The result was me getting my ass handed to me, while the timeline slowly shattered around us. The only reason I was alive and Jo was finally dead—because that was the second freaking time I had to kill her—was Billy Joe. He’d taken a message to Pritkin for me, who had linked his power with mine through Lover’s Knot, lending me his incubus abilities long enough for me to drain Jo’s power, destroy her body, and open a smorgasbord for her ghosts to feed on what was left.
Don’t ever tell me that having a ghostly companion isn’t worth the aggravation.
The end result was that I’d decided I needed some training, damn the risks, and Billy had looked smug for a month. He was still kind of doing it, with a little smile of reminiscence playing about his lips. Until it abruptly changed into a scowl.
“The mage couldn’t hear me,” he said. “He’s half incubus, but couldn’t hear a ghost yelling in his ear I had to float through his damned head, to whisper straight into his brain.”
“So, do it again,” I said. “If you notice anything, give him a head’s up. Literally.”
“Ha, ha.” Billy didn’t look amused. “Do you know what he threatened me with, if I ever ‘breeched his bodily autonomy’ again? Not that that’s anatomically possible for a ghost, but still—”
“If you save his life, I think he’ll understand.”
“I’d rather stay here and save
yours.” The usually sarcastic, jokey face was suddenly serious.
“I don’t need—”
“—protection, yeah, yeah, I know. You get a month’s worth of training and all of a sudden you’re super Pythia, defender of the weak and all around badass. But you’re still in the same vulnerable body, Cass. Jo had all the power in the world but it didn’t save her. You ought to remember that.”
But I was remembering other things instead. Like all the years that it had just been the Cassie and Billy show, as he liked to call it. All the times we’d picked each other up, talked each other down, argued, fussed and fought like the siblings he’d left behind and the ones I’d never had. And then I reached over, pulled him to me, and hugged him.
“What was that for?” Billy asked, looking startled. Because I’d never been the hug-y type. But that had been before getting multiple ones a day from the little initiates, to the point that they’d started to feel . . . almost normal.
Guess we’d both gotten used to this place, I thought.
“No reason,” I said. “Just long overdue.”
Chapter Sixteen
I tossed and turned for what felt like an hour, then got up and sat on the side of my bed, feeling tired, achy, out of sorts, and annoyed. I had a packed-out day tomorrow! But did my body care?
Clearly not.
I yawned, feeling both sleepy and not at the same time, which should have been impossible. Or no, I corrected, that wasn’t it. I was drained because I’d just given Billy a hell of a draw, using up most of the reserves that a good dinner and an evening lounging around in my underwear had given me. But I wasn’t sleepy.
I wasn’t sleepy at all.
Damn it!
I got up, padded over to the door, and almost got caught in my own ward before I remembered and shifted through. I went to the kitchen, hoping for a midnight snack, or whatever time it was. But when I pushed on the door to the butler’s pantry, it didn’t budge, as if the hinges had stuck or someone had accidentally latched it.
So, I shifted through that, too.
“Oh, crap. Busted,” someone said, as I rematerialized on the other side.
I didn’t see who. I was too mesmerized at the spread laid out on the center island, which was groaning under a feast of epic proportions. A Spanish feast, because Tami’s paella must have given someone ideas.
Well, olé, I thought, grinning.
Then the voice came again. “Oh, never mind. It’s just Cassie.”
“Hey!” I said, looking up. And saw Fred, my shortest, chubbiest bodyguard, standing at the island with a shaker in his hand, wearing a pair of boxers and his necktie, which as usual was under one ear. He also had on his socks, I noticed.
And nothing else.
“Am I, uh, interrupting?” I asked, glancing at the assembly of ne’er-do-wells gathered on stools around the island.