Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

“Anywhere!” Saffy said, staring around.

Reggie just sat there, frozen in horror.

Vi was trying to cast a conceal spell, but she’d also had a few. She held her liquor so well that I hadn’t noticed, but her magic did. It made the kitchen blink in and out like it was on strobes, but didn’t really conceal anything.

“Oh, God!” Fred said, in a panic. “She’s here!”

I shifted everybody except for him, because he’d grabbed my arm at the last second and the spell would have taken me along, too. And as soon as they were gone, the vibe totally changed. Fred tossed his trousers back onto the counter and picked up an oyster.

“Where’d you send them?” he asked casually.

“To Rico. He has their clothes, right?”

Fred burst out laughing. “Naw.” He opened a cabinet, and there they were, including Saffy’s jeans.

Some yelling filtered through from the balcony, but it was distant. I doubted it would reach the bedrooms. Sorry, Rhea, I thought, wincing.

“That’ll teach ‘em to do this kinda thing out here,” Fred said, looking satisfied. “There are kids in this house!”

“I take it Hilde isn’t coming?”

“Hell, no. I can hear her snoring from here.”

My breath let out in a sigh I hadn’t known I’d been holding. “You’re a bastard,” I told him.

Fred grinned and ate bomba at me.

There was some leftover sangria, so I poured myself a glass and took it to the bath. If a combo of alcohol and warm water didn’t put me to sleep, I didn’t know what would. I added a lavender bath bomb, because I’d heard it was supposed to be soothing, and climbed in. It was nice.

I wallowed around for a while. It remained nice. And not remotely sleep inducing.

Damn it, I didn’t know what was wrong with me!

Okay, that was a lie. I knew exactly what it was, and until I spoke to Pritkin and verified that he was okay, I wouldn’t sleep. Only how was I supposed to contact him?

I was too pooped to shift all the way to Stratford, and anyway, I’d been specifically warned to stay away. Plus, that would require knowing where in the Circle’s labyrinth he currently was, and I didn’t. I did some mental math: Stratford was eight hours ahead of us, so it was morning there. He could be anywhere.

Damn it, I needed to talk to him! But I couldn’t use a phone thanks to Jonas, and Pritkin was probably underground anyway. This was just so—

“Cassie?”

I jerked and looked around, because that had been Pritkin’s voice. Unless I was starting to hallucinate from too little sleep. But after a moment, I spied a familiar pair of green eyes looking out of one of the mirrors over the sink.

Mages could spell mirrors, or any reflexive surface, to act like a magical version of Skype, although these days, just as many carried phones. But magic was harder to hack, so I guessed this was the work around to Jonas’s prohibition. Not to mention that it was completely unaffected by wards and being underground.

“Cassie?” Pritkin said again, because he couldn’t see me from where he was, the mirrors being too high.

“In the bath.”

The eyes crinkled slightly at the edges. “What are you wearing?”

I sucked on a strawberry. “Absolutely nothing. Don’t you wish you were here?”

“Yes.” It was emphatic.

“Bad day?”

“Before or after my lover decided to try to kill herself?”