I shivered harder that time and shoved the thought away. That was stupid. The Pythian power had been from a god, yes, but it had developed its own personality over time, and didn’t seem to like them any more than I did. It had even helped me to defeat Apollo, the god who had originally given it. Not to mention, if I was drawing on new sources of strength, they came from Mircea and Pritkin, two men I cared for deeply, two men I trusted.

Well, most of the time, in Mircea’s case.

But his recent actions, like forcing that trip yesterday, weren’t entirely his fault. He was battling a mental affliction that hit older vamps, focusing their mind on a powerful obsession, in this case with his wife. That’s what that whole charade in Romania had been about. To find a fey creature who knew the truth about Mircea’s long-lost wife, who he’d thought was dead, but who had instead been kidnapped and taken into Faerie.

He wanted to get her back, if she still lived, or at least to find out what had happened to her. Once he did, the obsession should lift, and I’d have the old Mircea back. At least, I really hoped so!

“I will,” I told Gertie firmly. “As soon as I go home. This trip was the final thing he wanted.”

“Who cares what he wants?” Agnes said furiously. “Just kill him and be done with it!”

“I can’t kill him! He’s the senate’s general and we’re in the middle of a war—”

“A war you’re losing!”

“We are not losing, we—” I cut off, because I didn’t owe her an explanation. And because I didn’t want to be here all damned day.

And I guessed that Gertie didn’t, either.

“Back to the original point,” she said heavily. “You have shifted hundreds of times. It is easily your best skill. You have a natural affinity for it such as I have never seen—”

Agnes snorted.

“—and yet, you suddenly have a life-threatening problem with a shift, and before you can pull yourself out of it, you’re distracted by a message from a god?”

“She wasn’t distracted! She was attacked—” Rhea said, before realizing that she had just agreed with Gertie.

She shot me an apologetic glance from under a matching, pale blue hat, its lone feather flapping furiously in the wind. I smiled back with more reassurance than I felt. I was freezing, Gertie was determined to use me as a lure to find out if part of Zeus was hiding somewhere on Earth, and I was wondering what the hell we were supposed to do if we found him.

Only we wouldn’t, because he couldn’t time shift, damn it!