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I sat down on the bed, suddenly exhausted. It had been a long day at the end of a long week, and my chest hurt. I wanted to scream, to cry, to throw things, but I didn’t have the energy. I wanted to black out and find Pritkin there when I woke up. I wanted . . .
God. Sometimes I didn’t even know.
“Not tonight,” I admitted, rubbing the back of my neck. If I hadn’t felt up to dealing with a few nosy witches, I sure couldn’t take whatever was guarding dear old Mom.
“Come back to the suite,” Billy told me softly. “Before you give Marco a heart attack. Get some rest. Tomorrow . . . maybe things will look different.”
In other words, tomorrow maybe I’d come to my senses.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, because I didn’t want to argue anymore.
Billy nodded, and winked out, looking relieved. Which did exactly nothing to make me feel better. Despite the way he’d been sounding lately, Billy Joe wasn’t the timid type. Billy Joe had been a high-stakes gambler in life, until he ended up in a sack at the bottom of the Mississippi for cheating the wrong guys. When Billy thought something was too risky . . .
Well, let’s just say the odds weren’t great.
And it wasn’t like everything he’d said wasn’t true. But so was something he hadn’t bothered to mention. That if our positions were reversed, Pritkin would have come after me. Whether I’d liked it or not, whether I’d wanted him to risk it or not, he wouldn’t have just left me there. It probably wouldn’t even have crossed his mind. I knew that, with more certainty than I knew which direction the sun would rise tomorrow.
So how could I just leave him?
I curled up on his messy bed, and even after a week, the sheets still smelled good. Like soap and gunpowder and magic. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, and didn’t cry. Because it was weak, and I couldn’t afford to be weak.
And because you only cried for people who weren’t coming back.
And that wasn’t the case here, no matter how it looked. I had to get to him, had to get him away from his loathsome father, had to find a way to keep him. And for that, I had to get to my mother.
Somehow.
But it had been a week, and so far, I hadn’t even managed that first step. I’d exhausted myself flipping around through time like a crazy woman. I’d been chased by guards through the old Pythian Court, almost gotten myself run over in London, been shot at by Tony’s thugs. And for what? I was no closer to finding Pritkin than I’d been a week ago.
When he left me.
Chapter Five
“The Star . . .”
A soft chime woke me.
“The Star . . . The Star . . . The Star . . .”
A soft, annoying chime.
I groaned and rolled over, because it was too damned early, and the chime suddenly became more muffled. “The Star . . . The Star . . . The Star . . .”
I groaned again and sat up.
“The Star is universally considered to be the most beautiful card in the tarot,” a smug voice informed me, from somewhere underneath my butt. “It is also one of the most fortunate, although not, perhaps, in the way that many people would prefer. The Star—”
I fumbled around, groggy and still half-asleep, and didn’t find anything.
“—indicates that success is possible, but only in time and through great effort. The Star shines in the night sky, a beacon of light in a dark world, pulling the querent forward onto a heroic quest—”
I felt something stuck to the back of my leg. I peeled it off and brought it up to my bleary eyes. And saw a small rectangle with a night scene, a garden, and a naked chick with a jug.
“—worthy of an equally great reward,” the little tarot card burbled at me. “Should the querent survive—”
“Survive?”
“—the undoubted dangers, snares, and, at times, mortal perils that lie in the way, the reward will be as sweet as the clear, cold water the lovely maiden pours into the pool reflecting the starlight. And if not—”
