Of course, Billy knew what I’d been up to. His scheduled draws had been thrown off by my crazy schedule, and nothing matters more to a ghost than the energy that keeps him going. He’d figured it out almost immediately.
Lazy didn’t mean dumb.
Annoying, on the other hand . . .
“I don’t do that,” I said crabbily. “I never did that.”
“Then what were you doing?”
“Nothing! Except letting myself sleep and work at the same time, if you get me.”
“Not really.”
Maybe I was going to have to r
evisit that dumb comment, I thought.
“I wasn’t rewriting history,” I explained. “I’d go to a senate meeting overnight, because that’s when they hold them, just after I’d already had a long day. Then I’d pop back to shortly after I left and sleep through that same night. But all I was doing was sleeping, not changing anything.”
“So, you’re telling me if Pritkin got gutted by some fey, you wouldn’t save him?”
I glared at Billy. “Why are you harping on this?”
“Why are you evading the question?”
Damn it, sometimes . . .
“I’m not evading! I’m trying to avoid it becoming an issue!”
“Just wondering where the line is here,” he said. “You told Pritkin that you’d have been willing to go back and warn the Circle about that assassin. But that’s changing time, ain’t it? And then there’s Mircea—”
“I don’t want to talk about Mircea.”
“I don’t blame you. I always said that vampire was trouble, but did you listen? Maybe I should be called Cassandra.”
“You’d need a frillier shirt.”
Billy looked down. “This is plenty frilly. This was the frilliest they had.”
“Are you trying to tell me something?”
“After all this time?” he grinned. “Naw, I like girls. I was just a metrosexual before it was cool.”
“A Wild West Beau Brummel.”
“The Mississippi wasn’t exactly the Wild West, and you’re changing the subject.” He sat down on the bed, which meant that he floated slightly over top of it. “Where’s the line, Cass?”
“Where it always was,” I said, and Billy shot me a look. “It is! It’s just . . . things aren’t so simple, these days.”
“Were they ever?”
“Kinda, yeah. I used to just have to worry about keeping me alive. Now . . . I’m responsible for so many other people.”
“Bullshit. Unless you mean those little girls you got out there, that’s bullshit, Cass.”
I frowned at him. “It’s not bullshit. I’m Pythia—”
“And that don’t make you god, okay? You aren’t responsible for the universe, you’re responsible for the timeline. And, damn, isn’t that enough?”