Page 5

Her words were laced with irony, as none of us thought that would be our fate.There were plenty of ways to die here, and that one took too long.Longer than we probably had.

That thought brought me to the conversation I needed to have with everybody, and postponing it wasn’t likely to make it better.But I didn’t want to ruin any more appetites, so I sat quietly for a moment, sucking down some of the best soup I’d ever had.Or maybe I was just hungry.

“Other than for the garden, there’s not much in the way of provisions,” Pritkin told me.“We’ve checked the buildings that are safe to enter, and almost everything usable was destroyed.”

“Not that there was much,” Alphonse added.“Witches got ways of preserving food, but there wasn’t much to preserve.It looked like they were hunkered down for a while, probably living off the gardens and their stores and maybe getting some supplies through the portals.”

“That could have been what betrayed them,” Bodil said.“Portals leave a trace if you know how to read it.”

I didn’t say anything, but I was impressed.She’d just seen her world explode around her, killing everyone and everything she had ever known, but here she was, cooking soup and calmly having a discussion.I would have been...

Sitting here and calmly eating soup, I guessed, because my world wasn’t much better off.If this was how a secret enclave full of some of the most powerful people I had ever known had fared, what did everything else look like?I shivered slightly, not wanting to know, and concentrated on packing away dinner.

“We don’t need provisions anyway,” Alphonse said, breaking the small silence that had followed her words.

“Maybe you don’t,” Bodil said, eyeing him as if wondering when he might decide to snack on one of them.

“Don’t worry,” he told her.“Fey blood tastes nasty.Of course, I never tried any god-blood—”

“And your first attempt will be your last,” she assured him, but for some reason, Alphonse just laughed, with his dark eyes smiling along with his lips.It looked weird on a face that nobody could call handsome, with its crushed cauliflower nose, too-strong features, and swarthy stubble that added to the low-level mobster vibe.Which was unfair, as Alphonse had been a high-level mobster.

One who seemed to be in an excellent mood.

“Probably would,” he agreed.“I saw what you did to that army.Damn.And I meandamn, woman.You can throw down.”

“At home,” Bodil said dryly.“I don’t know about here.The desert is not my preferred battlefield.”

No, for someone with water magic, I wouldn’t expect so.But again, Alphonse only chuckled.“Well, good thing our fighting is behind us, then.”

“Behind us?”Æsubrand said suddenly.Whether over the purloining of his dinner or Alphonse’s relentless good humor, I didn’t know, but he looked pissed.“I would say it’s just begun!”

Alphonse cheerfully ate a tiny leg at him.“How so?”

“How so?We are in an alien world—yes, even you!I do not know what fifty years of the gods’ tender care has done to your planet, but I doubt you will like it, vampire!”

“Alphonse,” the big vamp corrected, “or I’m gonna start calling you elf.”

“I do not care what you call me!”Æsubrand snarled.“We are in an alien world stalked by creatures of unimaginable power!And yet, somehow, we are expected to cross a desert, find this Pythian heir, who is guarded by those very gods, and have her explain to us what happened before going back in time to change it!And if we fail at any part of that, both our worlds stay dead!And yet you sit there, laughing like an idiot—”

“I’m gonna overlook that statement since you just lost your world and all,” Alphonse said magnanimously.“But you should probably learn some manners.There are no princes anymore.You’re either one of them, or you’re one of us, and if you’re one of us, you’re on a par with these things,” he waved around the denuded stick with only a few scraps of meat still clinging to the wood, “so we gotta stick together.”

“And do what?”Æsubrand asked bitterly.“Cower in the shadows like vermin as we did before?I have never been so humiliated in my life—”

Ah, so that was what was eating him.

“Didn’t look humiliated,” Alphonse offered.“More like pissing your pants terrified, which—”

Æsubrand jumped him.

“—was perfectly understandable, if you’d let me finish,” Alphonse said while the sleekly dangerous fey prince did his best to pound his skull in.

Æsubrand seemed a little freaked out when he discovered that it was like trying to cave in solid steel, spread over granite, with a titanium underlayer.Alphonse just took it for a second because the prince wasn’t using a weapon, and fists were not very effective against vampire flesh.Then he plucked the enraged fey off his back like a dog scratching a pesky flea.

“You done, hoss?”Alphonse said, only to have Æsubrand do one of those acrobatic flips he’d used a few times on me and get the big man into a headlock.

“You insult me!”

“Not at all.I was there, remember?Cowering right beside you.Or have you forgotten already?”