I scowled. Great.
He saw my expression, and this time, he was the one who laughed.
“Did you think there was a trick to it? Cassie, do you think anyone is ever prepared for a job like yours? Do you think, had you been brought up at the Pythian Court, trained by the sainted Agnes herself, put through political instruction until it was coming out your ears—do you really think it would matter?”
“It wouldn’t hurt!”
“And it wouldn’t help. Not nearly as much as you seem to think.” He shook his head. “I came to be glad that I didn’t know what I couldn’t do. That I was too naive to read the signs, to realize how unlikely any of us were to survive. I remember pounding on the table in a war room—a leaky cave on some misbegotten world somewhere—with three armies outside and none of them ours, with half my forces thinking about changing sides and the other half so demoralized they couldn’t be arsed to care, and yet I was still strategizing. Too stupid to know we’d already lost.”
“And . . . did you?” I asked, because it had kind of felt like that for me lately, too. Like I’d already lost and just hadn’t faced up to it yet. Because how did you fight a god?
It wasn’t a question anybody could answer, since nobody had ever done it. Except for me and the guy I was currently chasing through time, but there had been some heavy caveats there. Like the fact that Apollo, the god in question, had already been crispy fried thanks to Mom’s protection spell, and so was almost dead by the time he got here. And even then we hadn’t fought him, because how the hell were we supposed to fight him? Instead, we’d led him into a trap where some hungry demons and a supernatural vortex had polished him off.
The only thing we’d contributed was to run away.
Fast.
Which frankly still sounded like a plan, because I’d mostly taken after my very human father, and the idea of facing down the god of war made me feel incontinent again.
But I couldn’t run this time.
Not with a bunch of angry gods battering at the door, with a fractured supernatural community that it was my job to somehow bring together, and with a showdown coming that I had no idea—no idea—how to win.
The only clue I’d managed to find had been on the search for Pritkin, fifteen hundred years in the past, and I wasn’t even sure I was right about that one. I was currently sitting on a ledge overlooking a big, open expanse, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like I was trapped in a cave, too, one with the walls closing in and the roof about to come down on my head. And me unable to avert the disaster I saw coming because the little less than four months between a life reading tarot cards in a bar and one supposedly leading the supernatural community wasn’t enough, wasn’t close to enough. It felt like I’d been set up to fail, and here I was, managing right on cue, and I couldn’t—I just—I didn’t—
Damn it!
I wiped an arm over my eyes and looked up to find Rosier watching me. Something passed over his face for a second, something I couldn’t read. And then it was gone again, and he was making another of those elegant gestures he was so fond of.
“Well, obviously not,” he said, answering my previous question. “I’m sitting here, aren’t I? In this hideous thing.” He looked down at his ghostly tunic in distaste.
I wondered why he didn’t change it. Ghosts couldn’t, but Rosier wasn’t one. But maybe he was tired, too.
I leaned my head back against the wall. “So how did you get out of it?”
He shrugged. “I seduced the leader of one of the opposing forces, who thereafter switched sides halfway through the battle. He was behind our enemies and we were in front, and after a while of being sandwiched between the two of us, they broke and ran. And never lived down the ignominy of being beaten by a ragtag group of incubi. I made damn well sure they didn’t.”
“That was clever,” I pointed out. “And what was it? Strong, statesmanlike . . .”
“And astute. And no, it wasn’t. It was desperation, but it worked. And when desperate gambles work, they call them brilliance. Do it enough, and people start believing that you always can, that you always will. They follow people like that. They write legends about people like that.”
“But . . . you still know the truth. You know you’re faking it.”
“Yes, but eventually you realize something: the other side is, too. At least as often as not. Learn what you can; do what you can; get others to do for you what you can’t. And fake it for all you’re worth in the meantime.” He shot me a look. “In other words, exactly what you’ve been doing.”
I blinked at that. It wasn’t exactly a compliment, but it was close. Somebody was basically telling me that I wasn’t screwing things up as badly as I might be.
Hell, I’d take it.
Rosier just shook his head again. “Are you finished with that terrible thing?” he demanded, looking in distaste at the now stripped foot.
“You don’t know what you missed,” I told him, flashing a greasy smile.
“Come on,” he said, extending a ghostly hand. “Let’s go fake it some more.”
Chapter Four
Half an hour later, Rosier was back in hell, doing whatever he did to recover from these things, and I was back in the casino I call home, trying to follow his advice. Namely, to get some advice, and from someone who might know what she was talking about. Assuming I could get her attention, that is. But she was behind a cash register, halfway across a shop in the casino’s main drag, and I . . . was not.
And I wasn’t about to get any closer.
“Mommy, Mommy, look! It’s the corpse bride!”
I looked down to find a munchkin in a tutu tugging at my skirts. My singed, dirty, old-fashioned skirts, which were complementing my ash-covered body. And face. And hair. A quick glance in the shopwindow in front of me showed that they did, in fact, make me look kind of corpse bridey.
I sighed.
“I’m not, actually,” I told the kid, still concentrating on the dark-haired beauty behind the counter.
Her name was Françoise, and normally, I’d have just walked in and said hi. We’d been friends for a while, even before she got her current job, prettying up the salon of the magical world’s most famous fashion designer (according to him, anyway). But right now wasn’t a good time to interrupt. Right now would be a good time to get lost, only time wasn’t something I had a lot of. So I was skulking, trying to catch her eye through the hanging floral strands serving as a backdrop for a bunch of frolicking goddesses.
A bunch of curly-haired blond goddesses, I noticed, frowning.
And then frowned some more when I was tugged on again. “I want a picture! I want a picture!” the pixie demanded while trying to manhandle me into an appropriate pose, whatever that would be for a corpse.
I would have manhandled her back, but my hands were full. And Françoise took that moment to notice me. And to open her dark eyes wide and to shake her head, pointing at the disturbance I’d already seen, because how could you not?
I know, I mouthed. But I need to talk to you.
More headshaking, along with an attempt to mouth something back, only I couldn’t tell what because the hand in my skirts had just become a fist, and I was being forcibly dragged away from the window.
“Darling, I think she’s on her lunch break,” a woman said, running up.
She looked a little odd, like maybe the airlines had lost her luggage and she’d had to cobble together an outfit from whatever she’d had in her carry-on. It had led to a mishmash of chic and street person: frizzy brown hair that looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in a while, but which complemented sharp brown eyes behind expensive glasses. She had on a blue business suit that had cost money, but which was sadly rumpled. And which was being worn with a T-shirt instead of a blouse, one that proclaimed: “Once upon a time, I was sweet and innocent, then shit happened.”
I need to get one of those, I thought enviously.
“I’m not on a break,” I told her, which drew a skeptical look, probably because of the ICEE and the two food bags I was juggling. “I mean, I don’t work here,” I clarified—not at all, apparently.