They’d ensured that I couldn’t just go back to the moment he was cursed and save him, because his body might be there, but his soul wouldn’t. It was on an epic journey into the past, riding a reverse, erratic time stream that I couldn’t change or influence unless I caught up with it. Or got ahead of it, so Rosier could place the countercurse as soon as it showed up. Only that hadn’t been going so well, either.
So far, we’d utterly failed.
Only no, I corrected grimly, we hadn’t failed. We’d been prevented. Which also explained our current situation.
“We’re at the Pythian Court?” I rasped.
“Yes.”
“Under arrest?”
“Oh yes.”
“And I feel like this because?”
“Drugs. To prevent you from twitching your nose, or whatever you do, and getting us out of this. They hit you with a dart as soon as you showed up. Don’t you remember?”
“No.”
I pulled the pillow back over my face.
As if the problem with the curse wasn’t bad enough, there was an added complication. Namely, that I wasn’t the only Pythia. Each age had one, tasked with preserving her little corner of the timeline from dark mages and crazed cultists and anybody else with the insanity and power to risk a time spell. Most of us ignored each other out of professional courtesy, whenever duty required a trip back in time. But Gertie, my nineteenth-century counterpart, had decided to make an exception for me.
And for the denizen of hell I was dragging back through time along with me.
I guessed good little Pythias didn’t hang out with powerful demon lords.
Not that Rosier was powerful at the moment. Which was why he was just sitting there, frustrated, furious and, yes, about half-mad, because the demon council that had cursed his son had also put a block on his power.
Meaning that, other than for mumbling the countercurse, he was utterly useless.
Which was a problem since, right now, so was I.
“At least they didn’t strip you,” Rosier said, after a minute. “It wasn’t bad enough that they ran me across half the countryside—they had to take my clothes, too! There I was, barely managing to hide from the damn fey, when I was set upon by two of those cursed acolytes.”
He was talking about the white-robed Pythias-in-training every court but mine seemed to have a lot of. They received a small amount of the Pythian power, enough to allow them to learn the ropes of the office and to compete for the top spot one day. And in the meantime, they helped the boss screw over anyone who started joyriding through the centuries in bad company.
“I thought I was doing a fair job of passing myself off as a typical Celt,” he added, “when hey, presto! No cloak! And a moment after that, no trousers! And no underwear! They used some spell to strip me butt naked, in the middle of the damn road, looking for weapons I didn’t even have because of your constant nagging about the timeline. They even took my last shoe!”
“Those bitches.”
“Yes! And afterward they had the temerity to act shocked, as if they’d never seen a naked man before! I thought they were Pythian acolytes, not vestal virgins. Of course, given the outfit, I suppose I should have known—”
“I’m working on the outfit.”
“You’re not going to be doing anything if we don’t get out of here,” he told me, tugging the pillow away. And eyeing me, as if trying to decide if I’d recovered yet.
“No,” I said, and wrestled it back.
But more things were starting to surface from the fog. Things like a burning Welsh countryside, a crap ton of Light Fey—because of course Pritkin had been in the middle of a crisis when we arrived; of course he had. And a had-it-up-to-here Pythia who had already followed us through time twice and was apparently sick of it, because this time she’d brought backup.
Rosier and I had been left dodging a whole troop of the girls in white while also dodging the fire and the fey and the other fey who had shown up to try to kill the first group and—
It hadn’t gone well.
In the bedlam, Pritkin had gotten away, fading into the dark like the mirage I was really starting to believe he was. Of course, so had I, but I couldn’t do the counterspell and Gertie had Rosier! And then she and a few other Pythias she’d recruited into a damn posse had tried to nab me, too. And when that failed they’d sent me back to my own time via some kind of portal and Gertie had dragged Rosier back here and . . .
And then I guess I’d come after him, hadn’t I?