He frowned. “Didn’t expect two of you.”
“And the first time? Who was the fey after then?”
“Why, the mage of course.” His eyes took in Pritkin, who was still buried under a pile of Corpsmen. “Angry mage.”
“Why him? What did you want with him?”
Jonathan’s colorless eyes met mine, and he finally found something interesting, after all. Because he burst out laughing, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed some more, to the point that it turned into a cackle. “Still don’t see. Can’t see, won’t see—”
“Can’t see what?”
“There must be three.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
I took a nap.
There was nothing else to do since Pritkin had gotten thrown in the brig to cool down and I couldn’t shift back to court. And probably wouldn’t be able to until tomorrow sometime. And since nobody had thought to offer me a room, maybe because there weren’t any extras right now, I ended up back in the hobbit hole.
It didn’t look much better than it had when I’d fought a dark mage here, but that had been days ago now, and somebody had picked the place up a little. And changed the sheets on the bed, although they hadn’t gone to the extremes of actually making it up. Because let’s not get crazy here.
But the sheet changing must have been at least a day ago, because they smelled like Pritkin. Fresh and clean, but with an overlay of magic and gunpowder, his signature scent. I shucked my pretty new coat, crawled in, wadded up a pillow and fell off the face of the Earth.
I awoke an indeterminate amount of time later, with gummy eyes and a head full of whispers, and the impression that I hadn’t rested very well. I got up, feeling hungry and rumpled and sweaty and faintly ill. My body wasn’t happy with the care it had been receiving lately, and didn’t mind letting me know it.
The mirror in the bathroom showed me back a cheerful, perfectly made up, well rested face, which was starting to seem kind of obscene at this point. I frowned at myself, and still looked perky. I scowled and looked like a constipated Kewpie doll.
I gave up and decided that a shower might help.
And discovered that the one in Pritkin’s bathroom was better than it looked. The water pressure was hard enough to count as a decent massage, and the temperature was hot. Plus, the pounding that my sore muscles were taking was helping to distract from the whispers, which were getting louder.
They were pissed at Jonas. He wanted to question Jonathan, rather than kill him, and had promised that the mad mage would be kept drugged so that he couldn’t shift away. Normally, that would have been enough for me, since we needed all the info we could get. But Pritkin wasn’t happy and Mircea—
Mircea wanted blood.
A lot of it. Red and hot and dripping down his chin after he finished feasting on his enemy. Literally.
It was extremely strange to have him and Pritkin agree on anything, but on the subject of Jonathan, they were not only simpatico, they were practically twins. It was . . . kind of creepy. And scary, with the voice in my head getting louder by the minute.
Not that Mircea was usually so bloodthirsty, being one of the more even-tempered master vamps I knew. But he wasn’t emotionally stable right now, and it seemed like questioning Jonathan had done something to the tentative equilibrium we’d established. It was beginning to feel like I was possessed by a furious demon, trying to rip, to claw, to destroy his enemies—and mine.
Because we were one, we were unified, and we were furiously angry at the arbitrary decision by the Circle to take our prisoner. His blood was ours; his death ours. We’d bled to capture him, risked our life to drag him back. How dare they take our prize from us? How dare they command us to do anything? We would teach them what respect meant, and afterward, we would teach him, over days, what pain really—
I sank down onto my haunches, hands over my ears, but that didn’t help when the voice was coming from the inside. Mircea was strong mentally—so damned strong! I hadn’t realized just how m
uch until now, as the demon howled and raged. Until I started to be afraid that, pretty soon, I was going to be howling and raging right along with him.
“It will break you,” I heard Rhea’s worried voice say, and for the first time, I thought she might be right.
Which was why I shut the connection down hard. So much so that I actually felt it, like a rubber band twanging in my head. I hadn’t severed it; I couldn’t afford that, and neither could Mircea. But I had stomped on it, like putting a foot on a water hose. Turning the flood of emotions into a trickle and allowing me to breathe again.
God, that was better!
That was so much better!
I staggered back to my feet and put soapy hands on the wall to steady me. I needed all the help I could get, because other thoughts were trying to muscle into the now echoing quiet. Thoughts of Jonathan, of the war, of heads on torsos where they had no business being, endlessly screaming—
Until I shut them down, too. Because screw this, screw all of this! For a moment, I just stood there and tried not to think at all.