Chapter Twelve
O kay, but what about Tony?” Alphonse said as we sat on the floor of our room, with the bottle that Pritkin had stashed away getting passed around and the guys snacking out of Alphonse’s coat.
I wasn’t eating, although my stomach was still actively complaining about that, maybe because most of the little offerings looked good. But they didn’t smell good. Nothing in here did.
And, for once, it wasn’t just the twins’ fault.
The flunkies must have cast a spell to mask the demonic scent while the ladies were retrieving their stolen items, and they’d cast it hard. It was the kind of passive aggressiveness I could have done without, despite the stuff being everywhere in the royal palace. It was called “ocean breeze,” according to Pritkin, and was supposedly the clean smell of wind across the sea, with a tinge of salt and a hint of pine.
And maybe it was. Unfortunately, the twins continued to emit what I hoped was merely passive odor, but frankly doubted it. The monster’s leg seemed to have made them gassy, and the spell wasn’t having it.
So, every time they erupted, it did, too, in a duel to the death that had the room taking on a smell that I wasn’t entirely sure was quantifiable or an improvement over the original.
“What about him?” I asked, trying not to choke.
“Okay,” Alphonse said, chewing on some seaweed candy because his nose seemed to have already adjusted, damn it. “I get what you’re saying about the illusion, and it’s possible. I didn’t scent the fat man, although, in a crowd like that, I might not have. I’m not a Hound,” he added, talking about the vamps with super sensitive noses that could pick up almost any scent, even one days old.
Lucky we didn’t have one of them with us, I thought, shooting the twins a look.
The poor thing would be dead.
“But here’s where it gets hinky,” Alphonse went on. “Tony might have been a fake out, and the poison could have been meant for any or all of us. But that damned octopus—”
“Kraken,” Pritkin said, drinking more blue liquid that tasted like mint and hit like a dozen semi-trucks. He belted it back like a man intending to get drunk, which had me worried.
And then what he’d said registered. “Is that what we fought?”
Pritkin looked at me. “What the hell did you think it was?”
“I . . . didn’t really have time to think all that much.”
“Obviously.”
I frowned at him and took the bottle away.
“—showed up at the perfect time to kill her!” Alphonse continued, pointing at me with the seaweed-covered stick. “The poisoned plate was also put in front of her—”
“Alphonse,” I said because I didn’t want to go through all that again, not with Pritkin already so touchy.
“—and the illusion could only have been aimed at two people, one of which—”
“Alphonse!”
“—was her . And then, when the Ice Prince didn’t manage to gut her, they loosed the big boy. Who immediately went after her and nobody else. I don’t think you were the target. I think she was and still is.”
“I know,” Pritkin said, his jaw tight. “But what the hell am I supposed to do about it? She’s Pythia. I can’t throw her over my shoulder and carry her out!”
His look said that we wouldn’t be here now if he could.
“Carry her out?” Alphonse looked confused.
“And neither can you! If they’re targeting her—”
“Well, of course, they’re targeting her! That’s why we didn’t come to your aid sooner; we had a fight with a bunch of would-be assassins. Or she had a fight. I mostly treaded water and swore—”
“You didn’t tell me that,” Pritkin said, looking at me accusingly.
“Didn’t I?”
“—and this court used to be run by an iron-fisted demigoddess,” Alphonse continued. “They’re not happy to see another one show up. But that’s not the point. The point is that the attack was planned and we know by who—”
“We know no such thing!” Pritkin snapped, his mood darkening by the minute. “I can name a hundred other suspects, and that’s just off the top of my head! And half of them have mental abilities that might have allowed them to control that thing. Tony doesn’t!”
“And I thought he was an illusion,” I added.
“Something he could have arranged as easily as anybody else,” Alphonse said. “He’s been here a while; he’s got friends. Not to mention the ones on the other side in this war. The fact that what you saw was probably fake don’t mean he wasn’t behind it—”
“You’re obsessed with him,” Pritkin accused. “Or else you’re trying to trick us—”
“Careful,” Alphonse growled.
“—into helping you take your revenge. I don’t care if you want to target this vampire, but leave us out of it! We have enough—”
“Don’t underestimate the fat man,” Alphonse snapped. “And I may be obsessed, but it don’t mean I’m wrong. Look, he had to know she was coming—”
“How? I didn’t know—”
“Then you’re not as smart as everybody says.” He looked back and forth between the two of us. “You know, you guys may think you’re subtle, but I got news: you ain’t subtle.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that the whole magical world knows you’re bonking—”
“Bonking?” I said worriedly.
“Doing the horizontal mambo,” Alphonse clarified. “Riding the bedroom rodeo, bow-chick-a-wow-wow—”
“We know what it means!” Pritkin said.
“The whole world?” I asked. Because who the Pythia was dating was considered a matter of political importance since that person could supposedly influence her. I didn’t intend to live my whole life undercover, skulking around like my predecessor did, but I wasn’t ready to make a big announcement yet, either.
