I just hoped Rhea would know it when she saw it, because I wasn’t sure I would.
I’d only seen it once before, back when I was just some tarot reader the Senate needed to run an errand for them. They’d suspected that some of the Pythian power had come to me, since the old Pythia was dying and my mother had once been her heir. But Mom had been disgraced, I’d never been trained, and they hadn’t been sure that whatever Agnes was leaking would be enough to do the trick.
So they’d sussed out a potion, called the Tears of Apollo, to help me out.
I’d all but forgotten about it since I’d ended up inheriting the whole shebang shortly thereafter, and hadn’t needed it again. But I should have wondered—why have a potion if the Pythia didn’t need it? I guess the answer was: because sometimes she did.
Rhea thought it was possible that we’d find some here, since Agnes had been knocking the stuff back like water the last year or so she lived. She’d been using it to augment her failing strength and allow her to still shift. And if it could boost a dying woman back to something like full power, Rhea thought there was a good chance it could turn me into super Pythia, bestrider of centuries.
Or at least, get Rosier and me back to the sixth century without ripping my guts out.
So I checked every damned pillow, only pausing occasionally to glance at the gorgeous curtains draping the windows. Or the dazzling rock crystal on the bar. Or what looked like one of van Gogh’s sunflower paintings glowing in a splash of moonlight on the living room wall. But the only thing I found was a good start on an inferiority complex.
The place looked like it could have come out of the pages of a magazine. Like the house downstairs, with its formal reception areas and opulent everything. It was impressive when you first walked in, but what would it have been like to live here? With not a th
ing out of place and even the folds of the drapes impossibly perfect?
I thought back to the cheerful mess at Dante’s, with the overflowing ashtrays and the zigzag fridge and the wine stain on the carpet that nobody had ever bothered to clean up because they were waiting for the next Apocalypse. This place smelled vaguely floral. Mine smelled like Marco’s cigars, takeout, and vampire feet. This place was quiet, serene. Mine was chaos on a daily basis. This place was . . .
Oh, hell. This place was Agnes, elegant and intimidating and flawless. It fit her.
It would never have fit me.
I wasn’t a champagne sort of girl. I was more the Bloody Mary type, specifically the kind they served in one of Dante’s bars, with fifteen olives, a bunch of chicken fingers, a cheeseburger, a fistful of onion rings, and a freaking pepperoni pizza, all stuck on skewers on top. It wasn’t elegant, but it got the job done.
Like me, usually.
Usually, but not tonight, because I couldn’t find a damned thing, in either the living room or the adjacent office-of-a-thousand-drawers.
I finally gave up and went to see if Rhea had had better luck.
And immediately felt bad for complaining. Because she was having to go through every pocket in every outfit in a walk-in closet as big as my bedroom. Maybe bigger, I thought, staring down a mirror-lined length of plush white carpeting to a tufted ottoman the size of a couch.
In front of a massive dressing table full of more freaking drawers.
“Shit,” I said, with feeling.
Rhea looked up. Her dark hair was frazzled and lint-filled, and her eyes were red from all the fibers floating around in the air. She looked like she wanted to agree with me.
But, of course, that wouldn’t be ladylike.
Since I’d given up on that a while ago, I said it again.
“Lady Phemonoe had a lot of clothes,” she agreed, as I made the long walk to join her.
“And makeup,” I said, staring at the dresser top. Damn; I knew drag queens at Dante’s who had less than this.
“She used a good deal of it, that last year,” Rhea said quietly. “I saw her without it once, when I brought up some tea. She was . . . haggard.”
“But she couldn’t afford to look like it.”
“The Circle expects . . . a certain standard.” Even from a dying woman remained unsaid.
“Yeah, well, the Circle can go . . .” I caught myself just in time, remembering Rhea’s more refined sensibilities.
But she didn’t seem to mind. If anything, she seemed curious. “You don’t fear them.”
“No.”