“I . . . The Pythian Court?”
“Do I have another one I don’t know about?”
“I . . . no. That is to say—”
“Please don’t. Just tell him I called, so he doesn’t say I didn’t consult him—”
“Consult—”
“—before deciding to make the court’s permanent residence Las Vegas—”
Tami laughed.
“—instead of whatever other possibilities we might have dis—”
“Be right back,” the man said, and the Muzak cut back in abruptly.
“What’s happening now?” Tami asked eagerly.
“I’m on hold again.”
“At least it’s Queen this time,” Roy said, not even trying to pretend that he wasn’t listening in.
I didn’t care. If I cared, I’d have done this in the bedroom, under a silence spell. But I was getting tired of having to creep around my own suite, of having to keep secrets from the people who were supposed to be my allies, of trying to do my job with no support and with active opposition half the time.
And it wasn’t like it mattered.
Mircea wasn’t going to give me that damned potion anyway.
Of course, Jonas probably wasn’t, either. I’d told Tami the truth last night: I didn’t have a lot of cards to play with him. In fact, I’d had exactly one, which I’d just used to try to get him on the phone.
It was the same problem I had with Mircea. I am Pythia, hear me roar might sound good in theory, but in practice it was a lot more problematic. Because what were my options? Fight Ares on my own? Run the Pythian Court like some kind of island in the supernatural stream? Never talk to them again? I was pretty sure that wasn’t in the job description. I was pretty sure that was the exact opposite of the job description, that the Pythia was supposed to be a bridge between the various groups, bringing them closer together.
Although it kind of sounded like Agnes hadn’t been doing that.
It almost felt like sacrilege to question her, but I was beginning to think that maybe her relationship with Jonas had given the Circle delusions of grandeur. Like they didn’t need anybody else, because they had the Pythia. And as for the vamps—
Well, they hadn’t trusted the office at all.
Until I came along.
And now I was Agnes 2.0, only with a vamp lover instead of a mage one. Who obviously expected the same privileges he thought Jonas had been getting. And maybe that would have worked in peacetime; maybe I could have done the same thing Agnes apparently had, and let the powers that be believe what they wanted while I did whatever I damned well liked. Hell, I’d mostly been doing that anyway, because I hadn’t had a choice. But it wasn’t going to work forever.
Because I wasn’t a peacetime Pythia. I was a wartime Pythia, and I needed them. I needed both of them to work with me instead of dictating to me, but they weren’t. And I didn’t know how to make them and I was running out of time and Jonas wasn’t going to give me shit, I knew it, assuming he even deigned to speak with me at all, and—
And then he was on the line. “Cassandra.”
“Lady Cassandra,” Rian snapped, because she had come into the kitchen in time to overhear.
If he heard her back, he didn’t react. Or probably care. I cleared my throat and grabbed an apple out of the bowl, because I needed something to concentrate on.
“I’m not calling about my court,” I told him.
“I gathered that.” It was dry.
“Or about the money.”
And, okay, that got a slight pause. And a frown from Tami, who is more practical than me, and probably had a list of all the stuff the girls needed. But they weren’t going to die if they didn’t get it.