“Was your friend able to help?” I asked thickly.
The scowl ramped up a notch, and he sat back on his heels. “Yes and no. The good news is, he can make a pretty good guess at the contents. The bad news, like I warned you last night, is that an ingredient list is useless without the recipe.”
“But if he knows what’s in it—”
“It’s not just about what’s in it. It’s about brewing time, temperature, method of combining ingredients—a hundred variables. Combine them one way, you get magic. Combine them another . . . a really expensive sludge.”
“So he can’t duplicate it?” I asked, to be sure.
“No.”
“So how do I get more?”
“You ask the old man. It’s your potion, Cassie. You’re the Pythia—”
He broke off when I sat up and put my head in my hands, not sure if I wanted to laugh or cry. I was Pythia when other people wanted something or found it convenient, but when the shoe was on the other foot? Not so much.
“Do you have any coffee?” I asked, after a minute. “Tea? Something with caffeine?”
Caleb snorted. “Not what you’d consider coffee. Not if you’ve been drinking that nuclear waste John mainlines all day.”
“I don’t drink Pritkin’s coffee and he doesn’t eat my doughnuts. We have a deal.”
“I’d hate to see the doughnut John would eat,” Caleb said, standing up. And circling around the little half wall that separated the open-plan kitchen from the open-plan living room.
He brewed stuff while I watched the Strip through the semicircle of windows to the left of the couch. And slowly began to feel stronger and more clearheaded. And lighter, like my limbs no longer weighed half a ton each. Even the pain from all those little, and not so little, wounds didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. They still hurt, but I could ignore them.
For the moment. But experience had proven that one bottle of the Circle’s special brew wasn’t going to last me for long. And without it, in my current state, I wasn’t going to be much use to anybody.
In a minute, Caleb was back with something that smelled good—genuinely good.
“You look surprised,” he said.
I stuck my nose in the mug. “What’s in this?”
“Amaretto.”
I looked up hopefully. “Like those little cookies?”
Caleb sighed and got back to his feet.
“And maybe a sandwich?” I turned around and put my good knee on the couch so I could see him. The smell of that coffee had me suddenly starving. “Do you have sandwich stuff?”
“I don’t cook.”
“Making a sandwich isn’t cooking. And what do you eat?”
Caleb looked at me over a muscular shoulder. “Takeout. This is Vegas.”
“But you live here. Doesn’t takeout get old?”
“No.” He rooted around in the fridge. “Fish tacos?”
“Sounds good.”
He stuck a nose in the container and made a face. “It wouldn’t if you smelled them.”
They hit the garbage can.
“Don’t you have anyone to cook for you? A girlfriend?”
“War mage,” he reminded me, sniffing a takeout bag. And rearing back, his eyes watering. “I gotta clean out this fridge.”
“So war mages don’t get the women?” I asked, only half joking. Because Caleb was a damn good catch. Handsome, brave, a world traveler—more than one world now—and judging by the apartment, he wasn’t broke. But if there were any feminine touches around here, I didn’t see them.
Even the artwork on the walls were line drawings, black on white and black-framed, more architectural than strictly beautiful. Sort of like the man himself: solid, straightforward, but more interesting than you’d expect when you got to know him.
“Women like security,” he told me. “Safety—”
“What’s safer than being married to a war mage?”
“—for their man, as well as for themselves. They don’t like going to bed not knowing if he’s gonna be there when they wake up, or if he’s ever gonna be there again.”
“Cops have wives,” I pointed out. “And soldiers—”
“And they face some of the same kind of thing. But it’s worse for us. Some of the stuff we work on . . . they can’t be told what happened to us, when we don’t come back. They may never be told. It’s . . . difficult.”
“So war mages don’t settle down?”
“Some do. Some marry other war mages. Some get divorced and drink too much.” He shrugged.
“Makes me wonder why anybody does the job at all.”
“I’ve often thought the same thing about Pythias.”
I made a face.
And then made a different one when a plate was handed over the counter.
It was a retrospective of Caleb’s weekly intake. But since he wasn’t as much of a health nut as Pritkin, there was actual food on there: broccoli beef still in its little carton, potato salad, dim sum balls stuffed with barbecued pork, chicken shawarma . . . and some of the requested amaretto cookies.
I dug in and Caleb watched me over the counter while sipping his own mug of coffee.
“So why can’t you just ask the old man for the potion?” he finally said.
I swallowed. “Because I’ve tried trusting Jonas lately, and it hasn’t gone well. I thought we had an understanding, but then he snuck Lizzie away this morning, before I got back, so now I don’t know.”
“You could ask him. See what he says.”
“Yeah, I could,” I agreed, around a mouthful of chicken. “Only I already did that a couple days ago, and didn’t get anywhere. He claimed he didn’t have any more, and maybe he doesn’t. Or maybe he does, and he doesn’t want to give it to me. He’s afraid I’m going to go off somewhere and get myself killed, like I can’t do that here!”
There was silence for another minute while I shoveled food into my face. It finally stretched long enough that I looked up and found Caleb regarding me moodily. “What?”
“You won’t like it.”
“Well, there’s a switch.”
He sighed and ran a hand over his head. It was the cue ball look today, so the recessed lights were shining on a slick dome that looked like it had too much to think about. At least if the wrinkles on the forehead were anything to go by.
“You look like a good gust of wind would blow you away,” he finally said.
“Caleb—”
“And I’ve seen that look, all right? I’ve seen it a lot. I know war mages who would have broken from some of the stuff you’ve been up to, and I strongly suspect I don’t know the half of it. Maybe Jonas sees the same thing, that you need a rest—”
“Yeah, I’ll take a few days off, hang by the pool.”
“I’m serious—”
“So am I,” I said, a little sharper than necessary. Because how did he not get this? “I take a vacation, and Pritkin will be dead and Ares will be back, because I have two rogues still alive and I don’t know where either of them is!”
“Two? I thought Lizzie—”
“Two. Jo Zirimis is the other, and she isn’t even in custody. My power is ignoring her, acting like she doesn’t exist, but she does—”
“Then why is the Black Circle targeting Lizzie?”