Reap the Wind (Cassandra Palmer 7)

“Isn’t it always?”

He sat on the edge of the damp bed. “With you? Pretty much.”

“I don’t try to be a disaster,” I told him, feeling my throat tighten up.

He sighed and took my hand, interlacing his fingers with my own. Since his were the size of sausages, that left mine spread uncomfortably wide, but I decided I could live with it. “You don’t have to try,” he told me. “It’s a gift.”

“You could always shoot me,” I offered weakly.

“I’ve considered it. But then I’d have a few dozen time-traveling little girls on my ass.”

“They can’t all time-travel.” At least, I really hoped not. “When did they get here?”

“You don’t remember?”

I shook my head.

“You missed quite the scene,” Marco said, letting go of my hand so he could lean back against the bedpost. And level exasperated dark eyes at me.

“Do I want to know?”

“No. But I’m going to tell you anyway,” he said pleasantly.

I threw my arm over my face.

“So, you come back from hell. Big swirly portal thing coughs you up onto the rug after all but wrecking the living room. But okay. At least you’re back.

“Only no. A couple minutes later, you’re gone again. No explanation, no good-bye, no nothing. One second you’re there, watching the news about that old house in London blowing up, and the next you’re not. For a minute, I thought you’d jumped back through the damned portal!

“But then I realized that the witches were gone, too.”

“The witches” in this case were a group of coven leaders who had volunteered to help me rescue mine. My coven, that is, since that’s what the Pythian Court apparently was. Since I’d never considered myself a witch, the idea of having a coven took a little getting used to.

Not as much as the concept of changing time, though.

But I hadn’t had a choice. I’d returned from my rescue attempt gone wrong only to find out that Agnes’ mansion in London had just been bombed. I’d sat around on the living room sofa for a few minutes, watching a magical news feed showing mountains of still-burning rubble and rows of tiny body bags and clumps of stunned-looking war mages. And tried to absorb that.

And then I’d taken the witches and gone back in time to fix things.

I wasn’t supposed to. The whole point of having a Pythia in the first place was to keep people from mucking about in the time stream, not to do it myself. But those little girls were my court now, even if I hadn’t had a chance to meet them yet. And they’d died because of me. And it had only been fifteen minutes. . . .

Anyway, I’d done it. It probably made me a lousy Pythia, but then, what else was new? And I wasn’t sorry, I thought defiantly.

Guilty, yes; sorry, no.

“And, uh, then what happened?” I asked, because I didn’t know.

I guessed the witches had gotten my court out, since it was here now. And that the demons had done the same for me, after I’d stayed behind to cover everyone’s retreat. And passed out from the strain of slowing down the battleground’s worth of spells that my acolyte’s dark mage friends had been throwing.

Because one had been waiting on me when I woke up, back here in my bed.

Not a spell—a demon. His name was Adra, head of the demon council, and incidentally, also the person who had cursed Pritkin. But he’d had a change of heart, or so he said, after seeing me risk my life to save my court.

I didn’t know why that should matter to the council, but maybe they weren’t as bad as I’d been told. Or maybe that had belatedly decided they might need some help with the gods, and I’d do. If, you know, they hadn’t just wiped my friend out of existence!

But I’d had no chance to find out before Rosier was throwing a pack at me filled with old-fashioned clothes, and we’d left right afterward, with my head still spinning.

Marco narrowed his eyes. “You tell me. The next thing I know, the windows start shaking and the floor starts moving, and it feels like about a six on the Richter scale. And then that damned portal activates again and there you are, stumbling out along with three battered witches and a couple dozen freaked-out little girls!”