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Chapter One
Okay, this was going to be easy.
That wasn’t something I said very often, because my life is a lot of things, but easy has never been one of them. My name is Cassie Palmer, and I used to be a down-on-my-luck clairvoyant who made ends meet by reading tarot in a bar. But then stuff happened. A lot of stuff. A lot of hair-raising, spine-tingling, unbelievably crazy and potentially deadly stuff. As a result, I was now a down-on-my-luck Pythia, the chief seer of the supernatural world.
Yeah, I don’t know how that happened, either.
But my no-good luck was about to change. Because my partner, who was currently lost in time, and who I’d been searching for for what felt like forever, was right across the room.
And this time, nothing was going to go wrong.
“This time, nothing is going to go wrong,” I said into my beer.
The should-have-been-handsome-but-wasn’t-because-he-was-an-ass who was propping up the wall next to me didn’t answer. His shirt was open and he was poking at something on his stomach—presumably a bruise. I clenched my hand on my beer mug so I wouldn’t be tempted to add a few more.
“Did you hear me?” I demanded softly, trying not to call attention to us. Not that that seemed likely. The little dive in Amsterdam where we’d washed up was loud, and an especially raucous group had just blown in through the door. Along with a blast of cold air and icy slush that numbed my toes even through thick leather boots and added another layer of frost to my eyelashes.
Apparently, central heating was not a thing in the 1790s.
The smart people were over by the fire, which had managed to melt the slush around a small ring of chairs and a few stool-type things that I guess were supposed to be tables. Or beer holders, anyway. But we couldn’t join them and try to thaw out. Because the bar was by the fire and a half-demon war mage named Pritkin was by the bar.
He’d glanced around a few times since we’d come in, but hadn’t picked me out because my strawberry blond curls were hidden under a dark brown glamourie. The same one that had changed my tip-tilted nose into a pug and fattened my already plump cheeks into chipmunk territory. It was not a great look for me, but since my reluctant partner had provided it, I’d decided it could be worse.
I was sort of surprised he hadn’t given me warts.
I wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t bothered to answer. Rosier might be Lord of all Incubi, the demon race known for being smooth, suave, and charming, but I didn’t get to see that side of him. No, I saw this side. The side that was poking at his hairy abdomen with a frown, as if the ring of bruises there was potentially life-threatening.
If only, I thought, and kicked him.
That won me a glare out of a stranger’s black eyes, because Rosier was wearing a glamourie, too. Normally, he shared the green eye color and rugged blond good looks of his son and our elusive target. And nothing else. The stubborn sense of honor, the brutal honesty, and the iron discipline of the man I knew must have all come from Pritkin’s human side, because I’d yet to see a shred of them in his reprehensible father.
“Why are you asking me?” the creature demanded, glowering at me from under greasy dark brown bangs. “I wasn’t the one who screwed up last time.”
“You got mugged last time!”
“You shouldn’t have left me alone,” he complained. “London is a dangerous city, doubly so in the Victorian age—”
“You’re a demon lord! How the hell you managed to get beaten up—”
“A demon lord without magic.”
“—by a handful of street thugs who didn’t even have—wait. What?”
He scowled at me. “Why do you think I’m carrying this?” he slapped the side of the leather man purse he’d brought along, because I guess incubi are more secure in their sexuality than most guys. Or maybe there was another reason.
He’d pulled the little patch out of it that had provided my glamourie earlier. I hadn’t stopped to wonder about it at the time, being too busy already wondering how to get into my multilayered Victorian outfit. But now it occurred to me that maybe a demon lord shouldn’t have to carry around his magic.
And shouldn’t have the crap beaten out of him quite so easily.
“In their infinite wisdom, the demon council decided to put a dam on my power,” he confirmed bitterly. “They worried about what I would do to some of them, back in time with both foreknowledge and magic intact. Not being able to deprive me of the former, they restricted the latter—something that becomes a problem when one is set upon by six huge brutes!”
I didn’t waste time pointing out that it had been three the first time he told that story, because deflating his ego could wait. Something else couldn’t. “Then what about the counterspell?” I hissed.
Rosier and I were putting up with each other because we had a common goal: to save his son from obliteration. Pritkin’s twenty-first-century body was back where it belonged, and in decent shape despite being hit by a deadly curse. But only because it hadn’t been the target. His soul had. The demon spell had sent his spirit sliding back through the eras of his life, and would destroy it once it reached the beginning of what had been, thankfully, a very long existence.
At least, it would unless we put the countercurse on him first.
But that wasn’t my job. I’d done my job—flipping us through time after the wildly careening soul, which didn’t have anything like a steady, predictable path. It jumped here and there, like a piece of flotsam in the rapids, catching only occasionally on some bit of time’s shoreline before being snatched off again a few minutes later.
And now the one person who could stop it was telling me he couldn’t cast the damned spell?
“Of course I can,” Rosier
said acidly, when I pointed this out. “They had to leave me that much, or what’s the use in my coming?”
“Nothing as far as I can—”
“But that’s the only one.”
I stared at him as his meaning sunk in. “You mean that’s the only spell you can do?”
He gestured at his bruised ribs. “Obviously.”
“But . . . but what if we run into trouble?”
“Well, you’re a witch, aren’t you?”
“No! No, I am not a witch! How many times do I have to—”
A hand reached around my shoulders and clapped over my mouth. “Keep your voice down! That is not a popular word in this era.”
I shut up, because he was right. And because I didn’t have a choice. And, eventually, Rosier decided to let me breathe again, but just so he could interrogate me.
“What do you mean, you’re not a witch?”
“I mean, I don’t do witch stuff,” I whispered. “I do Pythia stuff. That’s why I have bodyguards!” Only there was a limit to how many people I could take along on my jaunts through time, since every person added to the already considerable strain. So I’d left my guards at home, assuming that a demon lord could protect me.
Only to find out that he couldn’t even do that for himself.
“What do we do if we’re attacked?” he demanded.
“That’s what I just asked you!”
“You couldn’t have mentioned this before?”
“You told me to get us here and you’d take care of the rest!”
“That was before I knew I was dealing with someone without even rudimentary—” He abruptly cut off.
“What is it?” I glanced around nervously. But it wasn’t a witch-hunting posse coming for me with torches blazing. In fact, nothing of interest appeared to be happening at all. Just the bar’s alcoholic tabby winding around a few legs, looking for handouts, more icy rain lashing the windows, and a couple guys arguing over a game of dice.
