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T ony,” Rhea said, sitting on the edge of a dusty table. “You begin.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s probably better that way,” he said, darting little glances at Alphonse and Mircea, who were on opposite sides of him. As if not sure who to be more worried about.

It was Mircea. Alphonse would merely kill him; Mircea would make him wish he were dead. But right then, he was looking at his wayward servant with more curiosity than anything else, and I had to admit to sharing it.

What was Antonio Gallina doing with Rhea, of all people?

And maybe I said that out loud, because he answered me.

“The gods put me here,” he said, looking aggrieved. “I’m basically a jailer, to make sure their captive Pythia doesn’t off herself and deprive them of their little trap. Zeus gave up trying to persuade her to join him a while ago, but he figured she could still be useful. He expected you to show up sooner or later and didn’t know if you could tell whether she was alive or not. If she was alive, this would probably be your first stop, and his brother could kill you before you caused any trouble. But if she wasn’t, you’d be off doing who knows what, and he couldn’t have that. So I was plonked down in the same prison to make sure their bait kept breathing.”

“Some reward for screwing us all over,” Alphonse said, and to my surprise, Tony agreed.

“It was that damned Pythia!” he said viciously. “She said if I did what she told me, I’d live. But you call this living? Stuck in here all the time with little Miss Perfect over there, while the world goes to hell? You call this—”

“What Pythia?” I interrupted.

Tony paused to glare at me with his mouth still open, maybe because he wasn’t used to being interrupted. Especially not by the little girl he’d once kept at his court to predict calamities, so he could profit from them. But I wasn’t that kid anymore and hadn’t been in a while, and I guessed it showed on my face.

Because after a moment, he cleared his throat and moderated his expression. “You know, I should start at the beginning.”

“Make it quick!”

“Why? So Alphonse can kill me faster?” he said nastily, because he couldn’t keep up even the pretense of civility for more than a few seconds.

“He’s not going to kill you,” Rhea began.

“Like hell I’m not!” Alphonse snarled.

Then we all had to pause so Topknot could spell the screeching scholar who’d just come in and immediately tried to bean her with a scroll.

He fell over into a stunned sleep and then the gods showed up and started running for us again, and damn, that didn’t get any easier! I thought, staring furious death in the face. Until they winked out just in time, and Alphonse grabbed Tony by the neck.

“Talk!”

“Okay, okay! I was going to anyway!” He took a moment to adjust his bathrobe. “I went to see Lady Phemonoe, in that fine house of hers in London. I’d figured out who Roger Palmer was married to, and why his wife was so shy, wanting to stay tucked up in that patch of woods all the time. Or, I thought I had,” he amended. “I thought she was just the Pythia’s missing heir, and I was in line for a serious reward.” He snorted. “Reward my ass!”

“You went to see Agnes?” I said.

“Yeah, I’d been there once before, ‘cause Rasputin was recruiting. He intended to challenge for the role of Consul of the North American Senate a long time before he actually did it. He was in bed with the gods, and they were giving him orders to destroy the senate’s power, as they figured our consul was gonna be a problem for them in the war to come. Only I didn’t know that then. I just knew he was dangling some pretty fine offers my way, but they carried a lot of risk. I don’t like risk—”

Mircea snorted, although whether because Tony was a notorious coward or because of the incredible risk of what he’d been doing with the gods ever since, I didn’t know.

Tony pretended not to notice. “Anyway, when I went to see the Pythia the first time, I was vague about all that, but she figured out I was being offered a dangerous opportunity and told me the reward wasn’t worth it. That it wouldn’t go like I planned, which…” He glanced around. “Pretty spot on there.

“So I told Rasputin and his thugs that I’d think about it—”

“What did they want with you?” Mircea interrupted to ask, and Tony shot him a look.

“What do you think? I was yours, all right? I could access your court whenever I needed to, and I had old associates who lived there all the time. And you were her highness’s right-hand guy. You knew all her secrets and were in on every plan; hell, you made half of them! And knowledge is power. But you were damned tight-lipped and your guys weren’t any better. Nobody could get anything outta them, so they needed someone on the inside—”

“You,” Mircea said. And it was amazing how much menace he managed to put into that one word.

“I told ‘em no, all right?” Tony said, looking like he’d figured out who he needed to fear. “Or I put ‘em off, anyway, ‘cause telling guys like that a flat no ain’t healthy! I was gonna respectfully decline later, only then I met Roger the Bastard Palmer. Worst decision I ever made was not killing him immediately—”

“What did my father have to do with this?” I demanded.

Tony switched his look to me so he could glower, which he didn’t dare do to Mircea. “Everything! It all started going bad as soon as I met him! I shoulda known; I even told Alphonse that that guy was nothing but trouble—”

“But you didn’t kill him.”

