Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,30

go deal with it. Of course he had. Without so much as telling me a word about it, because I might have had an objection to his getting himself killed just after getting himself killed!

Honestly, was it any wonder that, sometimes, I just wanted to stay in a bubble bath and never get out?

A bubble bath in a vamp-built penthouse in a hotel that Mircea owned, I thought evilly. One I was taking while he and the senate battled it out for who got to pull my strings this week. I was supposed to be an independent entity, able to arbitrate between the various supernatural groups because I wasn’t beholden to one side over another. Could I do that here? Could I do that anywhere?

I’d told the covens that I could—that I would—and had somehow sounded confident doing it. But if Agnes hadn’t managed it, what shot did I have? I couldn’t even keep Mircea from taking my goddamned bodyguards! It was maddening!

Like my loofah brush suddenly deciding to break. I guess I’d been scrubbing a little too hard, and it snapped, causing me to spear my damned leg with a splinter. Damn it!

I threw it across the room, which was childish, but I was stressed. And was even more so when it hit not the smirking dolphins on the far wall but something in between. Something that wasn’t there, because nothing was, but that gave a yelp anyway.

And then rushed at me, an invisible terror except for the suds now streaming down its chest.

Chapter Seven

I should have shifted out and let my bodyguards deal with it, but it happened so fast that I reacted instead, sending a time wave that froze whatever it was in its tracks.

Or, to be more precise, in midair.

As far as I could tell, it had been halfway through a leap and now was stuck there as time literally stopped all around it. Except for me. I was left panting and slumped against the side of the tub, because time stoppages might not work on me, but they were still a bitch! And then slowly climbing to my feet and wading over to a towel rack, grabbing one, and wrapping it around me.

And going to see what this latest threat was.

I still wasn’t sure. It was frozen solid, I could tell that much from the power loss alone, as well as the line of suds, hovering like a small cloud in the middle of the room. I tried throwing some more up there, but they didn’t help all that much. I got a watery, soapy outline that was vaguely humanoid, but that was it.

So I went and got some body powder instead.

Halfway through shooting bursts of talcum everywhere, I started frowning. An expression that was a full-on scowl by the time I finished plastering what looked like a human-shaped statue, if a lumpy and rather streaky one. Not to mention wobbly, as my spell started to unravel.

My hands were shaking from the power loss by then, so I fished a little potion bottle out of my makeup bag, downed about a third of it, and felt ease and calm flood back through my system. And herbs scrape my tongue, because the stuff was nasty. I returned the bottle and brushed my teeth to get the taste out of my mouth, and because some people around here were nosy. Then came back over, sat on the edge of the tub, and waited.

It didn’t take long.

The long legs started flailing, the equally elongated arms started windmilling, and the momentum the body had had before time literally stopped around it suddenly carried it forward—straight into the tub.

It—or rather, he—hit down, half-in and half-out of the large basin, with his head underneath the water. He came up, gasping and shrieking, and then choking, because I guess something went down the wrong way. Until one of the long legs scrabbling for purchase on the water-slick floor slipped, and he ended up getting dunked again.

He finally got two hands on the side of the tub and pushed up, popping his head out. Or I guess he did. The water had washed off the powder, making him invisible again from the chest up.

But I still had enough indicators to get the broken end of the bath brush under what I guessed was a chin. And it must have been close enough. Because the invisible man suddenly decided to become visible again.

Leaving me looking into the bug-eyed, terrified face of—

“Augustine?” I’d strongly