Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

“Damned right,” Saffy said. “I was starting to think I’d lost my touch.”

Vi draped an arm around her neck. “You can practice your love charms on me, cutie pie. Hey, maybe that was how you got me in the first place.”

“Ha! You pursued me for weeks.”

“I don’t remember it like that,” Vi said, walking her toward the door. “I think I need to be checked for illicit charms. All over.”

Saffy laughed and they left, their arms around each other, and the meeting finally broke up.

Well, most of it.

Chapter Fourteen

Marco, of course, didn’t go anywhere. I hadn’t really expected him to. He did, however, send Rhea off to get me some dinner, which I appreciated.

The room was starting to get swimmy.

“How long have you known?” he demanded, as soon as the door shut behind her.

I didn’t even try to pretend that I didn’t know what he meant. “Six weeks.”

“Six weeks?” Black eyes flashed. “When were you planning to tell me?”

I wasn’t, I didn’t say, because I doubted it would help. I got up to get a refill, mainly to buy me a minute, but Marco took the glass from my hand. And when he returned, it was full of water.

I drank it anyway.

“There was a chance it wouldn’t be an issue,” I explained. “Mircea’s obsession is with Elena. Which is frankly a lot easier to deal with than the obsessions that some vamps get. He doesn’t want to rule the world or corner the stock market. He wants one woman. So, okay, we go into the past and bring her here—”

“Bring her here?”

“—then he doesn’t have an obsession anymore. And since she died, her absence wouldn’t affect the time line. It seemed . . . doable.” Marco just looked at me. “I thought that maybe, for once, we could head off a problem,” I said defensively.

He abruptly got up and paced across the room until he hit the conference table, before abruptly whirling back around. “You do realize that he’s about to lead a damned army into Faerie.”

“Of course, I do—”

“Then what the hell are you doing? Damn it, Cassie! He’s going to get killed and possibly take a lot of people with him! He can’t be off his head and do a job like that!”

“I get it—”

“I don’t think you do!”

Marco was agitated, something I could hardly blame him for, although I hadn’t expected it to be quite this bad. Although maybe I should have. Marco might be my chief bodyguard, but he’d had a number of other jobs over the centuries, one of which was soldier.

“What was the alternative?” I asked. “Tell the consul? Hey, your highness, just thought you ought to know that your general could go squirrelly and run off chasing his wife in the middle of battle—”

“As opposed to him actually doing it?”

“I don’t think he’s that far gone—”

“And if you’re wrong?”

He sat back down on the sofa, taking up a couple of Saffy’s worth of space, but the hugeness was part of his charm. I felt safer when Marco was around, despite knowing that he couldn’t fight some of things we were facing in this war any better than I could. But the more primitive part of my brain equated size with security, and I felt the usual calm, like a warm fuzzy blanket, wrapping around me.

Unfortunately, it didn’t look like I was having the same effect on him.

“I was barely twenty, and off on my first big adventure,” he told me seriously. “I was with a cohort going to relieve another one stationed in Judea—a simple enough assignment and a good first posting. Or it would have been, had our commanding officer not been more interested in opium laced wine than doing his job!”