“I did have regrets these past six months,” he told me quietly. “I found it a curse as much as a blessing, all that time to think. About the things I could have said, that I should have told you . . ”
“John!” The voice came from a distance. He ignored it.
“I thought I was sparing you, but I think I was really trying to spare myself. For a long time, I was almost grateful for my father’s curse. As hard as it was, it made some things simpler. I didn’t have to worry; I didn’t have to risk—”
“John!” the voice came again.
Pritkin glanced up, grimaced, and then looked back down at me again. And his expression was fiercer than I’d seen it in a while. “But somewhere in the last six months, I realized that, after what happened to my wife, I returned to earth, yes. But I didn’t return to life. I was as much a prisoner there as I was at court. Not just because of the curse, but because I wouldn’t allow myself—”
“John!” The voice was closer now. It was Caleb’s.
Pritkin said something under his breath and grabbed my arms. “Cassie, I don’t know how this will turn out. With the council, there’s no way to know. But whatever happens, I want you to know, I want you to remember, that I’m glad you came back for me. I’m glad I had a chance to know you. I’m glad—”
“John!” Caleb grabbed his arm. “We have to go— now. They’re calling for you—they have a ruling!”
“Of course they do,” Pritkin said. “Of course they bloody do!”
And, apparently, you don’t keep the demon high council waiting. We left the rest of the food and jogged back down the sidewalk, Pritkin and Caleb grim and silent, Casanova bleary-eyed and staggering, and me—I don’t know what I looked like, but my head was spinning like a tornado.
Not because of what Pritkin had said; I couldn’t think about that now. But because they had to let him go. They had to. After everything Mother had said, they couldn’t just . . . could they?
I didn’t know. They were like a million years old, but that only made it harder to guess. I had enough trouble figuring out how centuries-old vampires thought. I had zero chance of predicting the behavior of creatures who made them look like children. All I knew was that they really hadn’t liked Mother, and as her child, I wasn’t any more popular. As Pritkin was a repeat offender, as far as they were concerned. But like Mom had said, he was just one guy, and if they weren’t going to cough up an army, the least they could do—
And then we were back, coming in the front doors at the same time that the double ones to the council chamber burst open. That was sort of a surprise—I’d thought they were the type to expect us to come to them, not the other way around. But the blond demon with the pleasant voice was coming toward us, and his hand was extended and there was a smile on his face. And that looked—dear God, it looked—Caleb said something, an expletive but there was a lungful of relief behind it. And I turned to him for a second, hugging his arm. Because we’d done it, finally, we’d done it—
And then someone was shoving me into Caleb, brutally hard, enough that we both went staggering. And there was a sound, new and deafeningly loud. And a cry, of such tortured anguish that it cut through the air, spinning me on my feet even as I fell, pulling my head up—
To see Pritkin, lit for a moment by harsh spell light, silhouetted against another explosion. But this time, there was no outrunning it.
His mouth was open, but it wasn’t moving, and neither was the rest of him. For a second, he hung suspended in air, caught halfway through a jump, as if I’d managed to freeze time. But I hadn’t; I knew I hadn’t. I could still see dust motes turning lazily in the spell light behind him, golden yellow and burning like the sun—
And then it engulfed him and he fell, still motionless, to the floor, his father rushing to grab him, another of those keening cries coming from that usually cynical mouth.
Pandemonium was breaking out between guards and council members, and people were jostling and bumping and stepping on me as I pushed and shoved my way forward, and then I was kneeling by Pritkin, grabbing him, screaming at Rosier, “What happened? What happened?”
“What happened?” Green eyes blazed into mine, bright with grief and incandescent with hate. “What happened is that you killed my son!”
Chapter Thirty-three
Half an hour later, I was back in my hotel suite in Vegas, and staring at another scene of carnage. It felt unreal, like the one I’d just left. It felt impossible.
“It happened shortly after you left us,” Jonas said. “We only managed to obtain the images a few moments ago.”
I tried to look like I was paying attention as he said something else I didn’t hear. His voice was fading in and out, like a distant loudspeaker in a high wind. And even when I could hear the words, they sometimes didn’t make sense.
Like the scenes in my head.
