“Don’t play dumb!”
“Trust me, she
doesn’t have to,” came a cynical voice.
Pritkin’s head jerked up at sight of the specimen that had just joined us. Fortunately, Rosier was still unrecognizable. Unfortunately, it was because he’d somehow managed to fall onto my leftover glamourie.
And I guessed it wasn’t advisable to try to use two at the same time. Because the usually polished demon lord now looked like Popeye, with one bulging eye and one regular, a swollen chipmunk cheek, a bulbous nose, and a couple of shaggy brown things above his eyes that resembled fuzzy caterpillars. Caterpillars that pulled together when Pritkin grabbed his satchel.
“Does nobody in this benighted place have any respect for private property?” Rosier demanded.
I didn’t know what kind of dangerous stuff Rosier was carrying, but Pritkin took one glance at the contents and his already fearsome scowl grew exponentially. He grabbed me around the neck, facing off with Rosier, the bag held tight in the hand that wasn’t busy choking me. “Any closer and she dies!”
“Oh no, stop,” Rosier said lazily.
“I’m not bluffing,” Pritkin snarled. He looked down at me. “And now you’re going to tell me what that thing was.”
“What thing?” I asked, confused. “Look, we don’t have time for—urp.”
“I traced the thieves’ movements,” Pritkin told me, quietly vicious. “I discovered that they’d gone from England, where they stole my property, to Paris, where they sold it, via Amsterdam. I came here suspecting that they might have preferred to hide it well away from the auction site. And what do I find on the very day I arrive? My chief competitor—”
“You have to admit, it does sound damning,” Rosier murmured.
“—trying to eavesdrop on my conversation with their sister!”
“Their—you mean the barmaid?” I asked, strangely relieved. Although that may have been because he’d finally realized he was choking me and loosened his grip slightly.
“Or were you distracting me while your accomplice searched the place?” Pritkin suddenly stared around, as if he thought his prize was about to drop from a tree or something. “That’s it, isn’t it? It’s here!”
“No, I—”
“Then tell me where it is if you want to live!”
And, okay, things suddenly weren’t so funny anymore. Because Pritkin wasn’t kidding. I knew him well enough to know his don’t-fuck-with-me expression when I saw it. Just as I knew I couldn’t give him what he wanted. The map he’d lost had led to something called the Codex Merlini, a book of spells that needed to molder away exactly where it was, since some rather delicate events would later hinge on that. Some delicate, potentially world-ending events.
But I somehow didn’t think that trying to explain that was going to go over well.
And then I didn’t have to.
Half of the wall we were standing against suddenly crumbled in a cascade of rocks and dust and, oh, crap. I got a half-second glimpse of an incensed Pythia standing backlit amid the billowing clouds, parasol at the ready and chin tilted determinedly, and then I panicked. And since there weren’t a whole lot of options, I did what I usually do when terrified and defenseless, and shifted.
But not me.
The power that allows me temporal shifts also permits spatial ones, to a limited degree. Limited in that I have to know where I’m going, which I didn’t, and can see where I’m landing, which I couldn’t. I also couldn’t leave Pritkin with the cursed soul due to arrive any minute, and it’s not like I had a lot of time to think about it and—
And so I shifted her.
“Was that supposed to help?” Rosier demanded, staring at the sight of a waterlogged Pythia rising from the dark and, okay, faintly slimy canal, lavender curls hanging dispiritedly around a by now truly furious face.
For a split second, I just stared back in horror. I’d been aiming for the opposite bank, but I couldn’t see shit and—and damn.
“Run,” I squawked. Only to find out that I couldn’t. Because Pritkin wasn’t letting go, not having managed to follow all of that.
But Rosier had and he grabbed his satchel back and took off. Leaving me behind, because nobody had ever accused him of being noble. But for once, I thought he had the right idea.
“You want . . . the Codex?” I asked Pritkin, panting from lack of air and utter, utter terror. “Because you just let it get away. He has it!”
And, okay, that worked, I thought, as Pritkin started after the fleeing demon lord. Sort of, I amended, as he jerked me along for the ride. But that was okay; that was good, even. I just had to keep them close and keep him from killing Rosier and keep an eye out for the damned soul while I was at it.