Hunt the Moon (Cassandra Palmer 5)

To every vampire I ever met, I didn’t say, because it wouldn’t have helped. “It’s a fact of human nature,” I said instead. “People don’t like complicated answers. They like simple, easy-to-imagine ones. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if you give them two solutions—a really complex truth or a really simple lie—they’ll take the lie. It’s just easier.”

“Okay, so what’s our simple lie?”

“That I did it.” I glanced at Pritkin. “We’ll say I bubbled you. Like with the apple.”

“But you can’t do that yet.”

“So? They don’t know that.”

“I am fairly certain that Jonas does,” Pritkin said drily. “We need to come up with something else.”

“We don’t have anything else! And we don’t—”

“What are you talking about?” That was Caleb.

“A trick,” I said, glancing at him. “Or, really, it’s not a trick; it’s something Agnes could do with her power—speeding up time in a small area. I’ve been practicing—”

“And you can do that?” he interrupted.

“In theory.”

He cursed.

“Look,” I said impatiently. “The point isn’t whether or not I can do it—”

“Then what is the point?”

“That I’m supposed to be able to do it! That a real . . . that a well-trained Pythia could do it. And it will be a lot easier for people to imagine that than a legend coming back to life and hanging out in their damn cafeteria!”

“If you could do it,” Caleb said. “Maybe so. But you can’t, and the old man knows you can’t. So how is that—”

“He knows I usually can’t, but that’s not the same thing. I can do it, just not on demand. But occasionally I luck out and my power works for a change. And that’s almost always in a crisis or when I’m pissed off or—”

“Which makes little sense,” Pritkin said, interrupting me.

I looked at him. “What?”

“You said it yourself: you can use the power. You have proven that on a number of occasions—you prove it every time you shift. And the power is the power; it doesn’t change. Merely your perception of it does.”

“Meaning what?”

“That if you can use it under duress, you should be able to use it all the time. You should be able to use it at will.”

“But I can’t. I told you before: once in a while I get lucky, but most of the time—”

“Then perhaps you have been trying too hard. Did you not tell me that Lady Phemonoe said the power would teach you, that it would show you what it can do?”

“Yes, and I keep waiting—”

“And it has been showing you things, has it not? Or did Niall somehow teleport himself to that desert?”

“Niall?” Caleb asked.

“Jonas shouldn’t have told you about that!” I said, flushing.

“He didn’t do it to embarrass you,” Pritkin said. “But as an example of your progress.”

“Niall Edwards?” Caleb persisted.