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Brown eyes that were shrewder than the outfit would suggest narrowed. “You were expecting another answer?”
“I—well, to tell the truth, I’ve been having a little trouble with some of my . . . associates . . . lately.”
I’d almost said “acolytes,” since that’s who I’d assumed the girls were. I was a new Pythia, and not everybody from my predecessor’s court was exactly on board with the change of command. Five especially had decided that they could do without me, preferably permanently. And since they were on the loose at the moment, it had been a logical conclusion that some or all of them had hunted me down.
Logical but, apparently, also wrong.
Unless my acolytes had adopted one hell of a new dress code.
“Some trouble?” A slender eyebrow went up.
“They sort of want me dead.” It was one of the messes I was going to have to deal with as soon as I got Pritkin back.
Cherry red lips pursed. “Understandable. A rogue is a serious problem.”
“I’m not a rogue.”
That did not appear to go down well. “Whatever you are, you do not belong here.”
“Neither do you,” I pointed out. That outfit was pure Victorian excess.
She smiled gently. “Had you remained in London a little while longer, I would not have had to be.”
Well, that explained that. It looked like the nineteenth-century Pythia had taken exception to my romping through her turf; why, I didn’t know. Nobody had ever said anything before.
“Isn’t the usual procedure to, uh, ignore that sort of thing?” I asked hopefully.
The eyebrow ratcheted up another notch. “Ignore a powerful demon lord intruding into areas he oughtn’t?”
Crap. I should have known. Rosier.
He was just the gift that kept on giving, wasn’t he?
“But no matter,” she told me. “I do enjoy a bit of a chase. But I’m afraid this one is over now.”
I swallowed. Under other circumstances, she’d have been right. I’d have gone back to Victorian Britain without a fuss, on the assumption that I’d be able to talk my way out of this sooner or later. But right now, I didn’t have that option. Even if I could eventually convince her that I wasn’t a dangerous rogue, that Rosier wasn’t currently a powerful anything, and that we should therefore be allowed to go on our way, it wouldn’t matter.
It would still be too late for Pritkin.
The demon who had cast the spell had boasted that it had been selected with my abilities in mind, to make rescue unlikely. As a result, Pritkin’s cursed soul would only pass through each era of his life once. No matter how many times I came back to this year afterward, it would never be here again. And shortly beyond this point, his past became a lot more difficult to navigate, with a lengthy time spent in hell where my power didn’t work well, if at all, and then . . . an early life at a point too far back in time for me to reach.
My hands clenched on his arms. I was drained from a day of time-shifting, demon-sitting, and now Pritkin’s idea of a late-night snack. I was in no shape to challenge a Pythia who, presumably, had a lot more experience on the job than me and had two members of her court with her. Each of whom was like an extra battery pack, giving her a major advantage even if I’d been at full strength.
If I challenged her, I was going to lose.
But I didn’t have a choice. I had to catch Pritkin here. And based on how fast his soul had been going, it could arrive anytime.
Only, looking into the woman’s sharp brown eyes, time wasn’t something I thought I had.
And then Pritkin’s hands clenched back.
I looked up at him, surprised, but couldn’t read his expression. But he didn’t leave me wondering for long. “One kiss before you go,” he rasped.
I blinked at him, not sure I understood, and then at my counterpart. Who sighed and rolled her eyes. “Get on with it, then.”
He got on with it.
But this wasn’t a normal kiss. I knew it as soon as our lips touched, because I’d felt something like it before, although the memory had faded somewhat. Until a spine-tingling, thrumming, heady rush coursed through every cell in my body, and I remembered.
