Ignite the Fire: Incendiary by Karen Chance

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

 

I woke up yet again, this time to someone pounding on the inside of my skull. Pound, pound, pound; it echoed in my head, which was already freaking out for some reason. It felt like I’d woken up in the middle of a scream, which was weird enough, but I had the strangest impression that it was a scream of triumph.

And I didn’t get many of those.

I opened my eyes.

The sound stuck in my throat stayed that way, which was lucky, because it wasn’t my head that was pounding. It was the door. And it was more like knocking, only my senses were currently set on overdrive, making it echo like a kettledrum.

“Rhea? Lady Cassandra?”

For a moment, the words didn’t register, kind of like the room. I finally figured out that I was still in my bed at Gertie’s, but turned the wrong way around, which was why everything looked weird. My face was also hanging off the end, with my chin crushed between the mattress and the footboard, and there were no warm bodies beside me.

I frowned. Was there supposed to be? Because it felt like there was supposed to be. I reached out with the arm that wasn’t trapped below me and half asleep, but felt nothing but air.

And the wood of the headboard when my knuckles knocked into it, which—ow.

After a moment, I pried myself out the gap and rolled over, feeling a sense of loss and joy and pain and serious confusion. It was like rising to the surface after a too-long dive underwater. It was like awakening upside down, hanging over a gorge, supported by a single bit of rope. It was like . . .

I didn’t know what it was like, but it was discombobulating.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

“What?” I croaked.

“Lady Cassandra? Is that you?”

Well, who else would it be? I thought crabbily, and managed to accidently flip a pillow onto my face. I stopped waving my arms around, which I’d been doing for some reason, and just stayed there, like a turtle suddenly tossed onto its back.

Help, I thought.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

“Coming!” I yelled, without having any idea how I was supposed to do that. But something told me that I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself. That maybe I’d done enough of that for one day, and should act all casual like for a while. Before the Edwardian equivalent of the guys in the white coats came to . . . came to . . . do whatever it was they did, and what had I been thinking about?

Pound. Pound. Pound.

Oh, holy shit.

“Lady Cassandra? Do you need any help?”

“No! I’m fine!” I finally got the damned pillow off. And also managed to recognize the voice that was determinedly not going away.             

Crap, I thought blearily. It was Iris. Or Lily. Or possibly Rose. Some flower name, anyway. She was the acolyte I’d borrowed the now-ruined coat from.

Guess nobody had told her that she wouldn’t be getting it back.

I rolled off the bed, muttering, and still not sure which way was up. I took a shot and must have chosen correctly, because my feet found purchase on the floor. I stood up, and then just stayed there, swaying a bit, because the room was slowly revolving, like a fun house ride that wasn’t very fun.

Even worse, my brain kept insisting that something was wrong, that something was coming. A blow, an attack, it didn’t know, but something. Something bad!

I waited.

Nothing happened.

I waited some more.

Nothing continued to happen, except that I started to feel foolish and my toes went numb. And flower girl started pounding on the door again. I sighed, drew my robe around myself, straightened my shoulders, and staggered in her approximate direction.

It took a while, because my feet kept making detours to visit the dressing table and the tub, and then ran me straight into the wall beside the door. But I finally made it and grabbed the knob after the fourth or fifth try. I cracked it open to see a smooth blonde chignon and a pair of lovely gray eyes reflecting the light of a single candle.

I sighed again.

There were two types of people at the Pythian Court. The first were those like me, who were kind of a mess. We weren’t untalented—in some cases, quite the opposite—but we didn’t fit the graceful stereotype. That included people like Tessie, a tall, beefy girl who was only sixteen, but who already resembled a linebacker and hit about as hard. I’d dueled her once, and once was enough. Or Ermengarde, who was short and boxy and about as graceful as I was, but who had the rare ability to discern even minute disturbances in time. She was like a bloodhound on the scent, easily able to track down dark mages who were violating the Time Rules or visiting Pythias who were up to no good.

They proved that we misfits could be useful, but we didn’t exactly make the promotional material.

Iris did.

She could have been the poster child for Pythian recruitment if they’d had had one. She was the second type of acolyte: beautiful, serene, and poised. Tonight, she was wearing a pair of small, pearl drop earrings that gleamed softly in the candlelight and completed the young Grace Kelly impression she was giving off. And—of course—a white lace dress. Only on her it looked regal, almost princess-like.

Definitely Grace, I thought, as I clutched my blood-and-salve-stained robe with a pair of badly skinned knuckles.

“Uh, hi,” I said.

“Lady.” She curtsied—elegantly, of course—and when she came up, her face looked relieved.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“No, my apologies. I was just here when . . . when they brought you back. I am pleased to see you looking so much better.”

