“We have Rhea—”
Hilde harrumphed. I stared. I’d never heard anyone actually do that before.
“Something might be made of that girl eventually, it’s true, if she has anything of her parents in her,” Hilde said. “But right now, she’s almost as ignorant as the rest of ’em. They need training, not coddling.”
She sounded like somebody else I knew. John Pritkin was a war mage who had helped to protect me when I stumbled into this crazy new life—well, eventually. Our first meeting had not gone well, and neither had a bunch of subsequent ones. But when he finally figured out that I was serious—that, untrained as I was, I was trying, goddamn it—he got on board.
And when Pritkin gets on board, he really gets on board. The guy doesn’t know what half measures are. Which had resulted in me hating my life more than I already did when he put me through a training regimen that would have done a marine proud.
Not everyone had agreed with that approach. Mircea, for one, preferred the wrap-her-in-cotton-balls-and-sit-a-ton-of-vamps-on-her method, which, to be fair, had helped me out more than once. But Pritkin’s training had increased my self-esteem and my belief that I could maybe, possibly, eventually, kind of do this, and had allowed me to save myself.
So I understood where Hilde was coming from, I really did. But there was one crucial difference. I was an adult and a Pythia, while the girls . . .
I looked back through the shop window and didn’t see warriors. I saw kids playing with toys and running around, finding new treasures with which to decorate their currently spartan bedrooms to make them their own. And laughing and talking in spite of everything, especially the little ones, because they were resilient, as children tend to be.
But there was a limit to what anyone could take.
And, suddenly, a huge surge of protectiveness swept over me.
I’d had to be an adult before I was ready, and it had left me with more scars than I could name. I passionately wanted these little girls to be able to be kids, as I never had. To live for just a few years free of worry, to be able to laugh and run and play, instead of looking over their shoulders every few minutes, lying awake at night riddled with fear, and walking on eggshells.
War or no bloody war.
I turned back around and realized that Hilde was watching me, and that her eyes had softened. “You’ve a good heart,” she told me. “But you can’t protect everyone all the time. Neither can I.”
“No,” I admitted. “I can’t. Which is why we need help.”
Chapter Two
“You’re sure this is it?” I asked as Hilde paid the cabbie. We were supposed to be here to see about getting some coven girls for the court, but I didn’t see any—or much of anything else. Unless you counted miles of unforgiving desert and a merciless sun beating down like it had forgotten summer was over.
“It’s here,” a pink-haired witch said, and piled out of the front seat of the cab.
Her name was Saffy, short for Saphronia, which she hated, maybe because I’d never seen a name less suited to its owner. There was nothing old-fashioned about her. She had blond roots under short pink hair, a septum ring, and a half sleeve of tats, at least two of which were magical, because I occasionally saw them moving. She’d been inside the shop helping with the kids, instead of outside with the vamps keeping an eye on the local junkies, but that was by choice.
Saffy was a badass.
She’d proven that recently by helping to save the court during the Battle on the Drag. She and a handful of other witches had shown up and taken on a whole army of dark mages, at least long enough for me, Rhea, and some reporters who’d been caught in the cross fire to get out. The local coven leaders had afterward lent her little posse to my court, because, as they put it, I obviously needed some competent help.
That hadn’t gone over well with the Silver Circle, the world’s leading magical organization, which traditionally guarded the Pythian Court. Or with Mircea’s vamps, who had protested both the mage and witch additions to the household. But they hadn’t protested as loudly as I’d expected.
I think the attack had rattled even them.
Despite her badass demeanor, Saffy had proven really good with the kids. She made their crayon drawings move, delighting the younger girls, and helped some of the older ones put rinses of various colors on their hair. She’d also let Belle wear her punked-out leather vest back to the hotel while we came out here, leaving her in a tank top, jeans, a wrist full of charms, and some biker boots.
And black nail polish on the finger she was currently poking at the air with.
“I can wait,” the taxi driver offered, watching her worriedly. And then glancing around at the sparse scrub and some vultures on a hill, looking at us hopefully from atop their latest carcass.
“No, no, that’s fine,” Hilde assured him. “We’re going hiking.”
The man took in Hilde’s smart crepe de chine flowered dress, sensible low-heeled shoes, and old-lady support hose. She had a purse that matched the shoes, in bright, candy apple pink, and a little pearl brooch that kept the ruffled bosom on the dress properly in place. She did not have a hat, but looked like the kind of woman who should have a hat, or at least an Ascot-worthy fascinator.
“What?” the man said.
Hilde sighed and waved a hand at him, and his concerned eyes went blank. “Go back to work and forget about us,” she told him shortly, and the man obligingly drove off, the cab bumping a little on the rocky soil because we’d left the blacktop behind a few minutes ago.
“Is that what everyone does?” I asked, worried about the man’s suddenly slack-jawed, bespelled face. If every witch who needed a ride zapped him, I had to wonder what the long-term effects might be. But Saffy didn’t seem concerned.