Tempt the Stars

It creates an illusion that many minds can inhabit, similar to what you would term a conference call. Admittedly, I do not think it has been used to dial across time before, but then . . . she was always clever.”
    “Yes, so?” I asked harshly. Because I’d decided I didn’t care.
    “Well, it is a very old spell. A very rare spell, since the gods are now gone. Few people these days know how to cast it . . . or how to end it.”
    That took me a minute, but I got it. “You were spying on me.”
    “Essentially.” At least he didn’t try to sugarcoat it. “When you were in council chambers, we noticed the existence of several other Seidr links in your mind. Neither of which you seemed to be aware of, and neither of which you had bothered to close.”
    “Several—” I stopped, because suddenly a couple of things made sense. “Mircea and Jules.”
    “I do not know about the vampire. The first bond was tightly closed off; even we could not explore it without risking injury to you.”
    Mircea, I thought grimly. He had mental gifts he didn’t talk about, but which were kind of hard not to notice. I wasn’t sure how far they extended, but maybe . . . maybe they’d been enough for him to hang up on his own. Maybe that’s also why he’d suddenly gone incommunicado. Finding out your girlfriend was half goddess would be bad enough, without having her suddenly start spying on your brain.
    I freaked Mircea out, I thought dizzily.
    “But the second,” Adra was saying. “Yes, it is to a human named Jules. He has been having rather uncomfortable dreams, of late, thanks to you.”
    I bet. “So between the time my mother laid the first spell on me at her house, until I actually got to the council, there was a period when I was making other calls on my own, not knowing that’s what I was doing?”
    “So it would seem. I would wonder why your mother did not better inform you about the spell she planned to use, but . . . I think I know. In any case, we hardly thought someone would deliberately choose to keep open three distinct lines, when even one is somewhat debilitating. It therefore occurred to us that there was a chance you had not been taught about the workings of the spell, and that you would not know to close ours, either.”
    “But I felt it close. I felt relief—”
    “From your mother and most of the council leaving. Only a few of us stayed ‘online’ with you. The burden was still there, but it was less with fewer minds communicating. After the power you had been forced to channel before, it seemed like relief.”
    I scowled at him. “So you hoped to do what? Discover what kind of revenge I was planning?”
    He sighed. “Cassandra—may I call you Cassandra?”
    “No!”
    He sighed again. “We have, it would appear, gotten off on—the wrong foot? Is that the term?”
    “The wrong—” I just stared at him.
    “I’m sure that’s right,” he said, looking up as if referencing something. “Yes, yes, that is the phrase.”
    “That is
not
the—”
    “But you have to understand our dilemma. Ares and the other gods are actively working to return to earth, something a few of us have been at pains to keep quiet, to avoid a general panic. But you not only made that impossible, but appeared before the entire council demanding an army.”
    “My mother wanted the—”
    “Yes, and that was the point, was it not? Frankly, if our only choice is between Ares and Artemis, we would prefer the former. His skills are formidable, but his movements through the hells are restricted. His return would allow us time to consider . . . extreme measures. Your mother’s would not.”
    “So you killed Pritkin.”
    “It seemed prudent. Whether you intended to return your mother to her former glory, or to rule in her stead, you would need the incubus. Few are able to transmit power as his line can, and Lord Rosier’s antipathy for your mother is well known. I believe he would die before he would help her to regain her strength. But his son . . . we were not so sure of him. Or of you.”
    “So you spied on me.”
    “We wanted to know what you would do, once you were deprived of him. Some on the council were pushing for your death as well. But to others of us, that seemed . . . imprudent . . . with the gods attempting to return and your record of opposing them in the past. We required more information.”
    “Like
what
?”
    “We wished to know what you would do without the