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Even worse, it was aimed at her head.
“Behind you!”
She didn’t hesitate. The flashlight went skittering across the stones, distracting the shooter, who blasted the hell out of it while she disappeared into shadow. One of the bullets went astray and hit a small wooden cask. It looked harmless, but it must have contained the equivalent of a few sticks of TNT. Because a deafening explosion was followed by a ball of orange flame smashing against the ceiling.
Fire rained down everywhere, including onto the shooter’s hand and arm. The gun hit the floor and a man danced out of the stairwell, beating at the flames with his bare hands and shrieking. He also dropped a lantern that spun across the stones in lazy parabolas, lighting him up intermittently, like a strobe.
He was a tall, lanky blond, with horsey features half hidden by a floppy hat. He wore a long dark vest, knee pants and a puffy shirt that was quickly going up in smoke. He managed to get the flames out by flinging off the vest and ripping open the shirt, revealing a pale torso and some singed chest hair. He bent to retrieve his fallen gun, and a bullet sheared off more hair, this time from the top of his head.
He tore off his hat and stared at the hole in the crown as if wondering how it got there. The woman demonstrated by firing again, but he must have been a mage, because he’d managed to get his shields up. Her bullets hit them and hung there, a few feet away from his body, starfishing out from the impact points. He stared at one that would have taken him straight between the eyes and gave a little shriek.
It didn’t look like he was all that accustomed to gunfights, because his concentration wobbled. His shields went with it, and the suspended bullets dropped to the floor, rattling against the stones like beads. He snatched up his gun with adrenaline-clumsy fingers and got off a few random shots in our direction before stumbling through a doorway near the stairs. He never stopped screaming.
The woman kicked a few burning scraps of wood aside and emerged into the dim puddle of light given off by the lantern. She retrieved her flashlight and clicked it a few times, but nothing happened so she sighed and stuffed it into a pocket of the coat she wore. It was camel-colored wool and looked warm, I noticed enviously. Underneath she was wearing a lavender silk dress with a wrapped top and calf-length flared skirt. She looked like June Cleaver out for a night on the town, if June had accessorized with firearms.
This was the first time I’d seen her clearly, and I took a second to adjust my mental image. Our last meeting had also been on a time shift, but she’d been traveling in spirit instead of in body and had chosen to appear as a young woman. She didn’t look that different in the flesh. Her brown hair was streaked with silver now and there were fine lines around her eyes and mouth. But her body was as slim as ever and her current expression—exasperated amusement—was eerily familiar.
“Come out. I won’t hurt you,” she promised.
“You mean again?” I asked nervously.
“You’re hiding behind a barrel filled with gunpowder. If I wanted you dead, I’d just shoot it,” she told me with a deep under-note of duh.
She was tapping her foot impatiently and had lowered the weapon. That might not mean anything, but the fact was, I hadn’t come here to cower in the dark. No matter how good that sounded. Besides, I didn’t think she was kidding about the gunpowder.
I slowly emerged. “Where did I shoot you?” she demanded.
“In the butt.” Her lips quirked. “It’s not funny!”
“If you say so.” She looked me over. My outfit was more appropriate than hers for crawling around a damp cellar, except for not including a coat. I was wearing jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt that said “I Took the Road Less Traveled. Now Where the Heck Am I?” Yet for some reason, she looked perfect while I’d ripped the knee out of my jeans and had black stuff all over my arms. I held my wrist up to my nose and smelled it.
She hadn’t been kidding.
“You’re playing hide-and-seek in a cellar full of gunpowder?” I demanded incredulously, desperately brushing at myself.
“A cellar full of gunpowder that an idiot is trying to blow up,” she corrected. “So I’m a little tense right now. Who are you and why are you here?”
Now that the moment had arrived, I didn’t quite know where to start. “It’s complicated,” I finally said.
“It always is.” She headed for the door where the mage had disappeared, gun in hand. “You aren’t Guild.”
“I don’t even know what that is,” I said, jogging to keep up. “Is that who we’re hunting?”
“That’s who I’m hunting. I don’t know who—or what—you are.” She snagged the abandoned lantern and shoved it at me.
I took it gingerly, worried about powder residue near an open flame. It was a weird little thing, shaped like a large beer stein, with a black metal body and a door that could be opened or closed to control the light. I opened it all the way, but it di
dn’t help much. “I’m Cassie. And, uh . . . I’m sort of Pythia.”
That stopped her. Her sharp blue gaze swept over me again. “Don’t think so,” she said curtly.
The Pythia was the supernatural community’s chief Seer and, as a bonus, also the person charged with maintaining the integrity of the time line. It would have been a crappy job even if I’d had the faintest idea what I was doing. Since I didn’t, it was also really dangerous.
My assailant was named Agnes, AKA Lady Phemonoe, the former Pythia. She was the one who had stuck me with this mess and then died before she could give me any training. As a result, I’d spent the first half of my first month in office trying to get out of the deal and the rest of it running for my life. So it had taken me a while to realize the obvious: I was a time traveler now, whether I liked it or not. Agnes’ death didn’t necessarily mean she couldn’t train me. She just had to do it in the past.
I hadn’t intended for it to be quite this far in the past, but she was always surrounded by people in her own time. And most of them were the types who might recognize and resent another time traveler. Getting her alone had been tough.
Probably not as tough as talking her into this though.
