“Nothing.”That was the Pythia, sounding soft and surprised.
“Don’t lie!You put a spell on her, showed her something—”
“No.She showed me.”
I felt the Seer come up behind me, but I barely noticed that, either.Her smell was familiar, catalogued, known.Like that of the big vamp who wasn’t allowed to kill me, but who wanted to so badly that his scent all but screamed it.
Didn’t know vampires could sweat, I thought, but it was distant, too.As if I wasn’t all the way back yet, from that other place.And despite being in human form, I wasn’t the one in charge.
The world was different like this.Or no, not different; my counterpart simply concentrated on other things.The sight I so relied on was there but less critical, the way a human nose often was.We pass a thousand odors a day, some pleasant, some not, but most simply unnoticed.
The way the visuals of the suite were for her.
She didn’t care that a designer had been at work in here, that the creams and soft golds that formed the base layer of the living room we passed into were perfectly complemented by the glowing, vibrant shades of old masters on the walls, of a gorgeous, earth tone rug on the floor, by a profusion of green, growing things out on the balcony by the pool.She didn’t care about the textural contrast between the slick, expensive nap of the sofa and the chunky knitted throw tossed over the back.She didn’t care about the people: vampires everywhere, on high alert; witches blocking the path to the kids outside, putting their bodies and their magic in between them and us; and the quiet presence of the Pythia’s heir off to the side, subtle, watchful, and more dangerous than all of them, judging by the magic suddenly spilling off her.
My counterpart noticed, marked her as potential trouble, but didn’t really care about her, either, being too focused on...
That.
There it was, almost lost in the abundance of other scents.She raised her head and sniffed, but the smell she sought was faint, all but overwritten by the busy court.The bright reek of chlorine from the pool was stronger, as were a mix of lesser scents: the waxy crayons scattered around a half-finished drawing on the coffee table, which was also smeared with traces of candy bracelets and chocolate milk; the coppery blood on the big vampire’s clothing, which he had been too distracted to finish absorbing; the pungent alcohol in the glasses the witches had been drinking from, with one woman’s lipstick still warm and fragrant on the rim; the perfume of an expensive candle, shedding spicy notes into the air despite having been burned last night; the hay-like tobacco in the package of cigarettes rolled up in one vampire’s sleeve...
She whined softly, and Carales cursed and stiffened, but the Pythia held him back with a word.
“Marco.”
“Let meprotect,” it was almost agonized.
For the first time, my counterpart approved of the big vampire.She understood that need, yes, she did.She was feeling it now.
But where was the scent she sought?
Not here.
She abruptly turned and left, the caftan she wore swirling around our ankles.
“Cassie!”Carales barked.
“Stay with her.Don’t interfere.”
He did as he was bade, but so closely that he almost stepped on our heels as we made our way through the suite.It was large, sprawling across the entire floor of this tower.Maybe several floors, I corrected, detecting the skin-ruffling scent of vampires from below.
The Pythia was well-guarded, not that she needed it.But not well enough.Someone had gotten inside her sanctum, someone who shouldn’t be here, whocouldn’tbe...
My counterpart stopped again, sniffing, looking for that thread of scent we’d lost in the labyrinth of Tartarus.And a flood of information came to us from a room on the far side of the suite, a thousand different notes, a working anthill of sensory input.But overriding it all was a potent mix of ozone and magic, so thick that she could almost reach out and touch it.
It was hard to read through, even for her.She exerted more control over our senses to the point that the information we were receiving threatened to swamp me, like drowning inside my own head.She paid me no more mind than she had anyone else, leaving me to claw my way back to the surface on my own as her head tilted and her nose worked, and she took off down a hallway toward that fascinating cloud.
She’d smelled that combination before, in the kitchen, where a tiny woman had stopped a battle with barely a word.Power, heralded on the wind like the coming of a storm, the kind that made even the puddle around the heir seem thin and weak by comparison.Pythia.
This was her throne room we found ourselves in, her seat up the small flight of stairs, her scent everywhere, like her magic curling around the walls…
Yes, powerful, yes, dangerous, yes.The small woman with the strange eyes.The one who could have hurt us, but had not.
She was stronger than she seemed.She looked like a scrap of flesh, thin and lacking in muscle—muscle she didn’t need.Her power sparkled in the room, highlighted by the beams of sunlight flooding through the floor-to-ceiling windows, potent, insidious, wondrous...
But not the point.
After a moment of shock, my counterpart brushed it aside and concentrated on the background notes in that same air.
