Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,140

sweet odor flooded the air around the bed, despite the fact that I hadn’t given her permission to smoke. Not that she’d asked.

I sat up some more and drew the covers farther around me. It was cold in here, more so than I remembered. Considering the size of this pile and the heat outside, the consul’s air-conditioning bill had to be really something.

“And what does that mean?” I finally asked, because she seemed content to sprawl there and smoke at me.

“Pale blue, eerily so, and distant, like they look right through you. Worked a trick in the senate chamber, though. You had those witches pissing themselves.”

“There’s no such thing as seer’s eyes,” I told her irritably. “They look just like everybody else’s.”

“Then I guess your mother did you a solid.”

“I take after my father, and did you want something?” I snapped, my temper unraveling. “Because I want a bath.”

A really hot one. Preferably back in my big, sauna-sized tub in Vegas. Although how I was supposed to get there, I didn’t know.

“There’s a change of clothes in the bathroom,” Dorina told me. “Your acolyte brought them earlier.”

“Acolyte?”

“Formidable old gal with a foul mouth and an attitude? I liked her.” She blew smoke at me.

Hilde. Bet she’s pissed, I thought darkly. God knew what kind of shit I’d just stirred up with the covens.

“There were some witches who tried to follow you out; said they knew you. They were still around, arguing with people, when she showed up.” Dorina grinned past the smoke. “Might be one of the top ten dressing-downs I’ve ever heard in my life—possibly top five. It was a thing of beauty.”

Great.

Way to make things worse, I thought, because that was probably Evelyn and company that she’d just told off, and they were the nice witches!

Or they used to be.

“The girls?” I asked hoarsely. “Are they—”

“They’re fine—or they were last time I saw them. One tried to follow the covens through the portal, and had to be wrestled down by Pink Hair—”

“Other way around.”

“What?”

“Saffy, the one with the pink hair, is the firebrand.”

Dorina raised an eyebrow at me, in a way that eerily reminded me of her father. “Yeah, not so much. The dark-haired chick was going off. Her father—Marsden?” I nodded. “Yeah, he had to spell her with something to calm her down, after the remaining witches tackled her to the ground to keep her from taking on a whole coven. Only it didn’t look like it worked so well, because she was still screaming mad when your acolyte showed up and dragged both girls off by the ear.”

Holy shit.

“Don’t know what happened after that,” she added, grinning.

Neither did I, and I didn’t want to. What the hell was wrong with Rhea, and how was I supposed to fix it? How was I supposed to fix any of this?

I momentarily thought about burying my head under the covers, but I doubted it would help. I knew what would help, but that was back home, too. I settled for sitting there miserably, cold chills climbing over my body, my head pounding and my stomach growling. And scowled at the fearsome creature of legend sitting on my bed.

“Great, thanks for telling me. And you’re still here because?”

She grinned. And then flopped onto the bed like she owned the place, which, considering that she was blood, was probably fair. “God, I’m glad you’re an asshole!”

“I’m not,” I snapped.

“Then you’re giving a really good impression, but don’t take it the wrong way.” She rolled her head over to look at me. “I vastly prefer assholes to the slick, smarmy, too-diplomatic-to-ever-say-one-true-thing types around here. At least with assholes, you know where you stand.”

“And where do I stand with you?”

She just smiled. “I want to make sure we have an agreement.”

“About what?”

“What I said in the senate chamber. Jonathan is going to poke his creepy head out, sooner or later, and I want him alive.”

“Fine. Got it.” I threw back the bedclothes and started to get up, only to have a deceptively small hand latch onto my arm with the speed of a striking snake and the strength of a bodybuilder.

Make that ten bodybuilders, I thought, because I struggled for a minute and went exactly nowhere. It might as well have been a statue that had latched onto me. God, I didn’t need this!

“What do you want?”

“Assurance. Jonathan lives off magic; he’s drawn to it like a fly to light. And you’re the brightest spark around.”

I frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

“I