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For a moment, we just looked at each other.
Why didn’t I think we had a meantime?
“Apple,” I told Rhea, who ran to get one.
“She will talk, I assure you,” Jonas told me.
“I know she will,” I said, my eyes not leaving the girl. I don’t know what was on my face, but hers was smug, self-assured, cocky. She didn’t look like someone who was surrounded by war mages and an angry Pythia. She looked like someone who has already won, and is just waiting for everyone else to catch up.
“Apple,” Rhea said breathlessly, handing me one.
“What did you do?” I asked the girl again, bending over her chair.
“If you’re trying to threaten me, good luck,” she said. “That dart would have taken down a bull elephant. You’re out of power. And by the time you get it back . . .” She trailed off, smiling.
I held out the apple, flat on my palm. “One minute.”
“A minute is all you have left,” she snapped. “In a minute, the master will be back and you’ll be dead—”
“But you won’t be,” I promised. “You will be very much alive.”
“You’re damned right I—”
She stopped, somewhat abruptly. Because the apple had suddenly blushed a darker shade of red. It took a lot out of me; it took too much. A full bottle of Tears was warring with a hit of knockout drug and a lot of running around. The net result was edging up on zero.
But I had to do this.
I had to know what they’d done.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I told her steadily as the fruit began to change color on one side. “I’m going to age you.” The red started to brown in spots, and the plump flesh to move oddly, sickeningly, blowing up slightly before starting to deflate. “To the point that no one will be able to tell that you used to have pretty blond hair and smooth skin.”
The apple suddenly imploded, one half sinking in, almost to the core, while gray splotches joined the brown. She recoiled, but there was nowhere to go, with the Circle’s mages hemming her in on all sides. And me in front, keeping the decaying thing in her face.
“Old people earn their wrinkles,” I told her. “They buy them with a lifetime of joy and sadness, triumph and pain. With the sight of their lover’s face on their wedding day, the sound of their baby’s first cry, the feel of their child’s hand in theirs. But not you.”
And then it was all gray, in between one blink and the next, the once shiny surface of a formerly perfect fruit now fuzzy with mold and leaking nasty-smelling juices onto her nice blue blouse.
“You’ll just be old,” I said as she stared at the rotting thing. “In the blink of an eye. Too old to be Pythia, if that’s what he promised you. Too old to enjoy the triumph your friends will be celebrating. Too old to do anything or be anything or have anything or experience anything. Ever. Again.”
Wide, frightened blue eyes met mine, and then they narrowed and her chin raised. “My friends will save me,” she spat. “Once the master returns—”
“Your friends? You mean the other acolytes? The ones in competition with you for his affections? The ones who sent you here? Those friends?”
She stared at me, and then looked at Jonas, standing behind me. “You’re bluffing. The Circle doesn’t allow—”
“But you’re not dealing with the Circle, are you?” I asked. “You’re not even dealing with a proper Pythia. You’re dealing with someone raised by homicidal vampires, and I don’t bluff.”
“And I’m afraid,” Jonas told her mildly, “that the Circle tends to be . . . pragmatic . . . in these cases.”
The apple was no longer leaking. It was a piece of desiccated, withered flesh, clinging to a rotten core. I let it fall into her lap. “Once last chance. What are they doing?”
She swallowed. And then tossed her head defiantly. “It doesn’t matter. You’re too late to stop it—”
“To stop. What?”
“We’re attacking the vampire’s stronghold in New York. With a whole army!”
“Upstate,” Jonas murmured. “The consul’s home.”
