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“I know you don’t wanna think about it,” he said impatiently. “But we gotta figure this out—”
“It wasn’t Apollo,” I said, my voice muffled by the pillow.
“How do you know?”
“Because he wouldn’t have waited this long to attack me.”
“Maybe he learned something last time. He underestimated you, and look where that got him. Straight down the metaphysical crapper.”
“And I haven’t had any more visions—”
“Maybe he figured out you were spying on him and blocked you somehow. He was the source of your power, wasn’t he? So he should be able to—”
“And he wasn’t human,” I said, throwing off the pillow. Because obviously Billy wasn’t going to let me sleep until we had this out. “And nonhumans don’t leave ghosts!”
“That we know of.”
“In a century and a half, how many nonhuman ghosts have you seen?” I demanded.
“None. But we’re talking about gods here. Who knows what they can do?”
“Well, they can’t do this. Whatever went after me was driven off by cold iron. That wouldn’t have bothered a god at all.”
“That could have been a coincidence,” Billy said stubbornly. “Pritkin even said so—”
“Stop eavesdropping on my conversations! And the spirit also didn’t know English. We could barely communicate.”
Billy thought for a moment. “Maybe he forgot?”
I snorted. “Yeah. And then he grew feathers.”
“Damn.”
I stared at him. “Did you just say ‘damn’?”
He grinned, unrepentant. “It was a beautiful theory, you gotta admit.”
I didn’t have to admit anything of the kind. “Look, the gods are gone. Finished, kaput, out of the picture. Okay?”
He held up his hands. “Hey. Preaching to the choir here.”
“Beautiful theory,” I muttered, and swung the pillow at him.
It was a wasted effort, because he disappeared before it landed, fading away until only his laughter remained. It was the last thing I heard as I finally drifted off.
Chapter Seventeen
I walked into the living room sometime that afternoon, yawning and bleary-eyed from too much sleep, to see Marco coming out of the lounge. At least, I assumed it was Marco. It was a little hard to be sure, because while the height and girth were the same, the face was completely covered—in flowers.
“Hey,” I said, as a perfect red rose dropped off the towering stack he was carrying and plopped at my feet.
“Hey, yourself,” Marco’s voice told me, heading out of the apartment. “Get the door, will ya?”
I got the door. “What are you doing?”
“Taking out the trash.”
He strode over to the elevator and punched the button, shedding blossoms all the way. One had a little card attached. I bent and picked it up. Cassandra Palmer.
