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Probably not in my far one, either.
“Then some kind of stress reliever,” she said determinedly. “I could make you . . . a drink?”
I shook my head. I could still taste the wine from the Bollocks. Which meant I might never taste anything ever again.
“It’s okay,” I told her.
“Then let me run you a bath.”
I thought about it. And suddenly, all the aches and pains of a very long few days, of sleeping on a tree root in Wales, of climbing up and down, up and down, more hills than I could count, of being so sure we had him . . . only to have him slip through our fingers again, hit me.
“A bath sounds good,” I told her fervently, and got out of the tub.
I went to get some nightclothes, and by the time I got back, a bath pillow had been put in place, the dirt had been washed away from around the drain, and hot, frothy bubbles were taking its place. Rhea bustled out, and I eased my aching body into the hot, hot, almost-too-hot water, wincing because it caused every scratch and bruise to stand out in sharp relief. But it felt good, too, soothing away the pain almost as fast as it caused it. And in a minute, Rhea was back with that drink I hadn’t wanted but suddenly did.
Because it was milk and there was a plate of still-warm chocolate chip cookies to go with it.
A bubble bath and chocolate chips, I thought, slightly in awe. I might have just died and failed to notice. I dug in, and they were as good as ever, soft and melty and perfect. Tami always had been the best cook, and most of her stuff was homemade, because it was cheaper.
And better, I thought, looking up halfway through.
And caught Rhea watching me with a strange expression.
“Did you want some?” I asked indistinctly, because I had a cheek full of happiness.
“No,” she whispered. She sat on the vanity stool.
For a while, she just watched me eat cookies.
“You said your power doesn’t communicate with you?” she finally asked.
I nodded.
“At all?”
I thought back to my early days in this job, before I had completed the ritual to get the top spot, and was just another heir in competition with Myra. My power had jerked me around all over the place, like some kind of wild, time-traveling puppet, trying to stop whatever she was about to mess up. I’d really resented it at the time. Now . . . well, it wasn’t like I wanted to meet my acolytes again, but I preferred it to meeting Ares. But I wasn’t meeting them, because my power wasn’t taking me anywhere. Or telling me anything.
I swallowed milk. “No. Agnes told me once that I didn’t have to worry about learning how to be Pythia, that my power would train me. Like it did for the early Pythias who had to figure things out for themselves. But it hasn’t.”
She frowned. “It ignores you?”
“Well, it does what I want . . . if I’m not too tired. So I don’t think you can say ‘ignore.’”
“But when you talk to it, it doesn’t answer back?”
“What?”
“When you ask it a question. You don’t get an answer?”
“Ask it . . . a question?”
It was her turn to look at me.
And then to keep on doing it, longer than was comfortable.
“You . . . have never . . . asked your power . . . anything?” she finally said, in a tone that could only be described as “appalled.”
Poor Rhea. I kept freaking her out and I wasn’t even trying.
