Brave the Tempest (Cassie Palme) - Karen Chance Page 0,100

they presumably had legions of soldiers under their command.

But they had been, and they’d killed him. And even though they’d reconsidered later, when they decided it might be useful to have a friendly Pythia on their side, and had given me the counterspell, I still wasn’t okay with it. We needed them for the war, so I was playing nice, but that did not remotely mean I was okay.

They had better hope this is about me, I thought, as we turned into a small office. Because if they decided to go after Pritkin again, whatever had happened outside would be the least of their worries. And then the heavy door snicked closed behind us.

Chapter Twenty-three

The man who rose to meet us was not any more prepossessing than his office, which matched the rest of the hotel. There was a desk that looked like it ought to be in a high school classroom facing a couple of hard wooden chairs. There were carpet tiles on the floor under my feet, the industrial kind with no padding, one of which was missing and showing a patch of plain, concrete subfloor. And, strangely, there was an aquarium, small and dingy, bubbling against one wall, complete with a small scuba diver in an old-fashioned wet suit, endlessly waving.

And then there was Adra.

Adra, aka Adramelech, was a trans-dimensional being of immense power and, presumably, wealth. Yet his go-to disguise was a discount glamourie that looked like it had been picked up at the magical equivalent of a convenience store, crammed in between the five-hour energy potions and the Slim Jims. It was not exactly high-end, is what I’m saying.

It left him looking like he belonged with the desk: a slightly portly, middle-aged high school teacher, with a pleasant, round face that managed to be slightly creepy because of its complete lack of identifying features. Most people have something at least slightly unusual about them: acne scars, buck teeth, a bump on their nose, freckled lips. Something.

But not Adra. He’d tried out a few accessories in the past, to dress up the face, like a kid with a Mr. Potato Head doll—a cleft chin, a mustache, some truly scary bushy eyebrows—but none of them had really helped. And I guess he’d been too busy to bother today. Because this version had perfectly smooth baby skin; pale, almost colorless eyes; completely average features; and short blond hair cut in the most boring style possible.

A police sketch artist would have had a fit.

I, for one, was grateful for the normalcy. And then, when Pritkin almost squeezed my hand in two, I realized that this wasn’t really normal at all. Because that spot outside? Yeah, that wasn’t nearly as big of a deal as suddenly coming face-to-face with his murderer.

Because guess who had thrown that damned spell?

But if Adra felt awkward, he didn’t show it. “Ah, Mage Pritkin. Kind of you to come along as the Pythia’s . . . pit bull?”

“Partner,” I said sharply, and sat down without being asked.

Pritkin took the other chair, and thankfully the aggressive energy he’d shown with the Allû was no longer in evidence. And neither was anything else. The vibrant man I’d been with all night was shut down and closed off, with only the single vein beating at his temple giving any indication of his feelings.

’Cause, yeah. He had always hated this place. And, I assumed, even more now.

But he’d come with me, nonetheless.

I promised myself to make it up to him, and looked at Adra. “You wanted something?”

“Indeed, yes,” he said simply, and casually lit a cigarette.

Most of the demons I knew smoked; I wasn’t sure why. Pritkin always said it was because it reminded them of home, all smoke and brimstone, but I’d learned not to listen to Pritkin about the hells. My current theory was that the smoke helped to obscure less-than-perfect glamouries, and the actions of fishing out a cigarette, lighting, and then smoking it gave them a set rota of things to do with their hands. That was helpful, because some of them who visited earth didn’t have the usual number, or understand what passed for normal human motions.

Smoking gave them an out.

Or, at least, it used to.

“That’s going out of style,” I told him, to give Pritkin a minute. “People don’t smoke so much anymore.”

Adra sighed in what sounded like annoyance. “Humans live on fast-forward,” he told me. “It’s quite distressing.”

“Is it?”

“Terribly. I adopt a habit to help me fit in, and the next