Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

“We’re not going to start that again, are we? Did I mention that I’m naked?”

“Prove it.”

I grinned. “Is this a secure channel?”

“As secure as they come.”

“Because I don’t need naughty pictures of the Pythia showing up in the press tomorrow.”

“At least it would finally knock the war off the front page.”

I laughed. With my skinny legs? Hardly.

But Pritkin had never complained, especially not when they were up around his ears. God, I wished he was here! But it looked like he was still at HQ, judging by the rock dirt-and-rock background behind him.

I pulled the little makeup mirror, which had been fixed to the wall on an accordion mount, away from the tiles. I never used it, because who does their makeup in the tub? But I guessed somebody did, because it had come standard, although it was all fogged up now.

I swiped a hand across it, and there he was. And this time, I got the full face. It looked tired and stressed, but also half cynical and half expectant, because he didn’t think I’d do it, but wasn’t sure.

“Okay,” I told him. “Get ready.”

And then I tilted the mirror—

Toward my knee.

“Look,” I teased. “It’s all sudsy and sexy.”

I waggled the mirror a little. And then turned it back to my face, to see Pritkin’s lips quirk. “I’m half incubus,” he told me. “I can work with it.”

“I wish you were here to work with it. How much longer?” I was whining; I knew it, but I didn’t care. Jonas had bogarted my boyfriend, and I was salty about it.

“After today? Quite a while.”

“Why? What happened now?”

“Nothing happened now. Unless you count the fact that we can’t discover how the fey infiltrated our base.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that none of the wards were disturbed. We checked them three times, as some sustained damage in the recent attack. It was thought that one or more of them might be giving false readings. There was even discussion that perhaps the Black Circle had left themselves a back door in the attack—a compromised ward that they could use as a conduit back in at another time. Such a thing should have been detected during repairs, but with the Corps stretched as thin as it is, something subtle could have been missed.”

“Was it?”

“No. They’re on the fourth check right now, but I think it highly unlikely that we missed anything. As far as we can tell, no one unauthorized came through.”

“Then . . . you think you have a traitor?” I asked, struggling to understand how anyone could fool the wards at HQ’s check points. I usually avoided them by just shifting in, and for good reason. The one time I’d gone through with Pritkin, after lunch at a local eatery, it had felt like walking through a rain of burning needles.

“If he wasn’t fey, that might have been a consideration,” Pritkin said dryly. “As it is, it’s a mystery.”

“Which means it could happen again.” I was suddenly, fervently, glad that I’d sent Billy, and wondered if he was there yet. Probably not; he traveled along different pathways than humans, but Stratford was still pretty far away.

“That’s the worry,” Pritkin agreed.

“Pay attention to scent,” I told him earnestly. “Fey glamouries have a really strong smell, at least for the first few days.”

“And you know this how?” he asked.

“I . . . hear stuff. From the coven girls.”