Page 72 of Time's Fool

The vampire’s aristocratic lip curled, and the sky-blue eyes shot her a look. But the mage received a blow from a sword hilt to the side of his head instead of something more permanent. He slumped unconscious but alive in the vampire’s arms, although that did not appear to mollify Rhea.

“What on Earth was that?” she raged.

Louis-Cesare looked as confused as I was. “What you requested—”

“It wasn’t a request; it was an order! I am acting Pythia and this is my mission!”

“And you received compliance, did you not?” He looked disdainfully down at the mage, before dropping him in a heap.

“That’s not what I meant! What are you doing here? You grabbed hold of my spell—”

“You left me no choice. You said I could not come.”

She stared at him, probably because he’d had the temerity to act offended. “Of course, I said that! You have no business here—”

“No business?” His eyes flashed, and he suddenly looked as angry as she did. “Dorina is my—” He stopped abruptly and his gaze roamed about the space near Rhea, although they slid right over me. “You know who she is.”

“Who am I?” I asked, because I honestly wasn’t sure anymore. I was feeling a little strange.

But nobody answered.

“It doesn’t matter!” Rhea said. “You could have gotten us killed! You can’t just grab hold of a spell like that—”

“It matters to me,” Louis-Cesare said grimly. “I have no desire to interfere with your mission, whatever it may be. But I am not leaving my—I am not leaving Dorina until I am assured of her safety.”

I stared at him blearily, wondering what he meant by that and why he cared. But Rhea had a different response. She was no coward; you had to give her that.

Foolish, and possibly suicidal, but no coward.

Yet the vampire didn’t react, despite the tongue lashing that she proceeded to give him. He just stood there, water dripping off of those fine, aristocratic features, patiently waiting for her to wind down. And then slamming her against the cobblestones when another spell ricocheted off a building and burned through the air, right where they’d been standing.

And where I still was.

It burned through me, too, but I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel much of anything, except for increasing cold. And the spell tearing through what remained of me didn’t change that.

I watched it hurtle down a cross street, a brilliant yellow ball of flame surrounded by a pale outline of blue. The latter, or so I had been informed, was what living energy remained to me now that I was de-housed, so to speak. The spell bore it away, but the hole in my chest closed up right afterward and I didn’t feel the loss.

Probably because I had been forced to leave my body behind. Or rather, to leave the one that I had been using for a short time, which wasn’t actually mine. Or wasn’t mine yet.

It was all very confusing, but the best I could understand, Morgan hadn’t sent all of me into the future. She had shifted my spirit, which had sought out and inhabited the body I had in that era. But that version of me could not come back with us.

It had to stay in its own time, both for its protection and so that what was left of me might be stuffed back into my current form in this one, assuming that it was still alive. And that we could find it in these dark streets. And that it would accept my spirit back again, which was apparently not always a given.

It all made my head hurt, or it would have if I still had one. And it didn’t help that Rhea had her fist knotted in a piece of my energy and was dragging me around like a kite on a string. This, I thought, as I wafted about.

This is why I hate witches.

And then another one showed up.

“What the devil is he doing here?” Hilde demanded, as Rhea and Louis-Cesare, who had been on their way back to their feet, jumped in surprise.

Louis-Cesare managed to stay on his feet, but Rhea sat back down hard, smack in the middle of a puddle. It didn’t seem to improve her temper any. And neither did the fact that Hilde had flashed in perhaps an inch away from her face, with a little popping sound from the displaced air.

And then the older woman caught sight of me, and things immediately went from bad to worse.

She knew a great many curse words, and she used them all. Most of which I didn’t understand, although the basic sentiment was conveyed. Something which only seemed to enrage Rhea more.

“You’re one to talk!” the younger woman said, climbing out of the puddle. “You sent me back to our time to get rid of me, didn’t you? So that you could do . . . this!”

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