Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,2

where the life energy shed by visitors kept the hungry ghosts going. But for some, like Billy, it was an enchanted item, like a talisman, that collected enough power to let a ghost survive. Although survival kind of loses its luster when you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, buried underneath a river.

Billy had been lucky; some fishermen had trawled up the gaudy ruby necklace he lived in, which had eventually ended up in the magical junk shop where I’d stumbled across it. But what if they hadn’t? And what if, instead of being able to explore the area for fifty miles or so around his home—his usual range when I wasn’t topping him up—Billy had been trapped inside, all alone, for who knew how long? Only to slowly realize that the person who had put him there was dead, and that he’d never get out?

I felt a hard shiver go down my spine.

I guessed Billy did, too, because he rippled all over, just once, like a gust of wind had blown through him.

“Cassie—”

“I’ll take it,” I told the salesman, who had started toward a large bookcase, the tome under his arm, but at that he turned around.

And, suddenly, I was looking at Santa Claus after all. The man was positively beaming. “Oh, of course, of course. So useful for . . . any number of things. I’ll add it to the pile, shall I?”

He looked at the counter, which a delighted bunch of little girls had already piled high. I nodded, and he started off again, only to have me call him back a second time. Because the pouf was losing its tiny cotton mind.

“And that,” I said. What the hell. I’d gift it to one of my bodyguards if it was too much of a nuisance.

“Excellent choice,” the salesman said, his eyes gleaming, and hurried off before I changed my mind.

“Thanks,” Billy told me quietly.

I nodded and bent down to pat the little hassock, which started running around in circles excitedly, as if it somehow knew it had found a home.

“Lady?” That was Rhea, my acolyte.

Rhea was in jeans today, too, having been persuaded—not that it had taken a lot of talking—to give up the white, Victorian-looking dresses that the Pythian Court had worn for more than a century. I’d been told they were an improvement on what had gone before, but found that hard to believe. The girls were now dressed in shorts, because Vegas in the summer is scorching, and various brightly colored tees with cartoon characters on them, because they were kids.

Rhea, on the other hand, was nineteen, and could choose her own clothes. And, somehow, she’d continued to look serene and otherworldly despite the lack of traditional attire. Her long, dark hair was in a messy chignon today, and her jeans had been paired with a soft blue lace shirt with a high neck.

If you didn’t know her, you’d never guess that the neckline was to cover the scars from a recent “accident” in which she’d been held captive while a dark mage tried to blackmail me with her life. So Rhea had taken what she’d thought was her only option. And my timid, soft-voiced, sweet-faced acolyte who wouldn’t hurt a fly had cut her own throat on his knife blade to ensure that he didn’t have anything left to bargain with.

Yeah.

People aren’t always what they seem.

Only, at the moment, Rhea was looking a little less timid and a little more outraged, which probably meant that something was up with the kids. She was the type who would never stand up for herself, but was a lioness in defense of the talented tots who made up the court. She had, after all, been one herself once.

“What is—oh.” I stopped, after glancing behind her. Because of course. “Hilde?”

Rhea nodded, looking over her shoulder at my not-at-all timid, frequently-made-other-people-timid acolyte Hildegarde.

Hilde was . . . something else.

The exact opposite of Rhea’s soft motherliness, Hilde could have been a Valkyrie in another existence. Admittedly, the cap of silver white curls and the wrinkles—not many, despite her almost two centuries, because the body was, um, sturdy, and filled them out—might have worked against her, but the ’tude would have gotten her in anyway. Hilde was a force of freaking nature.

She’d joined the Pythian Court only recently, coming out of retirement to return to the organization she’d belonged to many, many years ago, before her sister was chosen as Pythia instead of her. Gertie had gone on to have