Cassandra Palmer 1(81)
«I will take responsibility before the Consul if anything occurs.»
«I don't care about the Consul.»
«Then you had best care about me.»
Two tides of shimmering energy began to build, enough to raise goose bumps on my arms and to set my bracelet dancing against my skin. «Enough!» Mircea waved a hand and the power in the room faded considerably. He plucked the vial from the Frenchman's hand and sniffed it delicately. «Water, Tomas—it is only water and nothing more.» He handed it to me and I took it before Tomas could argue.
I trusted Mircea, and besides, neither the bracelet nor my ward reacted to it. «It's okay.»
«No!» Tomas reached for the bottle, but Louis-Cesar knocked his hand away.
I looked at Pritkin, who was watching me avidly. «Bottoms up.» I swallowed the whole thing. Just as Mircea had said, it was only water, if a bit stale. Pritkin stared at me, as if expecting wisps of steam to start coming out of my ears or something. «Satisfied? Or do you want to hang a few crosses around my neck?»
«What are you?» he whispered.
I went back to my chair, but it was covered in brick dust so I opted for the couch instead. The window had shattered when Mircea tossed the grenade through it, so I had to brush shards of glass onto the floor first. Pritkin had better have some answers, because he was really getting on my nerves. «Tired, stiff and sick to death of you,» I told him honestly.
Mircea laughed. «You haven't changed, dulceata.»
Pritkin stared at me, and some of that terrible anger faded from his face. «I don't understand. You cannot have drunk holy water and shown no reaction if you are demon kind. But you cannot be human and do what I have seen you do.»
Mircea settled himself on the sofa after carefully dusting it off with his handkerchief. He picked up one of my bare feet and stroked it idly. I suddenly felt a lot better. «I have learned, Mage Pritkin, never to say never to the universe.» He glanced at me, and his expression was wry. «It delights in giving us that which we declare most emphatically cannot be.»
Louis-Cesar looked expectantly at me, and I nodded. «Yeah, I know. If people will stop trying to kill me for a minute, I'll tell you about Francoise, at least as much as I can.» I quickly explained about my second trip, in as much detail as I could remember without mentioning that a seventeenth-century witch appeared to be wandering around Vegas. I didn't want my cell, if I ended up in one, to have padded walls. «That is approximately what Tomas said,» Louis-Cesar commented when I was done. «But that is not as I remember it.»
«Which leaves us with three possibilities.» Mircea ticked them off on his fingers. «That both Tomas and Cassandra are lying for no obvious reason, that they hallucinated the same thing at the same time, or that they are telling the truth. I do not smell a lie on either of them.» He looked at Louis-Cesar, who nodded. «And must I point out the absurdity of a dual hallucination of that degree of detail, about events neither could have known had they not been there?»
«Which leaves us with the truth.» Louis-Cesar gave a sigh that sounded like relief. «And that means…»
Mircea finished for him. «That they changed history.»
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Chapter 11
«That's not possible.» I felt that I was on pretty solid ground. «I see the past; I don't change it.»
«The Pythia's power is passing,» Pritkin murmured, as if he hadn't heard me. «But no. It's impossible.» He suddenly looked like a confused little boy. «The Pythia cannot possess anyone. She can't have given you that ability; she doesn't have it.»
«Leave that aside,» Louis-Cesar said almost breathlessly. He stared at Pritkin, his face eager. «Could the Pythia's power allow Cassandra to travel metaphysically to other places, other times?»
Pritkin looked even more unsure. «I need to consult my Circle,» he said, his voice slightly unsteady. «I was not prepared for this. They told me she was only a suspected rogue. The Pythia has an heir. Her powers should not come to this… person.»
«What powers?» I decided to press my advantage now that I was back to person status, however tentatively. Better to find out what he knew before he decided I was some other weird kind of demon.
«No.» Pritkin shook his head adamantly. «I cannot speak for the Circle.»
«You've been trying to speak for them all evening,» Tomas said, grabbing the mage's shoulder hard enough that he would have stumbled if Mircea's power hadn't still held him. «But now that you can help us by doing so, you refuse?» Tomas' wrist had healed except for an ugly red scar; but his face was no better. His temper didn't seem to have improved, either.