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“Neither am I.”
“Really.” I held up a hand. It kept trembling unless I really concentrated. “How long has it been since your last caffeine fix?”
“Considering the day I’ve had? Far too long,” he muttered, slowly resting his—my—head on his arms.
He did look bad. The wardrobe-in-one was having a rough day. Apparently, it didn’t have a setting for demon fighting, or maybe it was just broken. It kept shifting to different shapes and patterns, all of which were muddy and wrinkled and torn in various places. The body underneath didn’t look much better. A dark bruise was mapping its way across my left cheekbone, matching the ring of them that circled my right wrist like a bracelet.
“You look really pathetic,” I told him.
One eye cracked, regarding me hopefully from behind a clump of lank curls.
“But you’re still not getting my coffee.”
“You owe me,” he muttered, not bothering to lift his head.
“How do you figure tha
t?”
“Look at me!”
“You wouldn’t have gotten that way if you hadn’t run off toward the guy who’d just tried to kill us.”
Pritkin’s head jerked up. “And we wouldn’t be here in the first place if you hadn’t gone after the Corps on your own!”
“Sugar?” Marsden set a tiny teapot and a cup and saucer in front of me. The saucer had cookies. Lemon cream. Yum.
I looked down to find my coffee missing.
I reached for it and Pritkin shrank away from me, huddled over the mug protectively. “Fine,” I muttered, concentrating on my tea. I’d probably have to detox once we got switched back. Assuming we did. Now that I’d had a chance to think about it, I was feeling a little nervous on that point.
“You were going to explain how we ended up in the wrong bodies,” Pritkin reminded me.
“I’d rather clear up a few things first, like why we’re here. Wherever here is.”
“You’re in the country outside Stratford, my dear,” Marsden said, and then paused. “Oh, that does sound odd, addressing John that way. May I call you Cassandra?”
“Cassie. And Stratford where?”
He blinked. “Upon Avon.”
“We’re in Britain?”
“Yes, the Circle has been based here for centuries. Shakespeare’s old home has always drawn the tourists, you see. No one notices any rather odd types coming and going, as a result.” He sipped his tea. “Everyone just assumes they’re Americans.”
I scowled at him. “I thought the Circle was based in Vegas.”
“Oh, no.” He looked slightly shocked at the idea. “That wouldn’t do at all. I’d have never gotten any work out of the Corps then, now would I?”
“Our North American branch was based at MAGIC,” Pritkin clarified. “And can we return to the point?”
I decided to man up to it—since I could actually currently do that—and fished the ivory menace out of Pritkin’s pocket. “Meet Daikoku, one of the seven Japanese gods of luck.” I left off the “good,” since I hadn’t seen much sign of that, and filled them in on the rest of the legend.
Marsden was biting his lip and Pritkin was staring at me incredulously by the time I finished. “You knowingly invoked an unknown, potent magical object without placing any boundaries on its power?” He sounded like he didn’t quite believe it. “Have you gone completely mad?”
“It seemed better than the alternative.”
“It wasn’t,” he said harshly.
