Yes, I thought ten minutes later, I was definitely going to sleep now.
Yepper, I agreed, twenty minutes in. Gonna drop off. Just any moment now.
You got it, I gritted out, after half a freaking hour. I had been awake for going on a day, under less than ideal conditions. My body ached, my brain was fried, and my eyes actually burned. I was going to sleep right now, damn it!
Only I didn’t. I tossed and turned and tried every conceivable position. I plumped my pillow, changed it out for a different one, and then pounded that one into submission, too, before giving up and going back to the first one again. I put on a sleep mask. I took off a sleep mask, because I had black out curtains that my vamp bodyguards almost always kept closed even when they weren’t in here. I didn’t need a sleep mask, goddamnit!
The problem was, I didn’t know what I needed.
Or no, that wasn’t true. I needed a normal schedule, so that my internal clock had some idea what time it was instead of being perpetually confused. Jet lag had nothing on time lag, let me tell you.
I finally got up, shoved my feet into slippers, and stomped off to the kitchen. Somebody had told me that warm milk helped insomnia. It sounded nasty, but I was willing to give it a try. Right now, I was willing to try anything.
Of course, that required that I play the fun and exciting game of Hunt the Milk, which was no mean feat. The penthouse’s kitchen had been designed to feed a horde, with three fridges—two regular ones and a shorty under the counter—a standalone freezer, two wine coolers, another wine cooler that was used only for beer, and God knew what else. I didn’t, because I couldn’t find half of it!
And what I could find, I often didn’t want.
Tami, my friend and self-appointed life manager, and I had sat around one night shortly after we moved in playing “guess the item” with a couple drawers full of weird, one-use-only gadgets. We’d managed to correctly identify an avocado slicer, a carrot peeler, a pair of herb scissors, a strawberry stem remover (okay, we cheated with Google on that one) and a vertical egg cooker. Plus some stuff that even the search engine of the gods hadn’t been able to help us out with. Tami’s go-to greeting for visitors to the kitchen these days was to drag them over to the mystery item drawer and try to make them identify something.
But whatever it was that you did want to find? Forget it. Especially milk. With twenty-eight little initiates now, most of them under the age of twelve, milk was like liquid gold. Which probably explained why people kept hiding it.
I had personally located it in the vegetable drawer, buried under a bag of radishes; in a wine fridge, shoved well to the back of the bottles; in a bar cart—where somebody had been making a White Russian, I guessed; in the refrigerated drawer in the butler’s pantry, which was supposed to be used only for party platters; and in an ice bucket. With no ice.
It was always a challenge. Which was why the actual designated milk shelf in the actual designated milk fridge was the last place I looked. So, of course, there it was.
I was staring at it resentfully when I felt the sensation of being watched. I looked around and then down to see four pairs of eyes—three brown and one blue—regarding me hopefully. It seemed that Tom had made the acquaintance of our other feline companions, and bonded over a love of warm milk. That surprised me, as I’d feared some tension.
But I should have known better. The other three belonged to Annabelle, one of my sweet old lady acolytes, and the three tabbies looked like their mama. I didn’t think they wasted energy on anything but waddling to the nearest food bowl—or saucer, in this case.
I microwaved a nightcap for them, and then made myself a hot chocolate, because that has milk in it, right? I decided it was close enough and was about to go back to bed when I heard a door open. And a very angry voice yelling in what sounded like the hall.
“No! I am not doing it again! I said—”
The voice abruptly cut off.
I put my head down on the counter and thought about just ignoring it. That was the problem with a household that currently consisted of sixty-one people, an eclectic mix of initiates, bodyguards, acolytes, Tami’s brood of adopted kids, coven witches, and the occasional war mage. It wasn’t just about the food; it was about the drama.
And I was so not here for the drama.
But two things stopped me: First, I was pretty sure that the voice had belonged to my chief acolyte and presumptive heir, Rhea, who was kind of my responsibility. And, two, she had been cut off in a way that I really didn’t like.
So, me and the cat brigade headed down the hall.
I found a group of eight acolytes encircling Rhea in the middle of the throne room at the end of the hall, so-called because of the hideous chair that dominated the far end. In the daytime, it was the audience chamber of the Pythian Court, with a gorgeous wall of floor to ceiling windows letting in a flood of bright Vegas sunlight. At night, the now star- and neon-studded backdrop became our unofficial gym and training salle. Only, instead of workout equipment and saunas, it was just a big empty space where this sort of thing happened.
Rhea was turning around in a defensive posture, trying to keep everyone in view all at once. That looked a little weird since she wasn’t in workout gear, but rather a long, flowing white nightgown and blue robe, which made her look vaguely like the Virgin Mary. The image was heightened by the long, dark hair that rippled down her back, the clear, teenaged complexion, and the sweet face, although the latter was screwed up in anger at the moment. She also had a wand in her hand, which was where the comparison with the mother of Christ kind of broke down.
“Rhea,” I said, starting forward, but I doubt she heard.
My voice had been eclipsed by that of Rico, one of my bodyguards, who I’d just noticed off to the side, being restrained by two and then three of his buddies. Because a pissed off vampire could drag a freight train—without a track. And Rico was clearly pissed.
“Let her go” he snarled. “Let her go or I’ll—”
“Calm the hell down,” Fred snapped. My smallest bodyguard was practically hanging off of Rico’s right arm. “Or Marco will figure out something’s going on up here. You wanna deal with Marco?”
But it was like Rico hadn’t even heard. That wasn’t too surprising since he had a Latin temperament and thought Rhea hung the stars. And because one of the acolytes had just zapped her with some sort of spell, causing her to cry out.
I didn’t know what they were doing, since they didn’t have wands, but then, they didn’t need them. Each was an adept Pythian acolyte who could have taken on a war mage squadron and had a serious chance of winning. Much less eight against one young girl, whose skills with the Pythian power were, uh, developing.