Of course, Han and Luke had almost been roasted alive in that same scene, so I supposed it could be worse. And they were treating me pretty well if they planned an execution. I’d woken up to see some guy with a bone through his nose and feathers in his hair who looked like he should be shaking a chicken at me, but who instead had been dressing my shoulder with a pot of salve. It smelled like a bear had made love to a skunk, but it had numbed the pain nicely. And now I had a jug of water and a pile of furs on the boards behind me, in case I wanted to sleep, I supposed.
But I didn’t.
I wanted to go. I wanted to find Pritkin. I wanted to get him to Rosier. I wanted to get that damned curse off him and get us back where we belonged and end this. . . .
Only that wasn’t happening, was it? Not with Chewbacca over there, watching my every move. I sat and chewed on my lip.
If I couldn’t get to Rosier, then I had to bring him to me. Somehow. And I had to do it soon, in case the crazy fey time stream sped things up, and the cursed soul showed up, thanks to my colossal screw-up, and—
And get a grip, Cassie!
I could do this. It was just another shift. And, yes, I was in faerie and Rosier was on earth, and my power didn’t work well here, if at all, but we were right by a portal. Before it got dark, I’d been able to see the river glistening through the trees. And the portal was in the river. And Rosier was just on the other side of the portal—at least he’d better be, because if he’d run off somewhere, I’d wring his demonic neck.
Right. So. A shift. Rosier from the other side of the portal to me, and then us to wherever Pritkin was. I didn’t see him, but he couldn’t have gone too far, and they weren’t spitting him down below, so I assumed he was okay. They’d probably separated us so we couldn’t collude or something, and shut up, shut up, shut up, just get his bastard of a father here.
I closed my eyes and reached for my power.
Not surprisingly, it didn’t come. But it wasn’t gone. The power went where I did now; whether I shifted in body or not, whether I shifted in time or not, it was like a great golden shadow, following, shimmering, beckoning . . . just . . . out of . . . reach—
Concentrate!
I took a deep breath, because I was short of it for some reason, and tried again. It felt almost exactly like trying to reach for something high on a shelf, when you’re not quite tall enough. Reaching hard, like I was straining and stretching and my fingertips could touch it but not grab it, like it was right there, right there, right there, but I couldn’t . . . quite . . . Damn it!
I stopped, panting and sweating and swearing under my breath, because I’d almost had it that time. Only for a second, and only like a fleeting touch, but I’d felt it, pure and beautiful and powerful. All the power I could ever need or hope to use like a shimmering sea spreading out all around me . . .
I paused for a minute, because that was exactly what it was. Spread out, like a vast ocean on all sides, crashing and beating and battering at the barrier that separated us. Like it didn’t like this arrangement any more than I did. But I still couldn’t touch it, not directly, not here, any more than I could reach the bottom of the river when on top of Pritkin’s elastic water trick.
In fact, that was really a better analogy, because a shelf doesn’t move. But my power did, ebbing and flowing like water, sometimes closer, sometimes farther away, but always coming back. It was like I was on some kind of metaphysical pool float that I couldn’t get off of, and wanted something over by the deck that I couldn’t reach.
But the water could, if I displaced enough of it. So I started mentally wiggling and squirming and jumping, trying to figure out this new way of controlling power that I couldn’t actually touch. And it worked—sort of.
I was doing something, anyway, something that made the float I wasn’t on rise and fall more and more, until it felt like I was sitting on a boat in the high seas instead of on a platform waiting for the fey to decide to come and cook me.
And, okay, maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea, I thought, playing with that much power, as the waves started striking harder, and things started getting a little out of control, and then more than a little. But I didn’t stop; I wasn’t sure I could stop. I just concentrated on Rosier, got an image in my head of that annoying, smug pain in the ass, and—
And—
And pulled.
I fell backward, although not from the snap of the power. That hit and absorbed, radiating shock waves through me, feeling weird and exhilarating and sort of good and bad all at the same time. Like when the little car rolls to a stop after a roller coaster and you’re left wondering if you really had a good time or not and clutching your chest.
And something else.
I sat up, realizing that I’d fallen backward because something had hit me. Something that I didn’t understand at first, because it wasn’t a pissed-off demon lord. Well, not entirely, I thought, as
I examined a piece of homespun-looking cloth, mud-splattered in places and rumpled, like someone had slept in it.
Because someone had.
It was a cloak, the kind that probably half the people in Britain were wearing right now. But it didn’t belong to any of them. That was Rosier’s little circular pin holding it at the throat, the one concession to vanity he hadn’t been able to deny himself, despite the fact that the pretty pewter item didn’t go with the rough material.
It was Rosier’s cloak. I sat there, clutching it for a moment in slight disbelief, feeling dirty wool under my fingers and a huge grin breaking out over my face because I’d done it! I’d shifted a cloak!
I decided to try for the owner next.
Or I would have, if someone hadn’t gotten nosy.
Literally. I felt a touch on my shoulder, and looked around to find myself nostril to nostril with something the size of an eight-year-old’s foot. And a pair of beady black eyes on the long stretch behind it, regarding me narrowly. “What you do?”