Embrace the Night

Chapter 13

Sight down the barrel of the gun. Balance the butt on your other palm if you need to steady your aim. Squeeze the trigger lightly. You won't have to apply much pressure to get it to fire. I breathed slowly and watched the paper target flinch as if the bullets were cutting through flesh. Almost all of them hit outside the target range, and not a single one was inside the circle that represented the vital organs. Ironic, that.

The unused storeroom had good ventilation for an indoor locale, so Pritkin had set it up as a firing range. Daily practice was supposed to improve my aim—at least that was the theory. So far, the paper cutouts at the far end of the room hadn't had too much to worry about.

I released the empty clip and reloaded. The weapon felt the same as always in my hand; the weight, the smoky scent of the oil and powder, the almost-there smell of burnt paper, were all familiar after almost two weeks of this. When I'd picked the gun up today, that had seemed strange. Like killing a man yesterday should have changed it somehow, added weight, shown up on the sleek black surface like a mark. Something.

But it didn't.

Nine mm Beretta, clip holds fifteen rounds. Maximum effective range is fifty meters, but it's better close up. Remember to take the safety off and aim for the torso. Pritkin had been giving me pointers, determined, as he put it, to reduce my status as a giant bull's-eye in the field. And that's how I'd been thinking of the lessons: as something designed to help with defense. It had somehow never registered that defense with a gun usually meant shooting something more substantial than a paper target. That defense with a gun might mean killing.

I'd grown up around guns, had seen them so often that they were just a part of the scenery, no more remarkable than a vase or a lamp. I hadn't owned one myself, because I wasn't expected to fight. At Tony's, I'd been among the group of useful noncombatants whom other people were supposed to protect. I'd been told a hundred times that, if an attack ever came, my job was to get to one of the many bolt-holes secreted around the place and wait it out.

There had been a certain comfort in my old position that I'd never really appreciated until now. Because the simple truth was, the moment you took on a position of responsibility, there were people who would look up to you, who would expect you to shield them, who would expect you to save them. I was used to running away, was damn good at it in fact, or I wouldn't have lasted this long. I knew how to get fake IDs almost anywhere, how to change my appearance, how to blend in.

I didn't know how to keep people alive.

My clip was empty again, the little click, click telling me to reload. I pressed a button and missed the grab. The spent clip bumped against my shoe before spinning away on the floor. I retrieved it and manually reloaded with fifteen new bullets.

Despite the ache in my wrist, my hands were steady. I kept being surprised by that, kept expecting to fall apart. I'd washed up in front of the bathroom mirror after we got back, letting the washcloth linger on the back of my neck, cool and soothing, while I waited to dissolve. Only I hadn't yet. It was starting to really worry me.

Once when I was about six, Alphonse had come back from a job covered in blood, with a gash in his forehead that almost bisected the scalp, making him look like Frankenstein's monster before the doc stitched him up. But he'd been in a rare good mood, because the other guys, the ones he'd left lying in pieces all over a basketball court, had looked worse. They'd taken out a couple of our people in a territory dispute and, since the dead had been Alphonse's vamps, Tony had let him handle it. Alphonse had done his usual thorough job.

He'd seen me loitering around a corner, watching him with wide eyes, and had chucked me on the chin in passing. It had left a red mark on my skin, which Eugenie had scrubbed off later while inadvertently teaching me my first swear word. When I was older, I'd realized that he'd been making a point, coming back covered in blood to show that the insult had been properly avenged, but all I'd thought at the time was that it was strange to see him so relaxed. If it hadn't been for the gore, he could have been anybody returning from a good night's work.

It hadn't bothered him either.

I aimed at the target again, which was still looking pretty pristine despite the fact that the air was getting acrid. I thought of Mircea's face, his eyes reflecting fire, his body outlined in jumping, deadly flames. I wanted to touch him so badly that I could feel his fingers on my wrist, like a phantom ache. This was how reaching for something with a missing hand must feel, restless and empty and wrong. And I'd almost been left with it forever, thanks to a guy who thought that trying to electrocute someone was an acceptable way of saying hello.

