“Now you can sense a vamp fight from twenty floors down and come running to my rescue?”I guessed.
“We knew it was you,” Sophie said crossly, as Jen just nodded.“I mean, who the hell else could it be?I told her—”
“What are you going to do?”Jen asked me dully.
“About?”
“You have reports to make, right?”Sophie said.“I mean, I assume you or Caleb told the Corps about my Cat.That she’s stronger now.There was no way to hide that; you already saw it.”
“And felt it,” I said, remembering how sharp those insubstantial claws had been.
And then I realized she was looking at me and biting her lip, and that Jen was trying not to cry.For once, the powerful, overly self-assured girls looked like the teens they were.Very worried ones.
“I don’t know what Caleb did or didn’t include,” I told them.“But I suck at writing reports.”
“Meaning?”Sophie asked.
“That mine are late—and likely to remain so.”
“But if they press you,” Jen said, sitting forward.
“I don’t think they feel much like pressing me these days,” I said.“And you’re clan, so you’re none of their business any—”
Jen burst into tears.
I sat there, wondering what the hell, as Sophie comforted her.“Am I...missing something?”I asked after a pause.
“It’s why she didn’t want to join the clan,” Sophie said.“You know, officially.Being an aux is one thing—if an auxiliary gets in trouble, it doesn’t reflect on the whole clan like a full member would.And she knew—we both knew, once she reminded me—that we could destroy Fireborn if the Circle found out about us...”
I took a moment to process that.
It didn’t help.
“The fuck?”I finally asked.
“W-what?”Jen stared at me.
“That’s what Kimmie said,” Sophie told me in a small voice.“She said we were being stupid, but she doesn’t get it.Her ability isn’t usually considered harmful—”
I got a vision of her multiplying potion bombs in Tartarus and almost choked on my tea.
“—so the Circle won’t fight as much for her.But if they find out about Jen and me being turbocharged, they’re going to want us for the war, and then afterward they’re going to—” she broke off, swallowing.
“You think I’d let them hurt you?”I demanded.
“No, and that’s the point!”Jen hissed, getting in my face.“You would fight for us, like you always do, and they might—they could—”
She collapsed into my arms, sobbing, and I just held her, looking at Sophie over her head.Who had a mulish tilt to her baby face.God, they were so young; they should be laughing over stupid fashions downstairs, not dealing with this!
And if I was a better Lupa, I’d know what to say.But I wasn’t, and all I had was the truth.“As far as the end of the war is concerned, you aren’t the only ones likely to have a problem,” I pointed out.
“Oh, shit,” Sophie said, her eyes going wide, as if she hadn’t thought of that.“You’re in this, too, aren’t you?And now that the Pythia knows—”
“The Pythia knows what?”Someone asked.
We looked up to see the lady in question standing in the doorway, carrying a tray.I didn’t know why; she had plenty of people for that.But she deftly manhandled the laden thing herself and shut the door behind her with a foot.
She had traded the impressive white robes she’d been wearing for khaki shorts, a pale lavender eyelet top, and a pair of leather sandals.She didn’t look much older than the girls, early twenties at a guess, which seemed wrong.The old matriarch fit the memo better.
