Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

“I was thinking that it would be nice to make something like that for the initiates,” I said. “So that they could see their parents whenever they wanted. Like a living picture of home. Of course, I don’t know how many are touch clairvoyants, but you have to figure at least some . . .

“But then I thought that it might be strange, or even a little cruel. To see what they no longer have, and to see it like that, frozen in time. Life isn’t like that; it doesn’t stay the same. No matter how much we may want it to.

“I want the girls to have more contact with their families, so they don’t grow up feeling like orphans. But I don’t think that’s the way to do it.”

“You can grow up beside your family, and feel like an orphan, too,” Rhea said softly. “Unseen, unnoticed, passed over.”

“Like your mother passed you over for an acolyte’s position.”

She nodded.

“Is that why you don’t use the power? You think she wouldn’t want you to?”

“I know she wouldn’t. She said it was because she didn’t want me to be trapped into this life, with all its rules and restrictions. But that wasn’t the reason.”

I frowned, and sat back in my chair, although it was one of those straight-backed torture devices the Victorians loved, so it didn’t help much. I sat forward again. “Then what was the reason?”

Rhea got up, walked to the door like she was going to leave, and then turned around and put her back to it. “The Pythian power is . . . like nothing else. You can change the world with it, literally rewrite time itself. Therefore, the person holding that office has to be . . . extraordinary. Intelligent, thoughtful, measured, a true diplomat. But also a warrior: tough, capable and tenacious, able to fight when needed, even against terrible odds. She has to be strong but gentle, wise but kind, a mother to her initiates and a sage to the supernatural community. She has to be . . . perfect. Simply perfect. One in a billion—”

I couldn’t help it; I burst out laughing. I tried to stop, because it was mean, I knew it was mean, but I simply couldn’t. I laughed and laughed and then laughed some more. Until I was bent over and gasping, with tears running out of my eyes and in serious danger of hyperventilating. For a moment there, I couldn’t breathe.

Rhea helped me onto the bed, concern in her eyes.

“Should I . . . should I go get the Lady?”

I wheezed out something incoherent, but when she tried to go, I held on. “Give me . . . a minute.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” I wheezed a little more, and told myself to stop it before I started off again. Rhea didn’t deserve that. She’d been dealing with a lot lately: her mother being murdered, her father being less than welcoming of the daughter he hadn’t known he had, and the little matter of a war to fight.

It didn’t help that, up until a short time ago, she’d basically been the nursery aide at court, helping to look after the smaller initiates. Her biggest daily worry had been who had the sniffles and who had stolen whose crayons. Then her mother died, her house got blown up, and the new, possibly crazy Pythia made not only an acolyte, but her heir as well. It was enough to make anyone tense.

And me laughing at her wasn’t going to help.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. “It’s just . . . you realize, that if that list you gave me was true, I’d have to turn in my resignation? That every Pythia would?”

Rhea looked taken aback for a moment. “They would not.”

“Would.”

“Would not—” she said, before she caught herself. And frowned at me. “You’re a goddess—”

“Demi, and I mostly took after my father. Who was not exactly a pillar of the community, let me tell you.”

“—and I’m not! I’m nothing!”

“You know that’s not true,” I said, wondering why she couldn’t see the potential that everyone else did. Especially after some recent events where she’d helped to save my butt. “You’re Agnes’s daughter. And Jonas’s, too. You have all the ability you need—”

“I don’t! I can’t do it!” There were two little spots of color, high on her cheekbones, which happened when she was really upset. “I’d screw it all up and kill everyone—”

“—but nobody is going to make you do anything.”

She stopped abruptly and looked at me.

“I never wanted this,” I told her. “I wasn’t like all those acolytes, scrapping and fighting and clawing for the position. I was raised by an asshole of a vampire who exploited the shit out of my gift until I ran away. Then the power found me, plopped itself in my lap, and just refused to leave. I never had a chance to decline.

“Well, that’s not exactly true; I declined a lot, but nobody listened. And for a long time, I was really upset about that. People kept trying to kill me, on a daily basis for a while, and mostly it was because I was Pythia. My enemies tried to kill me, my allies tried to kill me, it was basically open season on Cassie Palmer. I still don’t know how I survived—”