Tempt the Stars

of the future that might cause her to mess it up.
    But if she had been willing to talk . . . I think I knew what she’d have said. What she’d have done. Now I just had to figure out—
    The bathroom door blew open before I could finish the thought, in a swirl of comparatively cold air. And before I could yelp, I found myself jerked out and slammed against the wall of the entryway. That left me facing the bathroom door, where clouds of steam were billowing out, like the place was on fire.
    It was kind of appropriate, considering that they were framing the face of a livid half demon.
    A second later, my hands hit the wall beside my head, which might have left me indecent, since they were clutching the bath towel I’d been in the process of wrapping around myself. Only I didn’t let go. So the towel ended up being spread out as my hands were, forming a wet, clingy barrier in front of me.
    Which, unless it was a lot more magical than it appeared, wasn’t going to be enough.
    Because Pritkin was looking pretty damned homicidal.
    “They were out of cheesy biscuits?” my mouth said, because my mouth is an idiot.
    “Who are you?” he demanded, getting in my face. “
What
are you?”
    “What?” I said, staring up into furious green eyes.
    “I’m not playing games,” he warned, his voice low and flat and dead. “If the next words out of your mouth aren’t a confession, they will be your last.”
    My brain froze up at that, because it had seen what Pritkin could do in a rage. But my mouth—my stupid, apparently unconnected-to-brain-matter mouth—began panicking. And running a mile a minute.
    “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! It’s me! You know it’s me! It’s like—God! Why would some crazed assassin come in here and
use your shower
? Do people
do
that? Especially when it needs cleaning that bad? I mean, you need to let housekeeping in here occasionally or stop brewing potions in there or something, because the creeping crud is going to kill you a long time before the bad guys have the chance and
don’t slam me against the wall like that!
It hurts! I can explain, I promise, only I can’tifyoukillmeohGod!”
    The last was in response to a couple of enchanted knives slipping out from inside Pritkin’s old gray hoodie, the one he used on jogs because his battered leather trench would look a little weird. But he needed something to cover the arsenal of illegal and would-be-illegal-if-humans-knew-about-them weapons that went everywhere he did. These two rose on either side of his face, underscoring the fact that he didn’t have to let me go in order to gut me, a thought that stopped even my mouth’s inane babble. Maybe because it was too busy shrieking.
    “Stop that!” he said as the slamming recommenced, which of course only made me shriek harder. And try to shift away, only that didn’t work because Pritkin was holding on to me. Which meant he came, too.
    We ended up over by the window, something that didn’t help my dignity, since my bare butt was now pressed firmly against the glass. Welcome to Vegas, I thought hysterically, wondering if I was flashing half the parking lot. And then wondering why I cared considering I was about to be killed by my own bodyguard.
    Or maybe not.
    Pritkin didn’t let go, but the knives stayed on the other side of the room. Considering how fast they could remedy that situation, it didn’t make me feel that much better. But potential death is better than imminent death, and I’d take it.
    Only now it looked like I had some ’splaining to do.
    “You just shifted us,” he accused.
    “Of course I did!” I said feverishly. “What was I supposed to do? Stay put and get skewered?”
    “You’re a Pythia.”
    I stared at him.
“Duh!”
    “Or some Pythian initiate pretending to be one!”
    “Oh, for—Myra’s
dead
,” I reminded him. My rival for the Pythian power had tried to kill me, but had ended up shredded in my place. I hadn’t done it, but I hadn’t wasted a lot of tears over her memory, either.
    “There are other initiates,” Pritkin reminded me as he pressed closer, his eyes narrowed on my face.
    I shivered. But not because of the words. But because my bare ass against the air-conditioned window had just caused me to break out in full-body goose bumps.
    At least that’s what I told myself.
    I tried to move back, but there was nowhere to go. I was already flat against the damned window. And the sensation of slick cold on one side and hard