Hunt the Moon

After a few minutes, I went back inside, glancing at the clock on the way. It had somehow survived the carnage, and it said nine thirty. I hadn’t slept long at all, then. Technically, it was still too late to be calling anyone, but maybe—

The phone rang.

I jumped back, barely stifling a yelp, because my nerves were just that bad. And then I stared at it, hoping someone would pick up in the next room so I wouldn’t have to be all cheerful. But no one did pick up. And then Marco appeared in the doorway, a longneck in one hand and five cards in the other.

“You gonna get that or what?” he asked, his tone more curious than annoyed.

I got it. “Hello?”

“What are you doing up?”

Pritkin’s irritated voice made me smile and I turned away so Marco wouldn’t see it. “Answering the phone.”

“Very funny. Why aren’t you asleep? It’s after one.”

I glanced at the clock again. I guess it hadn’t survived, after all. “It’s hot.”

“It’s always bloody hot here,” he agreed, to my surprise. I’d never heard him complain about it, but I guessed for someone used to England’s climate, Vegas in August would kind of suck. And thanks to me, his bedroom had a big hole in it, too.

“Don’t you have anything cold to drink?” he demanded.

“Beer.”

He snorted. “You’re going to have a murderous hangover as it is. Call room service.”

“I could do that,” I agreed.

He waited. I didn’t say anything, because I wasn’t that pathetic. There was no emergency, and what was I going to tell him? I’m hot and bored and freaked-out, and I want to talk to someone with a pulse?

Yeah, that sounded mature. That sounded like a Pythia. I didn’t—

“That the mage?” Marco asked impatiently, like he couldn’t hear every word we uttered.

“Yeah.”

“He coming over?”

“Yes,” Pritkin said, surprising me again.

“Then tell him to bring beer,” Marco said. “We’re almost out, and the damn room service around this place sucks ass.”

“He said—”

“I heard.” Pritkin rang off without saying good-bye, or anything else at all. So I didn’t know why I was smiling as I went to the kitchen to make sure we had enough clean glasses.

“Damn it,” Marco said. “You didn’t tell him what kind. He’ll probably bring one of those weird English beers.”

“Ale,” one of the other vamps said darkly.

“Shit.”

They went back to their game while I washed up. Because, apparently, master vampires would carry out garbage, but they drew the line at dishpan hands. Not that there were a lot, since most of my meals came on room service carts these days.

I finished up and went to try again to get a comb through my potion-stained curls. I was still working on it when the doorbell rang. I gave up, pulled my hair back into a limp ponytail and went into the kitchen. Pritkin was already there, unpacking a couple of brown paper grocery bags.

“Foster’s,” he told Marco, who was peering into one suspiciously.

The vamp looked relieved. “It’s even cold.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I thought you Brits liked it hot.”

“Hot beer?” Pritkin looked revolted.

“That’s the rumor.”

“Because we don’t drink it iced over, thereby leaching right out whatever flavor you Yanks accidentally left in?”

“Ooh, touchy,” Marco said, and swiped the beer.

I looked in the other bag, but saw only a bunch of little boxes. I pulled one out, and it was tea. After a moment, I realized that they all were: peppermint, chamomile, green, black . . . It was like he’d bought out the store.

“You need something to calm your nerves that isn’t going to knock you out,” he told me.

“I don’t think tea is going to cut it,” I said drily. “Not with my life.”

A blond eyebrow rose. “You’d be surprised.”

He came up with a kettle I hadn’t known we possessed and proceeded to do tea-type things with it. I took an apple out of a bowl and set it on the table. “So you think it was Fey?” I asked, because I hadn’t gotten many details before I passed out.

“I don’t know what it was,” Pritkin said, looking like the confession pained him. “The Fey do not have a spirit form, yet your attacker was incorporeal. And you were able to give me a description—a fairly good one for so short a glimpse.”

“Why does that matter?”

“It matters because if it was Fey, you should have seen nothing.”

“You saw something,” I said, concentrating. A fragile bubble closed over the fruit, no more substantial than the ones the dish soap had left in the sink. And by the look of things, no more effective.

“I have a small amount of Fey blood,” Pritkin said, glancing at it. “It sometimes allows me to detect when they are near, although it isn’t a reliable skill. In some instances, however, a Fey under a glamourie might look like what I saw—a dark cloud. That’s why I threw the nunchucks to you.” His lips twisted. “That and the fact that I was out of other ideas.”

“Maybe I have a little Fey blood.” I didn’t really know enough about my family to know what I might have.

“You don’t.”

“How do you know? Can you see that, too?”

“I don’t have to. If you had so much as a drop, the Fey family you belonged to could claim you. And then you wouldn’t have just the Circle and the Senate fighting over you; you’d have them, as well.”

He was talking about the Silver Circle, the world’s leading magical association, which ruled over the human part of the supernatural community the way the Senate did the vamps. It was used to having the line of Pythias firmly under its protective thumb. That had been fairly easy, as the power of the office usually went to whomever the previous Pythia had trained, and that was always a proper little Circle-raised initiate. Or it was until me. The last heir to the Pythian throne, a sibyl named Myra, had also turned out to be a homicidal bitch, and the power had decided on another option.

The Circle had been less than thrilled by its choice, but we’d finally come to terms. As in, they were no longer trying to play Whac-A-Mole with my head. Only now they seemed to think they had the right to make sure that nobody else did, either. That was a problem, because the vampires felt the same way and the Senate didn’t share well.

The last thing I needed was another group in the mix.

“I have absolutely no Fey blood,” I said fervently.

“Trust me, they have checked,” Pritkin told me. “And you don’t. But that means you should have seen nothing.”

“Okay, I get that. I saw it, so it can’t be Fey. But it also wasn’t demon or ghost or human or Were. So what’s left?”

“That’s the question.” He leaned one hand on the table. “But the fact remains that it was driven off by cold iron. And only one species, to my knowledge, is so affected. Of course, it could have been a coincidence that it chose that precise moment to leave, but—”

“But that’s a hell of a coincidence.”

“Yes.” He looked at the bubble, which was shivering as if someone were blowing on it. “What are you