“Caleb—”
“You start putting the moves on what is basically a corpse, and then talking when there’s nobody there, and then some weird-ass shit starts going down with sparkly light and heat and John comes back to life and jumps your goddamn bones—”
“Technically, he didn’t—”
“And the next thing I know, he’s doing just fine. He’s fucking dandy. And you’re the one who looks like a corpse and almost are one—”
“I was not.”
“And he’s all energized with creepy, glowing eyes and enough power radiating off him to take on an army, and there’s only one way he got it, okay?”
“He could be possessed by an incubus,” I argued. “He doesn’t actually have to be—”
Caleb looked disgusted. “Sell it somewhere else. Everyone knows John is half demon—it’s not the kind of thing you can hide from the sort of work-up the Corps does on its recruits. But we didn’t know what kind. He told us Ahhazu—”
“Imagine that.”
“—but they’re minor-level functionaries. They can’t do that kind of shit. And a demon can’t possess another demon—or a half, for that matter. So two plus two, okay? His other half ain’t Ahhazu, it’s incubus. And there’s only one half human, half incubus ever been recorded—”
“Maybe Pritkin’s birth wasn’t recorded.”
“Bullshit. You know damn well who we got—”
“Don’t say it.”
“—next door, and John Pritkin ain’t his—”
“I’m warning you.”
“—name. It’s motherfucking Mer—”
“Say it and spend the rest of your life in the Jurassic,” I hissed.
We just stood there and breathed at each other.
“You gonna tell me I’m wrong?” Caleb finally said.
“I’m not going to tell you anything. Which is exactly what you’re going to tell everyone else.”
“Okay.” He ran a hand over his buzz cut, which was too short for him to tear out. Which was probably just as well, judging from his expression. “Just for the hell of it, let’s say I don’t want to rat him out. Let’s say I’ve worked with him long enough that maybe I don’t want to see what’ll happen after everyone finds out he had another name once. Let’s say I’m on your side. What the fuck do you expect me to do? I already told you, too many people saw. And there’s gonna have to be a report, and—”
“They didn’t see what happened in the car. They only know—”
“That he’s alive when he shouldn’t be. And that’s more than enough to pique some goddamned curiosity!”
“All right!” I said. “Give me a minute.”
“I hope you don’t need much more than that,” he said grimly. “We got lucky when we came in, with almost everybody on shift called out to that disaster you left. But they’re going to be back soon, plus the first day crew is going to be coming on and—”
“How long?”
He glanced at his watch. “Less than an hour before the day crew shows up. And probably nowhere near that long before the first groups start coming back from Disaster City. They’re gonna need to make out reports before they go off the clock, and that takes—”
“So how long do we have?”
Black eyes met mine. “Minutes.”
“Then we had best make good use of them,” Pritkin said, opening the door behind us. “And you forgot a silence spell.”
Caleb cursed. “I’m losing it.”
“With cause.”
“Damn straight with cause!” Caleb gazed at his friend, his eyes scanning the familiar features, as if he expected him to have suddenly sprouted horns.
“What is it?” Pritkin asked stiffly.
Caleb didn’t answer for a moment; then he shrugged. “Nothing. Just never met a legend before.”
“A legend is merely a man history decided to bugger,” Pritkin said harshly. “I’m the same person I always was.”
“Yeah, maybe. It’s gonna take some getting used to.”
“Then get used to it.”
“Don’t take that tone with me when I’m risking my ass—”
“Then don’t look at me as if I’m a laboratory specimen on a slide!”
“Well, forgive the hell out of me for being a little fucking traumatized—”
“Will you two shut up?” I yelled.
They both turned to look at me. I hadn’t actually intended to shout, but it seemed to have worked. And Pritkin was right; we needed to figure something out before Jonas showed up with his fussy little ways and his too-sharp blue eyes and his seemingly innocent questions, and we were screwed.
“We need to deal with this,” I told them.
“I think that’s been established,” Caleb said nastily. “But unless you know—”
“What I know is that people like simple explanations for things. Especially weird things—”
“According to who?”
To every vampire I ever met, I didn’t say, because it wouldn’t have helped. “It’s a fact of human nature,” I said instead. “People don’t like complicated answers. They like simple, easy-to-imagine ones. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if you give them two solutions—a really complex truth or a really simple lie—they’ll take the lie. It’s just easier.”
“Okay, so what’s our simple lie?”
“That I did it.” I glanced at Pritkin. “We’ll say I bubbled you. Like with the apple.”
“But you can’t do that yet.”
“So? They don’t know that.”
“I am fairly certain that Jonas does,” Pritkin said drily. “We need to come up with something else.”
“We don’t have anything else! And we don’t—”
“What are you talking about?” That was Caleb.
“A trick,” I said, glancing at him. “Or, really, it’s not a trick; it’s something Agnes could do with her power—speeding up time in a small area. I’ve been practicing—”
“And you can do that?” he interrupted.
“In theory.”
He cursed.
“Look,” I said impatiently. “The point isn’t whether or not I can do it—”
“Then what is the point?”
“That I’m supposed to be able to do it! That a real . . . that a well-trained Pythia could do it. And it will be a lot easier for people to imagine that than a legend coming back to life and hanging out in their damn cafeteria!”
“If you could do it,” Caleb said. “Maybe so. But you can’t, and the old man knows you can’t. So how is that—”
“He knows I usually can’t, but that’s not the same thing. I can do it, just not on demand. But occasionally I luck out and my power works for a change. And that’s almost always in a crisis or when I’m pissed off or—”
“Which makes little sense,” Pritkin said, interrupting me.
I looked at him. “What?”
“You said it yourself: you can use the power. You have proven that on a number of occasions—you prove it every time you shift. And the power is the power; it doesn’t change. Merely your perception of it does.”
“Meaning what?”
“That if you can use it under duress, you should be able to use it all the time. You should be able to use it at will.”
“But I can’t. I told you before: once in a while I get lucky, but most of the time—”
“Then perhaps you have been trying too hard. Did you not tell me that Lady Phemonoe said the power would teach you, that it would show you what it can do?”
“Yes, and I keep waiting—”
“And it has been showing you things, has it not? Or did Niall somehow teleport himself to that desert?”
“Niall?” Caleb asked.
“Jonas shouldn’t have told you about that!” I said, flushing.
“He didn’t do it to embarrass you,” Pritkin said. “But as an example of your progress.”
“Niall Edwards?” Caleb persisted.
“I’m not making progress!” I said furiously. “I haven’t made any in weeks!”
“Not since the last crisis.”
“What does that have to do with—”