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Yeah, okay, at some point the goddess famous for virginity had decided to hook up with a human for some reason, and pop out baby me. But that did not automatically confer any special insight. I’d had to learn about the whole mess the hard way, like everyone else—by piecing clues together over the last several months, ever since the war made it obvious that the gods were getting serious about the reclaiming-their-playground thing. And I still didn’t know much.
In fact, I probably knew less than most, since nobody seemed to think it important to actually tell me anything. I was just their ace in the hole, the quasi-divine chick they’d lucked into who was expected to pull something out of her ass every time a god or his little homicidal offspring showed up to wreak some more havoc. It was infuriating.
It was also terrifying.
Especially since, along with that lack of insight I’d gotten a big old goose egg in the divine equipment department. Sure, I had the power that came with my office, but all Pythias had had that. And most of them had known more about it than I did. But if there was some kind of demigod bonus I was supposed to get on the side, well, it had been lost in the mail. My maternal line notwithstanding, I was just Cassie.
And some days—most days—I was afraid that wasn’t going to be nearly enough.
Like days when I was covered in bruises and my own blood, plus some two-decade-old spiderwebs I hadn’t noticed until now. “Shit!” I said, running frantic hands through my hair and knocking off a couple of little brown things that scurried for cover. And didn’t make it thanks to Marco’s size-sixteen boot. “I need a drink,” I told him honestly.
“Drinks!” Fred’s head popped up. “That’s right. We’re going to need—”
“Don’t even—” I warned as he grabbed the coffee cup I had stupidly set down on the kitchen counter.
“You couldn’t get a large?” he snarled, playing keep-away. And then somehow my coffee ended up parsed out into three little demitasse cups, slapped on a tray along with the leaking doughnuts, and sped out the door, all in about the time it took to blink.
I started after it, but Marco didn’t move out of the way. “Wait.”
“I wait and I starve!”
“There are worse things.”
“Like what?”
“Like having your dingle cursed off,” Fred said, sidling back into the kitchen through the half inch of space left by Marco’s bulk.
“What?”
“You know.” He looked pointedly downward.
“They don’t do that!”
“Like hell they don’t! I’ve seen things, okay? And these aren’t mages. They’re not part of the Circle. They don’t have rules—”
“They have rules, just ones decided by their covens,” Marco argued.
“Yeah, rules like if someone pisses them off, they can curse his ding—”
“Would you man the hell up?” Marco snapped. And clapped a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt over Fred’s mouth. Fred’s displeasure thereafter took the form of outraged grunts.
“I thought the covens were under the Circle’s authority,” I said, trying to remember all the info Jonas had been force feeding me lately.
“Not the most powerful ones. They never joined.” Marco shot a look over his shoulder. “I guess they figured they didn’t need to.”
Yeah. And if they’d just waltzed in here through the kinds of wards the Circle had on this place, I kind of agreed with them. But that still didn’t make it okay.
“Why are they here?” I demanded.
“They wouldn’t tell me,” Marco said, effortlessly keeping Fred under wraps. And since, despite all evidence to the contrary, Fred was also a master-level vamp, that was actually kind of impressive. Or it would have been, had Marco not been simultaneously hiding from a few old ladies.
“You’re intimidated,” I accused.
He scowled. “Do you remember how old I am?”
“What does that mat—”
“It matters ’cause I didn’t live this long by being stupid. Sometimes it’s smart to be intimidated. Sometimes it’s smart to look before you leap.”
