Claimed By Shadow

Page 16

"Sorry," I held out the bag of food placatingly. "It just doesn't sound like you.”
"Which part?" Billy Joe asked. He floated over from the back of the room, near where the golem stood propped against the wall, as silent as the statue it wasn't. "The good, the honest or the English?”
I ignored him and grabbed half a meatball sub before handing the rest of the food to Mac. The smell in the car had reminded me that the only nutrition I'd had all day was a handful of peanuts at Casanova's. The sandwich did a lot to improve my mood, and after a few bites, I was even able to muster another smile for Pritkin, who was tugging on a green T-shirt. "You forgot I was dropping in?”
"I wasn't sure you would be," he said curtly.
I decided I could either waste time getting into an argument over the value of my word or I could eat the rest of my sub. I chose the latter. A glance around showed that the back room was no more interesting than the front, and wasn't going to provide much in the way of entertainment. Its bare brick walls contained a metal thing that looked sort of like a washing machine but probably wasn't, a mini fridge, a cot piled high with old books, an overflowing wastebasket and the tattoo table and equipment.
I swallowed the last bite and wiped tomato sauce off my chin. "Tick tock. You have fifty minutes left. If you want to spend them eating or getting tattooed, go right ahead. But when your time is up, I'm outta here.”
“To go where?" Pritkin demanded, peering at his sandwich as if he thought I might have slipped something nasty inside. "If you have the ridiculous notion of surviving a trip into Faerie on your own, allow me to point out one small fact. Your power won't work there, or will be very unpredictable if it does. For that reason, Pythias have made it a habit to leave the Fey strictly alone. You can go against tradition, but with your power unreliable and your ward blocked, you won't last a day.”
He sat on the cot and began dissecting his sandwich while I mulled things over. Mac was perched on a stool by the table, munching his way through the other half of my sub and staying quiet. Billy floated over and tipped his hat back with a hazy-looking finger. "He's got a point," he commented.
"Gee, thanks so much.”
Billy hoisted his insubstantial backside up onto the edge of the table and looked at me seriously. That was an expression he used so rarely that it got my attention. "I don't like the guy any more than you do, Cass, but if you're determined to do this thing, a war mage could be a real asset. Think about it. We got to get into Faerie, which ain't exactly easy anytime and will be 'specially hard with all the security from the war. Then we got to avoid the Fey, who don't like trespassers, while we look for the fat man and that seer chick. And, assuming we manage all that, we have to deal with them at the end of it. And if the Fey are hiding 'em, that ain't gonna be fun. We could use some help.”
"We haven't had an offer yet," I reminded him. Mac seemed surprised by my apparently random comments, but Pritkin ignored them. I suppose he'd learned that, wherever I was, Billy wasn't far behind.
"If he didn't intend to help, he could have stepped aside and let the mages have you back at the casino.”
"I could have managed on my own," I said shortly. Even to my ears it sounded sulky, but that didn't mean it wasn't true. I didn't need Pritkin, or anybody else, to come riding to the rescue.
"Yeah, but I thought you were trying to avoid using the power.”
This conversation was starting to irritate me. "Are you just going to sit there and eat, or what?" I asked Pritkin crossly.
He glanced up, a look of distaste on his features. I wasn't sure whether it was for me or the sandwich, so I let it pass. "We worked together before when we had a common cause. We have one again. I am proposing that we join forces long enough to deal with our mutual dilemma.”
"You have a grudge against Tony? Since when?" That was awfully convenient.
"The Circle has issued a warrant for him, but that isn't my interest.”
I crumpled up my sandwich paper and tossed it at the trash. I missed. "Then what is?”
Pritkin took a drink from one of the Cokes Mac had passed around, and grimaced. "I want you to help me recover the sybil called Myra," he informed me.
"What?" I stared at him. It was disconcerting and more than a little suspicious that the first name on my list also topped Pritkin's.
"None of our locating charms have turned up anything. Therefore it is a fair guess that she is hiding in Faerie, where our magic doesn't work. In return for your help, I promise not to take you before the Circle, and to assist you in dealing with your former master.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. "I don't even know where to start. First, you aren't taking me anywhere, and second, why should I help you bring back my rival? So your Circle can kill me and reinstate her? For some reason, that doesn't appeal.”