The air rang with gunshots and the sound of ripping paper until the clicking noise came again. I reloaded, my eyes smarting from the smoke, wishing life was that easy. Just fill up what was empty, replace what was lost. But it wasn't. Some things couldn't be replaced. So you had to make sure you didn't lose them to begin with.

It was all the way past crazy and out the other side that I was starting to agree with Alphonse.

That afternoon, Françoise and I made our way to the imposing marble and glass edifice in the main arcade where Augustine had set up shop. My run-in with the dark mages had made one thing very clear: if Mircea hadn't been there, I'd have lasted all of about thirty seconds. If I had any hope of actually getting my hands on the Codex, I had to be better prepared. I just hoped Augustine could do what I had in mind.

Françoise had paused in front of the two large plate-glass windows that displayed selections from the ready-to-wear line. She eyed a slim flute of a dress with golden bubbles rising upwards from the hem, like champagne, but passed on without comment. Inside, a large chandelier took up most of the ceiling, its crystals formed by icicles charmed not to melt despite the candles scattered among its many tiers. Françoise immediately began browsing, although what she planned to use for money I had no idea. I'd offered to take her shopping, since she'd ended up here sans family, friends and wardrobe. But my bank account didn't run so much to pricey boutiques.

I decided to explain things if and when she found something, and walked past the staff into the small workroom in back. Nobody tried to stop me. I was back in Elvira mode, wearing a black wig and an official-looking name badge. I'd discovered that it avoided a lot of questions if I looked like an employee, although it wasn't doing my arches any good.

The workroom was so crowded with racks of garments and bolts of fabric that I couldn't even see Augustine, but I heard someone muttering in a far corner. It turned out to be the great man himself, wrestling with a piece of golden fur that appeared to be trying to eat him. He threw it off and slapped a chair down on it, then started digging in the pile of papers on a nearby desk and muttering more.

I approached with caution, because the fabric was bucking and making a valiant attempt to throw off the chair. "Uh, hello?"

"It's no use complaining," he told me quickly. "There was no show, so nobody gets paid. Including me."

"I'm not here about that."

The fur gave a heave and almost dumped him onto the floor. He pretended not to notice, but he surreptitiously slid the edge of the heavy desk over to join the chair. "Then I'm at your disposal."

"I'm thinking about a dress. Something French."

"You can't mean that complete hack Edouard," he said, sounding appalled. "Darling, please. I can design you something better with my eyes closed. Hell, I could design you something better dead!"

"I don't mean I want a French designer," I tried to explain. "Just something that looks—"

"Forget Paris. Paris is done," he told me airily. "Now, at what occasion are you planning to showcase my work?"

"I need an outfit that would fit into the late eighteenth century."

"Oh, a costume party. I don't do costumes." Considering that Augustine's personal style was a cross between Galliano and Liberace, I thought that was debatable. At the moment he was wearing a saffron yellow tunic with puffy sleeves over a pair of purple harem pants. A gold sash tied around his waist pirate style held not a saber but a pair of scissors, a measuring tape and a tomato-shaped pincushion.

"I don't think you understand," I told him patiently. "It's kind of important."

"Ah, you want to dress to impress," Augustine said archly. "Well, in that case, you've come to the right place." He pulled me over to a dressmaker's form in one of the few open spaces in the room. With a mumbled word, it took on a very familiar, very detailed shape. I had a sudden urge to throw a towel over it. "Any special orders I need to know about?" he demanded. "Some of those can affect the design."

"No. I just—"

"Because I don't want you coming to me at the last minute saying you need a charm to make you dance better or hold your liquor or be a scintillating conversationalist and just forgot to mention it—"

"You can do that with a dress?"

"Darling, I can do anything with a dress. Anything legal, that is. So don't go asking for a love potion or some nonsense, because I'm not about to lose my license."

"What else can you do?" My mind was racing with the possibilities.

"What do you want?" A bolt of blank white fabric began draping itself around the form.

"Can you make me invisible?"

Augustine sighed and flipped the edge of my wig with a finger. "A bad outfit and worse hair can do that."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Then what about spell-proofing? Can you make it so if someone slings something nasty at me it bounces off?"

