father’s court was . . . well, parts of it were beautiful—”

“Many things are beautiful. Few are also good.” He moved a step closer.

“Yes, I . . . I guess,” I said, backing up slightly. “But it must have been hard, turning your back on all that wealth and power and . . ”

“There are only masters and slaves there. I did not wish to be either.” Another step.

“Well, no. But there must have been other things. I mean, he’s a demon lord—”

“There is nothing I want that he can give me.”

“But . . . but you could rule there. You could have anything you want—”

“Not anything,” Pritkin said softly, and my back bumped Formica.

I appeared to have run out of room. And he was still looking at me. But I couldn’t read his expression again, only this time, that wasn’t due to the lighting. I just wasn’t familiar with that particular—

He’s probably thinking how crappy I look, I told myself hurriedly, and that I’m going to have to go back in front of the council like this, and that it isn’t going to help our chances any, and damn, I wish I’d thought to grab one of those purloined Augustine dresses before heading out, not that it would probably have survived everything that happened in between, but you never know, and I wonder if any of these shops sell something that might be—

A thumb reached out and wiped away something at the corner of my mouth.

My thoughts froze.

I should laugh, I thought blankly. Grab a napkin, say what a mess I’d managed to make . . . only I couldn’t. I couldn’t seem to move.

And that was stupid, because clearly, he was just being nice. He was trying to make sure I didn’t go back in there and embarrass myself more than I was probably already going to. He was just trying—

The thumb began to move along my lower lip, slowly tracing its fullness. And my breath sped up, even as it tried to catch. Which should have choked me, but somehow got tangled up in my chest instead. To the point that it hurt.

This wasn’t—we didn’t—not that he—

“I did have regrets these past six months,” he told me quietly. “I found it a curse as much as a blessing, all that time to think. About the things I could have said, that I should have told you . . ”

“John!” The voice came from a distance. He ignored it.

“I thought I was sparing you, but I think I was really trying to spare myself. For a long time, I was almost grateful for my father’s curse. As hard as it was, it made some things simpler. I didn’t have to worry; I didn’t have to
risk
—”

“John!” the voice came again.

Pritkin glanced up, grimaced, and then looked back down at me again. And his expression was fiercer than I’d seen it in a while. “But somewhere in the last six months, I realized that, after what happened to my wife, I returned to earth, yes. But I didn’t return to
life
. I was as much a prisoner there as I was at court. Not just because of the curse, but because I wouldn’t allow myself—”

“John!” The voice was closer now. It was Caleb’s.

Pritkin said something under his breath and grabbed my arms. “Cassie, I don’t know how this will turn out. With the council, there’s no way to know. But whatever happens, I want you to know, I want you to remember, that I’m
glad
you came back for me. I’m glad I had a chance to know you. I’m glad—”

“John!” Caleb grabbed his arm. “We have to go— now. They’re calling for you—they have a ruling!”

“Of course they do,” Pritkin said. “Of course they bloody do!”

And, apparently, you don’t keep the demon high council waiting. We left the rest of the food and jogged back down the sidewalk, Pritkin and Caleb grim and silent, Casanova bleary-eyed and staggering, and me—I don’t know what I looked like, but my head was spinning like a tornado.

Not because of what Pritkin had said; I couldn’t think about that now. But because they had to let him go. They
had
to. After everything Mother had said, they couldn’t just . . . could they?

I didn’t know. They were like a million years old, but that only made it harder to guess. I had enough trouble figuring out how centuries-old vampires thought. I had zero chance of predicting the behavior of creatures who made them look like children. All I knew was that they
really
hadn’t liked Mother, and as her child, I wasn’t any more popular. As Pritkin was a repeat offender, as far as they were concerned. But like Mom had said, he was just one guy, and if they weren’t going to cough up an army, the least they could do—

And then we were back, coming in the front doors at the same time that the double ones to the council chamber burst open. That was sort of a surprise—I’d thought they were the type to expect
us
to come to
them
, not the other way around. But the blond demon with the pleasant voice was coming toward us, and his hand was extended and there was a smile on his face. And that looked—dear God, it looked—Caleb said something, an expletive but there was a lungful of relief behind it. And I turned to him for a second, hugging his arm. Because we’d done it, finally, we’d
done
it—

And then someone was shoving me into Caleb, brutally hard, enough that we both went staggering. And there was a sound, new and deafeningly loud. And a cry, of such tortured anguish that it cut through the air, spinning me on my feet even as I fell, pulling my head up—

To see Pritkin, lit for a moment by harsh spell light, silhouetted against another explosion. But this time, there was no outrunning it.