“No, more’s the pity!” He sent me another baleful glance. “Bastard sold me this BS about being a down-on-his-luck garbage man. One who was good at enchanting stuff as well as disenchanting it. And I always needed mages. The crap ones I had kept blowing themselves up or getting one of my shipments confiscated ‘cause their shit wards failed right alongside a goddamned Coast Guard ship, and then I had to kill ‘em—”

He waved it away. “Anyway, I needed competent help. And when I had him checked out, I discovered that he was up to his eyeballs in trouble with the Dark Circle. But that didn’t bother me. Their guys are good, and if he’d gotten in with them, it meant he knew his stuff. And if he’d managed to piss ‘em off, so much the better, ‘cause he couldn’t just up and leave me, could he? He needed a bolt hole, and I needed wards that worked!”

We had to pause again for the scholar to show up and freak out, and the gods to come screaming at us once more. And damn, I hadn’t thought they’d gotten that far, I thought, as one of them, an old man with a beard as long as he was tall, almost reached the hallway where the rooms were. He was close enough that I could see the veins in his neck sticking out, and the hunger in his eyes.

I shivered and looked away because Tony was continuing.

“But one of the guys I’d had checking Roger out recognized the broad he had with him—uh, recognized your mom,” he amended, as I glared at him. “She’d been in all the papers after she up and ran off with some mage—your dad, I guess—and he had an eye for a pretty face. So I went back to see Agnes again—”

“Lady Phemonoe,” Rhea said angrily, because we were all on edge.

“Whoever, to get the damned reward. She was offering a fuck ton of money for information that would lead to her heir’s return. So I figured, what if I could tell her exactly where she was? That would be worth even more, right? Not to mention making a friend in high places, which I might need depending on how things went with the rebellion.”

“But it didn’t go well. I figured it would be easy since I already knew her, and since I had the info she was after. That got me an audience right away, but it was weird. We were talking, all normal like, then her eyes turned white out of nowhere, and she started speaking in this monotone and told me to join Rasputin if I wanted to live. Told me I’d end up worse than dead if I didn’t. Told me—damn I don’t even know what all she told me, because she freaked me the hell out. And then she said to leave and never return, or she’d kill me herself!”

“What did you do?” Pritkin asked, looking intrigued.

“What the hell do you mean, what did I do? One of the most powerful women on the planet, who’s buddy-buddy with the Silver Circle, threatens me with worse than death? I fucking ran! All the way back to Philly! And I damned well stayed there!”

“Of course you did,” Pritkin said thoughtfully. “Tell me, had Cassie been born by then?”

Tony looked like he didn’t understand the question, but he answered. “Yeah. That was why I thought it was a good time to go to London. Roger’s wife had just popped out a baby, so I didn’t figure either of ‘em would be going anywhere.”

Pritkin nodded and looked at me. “The Pythian power?”

“What?” I said.

“You told me that it uses a Pythia’s clairvoyance, and that you haven’t had many visions since you achieved the office as a result.”

“Yes?”

“Wasn’t the same true of your predecessor?”

“I… suppose so. The power uses our eyes—our metaphysical ones—to keep watch over the timeline, and we can’t use them simultaneously. It would be like a human trying to look in two directions at once.”

“Yet Lady Phemonoe had a vision. That was a vision, yes?”

“That was a vision, yes.”

“Then it is safe to assume that the Pythian power must have permitted it—” He paused, looking frustrated, for another round of screaming and godly fury, before continuing. “—or perhaps even planted it, as it did not want Mr. Gallina—”

“His name is Tony, or Fat Asshole if you prefer,” Alphonse said.

“You always were a huge pile of shit, you know that?” Tony asked.

Alphonse punched him in the back of the head again.

“—to tell Lady Phemonoe where to find your mother,” Pritkin soldiered on. “Whom the Spartoi were stalking at the time. Had she shown back up at the Pythian Court—”

“She would have been killed,” I said. There was no doubt about that; I’d seen what hunted her.

“Almost certainly. That is why she and your father fled to begin with.”

“The Spartoi?” Zara asked.

“Demigod sons of Ares,” Mircea explained. “They were aware that the spell Artemis had used to bar the gods from returning to Earth drew part of its power from her soul. If she died, and her soul left this realm—”

“Daddy’s home,” Gray Curls said, scowling.

“Essentially, yes.”

“Is that how they did it, then?” Zara asked. “Is that how the gods got in?” She looked at Rhea, who blinked.

“No. Artemis perished some years ago, but her soul remains in this realm. Antonio had Cassie’s father make the orb, a magical talisman, to trap both of their spirits after the assassination—”

“I was owed , all right?” The fat man said when everybody looked at him. “No reward, a death threat, and then the damned Spartoi crawling all over the place—because somebody talked and they got wind of it! But I saved you, okay?” He looked at me. “I put them off! Told ‘em I had no idea where they got the idea that I was sheltering the Pythia’s missing heir, and if she was around, you’d damned well better believe the reward was mine!