Alphonse shrugged. “Some people think you dumped Mircea and took up with this guy,” he hiked a thumb. “Or else all three of you are getting jiggy with it on the regular because you can’t make up your mind—”
“We are not!”
Alphonse hiked an eyebrow.
“Not on the regular. . .”
He hiked two.
“What is your damned point?” Pritkin snarled.
“I have no idea anymore . . . oh, wait. Yeah, my point was that you two are an item, and Cassie is loyal to those she loves. So, yeah, Tony knew you were coming. Probably his masters on the other side told him you might try for the army, even before the court here figured it out. And,” he added, before Pritkin could interrupt. “These assholes knew weeks ago. You were spotted heading this way, and there was only one reason why you’d come back, ‘specially now. That’s why they could lay all those traps for you, to cut you off at the pass.”
“And how do you know that?” Pritkin demanded.
Alphonse tapped his ear. “Vampire hearing. They talk; I listen. But Tony . . .” he shook his head. “He’s smarter than that. He knew you’d expect it on the road; you know how many scouts they got. So, he laid his plans and waited for you to fall into them like an oversized spider.”
“You’re giving him a good deal of credit,” Pritkin said skeptically.
Alphonse and I exchanged a look. “Everybody always underestimates him,” Alphonse said. “He looks like a joke, like a fat Gomez Addams, and like somebody tryin’ to be bad who ain’t all that bad. But he had his own court for hundreds of years. You know the only people who can usually do that? First and second-level masters, which he ain’t.
“He’s third, and barely that, to the point that he don’t like being out in direct sunlight. Which makes him fodder, even with Mircea backing him up, which he usually don’t. You go out on your own, it’s expected that you can handle yourself and your court. Your master ain’t going to come riding to the rescue all the time, or any time, least not that you can count on. Tony shoulda been meat.”
“But he wasn’t,” Pritkin said, looking like he was listening for the first time.
“No. And it wasn’t about power, ‘cause it ain’t for most of us.” Alphonse grabbed the bottle from me and took a swig, and his eyes widened slightly. “What the hell is this?”
“Merlik. The merfolk make it from giant kelp and neon blue algae.”
“Why don’t that surprise me?” Alphonse looked at it some more, shrugged, and took another drink. “Anyway, like I was saying,” he wheezed. “You guys have been hanging out with the big boys—the ones with power to burn who can afford to be stupid sometimes and make mistakes. We don’t get that luxury. The losers farther down the scale have to make it by our wits or our fangs, or a little bit of both.”
“And Tony did.”
“Yeah. I was the fangs; he was the wits. So, he knew she was comin’ ‘cause you were comin’, and she wasn’t gonna leave you hanging out to dry. He knows her better than that.
“So, he made plans. And since he ain’t the type to trust anybody, he’s likely here to oversee those plans. You got a bigger problem than the other heirs.”
“Tell her that,” Pritkin said, and they both looked at me.
Like that didn’t make me even more determined to stay!
Alphonse was right about one thing: people underestimated Tony all the time. It was one reason I hadn’t minded the looks I received when I first became Pythia. They had ranged from “Poor thing, wonder how long she’ll last” to “You have got to be kidding me.” Nobody thought I could do this job, and that included me half the time.
But I hadn’t argued with them because I’d learned from the best. Having people underestimate me was a bigger shield than anything magic could create. They didn’t target me when they thought I was going to die on my own, just any minute now.
The same attitude had served Tony well for centuries, leaving him to work his nasty little plans in the shadows while everyone else thought he was a lightweight. And now he was on the other side in this war, and his buddies didn’t want the Alorestri forces under Pritkin’s control. So, Alphonse was likely correct; Tony or people loyal to him were here, which made my leaving utterly useless.
It would just switch the focus from me to the only guy left standing, and that wasn’t happening!
I didn’t say that, though, since I didn’t want another argument, but I didn’t need to. Pritkin was more than capable of reading my face, and his jaw had set into that mulish expression I remembered from when we first met. The one that said he hated this.
“I haven’t said I’m competing,” he reminded me. “If you stay, I’ll sit on the sidelines. I won’t participate—”
“Then I will.”
“What?”
I hadn’t wanted to do this, but he was leaving me no choice. “If you don’t challenge, I will.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “You don’t have standing—”
“Of course I do. All the gods were related; they practically made incest a family pastime.
And Nimue was a daughter of Poseidon. The same Poseidon who was a brother to Zeus. The same Zeus who fathered Artemis, or so some legends say—”
“The legends be damned!”
“—and whether it’s true or not, no one here can dispute it. So, as Artemis’s daughter, I’m Nimue’s second cousin. Or something.”
“That close enough?” Alphonse asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t think it matters, just so long as you have some connection to the throne. Look at him. He’s Nimue’s great-grandson .”
Pritkin’s eyes narrowed. “You planned this ahead of time,” he accused.
“Of course I did.” I hadn’t had much else to do on the way here.
“And didn’t tell me.”
I frowned. “I hoped I wouldn’t have to! But I know you. I knew what you were likely to say—”
“So, you held this in reserve to blackmail me?”