His mouth was open, but it wasn’t moving, and neither was the rest of him. For a second, he hung suspended in air, caught halfway through a jump, as if I’d managed to freeze time. But I hadn’t; I knew I hadn’t. I could still see dust motes turning lazily in the spell light behind him, golden yellow and burning like the sun—

And then it engulfed him and he fell, still motionless, to the floor, his father rushing to grab him, another of those keening cries coming from that usually cynical mouth.

Pandemonium was breaking out between guards and council members, and people were jostling and bumping and stepping on me as I pushed and shoved my way forward, and then I was kneeling by Pritkin, grabbing him, screaming at Rosier, “What happened? What
happened
?”

“What happened?” Green eyes blazed into mine, bright with grief and incandescent with hate. “What happened is that you killed my son!”

Half an hour later, I was back in my hotel suite in Vegas, and staring at another scene of carnage. It felt unreal, like the one I’d just left. It felt impossible.

“It happened shortly after you left us,” Jonas said. “We only managed to obtain the images a few moments ago.”

I tried to look like I was paying attention as he said something else I didn’t hear. His voice was fading in and out, like a distant loudspeaker in a high wind. And even when I could hear the words, they sometimes didn’t make sense.

Like the scenes in my head.

I shoved Rosier away and grabbed the too-limp body. Pritkin’s head dropped back, the short blond strands falling against my arm, soft, too soft without whatever product he usually used on them. Wrong. Like the body, so horribly still, or the face, lacking wit or anger or those weird flashes of humor—

Or anything.

“No.” I felt my skin ice over.

“It was a bomb, obviously,” Jonas said. “Likely a number of them. The wards had been tampered with. We’re still searching for the exact cause.”

Time rippled around us and Rosier stuttered, like a figure on an old TV screen flooded with static. But my power didn’t work right in the Shadowland; it never had. The time distortion fizzled out after only a few seconds, leaving Caleb and me staring at each other.

Jonas was looking at me, so I nodded. I’d seen the mansion that housed the Pythian Court once before. Mircea had taken me there to get a glimpse of my mother when she was still the heir. It had been a beautiful Georgian building, lit up for the party that had been taking place that night, the creamy white columns and elegant brick facade bathed in a warm golden glow.

It looked a little different now.

It was raining in London, which is where the images of the court were coming from, via some spell I didn’t care about, but which had turned the French doors to my balcony into a strangely chopped-up movie screen. It didn’t matter. The scene rippling across the beveled glass panes and luxe door pulls wasn’t one I wanted to see any better.

Jonas was watching the salvage efforts, looking strangely calm. I didn’t know if that was because he’d seen it all in his long decades with the Circle, and another crime scene just didn’t faze him. Or if he was trying to shield me.

Either way, I wished I had his detachment.

But the rain-soaked, fire-gutted building was hard to take. Although not nearly as much as the body bags, so many and so small, laid out on the sidewalk. They were getting wet, rain beading and then running off the plastic coverings, although there wasn’t any choice. There were too many of them to be taken away all at once, with more being drawn out of the wreckage all the time. It had been big, this court I’d never seen, these girls, sworn to my service, who I’d never even met. It had been . . . big . . 

“Help him!” I told Caleb, who was already muttering something that surged over both of us, making my skin crawl from the power behind it.

But that’s all it did.

Caleb cursed, and jerked Pritkin away, shoving me back when I would have grabbed him again. He pushed him down to the floor and put a hand to Pritkin’s chest, snarling something that made the too-still body shudder, almost like he was coming around. Until the magic faded and Pritkin fell back against the lobby’s beige carpet again, unmoving.

“Turn it off,” Marco said gruffly. He wasn’t looking at the scene, although I doubted it affected him any more than it did Jonas. Marco had seen things through the years that would make a veteran war mage blanch; a bunch of anonymous bodies already zipped away in bags weren’t likely to turn his stomach.

No, as usual, he was looking out for me. Or trying to. And I appreciated it, but I didn’t want it.

