“I thought you said facing off with me would be fun,” my other half said, her voice low and gravelly, but somehow silky, too.“Did you not find it fun, vampire?”
Annnd that probably wasn’t the best idea, I thought, furious, because the Pythia had to throw another of those spells to freeze Yvain in place, halfway through a leap.And then just left him there as I had been, hanging in space like some bizarre sort of chandelier.“Will you all please cut it out?”she screeched.
“Sorry,” I croaked.And then decided that, yeah, changing back was probably a good idea, only I’d prefer not to have an audience.
“Here,” Sophie said, figuring out my hesitation and pawing through a large shopping bag she’d dropped on the floor.And coming out with a handful of caftans, one of which she wrapped around me as best she could because no way would it have fit.
But it gave me some cover as I shrank back down to normal, and had a wave of dizziness hit me so profoundly that I just stayed there, sprawled on the floor, while she fussed over me.
“You can let them go,” I heard the Pythia telling Jen about the vamps.“They’ll behave.”
“That would be wise,” Jen said levelly, but she lowered her hand.And a cascade of body parts abruptly hit the floor across the room, along with the bodies they had been attached to, as the force that had been holding them against the wall suddenly vanished.
“Don’t try it,” the Pythia told Carales, who snarled and snapped at me like an angry dog.
I looked at him blearily, but didn’t reply in kind.
Luckily, most of the vamps appeared to have had enough, sorting through the pile to find their various pieces and hobbling or being carried off by others.I assumed the missing items would be reattached, or possibly grow back; I wasn’t sure how it worked, but you didn’t see injured vamps walking around.They seemed to be able to heal just about anything savethat, I thought, and dropped the wooden spoon I was still clutching.
Damn, I felt bad.
“You overdid it,” Sophie told me.“You shouldn’t be fighting when you’re injured!”
“That was her fightinginjured?”the chubby vamp said blankly.
“How are you this strong?”the Pythia asked Jen, regarding her curiously.And then her eyes went cloudy and almost pure white.“Oh, really.All of you?”
“What?”Jen asked.
“All of you in that grocery store got a bump up in power, didn’t you?”the Pythia said, which was news to me.“How...interesting.”
“Don’t talk to her!”Sophie said to Jen.“Don’t say anything!”
“I’m not your enemy,” the Pythia told her evenly.“And I already know.Help your mistress up, and let’s go somewhere we can talk.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
You were gonna tell me this when?”I asked the girls, looking between them.
We were having tea.The Pythia’s heir—the girl in white—had visited the very nice sitting room we’d been dumped in, and made sure we were supplied with dainty cups that I would have been afraid to touch if I wasn’t so exhausted that I could barely lift one.My fingers had left bloody prints on the porcelain that I tried to wipe away, but just managed to smear.
I sighed and would have liked to postpone this, but some things needed to be addressed.
And preferably before the Pythia returned from blessing out Carales, who had tried to kill me again on the way here.
“We weren’t going to tell anyone,” Jen said, looking almost as tired as I felt.
“You didn’t think the fact that you’re suddenly alotstronger was something I needed to know?”
“No.”
“Damn it, Jen—”
“It’s not you,” Sophie said, shooting her friend a look.“It’s the damned Corps.The war won’t last forever, and one day, the Circle won’t need us anymore.We’ll go from being assets to major liabilities overnight.And that wasbefore.How much worse do you think it’s going to be if they find out we’re even more powerful than they thought?”
“Especially me,” Jen said bitterly.“They hate necros, and I was already strong enough to worry them.But now—”
She broke off, her jaw tight.
