Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,77

would be dead if I couldn’t figure this out?

I pulled my legs up and let my head drop onto my knees. I could feel the blood vessels at my temples throb, throb, throbbing out a beat. I could smell the thing’s blood on me, a weird, peppery, fishy smell. It was gross and I was gross and I needed a bath, but it had been a very long day, and even with a shot of liquid strength, I didn’t want to move.

What was that thing?

I sat there for a while longer, until the potion did its magic and I started to feel more or less human again. A very old and creaky human, I thought, finally getting up. And catching sight of myself in the mirror.

Dear God.

I took a shower. It took a while, because there was a lot of scrubbing that needed to happen. Dried ancient demigod guts do not come off easily. Not that I knew for sure that they were from an ancient demigod, but that was my personal theory.

Everybody else seemed obsessed with what the monster had been doing there, if there were any more, how to detect them, etc., which were all good questions. But they seemed to me to be missing the point. We couldn’t fight something we couldn’t even identify. Like the Spartoi, I thought, remembering Ares’ disgusting children.

Nobody had realized that they were still in the world, either. Had this been another demigod, some long-forgotten spawn of an elder deity sent to screw with us? It seemed at least possible, especially now. If the invasion had to be delayed and we missed the upcoming window, it would certainly help the other side. Caedmon had said there wouldn’t be another opportunity like this for a decade, forcing us to fight on a more or less even playing field thereafter.

I didn’t want an even playing field! I wanted a damned advantage for a change! I was tired of this war; I wanted a chance to finish it quickly—and so did everybody else.

Denying us that . . . yeah.

Maybe it would be worth burning a demigod.

I rubbed the back of my neck. I actually kind of hoped that was the answer. Because that would mean this was a one-off. Otherwise . . .

I didn’t want to think about “otherwise.”

The fish guts finally came out of my hair, which I didn’t bother blowing dry. I also didn’t bother getting dressed, unless you counted panties, an oversized T-shirt, and my big, fluffy pink bathrobe. I was being petty, I knew that, but damn it, this wasn’t just my office, it was my home. If petitioners didn’t like how I looked, maybe they ought to make a goddamned appointment!

I didn’t want to see anybody anyway, I thought sulkily while running a comb through my wet hair. I wanted to go to bed, pull the covers over my head, and forget today ever happened. I wanted a bolt-hole like Billy had, where I could just disappear and lick some wounds. I wanted to be left alone!

But I knew how likely that was.

I finally left my bedroom and walked down the hall, still fuming, only to run into Fred, coming from the direction of the kitchen and almost weighted down with trays. “Here, hold this,” he told me, shoving one of them into my hands.

“Are you . . . feeling okay?” I asked after getting a look at the contents. Because the silver serving dish appeared to contain cooked broccoli, mushrooms, and asparagus, which was absurd. Fred considered vegetables and arsenic to be essentially the same thing.

“Yeah, the smell was making me nauseous, too,” he said, agreeing with the point I hadn’t been making. “But don’t worry; I got the good stuff.”

“What good stuff?” I asked, trailing behind as he headed for the terrace.

“All sorts!” He grinned at me over his shoulder. “We’re having s’mores!”

Broccoli s’mores? I thought, but followed him out anyway. And then stopped dead, and almost dropped the tray, because we did not have a visitor. We had—

“Pritkin!”

A blond head looked up, and for a long moment, I just stared. Not only because he looked good, although he did—he really did. The green eyes were bright and lacking the bloodshot quality they’d had lately; the face had filled out slightly, back to its usual square-jawed stubbornness instead of being gaunt and full of unfamiliar shadows; and the hair . . . well, the hair was a disaster, but I probably wouldn’t have recognized him otherwise. In short,