Reap the Wind (Cassandra Palmer 7)

“I don’t do hexes.”

“Well, you did something,” Pritkin said. “That Svarestri warrior didn’t collapse from a heart attack.”

“Which one?” I asked miserably, and sat back down. And put my head in my hands, because I couldn’t avoid the elephant in the room forever, could I?

Not when I’d just trashed the hell out of the time line.

I sat there for a moment, listening to him spread out a picnic I no longer wanted, the sinking feeling in my stomach filling it instead of food. I’d been mad at Rosier just for bringing a gun along he knew we couldn’t use, and what had I done? I knew better. I knew that anything I did this far back might have disastrous consequences, that it could mess up time in a way I couldn’t fix, that I was supposed to be guarding the time line, not trashing it myself!

If I had trashed it.

But it sure as hell seemed like I had. We’d killed another fey—that much I was certain about. And maybe more than one, because despite their scary resiliency, that had been a damned long drop onto damned hard rocks, and sure, maybe I’d gotten lucky and maybe some of them had made it, but I couldn’t believe that all of them had.

I couldn’t believe most of them had.

So how did that not trash time? Did the fey time line not count? Were all of them slated for heart attacks in the next few days? What?

I didn’t know, because I hadn’t received any sort of warning like Rhea had said I would. I hadn’t gotten anything at all, despite being in my right mind this time and looking for it. And I still wasn’t.

My power hummed along, a warm background energy, dimmer than on earth, but as I’d just demonstrated, still here on some level. But maybe it wasn’t enough of a level? Maybe it couldn’t talk to me here? Or maybe I just didn’t know how to listen.

Yeah, I was kind of betting on that last one. Which meant who knew how much I’d just screwed up? And for one man.

Maybe this was why Pythias weren’t supposed to have . . . people, I thought miserably. Maybe that was why Agnes had lived in that sterile museum of an apartment, all alone. People interfered with things, complicated them, messed with your head.

Agnes would have let Pritkin die, if it came down to it. I had no doubt of that. She’d have done the right thing and stayed home and just accepted that this was how things were now.

And if it had been Jonas? a little voice asked. Or someone else she cared about? Would she have done the right thing then?

I thought about that picture, the one Rhea and I had found. They’d looked so happy. Just two middle-aged people at a beach, with sand on their skin and the start of a burn across their cheeks and greasy food in their stomachs that would probably give them indigestion the next day instead of the hangovers their younger selves might have had. But they wouldn’t care about that. Because they’d stolen a day from the job, and the responsibilities, and the never-ending in-box, and they’d lived a little.

But what about the next day? What about when they went back to the job? Because they had.

What had happened then?

I didn’t know. But I knew what hadn’t happened. Agnes hadn’t trashed the hell out of the time line! Maybe she’d never been faced with the choice I had; maybe she would have failed it, too. I didn’t know that, either. I just knew one thing.

She’d expect me to fix it.

Somehow.

I felt a finger under my chin and looked up to see bright green eyes looking into mine. “Why the long face? We won.”

I laughed. It wasn’t a particularly nice one, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. “We survived.”

“Against the Svarestri, that counts,” Pritkin told me seriously. And then he grinned, a bright, open expression that had my breath catching, because he never looked like that. “And that’s worth celebrating, isn’t it? We survived!” He yelled it, and half a dozen voices yelled it back, along with hoisting their mugs.

One of which was slapped in my hand the next second by a smiling, half-naked baby war-mage. “Time to enjoy life!”

“Enjoy.” I refrained from rolling my eyes—just.

“You sound like that’s a word you’re not familiar with.”

“I’m familiar with it. Just not on a first-name basis.”

He grinned again and shook his head. And went back to unpacking the basket while I investigated my mug. Beer. Strong. But not bad, and my empty stomach accepted it eagerly.

“What do you mean, you relieved him?” I asked after draining half of it.