Curse the Dawn

Page 52

And nothing else.
I looked around, even peered behind the wardrobe, but no dice. I finally gave up and went to ask Pritkin. He was passed out on his back, leaking mud onto Marsden’s nice cotton sheets. I shook him lightly, not happy about having to wake him, but his old boss was nowhere to be found and things were getting fairly urgent.
One eye slitted slightly. “What?”
“Sorry. It’s just—there’s a problem with the bathroom.”
“What problem?”
“There’s no toilet.”
“This is an old house,” Pritkin said, like that explained anything.
“And they didn’t need to pee in the past?” I demanded.
He groaned and threw an arm over his face. “There’s a WC down the hall.”
“A what?” I asked, a little desperately.
“A water closet. It’s in a separate room.”
“Why? Why not put it in the—”
“Because a bathroom is where one goes to bathe, hence the name.”
“That’s bizarre.”
“No, Miss Palmer,” Pritkin said savagely. “It isn’t. What is bizarre is that I currently have a vagina.”
I’d never heard quite that tone in his voice before, but it didn’t sound good. I decided that I had enough information. I fled.
The WC turned out to be right beside the bathroom in a narrow little closet of a room. I was so relieved that the actual act of using it as a man wasn’t nearly as traumatic as I’d expected. I dragged myself back to the bathroom and turned on the water in the shower to get it hot, too tired to risk the tub in case I drowned in it.
The filthy coat hit the floor, along with the thigh strap for the holster, the bandolier-style potion belt, the bloody keep-your-pants-up belt that I’d used as a tourniquet, the under-the-arm holster, the five knives and the heavy boots—complete with two more knives—that constituted Pritkin’s idea of casual attire. It made a god-awful mess, but the floor was tiled and I promised myself I’d clean it up later. When maybe I didn’t feel like I was about to fall over.
The idea of just passing out, dirt and all, was starting to look really attractive. But no. I couldn’t sleep like this.
I had to tug the shirt off over my head one-handed, as the heat of Caleb’s spell had turned the buttons into melted lumps and my left arm still didn’t work. I glanced in the rapidly fogging mirror and, despite everything, had to smile. Pritkin was the only person I knew whose hair came out of a move like that completely unchanged.
But the fun part was still to come: trying to strip off the still-damp jeans with only one workable hand. It was harder than I’d expected, as sodden denim tends to cling. I stumbled into a towel rack and almost fell on my borrowed butt fighting them off. But as Pritkin had never adapted to the newfangled idea of underwear—apparently they hadn’t had tightie whities in the sixth century—that was that. Except for a whole lot of dirt.
The shower was hot and I stood with my face directly in the spray, despite the fact that it woke up a thousand cuts I hadn’t noticed before. It didn’t make the welt on my ass, where I’d landed on the fence post, or the raw, red patch on my chest too happy, either, but nothing’s perfect. It did help with the mud, which had ended up smeared all in Pritkin’s hair and down his neck.
Soap hurt, but I lathered up anyway, scrubbing away the worst of it and trying not to think about the fact that I had actual hair on my chest. And on my legs, I noticed, as I bent to wash between Pritkin’s toes. They were long guy hairs that the water had turned from dark blond to light brown, acres and acres of them and not just on my calves. They climbed up my thighs too, I saw with mounting horror. And how freaking wrong was that?
I rested my forehead against the glass and just breathed for a while. Every muscle and nerve in my body felt tight and thrumming with tension, ready to part with a brutal snap if I so much as breathed wrong. Why was it always the little things that got to me? I could handle vast numbers of people wanting me dead—that wasn’t new—or demon attacks or crazy ex-war mages or even the weight that definitely should not be there dangling between my legs. But for a moment I couldn’t, simply couldn’t, handle the hair.
I’d possessed people before, I reminded myself. I tried like hell to avoid it, but that hadn’t always been possible. So why did this feel so different? Maybe it was because my previous trips into other bodies had been short, with the longest lasting a couple of hours. Maybe it was because I’d just almost died—again—and, hey, that never got old. Or maybe it was because it was Pritkin.
I’d possessed only one other person I’d known beforehand, and that had been by accident. It had lasted only a few very confused minutes, which had been more than long enough. This, on the other hand, was already promising to take my and Pritkin’s relationship to a deeply weird level, and there was no end in sight.
