Tempt the Stars

thought of that. The vamps weren’t the only ones who kept a tracking spell on me. Pritkin had his own to help him locate me in emergencies. But like all spells, it had to be renewed. And he hadn’t been around to do that lately.
    Meaning that the only spell in this time frame was on the other me.
    And that meant—
    “Oh, holy crap!” I grabbed him with my free hand. “Did you talk to her?”
    “About you? No. I merely called—”
    “You
called
?” I shook him. “What did you
say
?”
    He scowled. “I inquired how she was, and satisfied myself that it was in fact her. You. Damn it! Who
are
you?”
    “Who do you think?” I said, sitting down on the window ledge, suddenly weak-kneed with relief.
    God, if he’d said anything, and if that had caused me to do anything differently . . . But he hadn’t. He couldn’t have. Proof of that was the fact that I was still here instead of having my bones scattered all over a field somewhere.
    “You’re from Cassandra’s future, aren’t you?” Pritkin demanded.
    “Way to keep up,” I said, pushing wet hair out of my eyes. I looked up to find him glowering at me, but I was too far gone to care. “Look, I need something—”
    “Evidently.”
    “Don’t get all British on me,” I snapped as his accent went clipped. That usually precipitated a hissy fit, but I was already having one and we didn’t get to do that at the same time. “I need weapons. Against demons. A
lot
of demons.”
    “No.”
    I had been tucking in the towel, because I’d provided enough of a free show for whoever was down below as it was, so I wasn’t sure I’d heard that right. “I beg your pardon?” I said nicely.
    “You heard me.” Pritkin was back to his default, steely-eyed look. And his voice had taken on some nuance again, with that faint lilt thing he did on the end of words sometimes. But that just meant he was less homicidal, not more helpful.
    “I need weapons,” I repeated. “Something easy to use. I don’t know how to fight demons—”
    “Which is why you aren’t getting them,” I was told flatly. “Angering a group of dangerous beings by shooting at them is hardly likely to improve your longev—”
    “Shooting at them?” I perked up slightly. Because that would be good. Well, better than having to get close enough to dump a potion all over them, anyway.
    “There is no reason to discuss weapons you are not going to be using,” Pritkin said repressively.
    I barely noticed because I was busy checking out his demon-fighting arsenal. I assumed that’s what it was, given that most of his weapons were in a footlocker or taking up the space meant for clothes in his closet. But I figured that the demon fighting stuff would be together, because Pritkin was persnickety about his weapons if little else.
    So I went to the bookshelf.
    “What does this do?” I asked, reaching for one of the weird-looking guns arrayed on the wall above the racks of little vials. It had a maw at least twice the size of a .45, and looked like it should be used for shooting elephants. I bet it was heavy—
    A hand clamped over my wrist, just before I had a chance to find out.
    “Never. Touch. My. Weapons.”
    I scowled up at him; the hold was strong enough to hurt. “Ow.”
    He didn’t apologize, and he didn’t let go, although his grip softened a fraction. “You can’t handle that gun.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I’ve seen you shoot,” he said sourly, taking it off the wall.
    “You haven’t seen me shoot that.”
    “And I’m not going to. What kind of demons?”
    “What?”
    “Demons. What kind are you facing?” Pritkin demanded.
    “I don’t know.”
    “You don’t
know
?”
    “My information wasn’t that precise,” I said, stung by the disbelief on his face. If he’d known what I’d had to go through to get that much . . . “I was just told that there’s a lot of them. They’re around this house and I . . . well, I need to get in.”
    “Where is the house?”
    “Why do you need to know that?”
    He looked at me, exasperated. “Different demon groups frequent different areas. They are often territorial, as your vampires used to be. Knowing where this house is could possibly tell us what you are facing, or at least narrow the field.”
    “Yeah,” I said, because that made sense. “Only no.”
    Pritkin frowned. “What?”
    I didn’t say anything. It had just hit me that I
couldn’t
say anything. Geography didn’t matter because these