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“Myra is already dead,” I said, trying to think of a way to change the subject.
“Yes, but the others are not! They had to know! They were thick as thieves, all of them! There’s no way they didn’t—”
“Rhea.”
“We can find her! She can help—”
She stopped suddenly, probably at the look on my face. And it was times like these that I wished I had a tenth of Mircea’s diplomatic ability. Or even some of that weasel-out-of-questions-you-don’t-want-to-answer ability. Because this answer wasn’t anything she wanted to hear.
“Rhea,” I told her gently. “Let it go.”
“You know something.”
The pallor from before had morphed into two high red circles on her cheeks. It made her look like a kid who’d gotten into her mother’s cosmetics and gone crazy with the rouge. But it didn’t look funny to me. It didn’t look funny at all.
“Rhea, please.”
“I want to know.”
“Rhea—”
“It’s my right to know!”
And I wasn’t going to get out of this, was I?
But I really didn’t want to tell her. If she looked this bad, just getting confirmation that Agnes was murdered, how would she feel about the rest of the story? How would she like knowing that her beloved Pythia had died on her last shift back in time, had thereafter hitched a ride in the body of a young girl kidnapped by the fey, and had waited out the centuries in faerie, where time runs differently. Just so she and the girl could make their escape back here at the perfect time for Agnes to merge with a new host—her old acolyte, Myra. And to slit her throat from ear to ear, releasing both their souls at the same time.
Not for revenge, but as her last act as Pythia. She had been determined to free the world from the horror she’d unwittingly unleashed. And to deny Myra the chance to come back in a new body, in the only way she could.
By dragging her soul away with her into the afterlife.
I could close my eyes and still see it, the red, red blood spilling down Myra’s snowy white gown, the two souls entwined, fighting to the last, the small body slowly slinking to the floor, almost gracefully. I’d seen it in nightmares a few times since. I didn’t want to pass them on.
But Rhea was right; as a member of the court, she ought to know.
“It’s a long story,” I finally told her. “And I don’t know most of it. If you want to hear everything, when we get back to Dante’s, talk to a witch named Françoise. She works at Augustine’s,” I added. “She can tell you more than me.”
To my relief, she seemed to accept that.
“May—may I be excused,” she asked, “for a moment?”
I nodded, and she abruptly ran off. I watched her go, feeling crappy. And reminding myself to be careful what I said in front of the court from now on.
“Sorry,” Fred told me. “I didn’t mean . . .”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I didn’t know she was going to take it like that.”
That made two of us.
Fred retrieved his terrible toy and sat on the sofa, and I put my feet up on the coffee table, because it didn’t matter anymore. And for a moment there was silence, except for the scritch, scratch, scritch of Fred petting his hairy cup. And damn, that was disturbing.
“Stop that,” I told him.
“Stop what?”
“Touching that thing.”
