It wasn’t like I’d had much choice.
And now she had us both.
Goddamn it!
I abruptly sat up, headache be damned, and Rosier handed me a glass of water. Which he had to stretch to do, since he was cuffed to the foot of the bed. “Victorian prudery,” he said dryly. “To keep me from ravishing you while you slept.”
“Then why didn’t they just put you in another room? In fact, why are you here at all? You’re a demon lord—”
“And you’re a powerful sorceress who placed me under your control, and have been sapping my power to fuel your jaunts through time.”
I paused halfway through a swallow to stare at him.
“Leaving me currently drained and incapable of posing a threat to anyone.” He saw my expression. “Well, I had to tell them something.”
“No! No, you didn’t!”
“Think about it, girl! If I hadn’t, they might have given me back to the damn war mages,” he said
, referring to the closest thing the magical community had to a police force. “Have you forgotten what happened last time?”
Not likely. Not after everything I’d had to do to get him back before the mages killed him, or the demon council’s guards showed up to do it for them. That’s why I’d checked the local war mage HQ before coming here; I’d assumed I’d have to break him out again.
But no.
Gertie was handling things herself this go-round.
Gertie was going hard-core.
“The further back we go, the more of a concern we are,” Rosier said, confirming my thoughts. “I heard them talking when I was coming out of that time freeze they slapped me with. Just snatches of conversation, but enough to know that they’ve elevated us from annoying mystery to serious threat—”
“We weren’t that already?” Could have fooled me.
“No. When we were in Amsterdam, there was a chance you were just an acolyte who had slipped her Pythia’s leash. But bored acolytes don’t have the power to make it back fifteen hundred years! By the time we reached Wales, they were betting on one of those . . . what are they called?” He flapped a hand. “Crazy men, run about trying to change time, usually get blown up for their trouble?”
“The Guild.” I swallowed, remembering how much my predecessor had loved them.
But Rosier just nodded. “That’s it. Guild of something or other—I forget. But the point is, they now think you’re dangerous—”
“Yes, thanks to you!”
“That cherry-covered freak was already determined to catch you,” he pointed out. “I merely ensured that she would think you needed me, and would be back to fetch me—”
“Which would have been great except that I do need you and I did come back!”
“—and now, thanks to my foresight, we’re together and can work on getting out of here,” he finished, ignoring the fact that he’d basically set me up. “Speaking of which, how long until you can shift?”
I picked up the glass and drained it, hoping it would help with the throbbing in my skull.
Nope.
“Well?” he prodded.
I wiped my lips on the back of my hand. “Long.”
“And that means?”
“It means long. We need other options.”