It would have been perfect, if her fellow gods hadn’t fought back. But some did, and the battle drained her more than she’d expected. To the point that she was forced to hide among the human population, to avoid retaliation from the demon hordes who were now hunting her. She had become weaker and weaker over time, unable to hunt, to feed, at least enough to make a difference, for fear of betraying her whereabouts to those with memories as long as her own.
Most of the world didn’t have that advantage, and they largely forgot great Artemis and her hunt. But the demons never did. Especially not Rosier, whose father had been one of my mother’s last victims. Which made it both awkward and seriously ironic that we were having to work together now. But while the demons might not like me, they understood one thing.
We were all on the same side now.
It was why the demon council of my day, who wanted the thorn in their side named John Pritkin very, very dead, had nonetheless relented and given me the counterspell. Not because they wanted to help the daughter of their greatest enemy, but because their paranoia was only eclipsed by their pragmatism. And they knew there was something worse out there.
Namely, the ancient beings that my mother had tossed out on their godly butts, who were currently pounding at the door, trying to get back in. And she was dead now and the spell she’d cast all those centuries ago to bar the way was starting to feel a little threadbare. And if it fell, it was going to be open season on all of us, whether weak and puny or old and powerful, because to the gods, we all pretty much looked the same.
And died as easily.
I glanced at Rosier, to find him staring out over the moon-flooded city, lost in his own thoughts.
“How did you do it?” I asked, because I really wanted to know.
“How did I do what?”
“Survive.”
He shrugged. “The only way I knew how. I started bellowing orders in my best imitation of Father, acted like I knew what I was doing, cornered a few of his old advisers and stuck them to my side like burrs, and . . . made do. Mostly because of Father’s excellent preparations, but people gave me the credit anyway. And afterward, I simply kept going. Listening to my own judgment sometimes, which I discovered wasn’t so bad, after all; getting advice from people who might actually know what they were talking about when I could; and hoping for luck when nothing else worked.”
I scowled. Great.
He saw my expression, and this time, he was the one who laughed.
“Did you think there was a trick to it? Cassie, do you think anyone is ever prepared for a job like yours? Do you think, had you been brought up at the Pythian Court, trained by the sainted Agnes herself, put through political instruction until it was coming out your ears—do you really think it would matter?”
“It wouldn’t hurt!”
“And it wouldn’t help. Not nearly as much as you seem to think.” He shook his head. “I came to be glad that I didn’t know what I couldn’t do. That I was too naive to read the signs, to realize how unlikely any of us were to survive. I remember pounding on the table in a war room—a leaky cave on some misbegotten world somewhere—with three armies outside and none of them ours, with half my forces thinking about changing sides and the other half so demoralized they couldn’t be arsed to care, and yet I was still strategizing. Too stupid to know we’d already lost.”
“And . . . did you?” I asked, because it had kind of felt like that for me lately, too. Like I’d already lost and just hadn’t faced up to it yet. Because how did you fight a god?
It wasn’t a question anybody could answer, since nobody had ever done it. Except for me and the guy I was currently chasing through time, but there had been some heavy caveats there. Like the fact that Apollo, the god in question, had already been crispy fried thanks to Mom’s protection spell, and so was almost dead by the time he got here. And even then we hadn’t fought him, because how the hell were we supposed to fight him? Instead, we’d led him into a trap where some hungry demons and a supernatural vortex had polished him off.
The only thing we’d contributed was to run away.
Fast.
Which frankly still sounded like a plan, because I’d mostly taken after my very human father, and the idea of facing down the god of war made me feel incontinent again.
But I couldn’t run this time.
Not with a bunch of angry gods battering at the door, with a fractured supernatural community that it was my job to somehow bring together, and with a showdown coming that I had no idea—no idea—how to win.
The only clue I’d managed to find had been on the search for Pritkin, fifteen hundred years in the past, and I wasn’t even sure I was right about that one. I was currently sitting on a ledge overlooking a big, open expanse, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like I was trapped in a cave, too, one with the walls closing in and the roof about to come down on my head. And me unable to avert the disaster I saw coming because the little less than four months between a life reading tarot cards in a bar and one supposedly leading the supernatural community wasn’t enough, wasn’t close to enough. It felt like I’d been set up to fail, and here I was, managing right on cue, and I couldn’t—I just—I didn’t—
Damn it!
I wiped an arm over my eyes and looked up to find Rosier watching me. Something passed over his face for a second, something I couldn’t read. And then it was gone again, and he was making another of those elegant gestures he was so fond of.
“Well, obviously not,” he said, answering my previous question. “I’m sitting here, aren’t I? In this hideous thing.” He looked down at his ghostly tunic in distaste.
I wondered why he didn’t change it. Ghosts couldn’t, but Rosier wasn’t one. But maybe he was tired, too.
I leaned my head back against the wall. “So how did you get out of it?”
He shrugged. “I seduced the leader of one of the opposing forces, who thereafter switched sides halfway through the battle. He was behind our enemies and we were in front, and after a while of being sandwiched between the two of us, they broke and ran. And never lived down the ignominy of being beaten by a ragtag group of incubi. I made damn well sure they didn’t.”