Just any day now.
But not enough to keep from getting zapped again, apparently. Rhea yelped, Rico cursed, and the trio of senior level vamps trying to restrain him started getting dragged across the freaking floor. I started to intervene again, but was eclipsed once again, this time by a woman who looked far more like a Pythia than I ever would.
That was fair, since she could have been one if she hadn’t given it up to go make babies, somewhere around the turn of the century—and I don’t mean the last one. Her name was Hilde, and when you looked up “formidable” in the dictionary, it was her grimly pleasant face you saw staring back at you. What you didn’t see was the jutting bosom, the booming voice, and the cap of pure white curls on her head, the latter because she was somewhere around two hundred years old. Nobody knew exactly where because everyone was too afraid to ask, Hilde being . . . well, Hilde.
Only Rhea seemed to have forgotten that. Her eyes flashed and focused on the newest threat, something which would have worried most people. Because Rhea could be pretty formidable herself. She was not only a coven-trained witch, she was also the daughter of the last Pythia and Jonas Marsden, the current leader of the Silver Circle, the most powerful magical organization on ear
th. She was young, being only nineteen, but there were times that you could clearly see the impressive witch she would become.
This, of course, had no effect whatsoever on Hilde, who was already an impressive witch and one who had clearly lost patience with the woman who was supposed to be her pupil.
“Defend yourself!” Hilde commanded.
“Attack me once more and I will!”
“As you like,” Hilde said, and zapped the shit out of her.
Several more bodyguards ran in to restrain Rico, who was now almost invisible under a mountain of vamps, although he continued to inch forward. He needn’t have bothered; Rhea could defend herself. At least, she could until she made the mistake of pointing that wand at Hilde, at which point it was aged into powder.
“Defend yourself!” Hilde commanded.
“Give me back my wand and I will!”
“You are a Pythian acolyte. You do not need a wand.”
“That’s not your decision!”
“You’re right,” Hilde agreed. “It is yours. If you want your weapon back, de-age it.”
And something about that simple comment looked like it hurt Rhea more than whatever taser-like spell they’d been using. “You know I can’t!” she said, her face crumpling.
“I know you won’t,” Hilde snapped back. “You have the ability; use it!”
“I can’t!”
“Then you are about to have a very uncomfortable night,” she said, and the circle abruptly closed in.
Rhea screamed as five or six of them zapped her at once; Rico roared and tore loose from his restraints, fangs fully extended; and I decided that I needed a little time to process all this and put everything on slow-down.
That spell, of course, did not affect the acolytes, who all promptly shattered it around themselves, emerging back into real time like goddesses stepping out of a mountain of ice. Time shards spilled across the floor and then promptly vanished, being reabsorbed into the current temporal stream. And the girls—if you could call them that when there wasn’t one under a hundred—curtsied at me.
One did more than that. Annabelle waved and then squealed delightedly when she spotted my cat. She scurried over, as fast as her fuzzy slippers would allow, because the girls looked like they’d been rousted out of bed, too. And the abrupt movement after the general weirdness of the court was enough for Tom. He arched his back, hissing and spitting, something that did not seem to bother her at all.
“Oh, what a pretty boy!” she cooed, bending down to get a better look. “Isn’t he a pretty boy? Yes, he is! Yes, he is!”
“Annabelle, you’re making a fool out of yourself,” Hilde said, with a sigh.
“But he’s so pretty!” Annabelle looked up at me. “Is he yours?”
“I—yeah. Sort of. His previous owner died—”
“Oh! The poor baby!” she scooped him up, cuddling him in a way that should have gotten her a face full of claws, but Tom appeared to be a pretty smart cat. He’d already figured out which side the bread was buttered on. He looked at me smugly from inside the pudgy arms of his newest servant, as if to say ‘See? This is how I should be worshipped.’
“He’s so poor and scrawny though,” Annabelle said worriedly. “Just skin and bones and fluff.”
And two tuna sandwiches and most of our milk, I didn’t say, because she was already carting him off. “Come, sweet boy. I’ll get you some nom noms.”
“Annabelle! We are in the middle of something,” Hilde said irritably.