I wanted to see this.

“Where did it start?” I asked hoarsely, trying to identify one part of the wreckage that looked worse than the others, something that might indicate an origin point. But the building was hardly a building anymore, with a blackened crater in the center that still steamed despite the gentle rain. There were pieces across the street, pieces stabbed through surrounding buildings, and so much broken glass in the road that the emergency vehicles had been forced to park well away, to avoid blowing out their tires.

The whole thing looked like the origin point.

No wonder nobody had gotten out.

A human word, savage and angry. Another incantation, strong enough to raise Pritkin’s limp body half a foot off the floor, to outline it in pale blue fire. And then another expletive, because that hadn’t worked, either.

“Caleb—” I breathed.

“A major curse,” Casanova muttered. “I saw it land—”

“Caleb!”

“He isn’t responding.” Caleb looked up, eyes dark with the same emotions flooding through me.

“Then try something else!”

“I’ve already put enough magic through him to lift a dozen curses!”

“Cassie?”

I looked up, and realized I’d missed Jonas’ answer. And based on his expression, whatever question he had asked after. “What?”

“Leave her alone! Can’t you see she needs to rest?” Rhea, I thought vaguely, seemed to have come out of her shell. Her eyes were snapping at Jonas as she handed me some coffee. I guess she’d figured out how to use the pods. Not too surprising; she looked completely unlike the frightened girl I’d come across in the kitchen.

“She will,” Jonas said calmly. “But first I must know.”

“Know . . . what?” I asked. My lips felt numb.

They were bringing out smaller body bags now, ridiculously small. They couldn’t have belonged to initiates. They looked like they’d barely fit a child of five.

“The nursery,” Rhea snarled, and okay. Timid girl was definitely MIA. She was gripping the mug so tightly I was afraid she was going to break it and spill scalding coffee all over herself. It didn’t look like she’d have cared. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a purer form of hate on any face.

Well, maybe one.

“Where do you think you’re taking him?”

“Away from you!” Rosier snarled, his face white with grief. If I’d ever wondered if he loved his son, I didn’t now. “Away from you, where he should have stayed!”

“Cassie!” Jonas’ voice had sharpened. “I really must know if you’ve seen anything, anything at all, that might help us.”

“About this?” I shook my head. “No—”

“Not about this. About
Ares
.”

“What?” I looked up, confused, and tried to remember what we’d been talking about. But it didn’t matter, since the answer was the same. “I haven’t had a vision about anything.”

“Even in the tarot?”

“No. That is, the Star card showed up, but . . ”

“But . . . ?”

“It lied.”

“How can this be the will of the council?” Caleb demanded. “Did you hear nothing Artemis said?”

But the council was already leaving, the guards holding us back. They did not explain themselves to mere mortals. They’d killed him, and they wouldn’t even tell us why.

“Answer me!” Caleb said, because no one had ever said he lacked courage.

And then one hesitated, and slowly turned. The very last one I’d have expected. The one Mother had called Adra.

The one who had killed him.

“They heard,” Adra said quietly. “More than you, war mage.”

“Meaning what?”

The demon’s eyes found mine. “They heard the final gambit in a great game.”

“Goddamnit, Jonas!” That hadn’t been Marco or the girl, but rather the tall witch with the short gray hair, whose name I’d forgotten.

At least, I had until Jonas looked up, frowning. “Do you know, Evelyn, I really do not need—”

“It’s not your needs I’m interested in,” she said, getting in Jonas’ face. There was a war mage at his side, not Caleb, but someone I didn’t know. Someone I didn’t even remember arriving. But he made a small movement, and the witch bared her teeth at him. “Feeling lucky, sonny?”

“I don’t need luck,” he said, very low.

“No, but considering who you work for, I assume skill is too much to—”

I stopped listening.

“What are you talking about?” Caleb looked like he wanted to put a fist through Adra’s face.

I didn’t. I just wanted Pritkin to move. Wanted to see the chest go up and down. Wanted to see him open those eyes and glare at me about something, anything . . . 

“I am talking about the fact that the being you call Artemis had won an entire universe for herself by her treachery, for she was the only great power left. She had ensured that by hunting the greatest of my kind to extinction, and then by exiling her own people. But she made one miscalculation. She left herself too weak to capitalize on her victory.”

