I stared around at the now mostly steam free bedroom, panting and wild-eyed, but there was nothing to see. Just a few swirling wisps in the air, a lot of water on the floor, and Rhea, silhouetted in the doorway clutching a tray. One she almost threw onto a table before running to my side.
She appeared to be alone. And since no one else came thundering up the stairs, I assumed that my shriek hadn’t been as loud as I’d thought. Although maybe not.
Rhea looked freaked the hell out.
“Are you all right?” She asked, staring around now, too. “What is it? Is something wrong?”
She had her hand on her sleeve, where she kept the wand she’d learned to use while at the covens. But she didn’t draw it. Probably because there was nothing to aim at except for a half-drowned Pythia.
A very confused one.
“What did you see?” I croaked, clutching her arm.
“See?”
“When you opened the door! What did you see?”
“I—nothing, Lady.” She stared at me, her eyes wide. “I heard you scream and thought you were being attacked. I burst in—”
“And saw what?” I knew I probably sounded like a broken record, but ri
ght then, I didn’t care.
“I didn’t. See anything, I mean. There was so much steam, and then it cleared and—and there was just you.”
I swallowed and stared around some more. Yeah, only there hadn’t been just me. Had there?
Suddenly, I wasn’t sure. The images of the attack, so fresh and clear a moment ago, had already faded in my mind, making me doubt myself. And try as I might, I could find exactly zero signs of an intruder. No marks on my body where that watery hand had held me down. No footprints on the wet boards except for Rhea’s. No anything.
Yet I could still feel the strange lips on mine, the alien tongue exploring my mouth, the foreign hands charting my body, because my assailant didn’t know it. While Pritkin—the real Pritkin—had sucked and licked and studied every inch of me. But this man, this thing, hadn’t, and didn’t know what made me wriggle, what made me sigh, what made me writhe. He’d had to figure it out, the same way that he’d had to change his size in order to—
I shivered suddenly, hard, and Rhea’s hands gripped my shoulders. “I’m getting the Lady,” she told me, and it was her firm voice. The loving but implacable one she used for younger initiates who had ventured too close to the balcony railing.
“No,” I said hoarsely. Gertie already thought I was a hot mess; I didn’t need to confirm it. Not when I wasn’t even sure what had happened myself.
“Lady—”
“Check the wards. Quietly,” I added, grasping her arm.
She looked like she was about to protest, but something on my face stopped her. “What am I looking for?”
“Anything. Everything.” I didn’t even know what to call it.
“I don’t want to leave you,” she said, her face conflicted.
“I’ll be all right.” If anything else happened, anything at all, I was shifting the hell out of here. Naked or not!
But Rhea had her mother’s stubbornness, if masked behind a sweeter façade. And my response clearly wasn’t good enough. “Can you come next door first?”
It was an example of how out of it I was that I didn’t even ask why. I just nodded and started to get up, only to find out that I couldn’t. Halfway up, my legs gave way and my body splashed back down, splattering Rhea with sudsy water.
I tried again before accepting that it wasn’t merely a soap-slick foot that was the problem. I clung to the side of the bath, feeling dizzy and panting like I’d run a marathon. The heat and languor of a moment ago was gone, and I was chilled to the bone. My heart was pounding, my throat was tight, and my body . . .
Was so exhausted that I couldn’t even climb out of the tub.
Rhea had to help me, biting her lip the whole time on what were probably a hundred questions, which was maybe a tenth of what I had. She wrapped me in a huge towel, because there was no overnight bag for me, since I was just supposed to be the taxi service. And used another to furiously dry my dripping hair after I collapsed onto a chair, shivering.
“You’ll catch your death!” she told me.