The horrible itching under my skin suddenly stopped. I cautiously ran my fingers over the wounded arm, the movement sending a little more mud and some dried blood slushing down the drain. But underneath, I felt only whole, unbroken skin, without even a ridge to show where the injury had been. Pritkin’s body had healed as if he’d never been hurt, all in the space of about an hour. It seemed that there were advantages to having a demon father.
Of course, there was a downside, too.
It was something I’d been doing a little reading on, lately. The old accounts were spotty and often contradictory, not to mention having been embroidered on shamelessly by every writer who heard the tale. But the earliest legends, before the romantic additions, all had one thing in common: they were pretty damn grim.
After Merlin’s mother died in childbirth, her family disowned her half-demon child. He somehow survived anyway, becoming a local curiosity who lived alone in the woods. Some said he was a madman, others a prophet, still others whispered of an unusually powerful wizard, whose human magic was strengthened by demon blood. None had thought to speculate about what it had been like, growing up alone, shunned and regarded as a freak of nature.
And then there had been the sojourn in hell. Pritkin had once told me that, although hundreds of years had passed here on earth while he was gone, it had felt like he was away only a decade or so. But a decade in the demon realms didn’t sound like fun to me. I didn’t know for certain what it had been like, because he never talked about the things he’d seen. He was the most guarded person I’d ever met, with conversations about anything remotely personal quickly running into a wall of silence. But he never spoke of demons except with contempt or hatred, and he’d hunted the more dangerous ones mercilessly since his return.
I remembered his pale face and tried to ignore a prickle of worry. Pritkin had grown up with impossible events as a way of life and usually took them in stride, but this was different. Before he met me, possession was something he’d associated only with the more powerful demons. Being suddenly thrown into someone else’s body probably reminded him a little too closely of the part of himself he preferred not to think about. I wondered what his reaction was going to be tomorrow with no assassins or exhaustion to blunt the effects. Why didn’t I think it was going to be good?
After a while, the darkness behind my eyelids and the hot water pounding my skin leached away some of the tension from a day that, even by my standards, had sucked. I was almost calm again, or as close as I was going to get in this body, when a ghost stuck his head through the shower door. I yelped and jumped back, and my foot slipped on a sliver of soap. I ended up on Pritkin’s butt, chest heaving, staring up at Billy Joe.
“What the hell?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
I dragged myself up, wincing, using the spigot for a handhold, which twisted and sent a spray of boiling-hot water raining down on me. I leapt out of the shower, biting my lip on a scream, and grabbed a towel. “What are you doing here?”
“You first. Because I’ve been looking for you for hours and when I finally locate you, what do I find?”
“Sorry you’ve had such a bad day,” I said viciously, patting at my red flesh. Damn, that had hurt.
“Not nearly as bad as you’re going to have when you get back. People are freaking out. Francoise told everyone the Circle has you, so the Senate demanded your return and, of course, the Circle told them to get bent. When I left, that vampire of yours was threatening bodily assault on Saunders if he didn’t give you up.”
“Why? The Senate knows where I am. They have a trace on me!”
“Yeah, and it told them you’re with the old head of the Circle.”
I felt the blood leave my face. “Have they mentioned that to anyone? Saunders, for instance?”
“Is that a problem?”
“If the Circle finds out I’m talking to Marsden, I can forget about us reaching any kind of deal!”
“Yeah. ’Cause that looks so likely anyway.”
“Can you find out if they’ve said anything? It’s important.”
“I can try.”
“I really need this, Billy. There’s some kind of internal power struggle going on and I don’t want to get caught in the middle of it. I have enough problems.”
“I can see that. Speaking of which, in case you weren’t dying or stuck in one of the Circle’s cells, Tami said to remind you that a bunch of kids are still missing. And that Alfred doesn’t have a driver’s license.”
“I know. Tell her I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“And that will be . . . ?”
“That depends. Among other things, Marsden has a charm on a cord around his neck. He used it to bring me here.”
“And if you don’t get it, he can use it to bring you back.”
“Right. So can you—”
Billy shook his head, cutting me off before I even finished. “No way, Cass. I had to use a hell of a lot of energy to find you. I can’t carry anything in this state. Now, if I had a draw . . .”