“You lie!”

“Why? For telling you what you do not wish to hear?” Adra asked, unfazed. “The one you call Artemis may have founded your order, war mage, but make no mistake. It was to serve her needs, not yours.”

Caleb turned away with a curse and Adra looked at me. “We don’t know what went wrong. Perhaps the spell took more energy than she’d planned, perhaps her fellow gods fought harder than she’d expected. All we know is that the aftermath left her vulnerable, and she was forced into hiding. And she was good at it, for we sought her, those of us she had wronged. And while we did not find her, we ensured that she could not surface, could not risk feeding on our lower orders, could not regain her great strength. We might not be able to bring her to justice, but we could force her to fade into obscurity among the humans, to die alone and unsung, bitterly brooding over how close she came.”

I’d been bending over Pritkin, but at that I looked up at Adra through a veil of tumbled hair. “You’re twisting everything.”

“But we were wrong about one thing,” he told me steadily. “We underestimated, by far, how long that process of decline would take. Just when we were sure she must have died, just when we thought ourselves safe at last, she formed another plan. A plan involving a child.”

“I want a word with the Pythia,” the older witch said. It didn’t sound like a request.

“If Cassie wishes to speak with you, she may, when we are finished here,” Jonas informed her. “Perhaps you can agree that stopping the return of an ancient menace is a little more important than whatever minor issue—”

“Yes,
minor
,” she said. “Do let’s worry about the politics before we concern ourselves with silly women’s issues. But if I may remind you, it was a
woman
who brought you this information,
women
who assisted in getting her here, women who died tonight!”

“I am not going to do this with you, Evelyn. Really I’m not,” Jonas said, little spots of color appearing on his fair cheeks. “This is not an example of misogyny despite your strange determination to make it one. This is—”

“—ridiculous,” I said, looking at Adra in bewilderment.

“Is it? A child who would be half human. A child who could feed here, on earth, as the gods could not. A child who could be hidden in the most unlikely of places until she grew up, until she came into her power—”

“No! That isn’t what—”

“A child who could be groomed to succeed to the only power of the gods that remained on earth, and then use it to go back in time, to join forces with a mother who may have lost her strength through the centuries, but none of her cunning—”

“I’ve been fighting the gods,” I told him furiously. “Not trying to bring one back!”

“Of course you have. They are rivals, threats that could challenge and overthrow you. They had to be fought off until you could find her, and bring her here—”

“I haven’t brought her anywhere!”

“You brought her thoughts. You opened a connection in the council’s own chamber. Do you have any idea how it felt, to see her again? Standing there, alive and amused— amused—at our consternation, at our shock and fear? To hear her give orders as if no time had passed, as if nothing had changed—”

“She was giving advice, not orders. And her thoughts are not
her
—”

“But you are in touch with her. You can go back, can find her, whenever you like. You’ve proven that—”

“And yet she didn’t bring her here.” That was Caleb’s angry voice. “If Cassie was part of some elaborate scheme, that would have been the first thing she did on becoming Pythia. There’s no getting around that!”

Adra smiled slightly. “Isn’t there? It’s clear you were not cut out for the political realm, war mage.”

“You let her go into
hell
,” Evelyn said. “Yet you won’t let her save her own coven? And when did it become a case of you
letting
the Pythia do anything?”

“We have an understanding with the council,” Jonas told her. “And I know a council summons when I see one—just as I know a trap! There was no reason to kill those children, no reason at all, unless it was to force Cassie to come to a place and time of her enemy’s choosing—”

“What if it was? Whatever the cause, those children are just as dead—”

“And that is a tragedy. But losing Cassie would be a greater one. And at any rate, one does not willy-nilly corrupt the timeline!”

“You and I corrupted it,” I reminded him numbly. “We went back—”

“To save a world. Not a handful!”

So where do you draw the line? I wondered. At a million? A thousand? One?

Because right now one seemed a terrible loss to me.

“And what does that mean?” Caleb snapped.

“The council suspects that she is Artemis’ daughter in more ways than one,” Rosier said spitefully, answering before Adra could. “That she decided, after meeting my son, after learning not only who he is but what, that she no longer needed her mother. That with his help, she could mine the demon lords for all the power necessary to fight off her rivals, to secure her control, to rule herself—”