Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

I didn’t mind, having half a glass of sangria left to polish off.

“How can you be so calm?” she finally blurted out.

I was sucking on a peach slice, so took a moment to answer. “About what?”

She stared at me. “About Lord Mircea! He’s basically the same as a rogue acolyte—worse, since he doesn’t have an acolyte’s ability or even an heir’s, he has yours. He’s a rogue Pythia—”

“And you think he needs to be dealt with.”

She leaned over the table. “He must be. Surely, you have to see that!”

“He’s needed for the war, Rhea.” She opened her mouth, but I held up a hand. “I know. I get exactly how bad this is. But losing the war would be bad, too, wouldn’t it?”

“We have an army—”

“One that’s little good without a leader. Not to mention that Mircea can’t go anywhere in time without me—”

“But he could,” she insisted. “With your power—"

“He could shift back in time on his own, yes, but how would he return? I wouldn’t be there to borrow power from—”

“Steal power from!” she said indignantly.

“—so how would he get back? Mircea is a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. He knows he needs me.”

But Rhea didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure? We don’t know anything about this Lover’s Knot spell, how it works.”

“And neither does he. I’m pretty sure you have to have the person you’re borrowing from there to, you know, borrow from. But either way, he can’t be certain, so he couldn’t risk it. He could get stuck, otherwise.”

But Rhea still wasn’t happy. “He knows you’d have to go after him. A Pythia can’t allow someone to remain displaced in time. Every day he was there—every hour—he would be a threat to the timeline. And as soon as you do—”

“If I do. I could send Hilde,” I pointed out. “Or some of the other girls.”

“You should be able to send me,” Rhea said fretfully. “I should be able to shift by now. I should be able to help you—”

“You help me in other ways,” I said, because it was true. Of course, it was also true that it would be really nice if she could shift, which was kind of a prerequisite to doing most of the other Pythian duties. But I didn’t say anything. Rhea looked miserable enough as it was.

“Would it help to see what the cards say?” I asked, and saw her eyes brighten.

I went over to my dresser and pulled out an old tarot deck. It had been bought at a five and dime by Eugenie, my former governess, which explained why it was your standard Ryder-Waite laminated cheapy. It had frayed corners, dirt in the creases, and a recent dunking had left some of the cards a little fuzzy to the touch. There was nothing special about it, except that Eugenie had had a witch enchant it for my birthday one year.

I still hadn’t decided if that was a good thing or not.

The deck almost jumped into my hand, and a card popped out, already happily burbling. “The Hanged Man shows a man suspended upside down in a tree. This is the card of seeing things from a different perspective. It tends to come up in a reading when old thought patterns and enmeshed ideas are holding the querent back, and a fresh way of looking at the world is needed. It is best embodied by the old saying: “What got you here won’t get you there.” If you want to make real progress now, you will need to stand old concepts on their head, and see new possibilities in longstanding situations.”

The card continued on, because they were all as long winded as hell, but I was no longer listening. The cards were merely a novelty item, but they’d proven eerily accurate in predicting the overall climate of a situation. Except for today, apparently.

Try as I might, I couldn’t see anything helpful in that advice. I already had a new situation—that was the problem! And the cheeky little bugger on the card, grinning at me from his ridiculous pose, wasn’t helping.

I shoved him back in the deck, and looked up to find Rhea watching me. “Is something wrong, Lady?”

I didn’t tell her to use my first name again. I’d given up. “No. Just wasn’t very useful.”

Of course, I didn’t know what would be. Any decision I could make regarding Mircea looked like a bad one, which brought up the other meaning of the card, the one that the deck might have told me had I given it time. Because the Hanged Man also appeared when a person felt stymied, with no clear direction, needing information or guidance they didn’t have.

Guidance, I thought. And then I was the one biting my lip. And thinking of my current mentor, if you wanted to call her that.

Crap, I thought. She was going to tear me a new one for this. But maybe, just maybe, she might have some advice, too. She’d forgotten more about the Pythian job than I was ever likely to know.