somebody else to be the one making little-understood bargains with unexpectedly powerful supernatural entities.
“Honestly, I still don’t feel all that safe,” offered Flick.
Smiling, Yelena ran the tip of her tongue across her too-white vampire teeth. “Wise, child.”
I shrugged. “Actually, I reckon we’re good. If you’re smart”—my gaze flicked to Yelena a moment—“and however much I might dislike you, I don’t think you’re not smart, you’ll realise that you’ve flat-out betrayed basically everybody. Which means your best bet probably is Safernoc. At least if they kill you they won’t take a century to do it.”
Yelena’s expression was pure venom, but there wasn’t a lot she could do now. At least, I hoped there wasn’t a lot she could do. I never quite knew how this sort of magic worked. Still, she left without much more complaint and Tara left with her. However strong an oath before Apollo was, there was no way she’d let Yelena out of her sight until the pack had determined how to deal with her.
I hoped we’d made the right call. I certainly liked Tara’s style of leadership more than I liked the dowager’s but it had blown up in her face once or twice already, for mostly me-related reasons, and if it didn’t pan out better this time she’d probably be totally fucked. And then what would happen?
Sadly, and selfishly, there wasn’t time to think about it. Not while there was still the more pressing issue that Elaine was out wandering the Lake District somewhere after dark and there might still be other servants of the King of Shadows, the Queen of Winter to contend with. And even if there weren’t any, if Yelena and the knights had been it, she could still fall over a cliff and die.
Then again, we did have a secret weapon.
“So, Patrick,” I tried. “Don’t suppose your deep, abiding, and definitely never-ending connection to Elaine is giving you any indication of where she is right now?”
He made a set of movements that were uncomfortably like sniffing the air. “She is not in danger, and she is not afraid, but she is lost. I should go to her.”
“You do that. Just let us follow you.”
He bolted. Of course he bolted. I bolted after him, leading to this uncomfortably Benny-Hill-like chain of us crocodiling out of the fake castle and into the wilds of the Lake District, with Patrick heading off heedless of pursuit, me keeping up as best I could and the two undergraduates trailing behind.
This was a total recipe for getting lost, ambushed, or injured, but I couldn’t see that many ways around it.
Once or twice I thought I saw a giraffe through the trees. I almost convinced myself it was my imagination.
33
Rushes & Lions
Perhaps it was the dark, perhaps it was the relatively unspoilt countryside of a national park, perhaps it was the eerie silver mist that rolled off the lake, but things were feeling at least twenty percent more vision-questy than they had a few minutes ago.
And that was before the white doe and the four lions.
Patrick stumbled to a halt. “I can no longer feel her,” he said. He seemed genuinely shocked. It must have been weird for him, his my-woman-is-in-danger sense had been part of his whole deal for well over a century. Losing it must have been like going suddenly numb.
“Call it a hunch,” I told him, "but what do you say we follow the pack of heraldic beasts?”
Flick and Sofia brought up the rear, both of them out of breath. “Why,” Flick gasped., “Are there. Lions?”
“I’m about ninety-three percent certain that it’s a holy grail thing.”
That earned me a suspicious look from Patrick. “Elaine is a fragile and innocent girl. Why must you persist in imagining that she is some kind of mystical figure?”
“You mean apart from the fucking lions?” I asked. “And your frankly spotless track record of dating young women with unknown magical powers?”
“Uh, Kate?” Sofia nudged me gently. “The animals are getting away.”
Oh right, the actual quest. Stupid mythic imperatives always getting in the way of a good argument. We set off after them, more slowly now because they were—I almost wanted to say proceeding in state—and there was that woobly, dreamy vibe that so much high-end wizard stuff had going on.
We followed the weird menagerie down into a valley, where the doe lay down on a bed of rushes and the lions gathered around her. Then there was a fading and a shifting and a shimmer in the air, and the