I shoved Rosier away and grabbed the too-limp body. Pritkin’s head dropped back, the short blond strands falling against my arm, soft, too soft without whatever product he usually used on them. Wrong. Like the body, so horribly still, or the face, lacking wit or anger or those weird flashes of humor—
Or anything.
“No.” I felt my skin ice over.
“It was a bomb, obviously,” Jonas said. “Likely a number of them. The wards had been tampered with. We’re still searching for the exact cause.”
Time rippled around us and Rosier stuttered, like a figure on an old TV screen flooded with static. But my power didn’t work right in the Shadowland; it never had. The time distortion fizzled out after only a few seconds, leaving Caleb and me staring at each other.
Jonas was looking at me, so I nodded. I’d seen the mansion that housed the Pythian Court once before. Mircea had taken me there to get a glimpse of my mother when she was still the heir. It had been a beautiful Georgian building, lit up for the party that had been taking place that night, the creamy white columns and elegant brick facade bathed in a warm golden glow.
It looked a little different now.
It was raining in London, which is where the images of the court were coming from, via some spell I didn’t care about, but which had turned the French doors to my balcony into a strangely chopped-up movie screen. It didn’t matter. The scene rippling across the beveled glass panes and luxe door pulls wasn’t one I wanted to see any better.
Jonas was watching the salvage efforts, looking strangely calm. I didn’t know if that was because he’d seen it all in his long decades with the Circle, and another crime scene just didn’t faze him. Or if he was trying to shield me.
Either way, I wished I had his detachment.
But the rain-soaked, fire-gutted building was hard to take. Although not nearly as much as the body bags, so many and so small, laid out on the sidewalk. They were getting wet, rain beading and then running off the plastic coverings, although there wasn’t any choice. There were too many of them to be taken away all at once, with more being drawn out of the wreckage all the time. It had been big, this court I’d never seen, these girls, sworn to my service, who I’d never even met. It had been . . . big . .
“Help him!” I told Caleb, who was already muttering something that surged over both of us, making my skin crawl from the power behind it.
But that’s all it did.
Caleb cursed, and jerked Pritkin away, shoving me back when I would have grabbed him again. He pushed him down to the floor and put a hand to Pritkin’s chest, snarling something that made the too-still body shudder, almost like he was coming around. Until the magic faded and Pritkin fell back against the lobby’s beige carpet again, unmoving.
“Turn it off,” Marco said gruffly. He wasn’t looking at the scene, although I doubted it affected him any more than it did Jonas. Marco had seen things through the years that would make a veteran war mage blanch; a bunch of anonymous bodies already zipped away in bags weren’t likely to turn his stomach.
No, as usual, he was looking out for me. Or trying to. And I appreciated it, but I didn’t want it.
I wanted to see this.
“Where did it start?” I asked hoarsely, trying to identify one part of the wreckage that looked worse than the others, something that might indicate an origin point. But the building was hardly a building anymore, with a blackened crater in the center that still steamed despite the gentle rain. There were pieces across the street, pieces stabbed through surrounding buildings, and so much broken glass in the road that the emergency vehicles had been forced to park well away, to avoid blowing out their tires.
The whole thing looked like the origin point.
No wonder nobody had gotten out.
A human word, savage and angry. Another incantation, strong enough to raise Pritkin’s limp body half a foot off the floor, to outline it in pale blue fire. And then another expletive, because that hadn’t worked, either.
“Caleb—” I breathed.
“A major curse,” Casanova muttered. “I saw it land—”
“Caleb!”
“He isn’t responding.” Caleb looked up, eyes dark with the same emotions flooding through me.
“Then try something else!”
“I’ve already put enough magic through him to lift a dozen curses!”
“Cassie?”
I looked up, and realized I’d missed Jonas’ answer. And based on his expression, whatever question he had asked after. “What?”
“Leave her alone! Can’t you see she needs to rest?” Rhea, I thought vaguely, seemed to have come out of her shell. Her eyes were snapping at Jonas as she handed me some coffee. I guess she’d figured out how to use the pods. Not too surprising; she looked completely unlike the frightened girl I’d come across in the kitchen.
“She will,” Jonas said calmly. “But first I must know.”
“Know . . . what?” I asked. My lips felt numb.
They were bringing out smaller body bags now, ridiculously small. They couldn’t have belonged to initiates. They looked like they’d barely fit a child of five.