Better?

What the hell had I looked like before?

I had a sudden flash of panicked faces and running feet; of blood and lightning and horrible pain; of whips made out of living gold and strange beings in brilliant white, like erotic angels; and of watching myself burn to death, my body turning black and red and dead, dead, dead—

I shut those thoughts down—hard—before I started hyperventilating, and concentrated on not screaming. Just don’t scream, I told myself harshly. Just don’t do it.

“Lady?”

“Uh, yeah. I’m . . . better.”

“That is good.” She smiled, and it was lovely, too. “They didn’t let me stay, but I heard . . . that is, there was a great deal of confusion. I assumed the stories were exaggerated.”

The same wild thoughts battered the inside of my skull, striving for attention, but I shoved them back. Later. Deal with it later.

Act sane right now.

I tried a smile of my own, although it felt more like a grimace. “Yeah. Exaggerated. But I’m afraid you’re going to be upset.”

“Upset?”

“About your coat. There was an, uh, unfortunate accident—”

“An accident?”

“—and it didn’t make it. We ran into some trouble on the river and—”

I stopped, because the confusion on her face had just changed into something closer to horror.

I thought that was kind of over the top for a coat. But with my luck, it had been her favorite, gifted to her by her dying granny or something. In which case, lending it to Calamity Cassie had not been a great move.

“Look, I’m really sorry—”

“Is that what you think,” she whispered. “That I’m worried about a coat?”

“Uh, yeah?”

That did not appear to be the right answer.

“I’ll replace it,” I offered.

“I don’t care about the coat!”

I don’t know what was on my face, but her expression was half angry, half gob smacked. “Okay?”

“Yes! Yes, it is! I would never—” she stopped for a moment, and then took a deep breath. “My apologies, lady.”

“For what? I burnt up the coat.”

She stared at me some more, then closed her lovely eyes. And when she opened them again, the serene smile was back, and so was the elegant curtsy, which she showed off again for some reason. “The Lady would like to speak with you, if you are able?”

I almost remarked that of course I was able, I was talking to her, wasn’t I? But she was acting a little weird. “Okay. I’ll be there in . . .” I looked down at my rumpled, salve-stained self. “An hour or so?”

She nodded, curtsied for a ridiculous third time, and fled. I stared after her in confusion. Sometimes, I didn’t get this place at all.

I pulled my head back into the room.

And was immediately reminded that I had a demon in it.

“Shit!” I jumped back, hitting the now closed door, as a shadowy figure lurched at me out of the darkness.

“I find you entirely frustrating,” Pritkin’s incubus informed me, boiling blackly.

I didn’t even respond to that. I just sank down onto my haunches with my back to the door, put my face in my hands, and let the cascade of wild images pour over me. A few moments later, I finally had a complete picture of the day, most of which I didn’t want.

Kind of like my companion.

A flash of guilt accompanied that last thought, and then more than a flash. If I was remembering correctly, he had helped me—like a lot. But that was the thing—was I remembering correctly?

My brain felt like it had been forced through a sieve, a couple of times. And what was left was not firing on all cylinders. Physically, I felt better, if alarmingly sore, as if my mind had finally figured out that I wasn’t being tortured anymore.

But mentally?

I wouldn’t trust myself to get my name right just now.

I was definitely not in the headspace to match wits with a demon, much less one with Pritkin’s intellect. But that looked like what we were doing. Which was why I looked up, scowling.

And found him scowling back at me.

Or, at least, I thought so. It was kind of hard to tell now that he was no longer in a body, assuming that he’d been in one before. I was a little hazy on that point, along with a lot of others.

Like what had happened to the empties?

I glanced worriedly at the bed, but didn’t see them, not even back in their original cottony form. The sheets currently in place were pristine and had tiny blue flowers on them, so I assumed that they’d been changed at some point. Probably by whoever had salved me up and put me into this robe.

God, I hoped that had been Rhea!

And then I wasn’t sure that I did, because she was . . . Rhea. Innocent, sweet, amazingly naïve for one at her power level, and only nineteen. I did not think that she was prepared for . . . whatever had happened in here.

But then, what was the alternative? Gertie? Agnes? I winced, and then did it again, feeling a migraine start a staccato beat on my already messed up head. The universe could not be that cruel. And what the devil had she seen, anyway? What had been left of those all-too-lifelike bodies that the incubus had made?

Had they still been . . . colorful? Anatomically correct? And what positions had we been found in after—

No! No, that had not happened. They had fallen to pieces, back into the rumpled sheets that they’d started out as, as soon as the power was all used up. They had, they had, they had, because I couldn’t deal with it if they hadn’t!

And that was assuming that they’d even been here at all, and that I wasn’t just imagining the whole—

My thoughts screeched to a halt, desperately grasping onto the new idea.

