Reap the Wind (2 page)

“What did you do?” we demanded, at the same time.

“What?” we said again.

And then “Stop that!”

And Pritkin did. But only so he could grab me and snarl: “It’s here, isn’t it?”

“Wh-what’s here?” I asked, as he backed me into a wall with no effort at all. Because I’ve always found a knife over my jugular to be really persuasive.

“Don’t play games,” he hissed.

I started to swallow and then stopped, afraid I’d push the blade in more. Of course, that might not matter. Since one glance at the frozen girl told me I had bigger problems than a pissed-off war mage.

There are spells that can render a person unconscious just that fast, but they wouldn’t leave her with one hand raised, adjusting a bit of material over the assets between her assets. Or cause her skirts to be stuck in a swirl, like around moving legs. Or make stray bits of her hair stay suspended in air that was no longer flowing.

She looked like someone had called her name right after she’d come out of the back, and she’d turned toward them, professional grin already in place. Only to freeze halfway through the motion and come tumbling back in here. She looked like a frame cut out of a movie, which would have been weird if I hadn’t seen that sort of thing before.

“You know,” I told him nervously, “I’ve never felt less like a game in my—”

“What you stole from me!” he yelled, making me flinch. And freak out, since I wasn’t sure I hadn’t just slit my own throat.

And then a voice came from the outer room. “In back! Check it out.”

Pritkin and I froze, stiff as the girl on the floor. I don’t know what his reasoning was, but mine ran something like: crap. That command had been in English, which was weird enough considering where we were. But not as much as hearing it in imperious female tones, in a place where women were tolerated only if they were with a man or serving drinks.

It can’t be, I told myself sternly. You’re just being paranoid. Even your luck isn’t that—

And then the curtain was flung back and Pritkin let go of me to face off with . . . two little girls?

That’s what they looked like at first glance, two teenagers wearing long, white gowns, their red and brown curls held back with ribbons from their innocent faces. But I knew the drill, I knew the goddamned
uniform
, and innocent they weren’t.

“Oh,
shit
,” I said, causing the brunette’s head to jerk up.

Her hand followed the motion a second later, but I’d expected that and already thrown myself at the floor, jerking Pritkin down with me. As a result, the time wave she threw rippled overhead, missing us by inches. And hit something to our rear that collapsed in a cacophony of rusty metal and shattering glass that I didn’t see because I was busy.

Freezing two Pythian acolytes in place before they could do the same to me.

It was lucky I was already on my hands and knees, because the power drain of stopping time was immediate and terrible, especially after flipping through the damn stuff all day. If “day” even meant anything anymore, which I wasn’t sure it did, I was just sure I was going to throw up. And then Pritkin grabbed me again.

“Where is it?”

Dear God, he was single-minded, I thought, trying to crawl off. I’d forgotten that, somehow. Although I was remembering as he dragged me back to my feet and shook me.

I caught sight of myself—red face, tumbled blond curls, startled blue eyes—in some brass platters hanging on the wall. And damn Rosier! He must have taken off the unflattering glamourie when he sent me after his son, and hadn’t bothered to mention it.

Well, that explained my reception, anyway.

My Pritkin might not be here yet, but this one . . . well, we’d met before. To be precise, we’d met in 1793 on one of my previous time jaunts, which had been barely a year ago from his perspective. It was why I’d needed the glamourie.

Okay, and because the last time we’d met, I’d made like one of Rosier’s street toughs and mugged him.

It hadn’t been intentional—all right, it had been, but it was for his own good. He’d been looking for something he absolutely couldn’t be allowed to find, and he’d had a map on him to its location, and, well, I’d had no choice but to take it.

And strip him and steal his clothes.

And get him beaten up by a vampire.

And then there was the small matter of burning the only map that led to the location of his most prized possession, so, yeah, I probably wasn’t his favorite person just now. But I had one big advantage. “I’m n-not t-trying to k-kill you,” I told him, pointing at the girls. “They are!”

It wasn’t a lie.

Because the frozen barmaid, and the time wave, and the girls’ prim little outfits all added up to one thing. One very, very bad thing. And if there was about to be a time battle in here, I didn’t want him anywhere near it.

“You have to go,” I told him frantically, when he finally stopped shaking me.

But Pritkin didn’t go. He just stood there, looking bemused, as I tried my best to push him out the back door. “Why?”

“Because . . . there are some . . . people . . . after me and . . . goddamnit!” The guy weighed a freaking ton.

