“He regularly turns away would-be servants because he has too many already.”
“He—people want to get bitten?” She seemed appalled.
She’d obviously never met Mircea.
“Yeah,” I settled for. “Some people do. But you don’t, and they know that, so you don’t need to worry, okay? They are here to defend us. They would have died last night defending us, if need be.”
Rhea looked troubled by that, as if she wasn’t sure what to think. But she didn’t question it. I’d bet the boys were going to get peppered with questions later, though.
Good; give them something to do.
“Second,” I told her, and sharpened my voice. “You are my acolyte. As of now. Later, if you hate it, we’ll see about changing that. But for right now, I need somebody who understands the Pythian position better than I do. And that’s you.”
She nodded, eyes wide and startled, and maybe a little terrified.
Welcome to the club, I thought.
“And third . . .”
“Third, Lady?”
“Third, how the heck do I jump back fifteen hundred years?”
Chapter Nine
“So these were Agnes’ private rooms.” I didn’t switch on a light, although there was a panel by the door. But a couple of sconces on the walls were set on low, plus the city-at-night haze outside of a set of floor-to-ceiling windows gave enough brightness to see by.
And there was plenty to see. Like plush carpets on highly polished floors, what looked like genuine old masters on the walls, and chandeliers overhead, softly chiming in the air-conditioning, of the kind that often cost more than the houses they decorated. And the whole was brought together by a color scheme in pale beige and blue, which along with the dim lighting had a very calming effect.
Or it would have, if we hadn’t been trying to burgle the place.
“Very private,” Rhea agreed softly, coming in behind me and quickly shutting the door. “No one came here except honored guests. And the acolytes, of course.”
The acolytes. Great. “Let’s hope we don’t see any of those tonight.”
“We won’t. They’re at the coronation.”
Yeah, that was the plan. We were a little more than a week back in time, on the night the acolytes were at my coronation in Washington State, watching me duel a demigod. Meanwhile another, later me, was here trying to rob their old boss. My life was weird.
And possibly also short, if they came back early.
“Any ideas?” I asked, glancing at Rhea, who looked like she belonged here in her formal, high-necked white gown. I, on the other hand, looked like a tourist that had somehow wandered in off the street, in jeans shorts and a tee with a picture of the blond Powerpuff chick on it. It showed her lifting weights and declared proudly that I was “Powering my Puff into Tuff.” Of course, it had been a present from Pritkin.
A very, very optimistic present. Especially now, when I wasn’t feeling tuff so much as gnawingly anxious. Being places where I’d almost died tended to do that to me.
I’d better get over that, I thought randomly.
Or my vacation spots were going to start getting really limited.
Rhea shook her head. “It could be anywhere. But she was using a lot, near the end. There should be some . . . somewhere.”
She looked around a little helplessly. Maybe because Agnes had basically had her own apartment on the upper floor of the London mansion that used to be the Pythian Court. There was a bedroom, visible through a doorway to the left; a sitting room, which we had entered into from the hall; and an office on the opposite wall to the right. And those were just the parts I could see.
“Take the bedroom,” I told her. “I’ll check in here.”
She nodded and hurried off, and I started searching the lounge.
It wasn’t easy. There was a massive three-sided sectional with about fifty pillows facing a fireplace. And a wall of shelving with a lot of drawers. And a bar with even more drawers and a ton of glassware. And what we were after was smaller than the average perfume bottle.