He sat back and the chair shrieked for mercy. “What is it this time?”
I crunched a toffee. “Well, Marco, apparently we’re in the middle of the Norse version of Armageddon and just didn’t know it. Ares, god of war, is out to get us, and the only way to defeat him is to find Hel—the goddess, not the place—who may or may not also be known as Artemis, and may or may not actually be a person instead of a spell or a weapon or a jelly doughnut. But we have to find her, because, despite the fact that the old legends say she defeats Ares, they said the same thing about the ouroboros spell and Apollo, so, clearly, the old legends are whacked.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So Jonas needs to know who or what or where, and expects me to tell him.” I threw my chocolate-stained hands up. “Somehow. See how that works?”
“No.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“So you’re sittin’ here, eating candy.”
“Chocolate.”
“And that’s different?”
“Candy is candy. Chocolate is therapy.”
“Got plans for this afternoon?”
“Eating more chocolate.”
Marco just shook his head. “You shouldn’t let that old guy get to you. He’s nuts.”
“Yeah.” I was kind of coming around to Marco’s way of thinking.
“Where’d he go off to, anyway?”
“Home.” Or wherever he went when he wasn’t blowing my mind.
“And the mage?”
“Same.” At least, Pritkin had said he was going to his room. I chose to believe him, because if I shifted down there and didn’t find him resting, I was going to lose it. And I was close enough anyway.
“Well, I’m going to bed,” Marco announced, placing massive hands on the table and levering himself to his feet. He didn’t need the help, even in the middle of the day, but vamps like to play martyr when they have to be up past sunrise.
“I thought you went an hour ago.”
“Wanted to wait till everyone cleared out.”
I rolled my eyes. Yeah. Because Jonas or Pritkin might suddenly decide to take a cleaver to my head.
He ruffled my hair and left. I found a coconut cream hiding in the second layer and sucked out the ooey-gooey innards. Things were looking up.
And Marco was probably right about not paying too much attention to Jonas. The guy told me one minute that he knew visions couldn’t be made to order, and then the next he asked for exactly that. I was supposed to hand him Artemis on a silver platter with nothing, absolutely nothing, to go on except a name that might not even be hers.
I’d tried to explain how unlikely that was. Like really, really unlikely. Like not-going-to-happen unlikely. But all he’d done was tell me that he was sure I’d come up with something.
Yeah, right.
To find someone, I’d need at least a photo, preferably something she’d owned and touched, or, even better, a trip to her last known place of residence. And even then, I wasn’t a damn hound dog. I might get a flash of something; I might not. But under the circumstances—
No. Just no. Even assuming Artemis actually existed, even assuming she was a person and not a metaphor, even assuming Jonas hadn’t made up this whole crazy thing in that brilliant but cracked head of his, the answer would still be no. There were no photos, nothing she’d personally owned, and she hadn’t been at her last known place of residence for something like three thousand years.
Not that I wasn’t going to try, because what the hell. But my track record for made-to-order visions wasn’t great. Actually, my track record for made-to-order visions was zero, but Jonas had looked so hopeful, I hadn’t wanted to tell him that.
He’d find out soon enough.