Page 135 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

“Hell, you don’t even need to,” Alphonse said. “Go back and help old me kill Tony before he can do whatever he did. Then this future,” he looked around malevolently. “Never happens, right?”

I stared at him. “You’d make a good Pythia.”

“Don’t have the assets,” he said, grabbing his chest. “But I pick up on stuff fast when it’s my ass.”

He looked at Pritkin and scowled. Because the mulish look was back, and there was no spell to account for it this time. “What is it?” I asked.

“I can’t,” Pritkin said.

“What do you mean you can’t?” Alphonse asked, getting in his face faster than I could blink.

I could have told him that was a waste of time. If anything, it was likely to have the opposite effect . . . and it did. “You want to take a step back,” Pritkin said.

“What I want to do right now, I can’t say ‘cause there’s ladies present. So start talking or—”

“Or what? You’ll feed me to those things?”

“I won’t have to! They’re coming for all of us!”

“Yes, they are,” Faerie said, tilting her head. “You are running out of time.”

“So do your thing!” Alphonse said and grabbed Pritkin’s shoulder.

Only to find himself on the floor—for a second, until he jumped back up. And was met by a hand on his arm, but it wasn’t Pritkin’s. “Stand down,” Bodil said.

“Lady, I don’t like hitting women, but you’re about to—”

Bodil knocked him out with a word, and Alphonse fell over.

“Stop doing that!” I told her angrily. We had enough problems without lugging two unconscious people around!

But she wasn’t listening. “Explain,” she said to Pritkin.

“My ability takes before it gives,” he told her tightly. “When Cassie has the Pythian power, it takes from that. But currently, she doesn’t.”

“You do not believe she would withstand the process alone?” Bodil raised an elegant eyebrow. And even though she hadn’t washed off and should have looked like a bedraggled mud monster, it was elegant. I would never understand the fey.

“No.”

“She is half goddess, and her mother was one of the strongest of them all,” she said dryly. “I think we can risk it.”

“I don’t.”

And unlike Alphonse, who had been snorting like a bull but with wide, panicked eyes, there was no fear there. Pritkin’s gaze was level and cold, as much as I’d ever seen it. Giving Bodil nothing.

She could knock him out—she probably already had back in the stables—but she couldn’t force him to do a damned thing. Which she seemed to realize because she looked at me. Batter up, I thought.

“Can we talk for a second?” I asked him.

Pritkin glanced at me, and then a silence spell clicked shut over our heads and he turned us away from the rest. He even led me off a few yards, I guessed so they couldn’t read lips. Not that most around here could understand English anyway, but he wasn’t taking chances.

“I’m willing to take the risk,” I said before he could start.

“I’m not.”

“Pritkin—”

“And even if I were, it wouldn’t help us.”

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