Marco cocked a thick eyebrow at me. “Think you’d better take that up with him. He wants you to call.”
He held out a shiny black phone.
I bit my lip and saw an unhappy-looking reflection do the same. Yes, Mircea and I needed to talk. Yes, we needed to do it soon. And not just because of personal issues. We were also allies in a war, the same war my dear acolytes had decided to join on the other side, and he might need something.
“Did he say it was urgent?”
Marco looked at me.
“Well, did he?”
“He didn’t say it wasn’t.”
I felt my back muscles unclench slightly. Mircea was a diplomat, but if it was life or death he would have said so. And Marco would be looking a lot more than just exasperated right now.
Of course, ignoring this was only going to dig me in deeper, and I had a feeling that I was in over my head as it was. But I just couldn’t deal with another problem right now, especially not a tall, dark, and handsome problem with wicked eyes and a knowing smile who played me like a violin even when I wasn’t exhausted. And starving.
“I’m hungry,” I told Marco plaintively.
He narrowed suspicious eyes at me but didn’t argue. Because a hungry Pythia was a vulnerable Pythia. The energy of the office might be all but inexhaustible, but that wasn’t true of the people who had to channel it. And out of fuel for me meant out of power.
He put the phone away. “What do you want?”
“Anything. And lots of it,” I added as my stomach woke up to inform me that half a beer was not an adequate daily intake. “And I need to see . . . uh, the guy. That I brought with me.”
“The demon, you mean?” Marco asked dryly, because yeah. He knew the wards, too.
But a moment after he strode out, a bedraggled, beaten-up, sopping-wet demon staggered in, sandwiched between two vamps. Someone had given him another pop eye to match the glamouried one, which oddly made him look better. Or at least more symmetrical.
It didn’t appear to have done anything for his temper.
“It’s okay. You can leave him,” I told the guards, more for their sake than his. Rosier might be temporarily powerless, but he wouldn’t stay that way forever. And he struck me as the vindictive type.
They exchanged glances, but they didn’t argue, either. Because we all knew it didn’t matter. Which was why I jumped up and clapped a hand over Rosier’s indignantly open mouth as soon as they’d gone. Vampire hearing ensured that they could eavesdrop equally well from the living room—of a suite on the other side of the building.
They didn’t do it on purpose, exactly. It was just that, with superhuman senses and living in one another’s brains half the time, vamps had about the same understanding of privacy as the NSA. And that was before getting orders to keep me safe or else.
So I put a finger to my lips while Rosier glared at me some more. But he stayed silent when I let him go so I could lean over and turn on the TV. Sumo wrestling, of course. Vegas only had about ten channels of the stuff. But I flipped around until I found a loud telenovela and blasted it, and then turned on the clock radio for good measure.
“What are—” Rosier demanded.
“Shhh!” I grabbed his hand and led him to the French windows on the other side of the room, which opened onto a balcony. It was a tiny trail of a thing, little more than a lip clinging to the side of the building. Because there are penthouses and then there are penthouses, and mine was of the low-rent variety.
I’d had a nicer one once upon a time, before the head of the Senate decided to move in and kick me out. It had a big balcony, with lots of room and a pool. I looked up and scowled; I bet she didn’t even swim.
“What are you doing?” Rosier asked as I climbed out.
“I need to talk to you.”
“And we can’t talk inside?”
“Not unless you want to be overheard.”
“I don’t give a damn,” Rosier said flatly. “And why do you live with a horde of bloodsucking fiends you can’t talk in front of?”
“They’re family,” I snapped. “Now get out here.”
“I’ll pass,” he told me, eyeing the twenty-something-floor drop without pleasure.