Alphonse whistled through his teeth, and I felt my cheeks flush. “I’m not blackmailing you! I’m saying we need that army, and if you won’t challenge for it, I will. And if you want to leave me here to fight alone, well, I guess that’s your—”
Pritkin abruptly got up and went into the bathroom. The Brain’s eyestalk moved back and forth between him and me for a moment, and then the vaguely blue-tinted creature slowly glorped after him. Pinkie stayed with me; I didn’t know why.
I guessed octopus bought a lot of loyalty.
I sighed, but Alphonse seemed pleased. “Okay, good, he’s gone. We can talk.”
“He’ll be back. He just wants to beat up some rocks first.”
Alphonse lifted an eyebrow but didn’t comment. He’d gotten good at that at Tony’s, where a wrong word could get your tongue cut out. “Then I’ll be fast. The point I’ve been trying to make is that the fat bastard is coming for you. That was him tonight. Some of it, maybe all of it, but it was him—”
“If he’s here.”
“He’s here. You know it as well as I do. You might not know it up here yet,” he tapped my head. “But your gut knows. Don’t tell me it doesn’t.”
I didn’t say anything. But frankly, I agreed with Alphonse. Tony might have been a middle-of-the-road vamp back home, with a decent-sized court and an income to match, but here. . . He was nothing, just nothing.
I still didn’t know how he’d ended up backing the gods, but he’d served his purpose on Earth and had no more to offer them. And they didn’t stay loyal to dead weight. So, whatever they’d promised, he was now uncertain about receiving it.
Probably protection; the fat man had always been paranoid. And now there was a less-than-zero chance that his future depended on offering them something big. Something that they hadn’t been able to get on their own.
Something like my head.
“Yeah, you know,” Alphonse said, watching me. “That’s good. It saves time. So, can we stop arguing about whether he’s behind this and start talking about how to use it ?”
“Use it how?” I asked, looking at him suspiciously.
“That’s fair,” he said, seeing my expression. “’Cause yeah, you’re the best chance we got to catch him. I’ve been here for weeks and haven’t had a sniff until you turned up. And suddenly, he’s popping out of the woodwork—”
“You want to repeat tonight and use me as bait, only with our plan instead of his.”
“What?” That was Pritkin again, coming back in with a terrible expression.
Alphonse and I both sighed that time.
“They’re coming after her anyways,” Alphonse pointed out. “But that’s good, ‘cause we can use it to—”
That was the last coherent thing he said for a while since talking through a broken jaw is hard, even for vampires.
The two men tumbled into the hall, and I tried some seaweed candy. And made a face because it was terrible, or maybe that was the stench. Pinkie had come over to drag a slimy, odorous appendage up and down my arm in what I guessed was supposed to be a comforting caress, only it had the opposite effect.
And, suddenly, I couldn’t take it anymore.
Not the smell, not the view of Pinkie’s dinner swirling around and around that transparent flesh, not Pritkin’s attitude —none of it! Not this room , which I knew would ensure zero sleep. I needed rest to be any good tomorrow, and this wouldn’t cut it.
I got up, wiped my arm on the bedspread, and paused, noticing a plain black cloak that somebody had left behind because it blended in too well with the fur. I grabbed it, flung it around me, and went out to find Alphonse and Pritkin. Who were halfway down the hall and still going at it.
“I’m staying with Alphonse,” I said. “Come on.”
“What?” Pritkin looked up with a bruised jaw that didn’t appear broken, but not for lack of trying on someone’s part.
“You heard me. I can’t breathe in there—”
“Someone tried to kill you three times tonight!”
“—and I need to breathe to sleep. So—”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Alphonse said from under Pritkin’s arm.
“You stay out of this!” Pritkin snarled.
“Just hear me out. Three times so far .”
He was abruptly released. “And what does that mean?”
Alphonse took his time standing up and shaking out the latest wrinkles in his once-nice tuxedo. “It means they know where she’s staying. She might be better off with me. Least until you get this place warded halfway to hell.”
“I have wards. And if I’m here, she’s safe. I don’t have to worry!”
Alphonse didn’t say anything, but his look was eloquent.
“What?” Pritkin demanded.
“Nothing. I know better than to get between a man and his woman,” he said diplomatically. And then he did it anyway. “But if I was gonna comment—”
Pritkin said something rude.
“—I’d point out that she throws down pretty good. She ended that fight tonight—”
“By flooding the damned room!”
“Well, that ended it. That thing was lookin’ for a way out, and she gave it one. You know there are other ways to win a fight than violence, right?”
Pritkin and I both stared at him.
“And besides, she can shift away if anything happens, can’t she?”
“But she won’t!” Pritkin snapped. “She’ll stay right there, as she’s proved a dozen times—”
“You sound like a broken record,” I said, grabbing Alphonse again.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Pritkin said, his green eyes darkening.
“Watch me.” My power had just returned, and it was itching to get me out of here.
“Cassie!”
“See you at the Challenge,” I said and shifted.