Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,174

back. “Including your Pythia.”

“I told her!” Rhea thundered. “I said—”

“I heard what you said,” Rico interrupted. Because of course he had. He’d been in the kitchen last night when Rhea and I had had our abortive conversation. Which, with vampire hearing, was practically the same as being in the room. But I guessed Rhea hadn’t remembered that.

Because she suddenly burst into tears. But, weirdly enough, her voice still sounded furious. I couldn’t see her, being out of sight of the doorway, but her tone was eloquent when she half yelled, half sobbed: “I’m useless! Don’t you understand? I’ve always been useless!”

She said some other stuff, but it was muffled by something that was probably her head being pressed against a strong, manly chest. And, you know, maybe this wasn’t the best moment to interrupt after all. I quietly set the suitcase down by the wall and tiptoed away.

Only to find myself confronted by another one, this time in Fred’s hands, as he snuck out of his door down the hall.

He saw me at almost the same moment that I saw him, and his face went through a number of contortions before settling on panic. He suddenly broke and ran, scampering for the front door like all the hounds of hell were after him. And vamps scamper fast.

But so do shifting Pythias.

“Not a chance,” I said, appearing in front of him as he reached for the door handle.

That resulted in me getting poked in the stomach before he snatched his hand back with a curse, but I was past caring at this point. Goddamn it! Couldn’t life give me one peaceful morning before the shit show started? Like, just once?

“Cassie—”

“Don’t ‘Cassie’ me!” I snapped. “Take that case back to your room, right freaking now, or I swear—”

“What’s the point?” he demanded. “I know you know—”

“You’re damned right I know! And we’re going to have it out—”

“You said we could leave!”

“Everybody but you. You don’t get to just slink away somewhere without—”

“I wasn’t slinking!” he told me indignantly.

I glared at him.

His cheeks started burning. Fred was the only vamp I knew of who blushed. “I was sort of slinking,” he admitted.

The door opened behind me, and I almost fell through. “Cassie?” That was Pritkin.

Normally, I’d have had a few things to say to him, too, considering everything. But the huge wave of relief at seeing him back safely was fighting with my righteous indignation. Not that I could see him, since something huge and pillowy and white was pushing its way through the door instead.

It looked like an overstuffed comforter, only fluffier.

“Try this on,” he told me, from somewhere behind it.

“What?”

“Cassie?” That was Augustine, coming in from the halls in a huff, a beautifully quilted bathrobe falling off one bony shoulder and his hair standing out everywhere.

“What?” I said, exasperated.

“Somebody said there are witches here?”

“Yeah. They’re in the kitchen—”

“What? What are they doing there?”

“Having breakfast—”

“Having—are you insane?” he practically shrieked, running up to me. “You know what we have in the—”

I jerked him down by the front of the bathrobe and clapped a hand over his mouth. “Shut. Up.”

“Cassie?” That was Tami.

“What?”

“Don’t take that tone with me,” she said, hands on slim hips. “Why didn’t you tell me we’re about to have eight more mouths to feed?”

“What?”

“Not to mention beds to come up with, when we only have four extra rooms right now!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Cassie?” That was Rico, towing a tear-streaked Rhea into the room behind him.

“I’m talking about the new initiates,” Tami said, her face thunderous. “We don’t have staff for the ones we already have, and you’re accepting new ones? How in the hell—”

“Hold that thought,” I told her, then grabbed Rhea and shifted us to my room, where the silence charms had better be working, damn it!

And then a thought occurred, and I shifted back just in time to slam the door on Fred again. “You stay until I say!” I told him. And then I looked at Marco. “He stays!”

“He’s not going anywhere,” Marco said, and Fred sighed and sagged against the wall.

“Cassie—” Tami said.

“In a minute!”

I shifted back to Rhea, who was standing in the middle of my bedroom, looking nonplussed. “Did you mean it?” I asked her.

“Mean . . . what?” she asked, starting slightly, because I guess she hadn’t seen me flash back in.

“That you wanted to help me?”

“What?”

“The other day!” I grabbed her by the arms and shook her a little. “Did you mean it?”

“I—yes. Yes, of course I did. But I