"Jealous rival?" he asked sympathetically.

"Something like that."

"How powerful is the little cat?"

"Does it matter?"

"Of course it does! I have to know how strong to make the counterspell," he said impatiently. "If it's something petty, like making you smell like a garbage truck—"

"No. I need to stop a major assault, like a dark mage could cast."

Augustine blinked at me owlishly. "Darling, what kind of party are you attending?"

"That's the problem. I don't know."

"Well, maybe you should think about skipping it. Who needs that kind of stress? Take the night off, do your nails."

"It's sort of mandatory."

"Hmm. This isn't really my line," he said doubtfully. "The war mages use charmed capes sometimes, to reinforce their shields, but I don't think fashion is their main priority."

Françoise poked her head in. She appeared to be wearing a small animal over the top half of her body, one with a lot of brown quills extending outward in all directions. "I 'ave found somezeeng," she told me.

Augustine stiffened. "Where did you get that? It's a prototype."

"What is it?" I asked, eyeing it warily.

"A jacket, of course," he told me. "Porcupine. Wonderful for getting rid of unwanted attention. Unfortunately, that one tends to launch quills without warning at anyone who upsets the wearer, so I don't think—"

"I'll take eet." Françoise piled an armload of other items onto the table. "And zese."

"What is all this?" I asked. Behind her were a couple of walking mountains of clothes, which I assumed to be the shop assistants, although no heads were actually visible.

"Pour les enfants," Françoise said, holding up a tiny T-shirt with WORLD'S GREATEST KID written on it in what looked like crayon.

I frowned at it and Augustine snatched it out of her hand, looking aggrieved. "An image of the child wearing it will appear under the title," he told me loftily.

"There's a place at the mall that can do that."

"And it makes the wearer have a sudden, uncontrollable fondness for vegetables."

I sighed. "We'll take it." He snapped his fingers at his over-burdened assistants, who began running around, adding things up. "About my dress," I said, now that he was in a better mood. "I thought creative geniuses like you appreciated a challenge."

He patted my cheek, which was a bit much considering that he didn't look a lot older than me. "We do, love, we do. But there's also the little matter of payment. This isn't ready-to-wear we're talking about. And for what you're asking—"

"Send the bill to Lord Mircea," Françoise said, playing with a scarf that, oddly enough, was just lying there being scarflike.

I started slightly. "What? No!"

Her pretty forehead wrinkled slightly. "Pourquoi pas?"

"I don't…that isn't…it wouldn't be appropriate," I said, very aware of Augustine listening avidly.

"Mais, you are his petite amie, non?"

"Non! I mean no, no I'm not." The frown widened, then Françoise shrugged in a way that suggested she knew denial when she saw it. "Send the bill to Casanova," I told Augustine. If he complained, I'd tell him to take it out of my overdue paycheck.

"Casanova," Augustine repeated, with an evil glint in his eye. "You know he actually expects me to pay for the damage to the conference room? He presented me with a ridiculous bill just this morning."

"Then present him one right back. A big one." I eyed Françoise's pile of assorted oddities. "And tack those on."

Augustine's smile took on an almost Cheshire cat quality. "Cinderella, I do believe you're going to the ball."

That evening, after I finished another shift in Hell, Françoise and I slipped out of Dante's in a shiny black Jeep. While I waited for Alphonse and my backup to arrive, I had a few errands to do, and she had volunteered to help. Neither of us had a car, but I'd managed to find us a ride.

The tag on the front of the Jeep read 4U2DZYR. It belonged to Randy, one of the boys who worked in Casanova's version of a spa. He would have been a perfect California beach bum, complete with deep tan, sun-bleached hair and toothy white smile, except that his voice still had a Midwest twang. He was possessed by an incubus, of course, but so far he'd been on his best behavior.

"You're serious?" Randy asked me for the third time, as we pulled into the giant Wal-Mart parking lot. "You want to shop here?"

"Yes, I want to shop here!" I said, exasperated. There'd been a time when Wal-Mart had been pretty upscale for me, in comparison to the 25-cent bin at Goodwill or the Salvation Army. But I got the impression that there weren't a lot of Randy's clients who felt the same way. He'd had to ask one of the waitresses for directions.