“And they bought it—”

“Of course, they did,” Mircea said. “Avariciousness was a far more believable defense than mere ignorance.”

“—so you wouldn’t even be here if not for me!”

“Should I thank you for killing my parents, too?” I asked, trying and mostly failing to keep my temper. “For trapping their souls so you could gloat over them like a trophy, just because they refused to have me See for you? For orphaning and then abusing me—”

“Abusing!” Tony snorted. “You were fine. Yeah, you had nightmares once in a while, but you were gonna have those anyway. I didn’t make you a Seer; you already were one. I just figured you should be mine in place of all that money I missed out on and all that risk I took for you . And for a while, you were really paying off. Shorting that airline stock alone made me millions—”

He was interrupted by me grabbing the front of his robe.

“Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you right now! You murdered them to steal me away; you tormented me my whole childhood; you ripped Eugenie apart —”

“That traitorous bitch! She wouldn’t tell me where you’d gone. She wouldn’t—”

I belted him, which did nothing except hurt my knuckles, and then Alphonse did it, which had a lot more effect. Tony ended up on the floor, his jaw broken for a second before he healed it, and glowered up at us. Then he spat blood and a tooth.

“You get nothing , you hear me?” he said. “Nothing more from me until I get a guarantee—”

“The only guarantee I’ll give is to kill you fast,” Alphonse said, as I spotted something gleaming softly in the dust. “And believe me, that’s a mercy considering what I was gonna do—”

He was interrupted by the scholar and the murderous horde of gods again, while I crouched down and retrieved something from the floor. Something that had fallen out of Tony’s pocket when he hit the ground. Something that looked a lot like—

“Give me that!” he reached for it, only to take a boot to the face from Alphonse. I didn’t even reply. Just scooped my parents’ orb into the scarf Pritkin had lent me, tied the edge into a knot around it, and then tied the whole thing around my waist.

“I think I can take it from here,” Rhea said.

“Yeah!” Tony nodded. “Why don’t you do that? Tell ‘em what they owe me! Tell ‘em they wouldn’t even have this chance but for me! I saved the goddamned world! ”

“You haven’t yet,” she said.

“Well, if they succeed, I will have! Who else were you gonna send back there? And you know, I could have stayed, right? I could have flashed back in, gone through a portal to Earth, and—”

“Watched it fall all over again?” she asked archly. She looked at me. “Tony did as my mother instructed, and joined Rasputin’s rebellion. I believe that Mage Pritkin is right and that the Pythian power wanted him to survive so that he could be useful now. And the only way to do that was to have him join the dark.

“But while he served them ably, they did not reward him as he expected. I also do not think he anticipated this,” she gestured vaguely at the destruction. “Or how little respect he receives now—”

“I’m a court jester!” Tony interrupted. So much for not saying anything else. “They keep me around to laugh at! No chance at advancement, money, influence, power—no nothing. Just an eternity of this until chicky poo here dies and they don’t need me anymore, then it’ll probably be lights out. Unless I off myself before then ‘cause I can’t take it anymore!”

“Trust me, you won’t make it that long,” Alphonse said.

“And you think I care?” Tony snarled, although he clearly did. “This wasn’t the deal!”

“The gods change the deal as it suits them,” Mircea said. “As you once did to those over whom you had power.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me all this?” I demanded. “Instead of shifting us all with no notice and almost getting us killed?”

“Why, you know that never occurred to me,” he said, sarcastically wide-eyed despite still being on the floor. “Sure, I been risking my ass for nothing, when I shoulda just talked to you. I’m sure you woulda been fine if I just waltzed up at that party the fey were throwing, and we’d had a nice, long conversation—before you blasted me out of existence! I wouldn’t have gotten three words out, and you know it!”

And, okay, couldn’t really argue there.

“Plus, you were hanging around this jackass,” he hiked a thumb at Alphonse, “and then you went missing and—I grabbed you as soon as you showed up and weren’t with him, okay? Only he threw himself at you at the last minute and got caught in the backwash. And I guess your Mom was about outta juice, ‘cause she dropped you in the right year but the wrong place, while I ended up back here.”

“He was supposed to bring you to me, but there were too many people around you when the shift happened, and it drained your mother too badly,” Rhea said. “She is still recovering—”

“So we didn’t know if you made it or not,” Tony added.

“Grabbed us, why?” That was Pritkin, ignoring yet another round of scream, clunk, augghhh from the scholar and the gods, which was almost becoming normal background noise at this point. “Why did you send him back?” he asked Rhea.

“To stop you.”

“From losing the contest?” I asked.

“No. From winning it.”