“Then why didn’t they just put you in another room? In fact, why are you here at all? You’re a demon lord—”
“And you’re a powerful sorceress who placed me under your control, and have been sapping my power to fuel your jaunts through time.”
I paused halfway through a swallow to stare at him.
“Leaving me currently drained and incapable of posing a threat to anyone.” He saw my expression. “Well, I had to tell them something.”
“No! No, you didn’t!”
“Think about it, girl! If I hadn’t, they might have given me back to the damn war mages,” he said, referring to the closest thing the magical community had to a police force. “Have you forgotten what happened last time?”
Not likely. Not after everything I’d had to do to get him back before the mages killed him, or the demon council’s guards showed up to do it for them. That’s why I’d checked the local war mage HQ before coming here; I’d assumed I’d have to break him out again.
But no.
Gertie was handling things herself this go-round.
Gertie was going hard-core.
“The further back we go, the more of a concern we are,” Rosier said, confirming my thoughts. “I heard them talking when I was coming out of that time freeze they slapped me with. Just snatches of conversation, but enough to know that they’ve elevated us from annoying mystery to serious threat—”
“We weren’t that already?” Could have fooled me.
“No. When we were in Amsterdam, there was a chance you were just an acolyte who had slipped her Pythia’s leash. But bored acolytes don’t have the power to make it back fifteen hundred years! By the time we reached Wales, they were betting on one of those . . . what are they called?” He flapped a hand. “Crazy men, run about trying to change time, usually get blown up for their trouble?”
“The Guild.” I swallowed, remembering how much my predecessor had loved them.
But Rosier just nodded. “That’s it. Guild of something or other—I forget. But the point is, they now think you’re dangerous—”
“Yes, thanks to you!”
“That cherry-covered freak was already determined to catch you,” he pointed out. “I merely ensured that she would think you needed me, and would be back to fetch me—”
“Which would have been great except that I do need you and I did come back!”
“—and now, thanks to my foresight, we’re together and can work on getting out of here,” he finished, ignoring the fact that he’d basically set me up. “Speaking of which, how long until you can shift?”
I picked up the glass and drained it, hoping it would help with the throbbing in my skull.
Nope.
“Well?” he prodded.
I wiped my lips on the back of my hand. “Long.”
“And that means?”
“It means long. We need other options.”
Rosier scowled.
“And we have one. Don’t we?”
Nothing.
What a surprise.
But then he did surprise me, by leaning over the bed, close enough to mouth, Two.
I blinked, brain still foggy, and followed his gaze to the door.
All it showed me was a tousle-headed blonde in an oval mirror, with dark circles under dazed blue eyes, wearing a high-collared white nightie. I guessed the shorts and T-shirt I’d started out with had offended local sensibilities. My new attire offended mine, making me look about twelve. It also did not give me any answers.
My eyes found Rosier’s again in confusion.
He sighed. Guards, on the other side of the door.
Yes?
They have the key. He held up his chained wrist.
I looked from it to the skinny, hairy legs poking out from under his tunic. And the arms that in no way resembled his son’s. And the too-soft middle. Rosier looked like he’d never lifted anything heavier than a champagne glass in his life.
Which might explain why he kept getting beaten up . . . by little girls.
Yes?
He sprawled across the bed to glare at me. And to whisper: “I’m a lover, not a fighter, but I’m damn good with sleight of hand. Just help me get them in here!”
Fine.
“It wouldn’t have to be for long,” I said, going with the argument I’d planned to have anyway. Because I wasn’t the only one who could shift. Of course, Rosier couldn’t time-travel, and his spatial shifts only went one place. But right now I’d take it. “A short trip into the hells—”
“No.”
“Really short. Like a couple of minutes—”
“Not a couple of seconds.”
“—just long enough for us to move a block or two and get past whatever wards they’ve got on this place—”
“Going into a minefield to avoid a fence. Yes, that sounds safe.”
“You know what’s not safe?” I asked, getting genuinely pissed. “Pritkin stuck in freaking Wales about to die, that’s what’s not safe.”
“And if I could do something about it, don’t you think I would?”
“Not if it meant risking your precious neck. You’ll let your own son die when a small risk—”
“Small? Small?” Rosier was beginning to look a bit flushed himself. “I put so much as a toe in hell, any hell, and I might as well have a neon sign over my head reading FREE BUFFET! I wouldn’t last two minutes—I doubt I would last one. And in case you forgot, this mission requires both of us, or I wouldn’t be here talking to you!”
“Ditto! If I could do this alone, believe me—”
“Alone? You can’t walk across a room alone—”
“I did pretty well when you abandoned me in freaking medieval Wales—”
“—without starting a war!”
“I didn’t start it! I had nothing to do with it!”
“And yet there you were. There you always—”
“This isn’t about me!” I yelled. “You have to be the most selfish, uncaring, infuriating man since—”
“Emrys?”
“Pritkin! It’s Pritkin, you prick! And he’s nothing like you!”
“He’s exactly like me,” Rosier said, scrambling across the bed to get in my face. “He doesn’t want to admit it; he’s never wanted to. You saw him, mooning over those damn fey. Ooooh, look, a Sky Lord! When they’re nothing but insane murderous bastards, every single one—”
“No arguments here.”
“—living in one measly, intensely creepy world—”
“Says the man from hell.”
“—when he could have thousands. And the knowledge of millennia, time out of mind. But always, always that perverse boy was attracted to every damn thing besides his own birthright!”
“The fey are his birthright, too. You saw to that yourself—”
“A fact I’ve regretted every day since!”
“—and, in fact, pretty much every problem Pritkin has can be traced back to you, can’t it?” I asked. “From leaving him to grow up with zero guidance, to taking him from earth before he was ready, to putting him in a terrible situation as your heir—”
“You understand nothing!”
“—to placing that damn prohibition on him—”
“To save his life, you wretched, wretched—”
“—to dragging him back to hell again, when you knew damn well—”
“That was your mother’s fault!” Rosier moved like lightning, wrapping his free hand around my neck. “She took my sire, long before I was ready to fill his shoes! She left me and my people vulnerable. She forced me to have to find a way to increase my power, and now her daughter is trying to take him away! I hate you! I hate your whole damn family!”
The door burst open, a fact I was grateful for, since I wasn’t entirely sure Rosier remembered that we were acting. Two war mages stood there, with their long leather coats and butt-kicking boots and annoyed expressions not looking all that different despite the era. But they didn’t come any closer.