“No, it wasn’t. This is war; Cassie needs to know the truth.”
“And when she wakes up, will you tell her the truth?” Rico asked, glancing at Rhea.
“She already knows,” I said, looking at the small lump in the bed. And then up to meet Rico’s dark eyes. “That mage didn’t slit Rhea’s throat. She did it herself, so he would have nothing left to trade. She knows, Rico.” I turned and went back to my room.
Chapter Thirteen
I ended up in the bathroom because I needed to be alone and it was the one place the vamps wouldn’t follow me. I loved them like family—hell, they were my family, or as much of one as I’d ever had—but they weren’t human. Not anymore. And sometimes they showed that in odd ways, like failing to understand the need for solitude.
Vamps didn’t have solitude. From the moment they were Changed, they never had it again. I often wondered why they didn’t go insane—more of them, that is. The constant buzzing in their heads, all those voices, all those thoughts, all the time—
I shuddered.
I could hardly stand being in my own head these days, which was getting cluttered with voices, too. Voices of all the people I hadn’t been able to help, because I hadn’t acted fast enough, hadn’t planned well enough, wasn’t strong enough. It was getting to be a long list. So many voices . . .
Except for the one I really needed to hear.
I sat against the side of the tub, pulled my legs up, and concentrated.
It didn’t help that I didn’t know how to do this. That, until a few days ago, I hadn’t even known that I could do this. I’d thought of the Pythian power as, well, power, some bit of Apollo’s strength that he’d given to the priestesses he’d claimed as his own.
And that was where it had started. But during all those thousands of years out of touch with its former master, it had become something more: an independent entity that guarded the timeline with the help of the Pythias it chose. Like it had chosen me, but was probably regretting it, because I hadn’t understood that we were supposed to be a team.
Until recently, when Rhea had given me a little Pythia 101, and I’d started listening for what my power was trying to say.
“Can I go back?” I whispered, into the silence. “Can I . . . fix this?”
Because I could. I hadn’t had the strength for a time shift this morning, but now . . . I could go back, I could call the Circle, I could have them waiting when the dark mages showed up. I could talk to Rhea, tell her to ignore that phone call. I could visit the desk clerk, warn him that his job was about to get him killed.
And I could do it all in five minutes. Hell, less than that, if I was lucky. And then the deaths, the pain, the suffering—all of it would be gone, erased like it had never happened.
Because for them, it never would have.
But my power didn’t seem to like that idea. Every time I thought about hitting rewind, all I got was a rising tide of black panic. My power wasn’t human and didn’t speak to me in English, or at all as far as I could tell. But I didn’t think that was a yes.
“If we’re partners, talk to me,” I whispered. “Why can’t I do this?”
Nothing.
It had been the same at the consul’s last night, but at least then I’d thought I understood. The supernatural community was fractured, with the Circle, the senate, the demons, the covens—basically, every single group I knew of—off doing their own thing. Some of them had alliances, yes, but they were more on paper than anything else. Old hatreds ran deep, and old distrusts deeper. No one wanted to work together, not even now.
Until last night, when the bad guys gate-crashed a party at the senate leader’s house, attended by the top dogs of most of the different groups. All of whom suddenly found themselves fighting side by side. I’d thought maybe that was what the power was trying to tell me: that they’d needed the lesson. It might have been costly, but in the end it might be far costlier if they never learned to work together.
That had made sense.
This didn’t.
“They died because of me; they trusted me. Please . . .”
Nothing. Not even the faint, glimmering strands that had shown up briefly in my mental landscape last night, much less the sparkling ocean of power I sometimes glimpsed when I concentrated hard enough. Instead, the ocean I saw tonight was dark and heavy, with storm-tossed crests above deep blue depths that seemed to go down forever.
It didn’t want me going back.
It really, really didn’t.
I knew that in my gut, felt it in every fiber of my being, just like I felt the almost overwhelming urge to do it anyway.
Because I could override it. Somehow I knew that. What I didn’t know was why it thought I shouldn’t.
And that was a problem, since according to Rhea, the Pythian power used my clairvoyance to assess risks and outcomes. It was why I hadn’t been plagued with the terrifying visions I’d had most of my life since becoming Pythia. My power had co-opted much of my clairvoyance, using it to poke around in time and see what was going on.
And for some reason, it had determined that today’s disaster had been necessary.
But I couldn’t see it.
“Show me, then. Show me something.”
But all I got back was more of that deep, dark ocean, mysterious, infinite, infuriating. And alien. Maybe too alien to see a handful of human lives as important. To something able to see the whole span of time, the whole extent of human civilization, maybe they hadn’t been anything but specks on a map: just some old guy, just some front-desk flunky, just some pie-obsessed girl.
But to me they’d been brave and resourceful and innocent, and they’d deserved better. They’d deserved a lot better, and I should have been able to give it to them. But I couldn’t and I didn’t even know why, might never know why, and I hated this job, hated having so much responsibility—for people’s lives—and never enough power or strength to go with it.
“Show me! You can’t just say no and that’s it. I’m not your slave!”
The words echoed off the tile box of a bathroom, because I hadn’t bothered to whisper that time. But it didn’t matter. The answer was the same.
“Goddamn it!” I yelled, and threw a slipper at the door, because it was the only thing I could reach.
And had it caught by a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt.
I couldn’t see anything but the hand and part of an arm, because the rest of the body was still outside. But I didn’t need to. It looked like Lou Ferrigno and Arnold Schwarzenegger had had a baby—a baby that liked tacky golf shirts—so I was pretty sure I knew who it was.
I supposed I should have felt privileged that Marco had left me alone this long to wallow in stupid human angst. Because that was how the vamps tended to view stuff like this, as some weird human habit. They didn’t angst. If something bothered them, they ripped its limbs off until it stopped.
And they were right—okay, not about limb thing, but about the part where this was a stupid waste of time that wouldn’t help.
I just wished I knew what would.
“Is it safe to come in?” Marco asked, sounding muffled because he was still talking through the door.
“Are you really worried?” I asked dryly.
“Well, you have another slipper.” The big head poked into the room and eyed me. And the bone-dry tub. And the fact that I was still dressed in the rumpled T-shirt I’d slept in.
Then he came in and sat down by the tub, too. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
I didn’t look at him. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want a heart-to-heart or cheering up or whatever this was supposed to be.
I didn’t need comforting; I needed answers. “I survived.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Marco, I’m fine. All right?”
“All right.”
We sat there awhile, the girl in the crumpled tee with naked toes peeking out from underneath, and the giant of a guy in Ferragamos, staring at our feet in silence.
Marco was the loafer kind. Today’s had tassels, to match the golf theme. I hadn’t known they made them in size eighty-nine or whatever, but I supposed so. Of course, if you were having them made to order, I guessed they made them any damn way you told them to.