Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,110

we needed staff.

“There have to be people in Vegas,” I said. “There’s a whole supernatural community out here. And with MAGIC out of the picture—”

“But that’s just it,” Tami said. “MAGIC’s being rebuilt. They’re mostly expecting to get their old jobs back. And the ones who aren’t don’t pass the Marco test.”

“I know I’m going to regret this, but what’s the Marco test?”

She sighed, and lifted her braids off her neck, because it was hot. And then decided to twist them up into a bun. “He used to do background checks for Mircea before he got assigned here. And I don’t mean just credit checks, but real PI-type stuff. It was his job to make sure that anybody employed by the family was completely legit. I think he also checked on anyone the family was doing business with.”

“But that’s a good thing, right?”

She grinned ruefully. “Sure, it’s a good thing. Until it gets ramped up to an eleven on a ten-point scale ’cause he’s not letting anybody suspicious near his girls. Got a traffic ticket when you were sixteen? Next! Ever late on a credit card bill? Later! Got a hangnail—”

“I’ll talk to him,” I promised.

She rolled her eyes again. “Good luck.”

“Oh my God, we’ve got tequila!” Saffy said. She’d been rooting through the small bar cart, and now she pulled out a bottle that had been hiding behind the rest. She took Tami’s beer glass, which I’d just filled up, away from me. “Forget that. I’m making margaritas!”

I looked at Tami, who grinned. “I’m not turning down a margarita.”

“Have both,” I told her.

“Now, there’s an idea!” Saffy said.

“I’m gonna be putting sugar in the meatloaf again,” Tami said obscurely.

I decided not to ask, and went over to the railing with my beer. I didn’t want a margarita. I wanted not to think for a while.

It didn’t work.

I whirled on Adra as soon as the door closed. “If he dies—”

“I assure you, that will not happen.”

There were times when I wished for Mircea’s glibness of tongue, his pretty turn of phrase, his honeyed words. This wasn’t one of them. “Bullshit! You already tried to kill him once—”

“And now you know why.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “He isn’t one of those . . . those things! Even if the rumors are true, Nimue was his great-grandmother. At most, he’s a sixteenth god—”

“And his father was a powerful demon lord of the type Tethys and her sort targeted. They were trying to make super soldiers; they didn’t go after the weak. And with the fey blood added in—”

“Then you admit it,” I said, my body going cold. “You think Rosier accidentally re-created the gods’ experiments. You think—”

“Accidentally?” Adra’s brows grew together. “Yes, that is what he claimed. But he needed power to help him hold on to that rickety throne of his. He could have gone after any of the half-breeds in Wales, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. Instead, he chose her—”

“That’s not Pritkin’s fault!”

“No, it wasn’t,” he agreed, surprising me. “And killing the heir to one of the great thrones is no small thing. Which is why we watched and waited—until he killed one of us in a duel, showing his strength at a time when he was barely an infant to our eyes! Many wanted him dead then, and more agreed when he returned to the hells, searching for his father, determined to take the life of yet another member of council—”

“He paid for that!” My voice was breathy, even a little squeaky. I didn’t care. “He was exiled, almost powerless, for a century—”

“Yes, he was exiled. To earth. Where he met the daughter of Artemis.”

His eyes met mine steadily, and I stared back, feeling like I’d just been turned into a block of ice. And, suddenly, my harried, frantic, desperate thoughts slowed way, way down. Some part of me that I barely recognized, some more logical, unemotional part took over. Because if I got this wrong . . .

I didn’t think it would be a good idea to get this wrong.

“The very idea of a daughter of the Great Huntress,” Adra continued, “she who had hounded some of my people to near extinction—that was bad enough. But the thought of you with the scion of the incubi, whose abilities magnify power—”

“We’re not a threat to you,” I said, almost eerily calm.

Adra’s sharp eyes narrowed. “You can generate the energy of a god between you—”

“But not hold on to it. It almost burned both of us up before