Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,217

as I’m about to if you don’t get your filthy hand off me!” he told Pritkin.

“Let him go,” I told Pritkin, who glanced at me, then released him abruptly enough that the man staggered and almost fell, because he’d been pulling away.

“Demonic scum!” he said, and whirled—on the other side of the city, because I wasn’t in the mood.

Pritkin blinked, because I guess he hadn’t expected that. One of the other mages swore, and several others came running over. Because it didn’t look like they had, either.

“Pythian acolyte,” Pritkin said quickly. “She shifted him, nothing more.”

“And why are you eating with one of them?” a dark-haired mage demanded, like it was any of his business.

“I haven’t seen you before,” a guy with slicked-back blond hair said, glaring at me.

“And that’s my problem how?”

He scowled. “I’m going to need you to come with me.”

“Thomas!” the slightly smarter mage said, sounding exasperated. “You’re as bad as Harry. Let them eat in peace.”

“I’ll let them eat—as soon as we’ve verified the situation with Lady Herophile—”

“Cassie,” Pritkin said, seeing my face. Which had probably been getting redder, considering my mood. I’d had a day, and these assholes weren’t making it better.

“Let me help you with that,” I said, and shifted the blond straight to Gertie.

And then Pritkin was on his feet, at the same moment that weapons were drawn by the half a dozen assholes who were left.

I kept my seat. “Spatial shifts are easy,” I told them. “I can do this all day. And you can explain yourselves to Gertie in person. She’s already in a mood, so have fun with that.”

“You can’t go around shifting war mages!” the brunet snapped.

“I can when they start it by assaulting my dining companion—for being my dining companion,” I said, and ate a potato at him.

The man started to answer, but the smart one grabbed his arm. “She’s right. You want to verify, you call the Lady and ask her. This is over.”

The brunet glared some more—I guess the hotheaded blond was his friend—and shrugged off the smart guy’s hand. But he went back to his table, after straightening his lapels at us, like some tough guy out of a movie. As if to say that he was only doing this because he felt like it.

I felt like adding him to Jowly’s swim around the Thames, but Pritkin put a hand on my arm. “Don’t.”

I didn’t. Mainly because I didn’t want to interrupt my happy food haze any more than I already had. The rest of them left, but nobody apologized, not even the smart one.

Maybe he wasn’t so smart after all.

“Let’s go get a coffee,” Pritkin said, eyeing me.

“Not a chance.” I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of thinking they’d run us off. “Let them be the ones to leave.”

“They’re merely concerned for you.”

“They shouldn’t be!”

“Shouldn’t they?”

I’d been glaring at the guys, but at that, I turned to look at him. “What?”

A silence shield snapped shut around the table, probably because the asshole contingent was trying to spy, judging by their expressions when the sound cut out.

“They have a point,” Pritkin told me.

I frowned. “What point? They treated you like some kind of monster!”

“Cassie.” The green eyes were sober. “I am some kind of monster.”

I started to give the response that deserved when he stopped me.

“Adramelech said you know what I am, what my father’s experiments made of me.”

And goddamn it, Adra! I sighed and leaned back against my chair. “That’s what this is about? I should have made him promise to let me tell you.”

Pritkin stared at me. “How can you be this blasé? You know—”

“What I know is that it doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes everything!”

“How? You’re still the same person you’ve always been. The same as last week and the week before that, and all the other weeks before you knew—”

“That I was designed to be a killer, just like the Ancient Horrors?”

“Bullshit!”

“That is what Adramelech thinks,” he persisted. “What the council were trying to prevent when they cursed me.”

“I know,” I said, covering his hand with mine, because he was clearly taking this hard. “Adra said as much—”

“You know?”

I nodded.

Pritkin frowned. “What do you know?”

“That the council freaked out. The genetically designed super soldier and the demigoddess scared the crap out of them. They found out that we were involved, were afraid that you’d increase my power more than they could handle, and killed you to deprive me of my ‘battery.’ Adra admitted it when you were off getting your weapons, and