He continued, “But the mindset is still there. If you two truly needed to, you could call in a favor, call a name, find a book, or remember an author’s name from one of your books and chase it down. With your diabolist, you can theoretically pick up the raw firepower you need to remove every single one of your enemies from the table. But you don’t. We have to hold back, because the price is often too high to pay.”
“I think I want to be more optimistic than that.”
“Okay,” he said. He shifted his weight, and his injured maenad backed off a bit, giving him space. “Right now, we’re playing a game of chicken. Rather than an onrushing car or train, there’s a diabolist of impaired faculties in the building. It would not be surprising if she woke up and then acted with her faculties thus impaired.”
“That’s the gist of it,” I said.
“As an optimist, you would have the advantage. Maybe she’ll simply sleep it off. Maybe she’ll act benevolently. As her ally, too, the odds are with you. She’s more likely to come after me than she is to hurt you, am I right?”
I was silent, and utterly still.
“On the other hand, she’s in close proximity to your other allies, who are very likely to be collateral damage. I don’t know if you know this, but she’s been tainted by Conquest.”
“I know,” I said.
“Then you know we have every reason to expect that taint would have more sway over her when she’s not fully herself.”
If he didn’t look quite so grim, I would have thought he was enjoying this.
“If you crack first, you might well show me the way to her. I would try to be fair. Killing her would only transfer ownership to the next heir. We don’t want that. I don’t want to hurt or kill her cabalists either. We can keep her and you contained and organize your release from captivity when the Lordship is settled and full attention can be devoted to the dangerous diabolist and her mirror-dwelling pet.”
“Or you crack,” I said.
“Or I crack. I call on my god to show the way, and in the doing, I disarm myself of my primary source of power. You hurt the snake, and that counts a great deal against you. I could probably assume that’s enough that he’d grant me the favor, despite the disappointment in me. But probably isn’t certainty, and I’d normally be unwilling to call on my god for three great acts in a single week, let alone a day.”
“Our game of chicken,” I said.
“A good game for an optimist to play. It’s not about who wins,” he said, “It’s about who loses the least.”
“Or,” one of the Maenads said, “you could send us after him.”
He turned his head to answer her.
I ran, not even listening to the words that escaped
However much I wanted to be an optimist, I couldn’t, not when this much was at stake.
“Demon upstairs,” I breathed the words, “Don’t follow.”
Technically true, but misleading. I just needed them to hesitate.
I stepped from the edge of the mirror space, and I leaped.
Moving up, more than anything else.
Up to the next floor. To the meager, short-reaching light that the picture frames shed into the hallway.
They were already moving. They were fast.
I found the bookshelf, which was supposed to open into the real world.
I just had to reach the handle before they got close enough to see me and what I was doing. The benefits of being inside a reflected surface. If I couldn’t, I could run. I could get help.
I wasn’t sure what form that help would take, but I needed to check.
It was unlocked. The way into the library was clear.
The reason it was unlocked, however, was something else. It was open.
The house had been Jägerbombed, as the satyr had put it. Pictures had been knocked from walls, books from shelves, and the entire building had been rocked, with barriers suffering for it.
And, perhaps, a divine hand had nudged things to this particular result.
The lock had jostled open. The bookcase was partially ajar.
I looked from my reflected bookshelf to the one opposite.
I ran. No regard for safety.
I lunged through the mirror. Reaching for the bookshelf, blind.
If I could push it closed-
The darkness claimed me. My hand didn’t touch it.
I was shunted.
By the time I found my feet, I could hear the noise of the bookshelf sliding open.
It opened wide. Rose, Evan, Alexis, Tiff and Ty lay collapsed on the ground.
Jeremy strode in, as I pressed my hands against the glass, unable to stop him.
10.07
My mind was a haze, my emotions caught in some horrible, undefinable place.
I liked humanity, I hated people, but certain individuals were immensely important to me.