And had promptly gotten power drunk as all hell, not being used to that much access all at once. Partly as a result, she’d gone on a tear at the consul’s house, instead of just shifting Ares over immediately. That had allowed me time to catch up with her, and to take the last bottle after our duel.
And this was it. The last bottle the senate had, and quite possibly the last bottle anywhere. Which was why I’d dropped it off with Caleb before I went after Rosier, hoping that one of his contacts could reproduce it.
Really hoping.
“You okay?” Caleb asked. I realized I’d closed my eyes at some point, and opened them to see the patented war mage scowl.
“Was your friend able to help?” I asked thickly.
The scowl ramped up a notch, and he sat back on his heels. “Yes and no. The good news is, he can make a pretty good guess at the contents. The bad news, like I warned you last night, is that an ingredient list is useless without the recipe.”
“But if he knows what’s in it—”
“It’s not just about what’s in it. It’s about brewing time, temperature, method of combining ingredients—a hundred variables. Combine them one way, you get magic. Combine them another . . . a really expensive sludge.”
“So he can’t duplicate it?” I asked, to be sure.
“No.”
“So how do I get more?”
“You ask the old man. It’s your potion, Cassie. You’re the Pythia—”
He broke off when I sat up and put my head in my hands, not sure if I wanted to laugh or cry. I was Pythia when other people wanted something or found it convenient, but when the shoe was on the other foot? Not so much.
“Do you have any coffee?” I asked, after a minute. “Tea? Something with caffeine?”
Caleb snorted. “Not what you’d consider coffee. Not if you’ve been drinking that nuclear waste John mainlines all day.”
“I don’t drink Pritkin’s coffee and he doesn’t eat my doughnuts. We have a deal.”
“I’d hate to see the doughnut John would eat,” Caleb said, standing up. And circling around the little half wall that separated the open-plan kitchen from the open-plan living room.
He brewed stuff while I watched the Strip through the semicircle of windows to the left of the couch. And slowly began to feel stronger and more clearheaded. And lighter, like my limbs no longer weighed half a ton each. Even the pain from all those little, and not so little, wounds didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. They still hurt, but I could ignore them.
For the moment. But experience had proven that one bottle of the Circle’s special brew wasn’t going to last me for long. And without it, in my current state, I wasn’t going to be much use to anybody.
In a minute, Caleb was back with something that smelled good—genuinely good.
“You look surprised,” he said.
I stuck my nose in the mug. “What’s in this?”
“Amaretto.”
I looked up hopefully. “Like those little cookies?”
Caleb sighed and got back to his feet.
“And maybe a sandwich?” I turned around and put my good knee on the couch so I could see him. The smell of that coffee had me suddenly starving. “Do you have sandwich stuff?”
“I don’t cook.”
“Making a sandwich isn’t cooking. And what do you eat?”
Caleb looked at me over a muscular shoulder. “Takeout. This is Vegas.”
“But you live here. Doesn’t takeout get old?”