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“Yes, and have you wondered why that is?” I clung to his shoulders. “They killed you in front of me, then decided, hey, you know what? Maybe we could use a Pythia in the war, after all, and gave me a counterspell they didn’t think I’d be able to use! They thought I wouldn’t get to you in time; Adra even said so! They used that particular spell because it was supposed to be foolproof! And now that I got you back anyway—”
“Cassie—”
“—they’ve come up with a new way to kill you! Somewhere far away, where I’ll think it was an accident, only I won’t!” I said loudly, glaring at Adra. “I won’t!”
“Cassie,” Pritkin told me gently. “I promise you, I will be fine.”
And that was just so typical of the man, so infuriatingly, glaringly typical, that I just . . . I couldn’t . . . words, all the torrent of words jumbling around in my head, couldn’t seem to make it out of my mouth. I stood there, speechless for a moment, still staring at Adra. Staring hard.
He looked back for a moment, and then made a small gesture to the fat little demon who had come in without me even noticing. “My assistant has some clothes and weapons for you,” he told Pritkin. “If you will follow him?”
Chapter Twenty-five
“You look like my mother,” Rhea said softly. I’d gotten up to get myself a drink at the bar cart the guys had set up for me.
“Really? I don’t think I look anything like her,” I said absently, and took the glass Tami held out, to get her a refill.
Tami adjusted her shades and sighed. “I could get used to this.”
“You need to hire in some help,” I told her. “You’re not a housekeeper. Half of what you’ve been doing around here isn’t even your job.”
“Yeah, but her cookies are bitchin’,” Vi said, grinning.
“I’m making snickerdoodles tonight,” Tami promised.
“I bow down.” And then she did, actually genuflecting.
I was glad to see them getting on so well. There’d been some tension when the coven women first arrived, which had included Tami draining the crap out of Vi and a war mage after the two started threatening each other. For a while there, I’d been worried that our little blended family was going to rip itself apart.
Fortunately, the sole war mages currently on staff were Reggie, aka Jug Ears, who was pretty laid-back for the breed, and an old guy named Stimson who didn’t live in and who mostly showed up once a week or so, probably to debrief Reggie. Meanwhile, the coven girls—Saffy, Vi, and a redhead named Ferne who was off for the weekend—appeared to have been won over by Tami’s cooking. That wasn’t surprising; even Fred couldn’t find anything to complain about there, and was frequently seen going back for seconds.
“Yeah, but who else is gonna do it?” Tami asked. “The guys make more mess tha
n the kids, and the hotel’s staff—” She shook her head in disgust.
“The old Pythian Court must have had help,” I pointed out.
“Sure. I tried them. But they all have families in Britain. They don’t want to come out here.”
“Maybe if we sweetened the deal? At least for the tutors and such?”
She rolled her eyes; I could see them past the shades. “Cassie. Their old house blew up. If the Circle hadn’t been paranoid and refused to allow live-in staff, they’d have gone with it. A lot of them decided they could find safer positions elsewhere.”
Point. But we still needed more people. There were two dozen little girls who had to be fed, played with, listened to, nursed when sick, and taught their ABC’s. There was a vastly bigger suite that needed to be cleaned, and Tami was right: the hotel’s staff did the bare minimum, when the guys would even let them in here. Plus, I needed an appointment secretary like yesterday. If I didn’t start seeing people soon, we were going to have them beating down the door.
War or no war, we needed staff.
“There have to be people in Vegas,” I said. “There’s a whole supernatural community out here. And with MAGIC out of the picture—”
“But that’s just it,” Tami said. “MAGIC’s being rebuilt. They’re mostly expecting to get their old jobs back. And the ones who aren’t don’t pass the Marco test.”
“I know I’m going to regret this, but what’s the Marco test?”
She sighed, and lifted her braids off her neck, because it was hot. And then decided to twist them up into a bun. “He used to do background checks for Mircea before he got assigned here. And I don’t mean just credit checks, but real PI-type stuff. It was his job to make sure that anybody employed by the family was completely legit. I think he also checked on anyone the family was doing business with.”
“But that’s a good thing, right?”
She grinned ruefully. “Sure, it’s a good thing. Until it gets ramped up to an eleven on a ten-point scale ’cause he’s not letting anybody suspicious near his girls. Got a traffic ticket when you were sixteen? Next! Ever late on a credit card bill? Later! Got a hangnail—”
