Except how could he protect me from himself?
I realized that I was still screaming when Pritkin grabbed me.
“Cassie! Cassie! What the hell?”
That’s what I want to know, I thought wildly. I finally managed to stop shrieking like a banshee. But part of me was still screaming internally, because—because—because what was happening?
I knew those eyes, I thought, blankly.
I should do—I’d seen them in London when something attacked me.
No, not something. Someone. I clutched the bathrobe around me and stared at my lover, who stared back, obviously bewildered and worried and a little freaked out.
What was happening?
“Cassie—”
“No, no, no!” I tore away, trying for the bathroom, wanting to be alone, but I didn’t make it. I ran into a bedpost instead, hit my head and grabbed hold, the room spinning even as I tried to think. Pritkin couldn’t have attacked me in London! He wasn’t even there!
So how could his incubus have done it?
And why?
The first, and so far, only time his other half and I had had a conversation, it had been all about how misunderstood it was. How it hadn’t meant to drain Pritkin’s wife of life energy; how her death had been a terrible accident, one that Pritkin had unfairly blamed it for. And how, afterwards, he had basically locked it away for life. Why bother to tell me all that, to try to garner sympathy, and then just turn around and attack me the first chance it got?
To lower your defenses? a little voice asked. To make you assume, as you had, that it was no threat to you?
It isn’t a threat! If it tried anything, Pritkin would—
Do what? Lock it away again? But wasn’t it already locked away, as much as he could manage? So that wasn’t much of a deterrent, was it? And if it managed to drain not only you, but the Pythian power?
Well. He’d never be able to lock it away again, now would he?
Stop it! Gertie’s court was a hundred years ago! It had no way to get back there—
It had Jonathan. They’re both after the same thing, after all—the Pythian power. If they teamed up—
No! It was a visceral, gut reaction. But I knew those eyes, I thought, turning back around to stare at them.
And even though they were now green, something was similar. No, something was the same. For a second, I swore I could see the starlit ones behind the green, like two images superimposed over one another.
I shuddered hard, and Pritkin swore. “If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, right now—”
“Nothing,” I gasped. “I . . . I just need a minute.”
I abruptly sat down in a chair, and put my head in my hands. Even for me, this was a lot. And something I had no idea how to handle.
Telling Pritkin what had happened in London . . . no. We’d just reached a sort of equilibrium tonight. An us-against-the-world kind of deal, where we’d finally bared everything, talked some shit out and agreed to trust each other.
How could I tell him that he couldn’t even trust himself?
How could I tell him that my chief defender was the one who’d attacked me?
He would leave, I thought. I didn’t know what he’d do afterward, but I knew that much. He wouldn’t risk what happened with his wife happening again. And I . . .
What would I do then?
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “Yet you wake up screaming? Did you have a nightmare?”