“I can’t call it anything if I can’t breathe,” I croaked—uselessly, because Gertie wasn’t listening.
“You call what happened out there nothing?” she continued, flinging a hand toward the entrance hall somewhere behind us. “You’ve crossed over!”
“I have not!”
“The first Pythia ever to be careless enough to—”
She stopped.
“What do you mean, you have not?”
I wrestled with her for a second, before finally managing to jerk free. And then sat there, glaring, my throat feeling bad enough without her trying to garrote me! “Cut it out!” I said.
“Then explain yourself!”
“I mean, I’m not a vampire!” I said, rubbing my injured neck and spelling it out for the crazy woman. “I haven’t crossed over, I haven’t died, I haven’t done anything! Except almost get killed by whatever you turned loose on me!”
“You’re not dead?” Gertie seemed to be fixated on that point.
“Do dead people throw up their dinner?” I asked thickly, wondering if I was about to do it again.
“Then what the devil is wrong with you?”
I sighed and gave up on the idea of waiting for a better time.
I told her.
~~~
“Absolutely unacceptable!” Rhea was slamming things around my bedroom, as furious as I’d ever seen her. Possibly because nothing got under her skin worse than her parents.
Or seeing her Pythia reamed out for half an hour, it seemed, in the ass chewing of the ages.
I didn’t say anything, not being up to it at the moment. I lay in the large, comfortable, squashy topped bed, and watched the ceiling slowly revolve above me. And wondered whether other Pythias got blessed out as much as I did. It seemed unlikely. I couldn’t imagine anyone talking to Gertie the way they regularly did to me.
Well, I couldn’t have before tonight.
A small smile split my face, despite everything, because Rhea had been magnificent. It occurred to me that, if she ended up succeeding me someday, Gertie’s little parlor had had four Pythias in it, all going at each other at the same time. Well, three of them had been.
I’d mostly sat and barfed pot pie. But at least I seemed to have finally gotten rid of all the Were blood. And it wasn’t like Rhea had needed the help.
I just wished that she’d finishing venting at Gertie, because I was really kind of sleepy right now.
“—for them to dare, and to a Pythia—” she was saying, while throwing things out of a large wardrobe.
“They’re Pythias, too,” I rasped, because my throat was raw. And wondered if she was looking for something or just enjoying tossing stuff around.
“That doesn’t excuse it!” she said, rounding on me. “You’ve saved the world—repeatedly! What have they ever done?”
I opened my mouth, but apparently that question had been rhetorical, because she kept going.
“The last time we were here, with Hilde and the others, what did they do? Jo was shredding the time line, sending shards of other eras crashing into this one, threatening to destroy everything! And what did they do?”
“They helped with—”
“Nothing! We stopped her, particularly you. You fought her to a standstill, whilst we did everything that we could to protect you! Jo threw an army against you, but you never faltered, not once! Meanwhile, they stood on the sidelines, and did a little mopping up once the real danger was past, yet they have the gall, the utter, utter—”
“Rhea.”