She teared up suddenly. And then rose in order to drop the most perfect curtsy I’ve ever seen. “It is an honor to serve,” she whispered. And glanced at Hilde, who was looking off into space. And gave her a little kick.
“What? Oh yes. An honor,” Hilde said. “You know, the main problem with Jonas is that he’s simply used to too much access. Got spoiled, what with his relationship with Lady Phemonoe. He needs a few more degrees of separation, to remember that access is a privilege, not a right. . . .”
Billy made another yacking sound, and then a hurk. Abigail looked at him in alarm, and took Hilde’s hand. “Perhaps we could discuss this later?”
“Oh yes.” Hilde squinted at me and then patted my hand. “I’ll be upstairs, in case Jonas comes nosing about again, all right?”
I nodded. She appeared to be looking forward to it.
They left.
I looked back down at the bed, where Pritkin had yet to so much as stir. “The Pythias took his memories,” I told Rian. “They said they had to, or it would have changed time. But he’s supposed to get them back.”
“I’m sure he will.”
God, I envied her serenity! On a number of levels.
“I did have a question, if you feel like answering,” she said, after a moment.
“What?” I looked back at her. “Sure.”
I expected something about Rosier, because I knew they’d been close. But it wasn’t what I got. “Your ghost told me what happened. Well, some of it. One thing, though, I didn’t understand.”
“One thing?” I didn’t understand half of it, and I’d been there.
She nodded. “The killing blow, the one that destroyed Ares. It was made by Arthur, was it not?”
“Yes.”
Her head tilted. “But that is what I find odd. As I understand it, he was part human and part water fey. Yet he wielded a fire weapon?”
“It was more like he boomeranged Ares’ own power back at him.”
“Yes, but how did he do that? For that matter, how did he wield Excalibur at all? I know it’s a little point, but it bothered me. I wondered why Nimue would even give the sword to him in the first place.”
I thought about it for a moment, and then laughed, suddenly remembering Rosier’s description of the ugliest man he’d ever seen. Almost inhumanly so. “If I was going to guess,” I told her, “I’d say Arthur had some fey on both sides. It also might explain why his symbol was a dragon.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
Billy hurked and coughed and made a strange hnnnz sound in his throat that was just . . . really off-putting. I sighed. What the hell did you do for a sick ghost? I’d never even heard of such a thing.
But I wasn’t taking him to any necromancers—that was for sure.
“I can give you a draw after breakfast,” I said.
“I don’t want a draw. I want this thing out of my throat!”
“What thing?” I asked warily.
And got some more hurking sounds in reply.
I wanted to ask him where he’d gone off to, on the battlefield. One minute he’d been there, right beside me, and the next he was gone. Not that he could have helped; we were both tapped out. But still . . .
I wondered what he’d been up to.
“Just remember,” Rian told me. “Whatever else happened, Ares is dead.”
“But Jo isn’t. Not completely.”
“But she’s just a ghost. What can a ghost do?”
“You’d be surprised.”
And then there was a slight stir on the bed.
I scrambled up and leaned over, to find green eyes open and staring back at me. Awake and aware. And alive.
For a moment, I just looked at him. I couldn’t seem to say anything. And for once, neither did he.
“We were warned that it might be a while, before he gets his voice back,” Rian told me. “In fact, all the senses are likely to be a bit . . . askew . . . for a few days. The spell is somewhat disorientating.”
Yeah, I bet.
I sat down on the bed, and Pritkin managed to grab my arm, after several tries. He tugged me down to him, and for a moment I felt guilty, because I was kind of relieved that I’d have a few days to sort out what to say to him. After everything we’d been through, I honestly had no idea.
But apparently, I was the only one.
“I remember,” he said, in a hoarse whisper.
I met his eyes, and from only a few inches away, they were . . . intense.
I swallowed. “Um. You remember . . . what, exactly?”
He smiled. And I swear, it was the evilest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Everything.”
Oh boy.
But then Billy saved me.
Hurk, hnggg, hnggg, hnggg! Yak yak yak yak.
And then Billy coughed up Rosier.
Conclusion
Rian and I were heading downstairs, both because Caleb had shown up to relieve her, and because she had a demon lord to escort back to hell. A very wrung out, very tired, very subdued demon lord. Who was getting told.
“Your father kept everyone in line through power,” she said severely. “Power you helped him acquire, but which he never thanked you for. You have done equally well through diplomacy, shrewd dealing, and sheer audacity. How are you not his equal when you did more with less?”
Rosier didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure he could. But Rian didn’t seem to care.
“For centuries, all I’ve heard was ‘I need a son,’ ‘I have to have more power,’ ‘I need a son to help me.’ But all that while, you were handling things perfectly well without one! And speaking as one of your subjects, may I say that I quite prefer the life we have now to the stories I’ve heard about your father’s era?”
Rosier managed to look meek.
“And may I assume, after everything you’ve been through, that you’ve learned something? And that Pritkin is no longer to be required to live under the sword of Damocles? May I tell him that he is free and able to choose his own path from now on?”
Rosier appeared to stiffen slightly at that, and to grow a backbone—or whatever the wispy steam version was. Until those dark eyes flashed, and she shot him a look of utter scorn. And he gave what sounded like the faintest of sighs.
And folded.
“I’m going to pick up Casanova for lunch, and afterward take Lord Rosier home,” Rian told me, shifting her pale blue Birkin bag to her other arm so she could punch the elevator button. “If you need me, Carlos can get you in touch.”
She air-kissed me, and stepped onto the elevator.
“I think I am going to enjoy the next few weeks,” she told Rosier. “There are any number of things I’ve intended to say to you.”
Rosier somehow managed to give off the appearance of alarm, despite being basically a whiff of smoke. One Billy had enveloped as he had me once, before he utterly dissipated. And had sustained him with his own life force until Rosier could accumulate enough sticking power to keep from fading.
He was going to owe him big-time, after this. I briefly wondered what kind of gift you got a ghost. And then I thought of Billy and Rosier, and the sheer amount of mayhem the two of them could cause together, and decided I didn’t want to know.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Rian said, placing a delicate Jimmy Choo in the elevator doors. And digging around in her purse. “Lord Mircea sent this for you.” And she pulled out a flat, rectangular package. “But strangely, it was delivered to John’s room.”