Green eyes narrowed. “Perhaps we could work out an arrangement—”

“No! No, we can’t!”

“Give me what I want, and I will help—”

“You can’t help me with this. It’s . . . new magic,” I said, thinking fast. “Really new. Like super new.”

Pritkin frowned, but he didn’t call me on the lie, maybe because he couldn’t. This Pritkin wasn’t the spell master of my day, when there were few enchantments he didn’t know or hadn’t invented. This one was just back from an extended jaunt in hell, and was therefore out of the loop as far as magical theory went.

Way out. It was why he’d lost the property he was trying to recover from me to a couple of low-end scam artists who didn’t have as much magic in their whole bodies as he did in his little finger. But knowledge is power, and they’d known stuff he didn’t.

I could almost see the thoughts running through his head, but he still wasn’t moving. And that was a problem since he was half again as heavy as me and most of that was muscle. But I was determined, because we didn’t have a lot of time.

And then we had less, when he glanced at the curtain and then at me, and I suddenly found myself up against the wall again.

But this time, the knife was nowhere in sight.

“No, see—” I managed to say, right before a hard mouth came down on mine.

“This . . . is no time . . . for a snack!” I gasped furiously when Pritkin let me up for air. Only to have him scowl in a very disturbing impression of his father.

All the more so because the next thing I knew, a knee was spreading my thighs, hard hands were gripping my hips, and he was nuzzling my neck with little growling sounds that sent shivers all the way to my belly.

And put a crease in my forehead, because this was so typical.

Not the sexy stuff, although there’d been a few moments. . . . But moments were all they’d been, because of the whole no-sex rule and because, well, it was complicated. But the stubbornness. The arrogance. The absolute certainty that he knew better than me about
every damned thing
, yeah, that was familiar.

The last time I’d seen him, other than for that glimpse in London, had been the moment he was cursed. And just after, when I was sure I’d lost him for good. It had felt like a punch to the gut. It had felt like the end of the world. I’d thought, if only we had one more minute . . .

And now that we did, all I wanted was to give him a swift kick.

But instead, my hands were finding their way under his shirt, my fingers were ghosting over his ribs and nipples, and my palms were enjoying the feel of springy chest hair under my hands.

And then he pushed me against the wall and kissed me again.

And damn it, I knew what he was doing, I thought, returning the kiss furiously. He was trying to use incubus abilities on me, and it wasn’t going to work. Because he could feed anytime—I broke off to bite on a luscious lower lip—when we weren’t—and to suck on his chin—in the middle—and along his jaw—of a damned crisis! I bit an earlobe and heard him inhale sharply. Served him right, I thought, worrying it, and wondering how I was supposed to face a Pythia at full power when I was barely able to stand up on my own.

And then suddenly I wasn’t.

A single hand curved under my butt, lifting me, another captured my hands, shoving them over my head, and a body pressed against mine, holding me helplessly against the wall. I couldn’t touch him, I couldn’t
move
, except to wind my legs around his waist, skirts and all, and try to hold on. But he could, and he took full advantage, with little vibrations of his hips against mine that quickly had me gasping and groaning and staring at some cobwebs on the ceiling like I had no idea what they were.

And then he was groaning, too, and talking into my neck.

I couldn’t understand a word because it wasn’t English, at least I didn’t think so. But it was hard to tell with all the white noise suddenly roaring in my ears. Along with the ebb and flow of labored breathing, which might have been mine but I wasn’t sure because he was kissing me again, hot and hard and hungry, almost desperate. And his hips were moving more, pounding me into the wall until he forgot to hold my hands and they found his shoulders and I just hung on. And every time he did that
grind
again, the white noise ramped up and my heart sped up and my breathing became sobs became groans became cries until I was just screaming and thrashing and—

And . . . and . . .
oh.

I held on as wave after wave of sensation crashed through me, like a hurricane slamming into a beach. Hurricane Pritkin, I thought deliriously, as the vibrations hammered at me, wild and tumultuous and demanding. And then softer, gentler, sweeter, but no less strong for all that. I finally surfaced to find his body still pressed against mine, his breathing uneven and his fingers trembling on my jaw. A piece of my hair was stuck to his cheek. I brushed it off, panting slightly, feeling drugged and delirious and golden warm wherever our skin touched.

And then someone cleared a throat.

It wasn’t Pritkin.

