But Marco shook his head. “Silence spell. Guess she didn’t want us knowing court business.”
“Rhea can do a silence spell?” I asked enviously.
“Guess so. By the way, Jonas knows you’re back.”
“How?”
Marco came back in still scowling, although whether at me or at the lingering effects of the pepper, I didn’t know. “Don’t look at me like that. You were the one hanging off the side of the damned building because God forbid anyone should know what you’re up to. And you know he has spies everywhere.”
“Some people need to learn to mind their own business,” I said, scowling.
“Couldn’t agree more,” he agreed, without a shred of irony.
Because, of course, I was his business, from a vampire point of view. Keeping the family safe was a Very Big Thing in the vamp world. Any master who couldn’t do it lost face—possibly literally—very soon, because he’d be viewed as weak. As would any servant be who let down said master, which Marco clearly had no intention of doing.
Good, I thought evilly. “Tell Jonas I died,” I told him.
“He’ll want to see the corpse.”
“Then tell him I left!”
Jonas was in my black book anyway. Only, unlike Mircea, I wasn’t too afraid to talk to him. I was too pissed. He’d forbidden me to go back in time to rescue my court, and despite the fact that he probably didn’t remember it because of the whole time-change thing, he’d still done it. Not to mention keeping from me the tiny fact that a bunch of my acolytes were bat-shit crazy and possibly homicidal. And what was his reason?
That I already had enough on my plate to worry about.
Yeah, like getting assassinated by enemies I didn’t know I had, Jonas!
Of course, he thought the Circle could protect me. He always thought that. Only the kind of things that came after me weren’t always things the Circle had seen before.
Jonas was smart, but he didn’t think I was, and I was getting tired of being treated like a witless wonder. No, I hadn’t been Pythia very long; yes, I was scarily ignorant of some parts of my job. But I was doing my best to remedy that in between planning rescue trips into hell and trying to stay alive! And so far, I’d proven a fairly quick study. If someone had been around to train me, I might have been doing even better.
Someone like my damned court, for instance.
But then, I wouldn’t need the Circle so much in that case, now would I?
Marco’s lips were twitching at whatever emotions had been running across my face. “What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie. You suck at it almost as much as I do.”
“That’s why I’m the muscle,” he told me.
“I’d like to be the muscle sometimes,” I said wistfully, only to have him reach out and pinch my sad excuse for a bicep.
“I’m thinking no,” he said, grinning now. “But don’t worry; I’ll deal with Jonas.”
He appeared to be looking forward to it.
“Was there something else?” I asked when he just stood there.
“The girls?”
“Shit.” I didn’t know what to do about the girls.
Marco nodded in agreement. “They slept in the living room, in the lounge, in your bed, and in the spare room last night, and we still didn’t have enough space. We were tripping over cots—”
“And then they needed baths,” Fred said darkly. “And we didn’t have enough of those, either. By the time they finally finished, the whole apartment was steamy. And they left their stuff everywhere—”