It was still muttering to itself, as they all did unless the flap was closed. My old governess had a witch enchant them for a long-ago birthday present to me. I hadn’t needed the explanations in years, but the charm was still going strong. Meaning that they enthusiastically informed me of their interpretation every time I pulled one out, even talking over each other when necessary.
Every time until tonight.
Tarot cards can be read two ways—okay, more than that, depending on which cards are drawn in a reading along with them. But mostly, there are two: upright and reversed. Good or bad, yin or yang, a positive spin on upcoming events . . . or a warning.
Or, in this case, neither of the above. Because the little guy in the fancy chariot had hit my nose and bounced off. Landing neither upright nor reversed, but on his side.
It lay there, vibrating slightly as it wrestled with itself, its grimy surface almost managing to obscure a bunch of symbols I’d seen before, and seen recently. There was the moon, my mother’s icon, on his shoulder armor. There was the sun, Apollo’s emblem, emblazoned on his chest. There were stars on the canopy fluttering over his head, like the ones on the card I’d drawn at the beginning of the odyssey to find Pritkin, and which had promised a long, tough road ahead.
I’d had no idea.
And finally, there was the little warrior himself, mostly silent at the moment because of the conflicting meanings of his two natures.
There are a lot of ways to interpret the chariot, and the card usually burbles on happily about all of them. But at its heart, it’s a simple contrast: victory or defeat. Or, as it was now, a battle undecided, hovering on a knife’s edge, able to tip either way.
I flicked it with a finger, pushing it upright. And heard what almost sounded like a sigh of relief from the little dude before he started telling me all about victory. Yeah, I thought, staring at him. But was it mine, or was it Ares’?
But on that, the card was silent.
* * *
I never made it upstairs. By the time I’d gotten myself presentable, I’d also received a text from the guy with my ticket to ride. Or, at least, my ticket to sixth-century Wales.
That was a good thing, because I obviously wasn’t going anywhere without it. I barely made it to an apartment on the other end of the Strip, less than a mile away. And even then, I didn’t stick the landing.
“Cassie!” Something clattered into what sounded like a sink, but I couldn’t tell because I’d hit my knee and it was that knee, the I-crawled-on-shrapnel-across-a-blood-streaked-floor knee, and the pain was enough to momentarily blind me.
“You okay?” a familiar voice asked, closer now, and sounding concerned. Probably because I’d just screamed like a banshee.
That’s another thing the movies get wrong. Why is the hero always so damn manly? Why is it not okay to scream a little when it feels like you just shattered a kneecap? Why are you supposed to suck it up and soldier on, without even a curse or two? Is that reasonable?
I must have said part of that out loud, because my companion sighed. “No, it’s not reasonable,” he agreed. And the next thing I knew, I was being hauled over to a black leather sofa that all but screamed bachelor pad.
That was fair, since the guy who owned it was a confirmed old bachelor.
Well, okay, not exactly old. When he had hair—which wasn’t often—it was still dark, and the chocolate skin was mostly unlined. The handsome features looked fortyish, although it was hard to say. The war mage profession aged a person almost as much as being Pritkin’s friend, and Caleb was both.
Lately he’d been mine, too, although he’d probably prefer not to be, considering the stuff I got him into. But there weren’t a lot of war mages I could trust, especially senior ones who might know a thing or two. And who might be willing to keep said things from his boss.
“Do you have it?” I slurred. I’d planned on a few pleasantries first—hi, how are you, did your day suck as hard as mine—but right now I just really wanted—
“Thank God.” I grabbed the little triangular bottle Caleb pulled out of his jeans and downed a third of its contents. It tasted utterly, utterly vile, the kind that makes you shiver and shake and have to choke it down through sheer force of will.
But oh, it was sweet once you did.
I collapsed back against the sofa, gasping.
The Tears of Apollo was a potion designed to help the Pythias access their power. It worked by increasing our stamina—always a problem, since the power was virtually endless, but our ability to channel it wasn’t. And channeling stuff meant for a god when you weren’t one was a real bitch.
But with the Tears, we could not only hold out for longer; we could use more of the power at a time, allowing our spells to have more oomph behind them. That was why I needed it, in order to shift an impossible-sounding fifteen hundred years into the past after Pritkin. It was also why the competition had been after it last night, when they sicced Lizzie on me.
Agnes’ old acolytes had only been given a narrow stream of the power for training, but access was access. They’d hoped that the Tears would widen the flow enough to rival a Pythia’s power, allowing them to shift Ares past my mother’s barrier. And it might have, except for one small problem.
They didn’t have any.
The Tears was only used by one person, so potion stores didn’t carry it and potion brewers didn’t know it. The only people who did were the Circle, who traditionally brewed it for the Pythias, and the Pythias themselves. And the vampire senate, who weren’t supposed to have it or even know about it, but since when had that ever stopped them?
The senate had three bottles originally, which seemed to be what a batch made. They’d acquired it back when I first got this job, because they’d had a little time errand they wanted me to do and assumed I’d need the help. That had left two bottles up for grabs, and Amelie—the strongest of the rogues—had grabbed them last night.