I looked up, blinking. And saw a short, stout, middle-aged woman in a frilly Victorian frock framed in the doorway. She had a head full of improbable violet sausage curls and was carrying a cherry-covered parasol. The frock had cherries on it, too, big red ones on a white background, and small, round, purple glasses were perched on the end of her nose.

She looked totally nuts.

She also looked confused, although not half as much as I was.

“Are you finished?” she finally asked, politely.

I just looked at her.

“Yes, I remember,” she said, a little nostalgically. “Take a moment, girl.”

I took a moment.

And then I took another one.

“Who the hell are you?” I finally asked.

“My very question.”

I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. Then I looked at the two girls in white, who were still imitating statues on either side of the door. “Yours?” I asked carefully.

“Quite.”

I slumped back against the wall in sheer relief. “Oh, thank God.”

Brown eyes that were shrewder than the outfit would suggest narrowed. “You were expecting another answer?”

“I—well, to tell the truth, I’ve been having a little trouble with some of my . . . associates . . . lately.”

I’d almost said “acolytes,” since that’s who I’d assumed the girls were. I was a new Pythia, and not everybody from my predecessor’s court was exactly on board with the change of command. Five especially had decided that they could do without me, preferably permanently. And since they were on the loose at the moment, it had been a logical conclusion that some or all of them had hunted me down.

Logical but, apparently, also wrong.

Unless my acolytes had adopted one hell of a new dress code.

“Some trouble?” A slender eyebrow went up.

“They sort of want me dead.” It was one of the messes I was going to have to deal with as soon as I got Pritkin back.

Cherry red lips pursed. “Understandable. A rogue is a serious problem.”

“I’m not a rogue.”

That did not appear to go down well. “Whatever you are, you do not belong here.”

“Neither do you,” I pointed out. That outfit was pure Victorian excess.

She smiled gently. “Had you remained in London a little while longer, I would not have had to be.”

Well, that explained that. It looked like the nineteenth-century Pythia had taken exception to my romping through her turf; why, I didn’t know. Nobody had ever said anything before.

“Isn’t the usual procedure to, uh, ignore that sort of thing?” I asked hopefully.

The eyebrow ratcheted up another notch. “Ignore a powerful demon lord intruding into areas he oughtn’t?”

Crap. I should have known. Rosier.

He was just the gift that kept on giving, wasn’t he?

“But no matter,” she told me. “I do enjoy a bit of a chase. But I’m afraid this one is over now.”

I swallowed. Under other circumstances, she’d have been right. I’d have gone back to Victorian Britain without a fuss, on the assumption that I’d be able to talk my way out of this sooner or later. But right now, I didn’t have that option. Even if I could eventually convince her that I wasn’t a dangerous rogue, that Rosier wasn’t currently a powerful anything, and that we should therefore be allowed to go on our way, it wouldn’t matter.

It would still be too late for Pritkin.

The demon who had cast the spell had boasted that it had been selected with my abilities in mind, to make rescue unlikely. As a result, Pritkin’s cursed soul would only pass through each era of his life once. No matter how many times I came back to this year afterward, it would never be here again. And shortly beyond this point, his past became a lot more difficult to navigate, with a lengthy time spent in hell where my power didn’t work well, if at all, and then . . . an early life at a point too far back in time for me to reach.

My hands clenched on his arms. I was drained from a day of time-shifting, demon-sitting, and now Pritkin’s idea of a late-night snack. I was in no shape to challenge a Pythia who, presumably, had a lot more experience on the job than me and had two members of her court with her. Each of whom was like an extra battery pack, giving her a major advantage even if I’d been at full strength.

If I challenged her, I was going to lose.

But I didn’t have a choice. I
had
to catch Pritkin here. And based on how fast his soul had been going, it could arrive anytime.

Only, looking into the woman’s sharp brown eyes, time wasn’t something I thought I had.

And then Pritkin’s hands clenched back.

I looked up at him, surprised, but couldn’t read his expression. But he didn’t leave me wondering for long. “One kiss before you go,” he rasped.

I blinked at him, not sure I understood, and then at my counterpart. Who sighed and rolled her eyes. “Get on with it, then.”

He got on with it.

But this wasn’t a normal kiss. I knew it as soon as our lips touched, because I’d felt something like it before, although the memory had faded somewhat. Until a spine-tingling, thrumming, heady rush coursed through every cell in my body, and I remembered.