I looked it over, and didn’t find any flaws. Yeah, I thought, brightening. That was probably it.

Yeah, that was definitely what had happened!

My head came up.

“That was you, right?” I said to the demon, wanting confirmation.

“What was me?”

“All of it. The . . . that whole thing . . . it was some incubus-induced dream you made up, some trick to fool Zeus?”

The demon frowned. “What are you talking about? Do you still not remember what occurred?”

“I remember,” I said, a little knot of panic growing under my breastbone. Because he didn’t look like he understood. “But I don’t really remember, right?”

He frowned at me some more. “I have no idea. I prompted your mind so that we could talk—”

“Yes!” I cut him off excitedly. “Yes, that’s what I mean. That wasn’t real. You did something, messed with my brain—”

“It appears to be messed up enough already.”

“Just tell me that you did that!” I grabbed him, and somehow found purchase on the smokey body. I used it to shake him. “Tell me!”

“What I’ll tell you is that you need to calm down—”

“I’ll calm down when you tell me the truth!”

“I have told you the truth, and let go of me—”

I did not let go of him. “Tell me that wasn’t Pritkin earlier, that it was you—”

“Very well, if it will help. It was me.” I loosened my grip slightly, feeling a huge rush of relief flood my overtaxed body. “After all, we are one and the same—”

“Augghhh!” I shook him some more.

“How are you doing that?” he demanded. “I’m not in physical form—”

“But you were! That was you in that body you made, right? Not Mircea; he contacted family, so that had to be him. But the other—that was you!”

The demon stared at me for a moment, and then bizarrely, he shook me back. It was hard enough to make me feel like a human maraca, which was unpleasant, although nowhere near as much as the full-blown panic now clawing at my breast. I grappled with him, sending us rolling around the floor.

“Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!”

“I saved your life, you maddening woman!” he snarled. “Repeatedly! And you’re worried about—I don’t even know what you’re worried about!”

“Pritkin! And Mircea! And me!” I stopped fighting and shoved him away, before putting my head in my hands again, although I felt more like tearing my hair out. “Tell me I didn’t just destroy my entire life!”

I sat there for a while, rocking back and forth, feeling like I was going crazy. I thought about screaming, but my throat hurt, and the last thing I needed was to summon additional company. I rocked some more instead, telling myself that it was fine, it was fine, it was all going to be fine, but it wasn’t fine and the words rang hollow.

Of course, it would have helped if I’d gotten some kind of comfort, or at least acknowledgement of the problem, from the demon! But he was being unusually silent. And when I finally looked up, I found him lying on the floor, with an arm thrown over his eyes.

It was bizarre enough to leave me staring.

After a moment, I poked him. “What are you doing?”

“Grappling with a concept.”

The lying on the floor, looking like an overwhelmed southern belle thing, did not change.

I poked him again. “What concept?”

“The concept that we just defeated Zeus, the most powerful being of the ancient pantheon—and yes, I know it was from a world away, but we beat him.” The arm was thrown off, revealing blazing green eyes, and then he came up on one arm so that he could get in my face. “We beat him as few, and possibly no, other people have ever done, and what are you thinking about? Having to discuss a threesome with your boyfriend!”

I scowled. “It’s a problem!”

“It is not a problem! It’s absurd! And in any case, you won’t have to discuss anything, as I brought his subconscious—”

“What?”

“—his conscious mind being asleep at the time.”

“He was asleep?”

“Yes, he was asleep, so can we finally get back to—” the demon stopped, probably at sight of the pure horror on my features. “What is it now?”

“He was asleep? He doesn’t know?”

“It would have taken too long to wake him up and explain everything, assuming he would have listened to me. Which is why this whole thing is even more ridiculous than—” he broke off again. “Stop looking at me like that. Why are you looking like that?”

I hit him. “I have to tell him? You left me with—I have to explain this?”

“Explain what? What we did saved your life—saved all our lives, if I may remind you? We are linked via the Lover’s Knot spell. If you had died, we would have as well—”

I put my head back in my hands. I thought that death might be preferable to the mess I’d been left with. Pritkin hated his incubus side, and was not remotely a fan of Mircea. This hit every hot button he had and yes, I assumed he’d prefer for me not to have died, that he would understand. But what would it do to us?

“You don’t have to tell him,” the incubus pointed out, apparently having no problem with eavesdropping on my thoughts.

“Get out of my head! And yes, I do!”

He sighed, and it sounded exactly like one of Pritkin’s. “I can’t get out of your head. It is the only way we are able to communicate, through the vampire’s mental abilities. And this is exactly what I mean.”

I did not ask what he meant.

Of course, he told me anyway.