Page 57

I wanted to stand up for once and take them on, all of them, and wipe them out with a wave of my hand or with more than that.With cracking bones and sundering skin if need be, with draining power and growing darkness, with the certainty that death reached out its clutching fingers for us all.And feel myself falling into its embrace just as long as they fell with me—

“Stop it.”Bodil’s voice was flat, but her hand tightened enough that it felt like I’d experience some of those cracking bones sooner than expected.“Stop it andchoose.”

“And if I choose wrong?”I challenged, looking up at her with burning eyes.“If I choose mother’s path instead of father’s—”

“Then you’re a fool, Cassie Palmer.Your mother failed, all her strength not excepted.Your fatherwon.”

And just that fast, I was out of it and panting in a suddenly brilliantly lit room filled with color and light and a shaken-looking Bodil gulping something out of a hide skin bag.Because I guessed that hadn’t been easy.No, for us demigods, that sort of thing never was, was it?I thought, catching her eye as she wiped a hand across her lips and stared back, her rich skin tone as ashen as it ever got.

Choose, the word floated in the air between us, and I suddenly realized I had a bigger challenge than I’d thought.Battling gods I could do; I’d done it before.But this time, I had a bigger enemy.This time, I had to overcome myself.

And that was likely to be a much harder fight.

Chapter Seventeen

As shaken as both Bodil and I were, no one else seemed to notice anything strange.Maybe because we’d been away for only a few seconds, our discussion taking place in the mind, with lightning-fast connections.I took a drink from a flask that was being passed around, and barely noticed as something burned its way down my throat.

“—emerged from a guild of magic workers in Cologne in the twelfth century, or at least, that’s as far back as the Corps could trace them,” Pritkin was saying.“The Guild was a mixed bag, with many in it for wealth and power, as traveling back even a few decades would give them opportunities to cash in from foreknowledge of coming events.”

“Like Tony did with Cassie’s gift,” Alphonse said, eyeing me as if he knew something had happened, but wasn’t sure what.

“Yes, but others appear to have been true believers, under the impression that the world was too corrupt and wrong-minded to save.They wished to start over, reaching far enough back in time to reset the entire culture, although they had different ideas about what their utopia should look like.”

“One man’s heaven is another man’s hell,” Alphonse agreed.

“Infighting eventually caused them to fall apart, after which the spells they had amassed after centuries of trial and error were split between the various factions.Some were lost to time, possibly literally, while others have continued to be passed around from one treasure-seeker to another.A few fanatics also persisted, calling themselves after the old guild and trying to force their version of utopia on everyone else.Fortunately, the Pythias managed to stop any whose spells actually worked.”

“So, some of them did?”Enid asked, her forehead wrinkling.

Pritkin shrugged.“Perhaps one out of a thousand, if that.Those with access to the old grimoires probably stood a better chance, as they contained centuries of knowledge about what didn’t work.Although the odds were still astronomically against them—”

“As they would be with me,” I said, finally coming back to life.

“Are you sure?”He looked at me seriously.“Jonas is right about one thing: you have more experience with this than anyone alive, and you told me more than once that shifting is your greatest talent.”

“Thepowermade it easy, which I don’t currently have.”

“But if Jonas could give it to you?”

“He can’t—”

“But if he could?”Pritkin was pushing; I didn’t know why, but it was pissing me off.Maybe because we’d just discussed this!

“He can’t.No one can!”

“You don’t know that!”That last was Æsubrand, coming around the side of the bed.Bodil must have kept him in check until now, but he’d slipped her leash while she was distracted.And he was furious.

Like I cared, I thought, standing up and walking out.

“Where the hell is she going?”he demanded from behind me.

I didn’t answer, didn’t even slow down.Just kept opening doors until I found them, four rooms down, a huddled knot of sour-faced women with straggling wet hair and borrowed gray shifts, crouched on the floor gnawing mutton.And looking up at me in shock when I burst in without so much as a knock.

But they weren’t shocked enough that they didn’t have wands out so fast that I hadn’t seen them move, wands that the Circle had failed to find and relieve them of and which they’d already used, judging by the two glassy-eyed war mages slumped in a corner.

“Dead?”I asked, staring at the men.

“Unconscious,” Butch Cut said.“Damned Circle put guards on our door.”