“Not with our plan—”
“—and it’s stressful. You already have enough on your plate! How are you supposed to handle your job and take on his strain, too? And for how long? Lady, it will break you!”
I stood back and crossed my arms. “You think me that weak?”
“I think you’re that weak,” Agnes said, passing by.
“No one was talking to you!” Rhea told her furiously.
Agnes just smiled and wafted on, over to where I guess a lesson was happening. The little girls had been corralled over by one of the walls, facing the flowering vines. They appeared to be trying to cast some kind of spell on them, only I guessed it wasn’t going well, because nothing was happening.
I turned my attention back to Rhea.
“Gertie said think outside the box,” I told Rhea. “I’m thinking outside the box.”
“Just make him take the spell off!” Rhea said, in a furious whisper. “I thought that’s what we were here for!”
“So did I. But that won’t work—”
“According to who? Him?”
“No,” I said firmly. “According to me. He even offered. But Rhea, he doesn’t remember shifting this last time. He showed up in his night clothes because he didn’t even take time to dress! If he took off the spell, he’d just have it recast when the next episode hits. He can’t trust himself—”
“And neither can we!”
“We can now, at least for a while—”
“You don’t know that! Not to mention not knowing what this could do to you! You can’t risk it—”
“I also can’t leave him to rot in a chrono cell while everything goes to hell!” I snapped, because she didn’t seem to be getting this. “Or until he shifts back in time again, and Gertie kills him—”
“Well, someone has to do your job,” Agnes opined, having gotten close enough to hear that last remark, because she was chasing a stray.
“Go back to whatever you’re doing,” Rhea told her. “This is none of your business.”
Agnes smiled at her and shooed the child back toward the waiting governesses, with a little pat on her backside. And then turned to us. And one look at her face told me that she’d been waiting for this for a while.
Great.
So much for a peaceful lunch.
“It isn’t any of my business,” Agnes said sweetly, “when my Pythia has to exhaust herself, running all over the timeline, cleaning up your Pythia’s messes?”
“It wasn’t her fault!” Rhea snapped.
“Then whose fault was it? She lets a vampire, of all things, hijack her power, and then signally fails to rein him in. She can’t judge her shifts properly, and almost splits her head open on a rock. Not to mention allowing said vampire to completely trash the timeline!”
“He’s sick! He doesn’t know what he’s doing!”
“Then he should be put down before he kills the rest of us.”
“This has nothing to do with you—”
“Nothing? He was in the fifteenth century,” Agnes said, getting in her face. “If he trashes the timeline then, it affects us now—just as much as you. But I wouldn’t expect you to understand that. Not when, on top of her other flaws, your Pythia picks an heir who can’t even shift!”
“Okay, cut it out,” I said, because ragging on me was one thing, but ragging on Rhea was something else. And because I was afraid that she’d run away again, and we still needed to talk.
But Rhea wasn’t looking like she felt like running away.