“Tell me about it.”
“I’m trying,” she said seriously. “You aren’t a vamp possession, to be locked away in a safe until they call. You’re an independent agent and you have a job to do. And everybody is just going to have to learn to accept that,” she said, looking at Marco.
Who, to my surprise, didn’t say anything.
“Three,” Tami said. “Her Highness decided when she moved in here that it was too small and shabby, and that she couldn’t possibly be expected to live in such squalor—”
“I doubt she put it quite like that,” I murmured, still looking at Marco.
“She put it exactly like that—tell her.” Tami grabbed Fred in passing, who had a phone stuck to his ear.
“Okay, yeah,” he agreed. “But you know English isn’t her first language—”
“She’s lived here for a couple hundred years!”
“But she don’t get out much.”
Tami rolled her eyes. “My point,” she said stubbornly, “is that her people spent most of the last two months gutting the whole floor and rebuilding it to make room for her most-needed servants. Who apparently number in the double digits and don’t like sharing. It’s perfect!”
“But it isn’t ours,” I pointed out. “We can’t just move in—”
“Why not? The consul’s in New York—”
“Where her house was just destroyed! She’ll probably be back any day now—”
“—and isn’t that what she did to you? Just came in, kicked you out, and took it?”
I opened my mouth, and then closed it again.
Because sort of.
“And never even bothered to talk to you about it, right?” Tami persisted. “So, basically, you could say that you’ve been graciously allowing her to live here—”
One of the vamps choked back a laugh.
“—in recognition of the fact that she had a bigger household than you. But now that you have your court, you’ve decided to take it back.”
I hesitated. It was damn tempting, especially after everything she’d pulled. But I kind of thought our relationship was bad enough.
“Listen to me.” Tami took my hand, the one that wasn’t curved under an increasingly heavy little girl butt. “It’s like you said to Jonas’ secretary the other day: you can move your court anywhere you choose. He wants you in London; the vamps want you here. Think she’s going to kick you out only to see you run into the Circle’s waiting embrace?”
Marco came over and took the sleeping child. “The kids have been running around the casino all day, laughing and looking for things to decorate their rooms,” he said gruffly. “The place is closed, so Casanova doesn’t care, just so long as they’re returned when and if.”
“Undamaged?” I said, looking at the expensive paintings worriedly. Because I was pretty sure I’d last seen them in the vault, part of an investment portfolio the old owner had put in place. And my decor tended to have a really short shelf life— “Cassie?” I looked up, to see that Marco’s dark eyes had gone soft, maybe because the little girl had snuggled into his huge neck.
“What?”
“They’ve been laughing.”
I blinked at him, remembering the grubby, traumatized kids I’d helped to rescue from their burning, about-to-explode house, just a few days ago. Nobody had been laughing then. I’d wondered if they ever would again.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, spotting Rico, who had just come in. “Rhea?”
“Good. You want to see her?”
“Yes, but . . . there’s someone else I need to see first.”
*
There was a small party at Pritkin’s bedside: Hilde, Abigail, and Rian, the latter sitting off to one side, along with Billy Joe. Who was looking green.
More so than usual.
“You all right?” I asked, putting an arm around him.
He looked up smiling. And then made a face. “Got a sour stomach.”
“Billy. You’re a ghost. You don’t have a stomach.”
“Well, I got a sour something.” He gave what could only be described as a yack. I moved back a few feet.
Rian continued quietly reading a book. She looked the same as usual: calm, serene, beautiful. I wondered if anyone had told her. “Rian,” I said. “I just . . . uh . . . I wanted to say—”
“We’ll talk later,” she said, smiling. “Your friends have been waiting for you.”
I walked over to the bed. I hadn’t been to visit Pritkin this whole time. He’d been at Caleb’s for a while, because hell wasn’t safe for him, even now. Then here at the hotel, after Caleb had to return to work. And neither of them was exactly hard to get to. But I hadn’t been able to bear it.
And now it was exactly as bad as I’d feared.
The eyes that were usually hard and angry, or narrowed cynically, or wide in alarm—or occasionally, warm or playful or amused—were now closed, the too-light eyelashes almost invisible on the badly stubbled cheeks. Nobody had apparently thought to shave him, and he was halfway to a respectable beard.
I looked over my shoulder. “Has he remembered anything?” I asked Rian.
“He hasn’t woken up yet.” She saw my expression. “This isn’t a spell anyone is supposed to survive. But once you applied the countercurse—”
“He applied it,” I said, biting my lip. And looking back at him. “What if he pronounced it wrong? What if the rain smeared a word? What if—”
“Cassie. Give it time.”
I didn’t say anything. But I felt like I’d given it enough time. I felt like I’d given it a world of time. I wanted to shake him, to see those eyes open, to— I sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Jonas was in here earlier,” Hildegarde informed me, without preamble. “Someone ratted you out.”
I looked up. “What did he want?”
“To know what happened to your war mage. To know what was going on. To ask us where we all went off to, and what we did, and what we knew—a thousand things!”
“We didn’t tell him anything,” Abigail said.
“Damn right.” Hilde’s silver curls bobbed angrily. “He knows better than to question an acolyte about a mission! That’s for the Pythia to tell him—or not—as she chooses!” She looked at me severely. “You’re going to have to rein him in.”
“I could use some help with that,” I said honestly.
Hilde looked pleased for a moment. And then she frowned. “It was quite exciting, I must admit. But this . . . frankly, it’s usually seen as a job for the young.”
“I met the young,” I said dryly. “They almost killed me.”
“Good point.”
Abigail was glancing between the two of us, but not looking like she wanted to volunteer. At all. They both looked like they’d had a bath and a meal, but her eyes were still wider than when I first met her.
Yeah, I thought.
This life does that to you.
“You have a family,” I remembered.
She nodded emphatically. “I really have to get back. But I could stay for a week or so, help you settle in?”
“You’ve done enough,” I told her. “I’m very grateful.”