Oh God, yes, I remembered, I thought, groaning and grabbing on to his hair, his shoulders, his butt, trying to crawl up his body as he filled me with life and energy and power, to the point that I found myself laughing against his lips, the feeling so giddy, so effervescent, so light, that it simply had to come out somehow.

“All right,” the other Pythia said dryly. “I think that’s quite enough.”

I didn’t answer, being too busy giggling and holding helplessly on to Pritkin.

“Come along, girl,” she said impatiently.

“No.” It was strangled, because I was desperately trying to keep a straight face.

I failed.

Brown eyes narrowed. “You don’t want to test me, my dear.”

“You know,” I gasped, “I kind of think I do.”

And then I froze her.

The expression on her face as she toppled over really set me off, but Pritkin was already towing me through the door and back into the bar. Where people were starting to move sluggishly as her time spell unraveled. And that included one extremely odd-looking demon lord who scowled in slo-mo when he saw me run through with his son, still doubled over with laughter and strange euphoria and utter disbelief that I’d just done that.

Oh God, I was so dead, I thought hysterically.

And then a sheet of rain slapped some sense back into me.

Pritkin had pulled open the door, which almost resulted in us getting blown off our feet. It looked like the other Pythia’s time bubble extended only as far as this room. Because outside, nature was taking its course in the form of a gale of wind and sleety rain that was only slightly lessened when Pritkin jerked me around the corner and up against the side of the building.

There was intermittent cover under the eaves and the spreading arms of a tree. But unlike the dark shadows along a nearby canal, it was way too close to a window for my liking. A haze of golden light speared the darkness from between the gaps in a pair of old wooden shutters, highlighting random bits of war mage: a cheekbone, a stubbly jaw, one violent green eye.

And a pair of thin lips that opened to say:
“Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“My property!”

Oh, right. He wanted his damned map back. “We don’t have time for that,” I told him, sobering up slightly. “We have to get . . . somebody . . . and then get out of here—”

“Give me what I want and I will let you go!”

“I can’t give you what I don’t have,” I told him, distracted, because the gaps in the shutters were from warped boards, not slats, and I couldn’t see much inside. That was worrying, since Pythias weren’t affected by time spells like other people. What I’d flung at her would have bought me fifteen minutes, maybe more, with anyone else. With her . . . I honestly didn’t know how long we had.

But I was betting it came under the heading of not long enough.

Annnnnnd now Pritkin was shaking me again. “I helped you!”

“Yes, after m-mugging me,” I pointed out. Although in fairness, it felt like I’d gotten back more power than I’d given. Like, a lot more.

Which was weird, because he was looking kind of energized himself.

Along with pissed.

“I b-burnt the map,” I reminded him quickly. “You w-watched me—”

“But you’d memorized it, hadn’t you?”

“Look, can we t-talk about this another—”

“You’d memorized it”—low and furious—“and you saw something in there that brought you here!”

“And you know that h-how?”

“Don’t play dumb!”

“Trust me, she doesn’t have to,” came a cynical voice.

Pritkin’s head jerked up at sight of the specimen that had just joined us. Fortunately, Rosier was still unrecognizable. Unfortunately, it was because he’d somehow managed to fall onto my leftover glamourie.

And I guessed it wasn’t advisable to try to use two at the same time. Because the usually polished demon lord now looked like Popeye, with one bulging eye and one regular, a swollen chipmunk cheek, a bulbous nose, and a couple of shaggy brown things above his eyes that resembled fuzzy caterpillars. Caterpillars that pulled together when Pritkin grabbed his satchel.

“Does nobody in this benighted place have any respect for private property?” Rosier demanded.

I didn’t know what kind of dangerous stuff Rosier was carrying, but Pritkin took one glance at the contents and his already fearsome scowl grew exponentially. He grabbed me around the neck, facing off with Rosier, the bag held tight in the hand that wasn’t busy choking me. “Any closer and she dies!”

“Oh no, stop,” Rosier said lazily.

“I’m not bluffing,” Pritkin snarled. He looked down at me. “And now you’re going to tell me what that thing was.”

“What thing?” I asked, confused. “Look, we don’t have time for—urp.”

“I traced the thieves’ movements,” Pritkin told me, quietly vicious. “I discovered that they’d gone from England, where they stole my property, to Paris, where they sold it, via Amsterdam. I came here suspecting that they might have preferred to hide it well away from the auction site. And what do I find on the very day I arrive? My chief competitor—”

“You have to admit, it does sound damning,” Rosier murmured.

“—trying to eavesdrop on my conversation with their sister!”