"The Circle has no plans to put her in your place," he said grimly. "As for the other, do not overestimate your abilities, or underestimate mine. If I wanted to capture you, I would. Even if I refrain, eventually someone else will. The Circle will never stop chasing you, and they have to get lucky only once. You, on the other hand, have to elude all of their traps, with little knowledge of the magical world to aid you. Only with my help can you hope to avoid the fate the Circle has planned for you—and for her.”
"Oh, right. They're going to kill the only fully trained initiate they have. Why do I doubt that?" The Circle might want me dead, but they had every reason to keep Myra alive and well. There was a war on, and they badly needed the help a malleable Pythia could provide.
He glanced at Mac, who was looking dour. "Some of us have noticed a disturbing tendency in the Circle's leadership lately. They seem to care less for our traditional mission and more for power every year. The Silver have always been separate from the Black, not only in how we obtain power, but in what we do with it. I fear the Council has forgotten that.”
Mac nodded. "And now they have a new candidate for Pythia, one of the more docile initiates. If both you and Myra die, they believe she'll inherit." He shook his head wearily, causing a dragonfly on his right shoulder to flutter glittering green wings. "I knew we had some rot at the core, but this is worse than any of us guessed. The power chooses the Pythia. That has been a maxim for thousands of years, because to have the wrong person in that office is to invite disaster. Dark mages are always trying to find ways to slip through time, to remake the world the way they want, and every once in a while one succeeds. Without a proper Pythia on the throne, our entire existence is in danger! The council must be stopped!”
"Uh-huh." I looked into Mac's homely, earnest face and tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. But it was difficult. The world I'd grown up in was run on the carrot-and-stick principle: everything was done to gain reward or to avoid punishment. And the more risky the job, the higher the rewards or the greater the punishment had to be. Considering the risk level Mac was talking about, the payoff had to be out of this world.
Pritkin had stayed quiet throughout his buddy's rousing speech, contenting himself with glowering into the distance. I snapped my fingers in front of his face. "So, what's your story? Are you also in this out of the goodness of your heart?”
His perpetual scowl deepened. "I am in it, as you say, because I resent being made into a murderer. I was given the assignment of locating Myra for trial, even though the verdict in her case is a foregone conclusion. Others are searching for you, and I have no doubt that their instructions were the same as mine. If I did not think she could be taken alive, I was free to use extreme measures to ensure that she did not continue to threaten the Circle's interests.”
One word in all that had caught my attention. "Trial?" It was hard to believe that anyone would prosecute Myra for attempting to kill me. It seemed more likely that the Circle would give her a medal. "What did she do?”
"She has been implicated in the death of the Pythia.”
For a minute, I thought he was talking about me, after all. Then it clicked. "You mean Agnes.”
"Show some respect!" Pritkin said heatedly. "Use her proper title.”
"She's dead," I pointed out. "I doubt she minds.”
"But Myra couldn't have done it!" Mac broke in. "The Council's argument doesn't make sense. What would she gain by it?”
I thought that was kind of obvious. "She probably thought she'd be Pythia, if Agnes died before she could pass the power over to me.”
"But that's just it, Cassie," Mac insisted. "As John pointed out to the Council, the power won't go to an assassin of another Pythia or heir designate. It's an old rule, to keep the initiates from slaughtering each other for the position.”
My mind screeched to a halt. "Run that by me again?”
"The power has never yet gone to the killer of a Pythia or her heir," Mac repeated slowly.
"You didn't know that?" Pritkin demanded.
"No." And I wasn't sure I believed it. I really wanted to, because it meant that offing me might not be on Myra's agenda after all. But I was having a hard time with the idea that she intended to let bygones be bygones. It didn't seem like her style, especially not with two knife wounds from my weapon in her torso. Not to mention that, even if she did decide to take the high road, I couldn't see Rasputin letting her concede defeat. He needed her to be Pythia if he had any chance of winning, or even surviving, the war. Something was wrong here.
"Didn't Agnes die of old age?" I asked Mac, since he seemed the more forthcoming of the two.
"That's what we believed, at first. But strange sores were noticed on the body when it was being readied for burial. A doctor was called in to look at them, and became suspicious, so an autopsy was ordered. She didn't die because of her age, Cassie. She was poisoned. And considering the amount of precautions taken to safeguard the Pythia, it couldn't have been easy.”