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“I’m talking about the new initiates,” Tami said, her face thunderous. “We don’t have staff for the ones we already have, and you’re accepting new ones? How in the hell—”
“Hold that thought,” I told her, then grabbed Rhea and shifted us to my room, where the silence charms had better be working, damn it!
And then a thought occurred, and I shifted back just in time to slam the door on Fred again. “You stay until I say!” I told him. And then I looked at Marco. “He stays!”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Marco said, and Fred sighed and sagged against the wall.
“Cassie—” Tami said.
“In a minute!”
I shifted back to Rhea, who was standing in the middle of my bedroom, looking nonplussed. “Did you mean it?” I asked her.
“Mean . . . what?” she asked, starting slightly, because I guess she hadn’t seen me flash back in.
“That you wanted to help me?”
“What?”
“The other day!” I grabbed her by the arms and shook her a little. “Did you mean it?”
“I—yes. Yes, of course I did. But I can’t—”
“You damned well can!” I exploded, and then told myself to calm down. It was too early to be freaking out. I didn’t usually get this panicked until at least early afternoon.
“Lady,” Rhea said, looking concerned. Because despite her own distress, her natural compassion was taking over. “What is it?”
I laughed. “Oh, nothing. Except that a bunch of witches, including one who tried to kill me last night, just showed up, and now they want to give me some girls—”
“What?”
“—that we don’t have room for, so Tami’s pissed off, but we can’t refuse them or we’ll never get this chance again—”
“No, no, of course we can’t.”
“—not to mention that some war mages are trying to muscle in on an errand that they’ll only make worse, because they make everything worse—”
“I . . . they are?”
“—and Pritkin’s back, which is good, because he’s the one I really need for my errand, only I can’t leave because Augustine is hiding a little . . . creature . . . in his workroom that he stole from the witches—”
“He’s doing what?”
“—and if they find out, not only will we not get the girls, we’ll probably piss them off again, and I can’t deal with that right now!” I shook her some more. And then I stopped, because she was starting to look dizzy. “Listen,” I said, trying for calm. “I don’t pretend to understand everything you’re going through, okay? I really don’t. Your mom just died, and then you almost died, and I’m a terrible Pythia for not realizing how bad you were hurting and not taking some time to—”
“No!” She looked appalled. “No, this has nothing to do with—”
“—talk to you more and try to help you figure things out. But I suck at that and I didn’t know what to say, and I was afraid I’d just make everything worse. So I didn’t do enough and I’m sorry for that, I’m really, really sorry! And I’m not saying that just because I need you right now, although I do—”
“You . . . you need me?”
“—and I don’t give a damn if you never learn to shift! I need you for plenty of other things, for this.” I waved an arm around crazily, to indicate the general madness of my life. “And I need you now. Can you help me? Can you deal with this while I go do what I need to do?”
She just stared at me for a second, as if trying to catch up, which, yeah. I knew that feeling. But then her shoulders went back and some of the tragedy left her face. Because Rhea had a spine of pure titanium under all that sweetness, and she was never better than when helping others.
Including a clueless Pythia with far too much on her plate.
“Leave everything to me,” she said, and then she hugged me. “Do your duty. I’ve got this.”
