“I am saying . . .” She licked her lips. “I am saying that I do not think they can. It seems to me, if such a thing were possible, Myra would have already done it for Apollo.”
And, okay, I couldn’t argue with that. Apollo had tried to bypass the barrier my mother put in place by overloading a ley line, and had ended up barbecued. I didn’t think he’d have chosen that option if he could have just had his pet acolyte shift him here.
“So what do they want this for?” I held out the bloody bottle.
Rhea just stared at it. She still looked stunned, pale, and more than a little freaked out. So much for an easy first assignment.
We don’t get the easy jobs. . . .
I’d said it to Pritkin once, and it had never felt more true. The Pythia’s position sounded so powerful, so invincible. What couldn’t be fixed with the ability to manipulate time?
A lot of things, as it turned out.
But maybe one of them could be fixed another way.
I went back to the bedroom and started rummaging around under the bed for my sneakers.
“I need you to talk to Casanova,” I told Rhea, when she followed me in. “Tell him I want rooms for the girls and I want them now. This place is too dangerous for kids.”
“I—yes. Yes, of course.”
“And make it a suite—or three. We don’t need the littler ones figuring out how to turn a doorknob and wandering around the damned hotel.”
“Yes, that sounds like a very good—”
“And get them some clothes; they haven’t changed in days.”
“I will, of course, but—”
“And make them normal ones. The less they look like initiates, the safer they’ll be!”
“Of course. I mean, I will, that is, I would, but—”
“But what?”
“It’s just that . . .”
“It’s just that what?” I asked, coming up with two sneakers, but they were both for the left foot.
“It’s just that there’s a problem with the money,” she admitted.
“What problem?”
“The . . . fact that we don’t have any?”
I looked up at her, one arm still under the bed, trying to snare another shoe. “You’re telling me the Pythian Court is broke?”
“No.” She looked shocked. “The court has plenty of money; we just can’t access it.”
“Why not?”
“The Circle locked the accounts. I had to borrow money from your chief bodyguard for groceries—”
“From Marco?”
She nodded. “I didn’t know what else to do. The accounts were accessible to the Pythia and her heir. But the Lady is dead, and Myra is—”
“Also dead.”