He pulled into the closest available parking space, tires squealing, and stopped on a dime. He looked at me seriously over the tops of his Ray-Bans. "As long as you make sure Lord Mircea knows that I had nothing to do with this. I'm only following orders. If the boss's lady wants to go slumming—"

"You sound like I'm going to a strip club or something!" I said irritably, getting out. "And I'm not the boss's lady!"

"Oookay." Randy pried Françoise, who had the backseat in a death grip, off the upholstery. I'd forgotten to ask if she'd actually been in a car before, and judging by the wide eyes and dead white complexion, I was betting the answer was no.

"I nevair want to do zat again."

"I'm not that bad a driver," Randy said, offended.

"Yes, you are," she said fervently.

"Well the wheels have stopped rolling, sweet thing," he told her, getting an arm around her waist. He deposited her on the concrete. "You know, I've done some of my best work in backseats." This was accompanied by a huge how-could-anyone-not-think-I'm-cute? grin. Which is probably the only thing that saved him.

I hauled the extensive shopping list out of my purse and waved it at them before Randy said anything else. "Can we get going? Because we don't have all day."

Eight kids plus a baby, I had discovered, need a lot of things, especially when their entire existing wardrobe was literally the clothes on their backs. And except for a few T-shirts for the tourists, Augustine's establishment didn't specialize in children's anything. He preferred his customers to be adult and very well-heeled. Hence the list.

An hour later, I was leaning against a shelf stacked with Fruit of the Loom T-shirts while Françoise terrorized various underpaid store employees. She had commandeered no fewer than four, whom she had racing back and forth, trying to find all the needed sizes. She looked a little out of place, as she was wearing one of Augustine's sophisticated creations: a long, basic black dress with a chic jacket covered in a newspaper print. I hoped no one noticed that all the headlines were today's.

Randy was standing in front of a mirrored column, admiring the flex of his bicep. "What do you think?" The muscle shirt he'd poured himself into was bright blue and perfectly matched his eyes. He knew damn well what I thought, what half the women in the store did. Either that, or we just happened to go shopping the same day every young mother in the state needed to restock her son's closet.

"I thought you didn't shop at places like this."

"A T-shirt's a T-shirt." He shrugged, causing a ripple of muscle that prompted a squeak from a nearby customer. "So, listen. You got a lot of kids."

"Yeah. So?"

For a minute, he just stood there, looking at me awkwardly, like a big kid himself. A big kid with a lot of muscles and a see-through mesh tee. "So you're putting them up in the casino, right? In a couple free rooms?"

"How do you know that?" The kitchen staff hadn't had space in the minuscule quarters that Casanova had allotted them for another nine people, so I'd had to get creative. It helped that I worked the front desk occasionally.

"Everybody knows. The staff have been working to keep the boss from finding out. But he does check the books sometimes, you know?"

"What's your point, Randy?"

"I just wanted to say that, if you need, well, any money or anything…" He trailed off, while I looked at him incredulously. I had no idea what his incubus was teaching him. Apparently, they hadn't gotten to the part where women were supposed to pay him.

"We'll be fine." If Casanova gave me any grief about the rooms, I'd have Billy rig every damn roulette game in the house. Come to think of it, he was pretty good with craps, too.

"You sure? 'Cause, I mean, I kind of get paid a lot. It wouldn't be, like, hurting me any, you know?"

Françoise was giving him the kind of look I expected to see incubi giving her. She saw me notice and gave a shrug that could have meant anything from "I was just looking" to "I haven't had sex in four hundred years, so sue me." I decided I didn't want to know.

"Thanks. I'll be in Shoes," I said, snagging the lightest of the remaining carts.

Sixteen feet—I wasn't counting the baby because so far she hadn't proven able to keep up even with socks—need a lot of shoes. I stood up from fishing around on the bottom row, trying to find a pair of Converse look-alikes in Jesse's size, and hit my head on somebody's elbow. Somebody who looked like he'd escaped from Caesars Palace and forgotten to take off the costume.

"Why are you here?" The voice echoed loudly in the large space.

I looked around frantically, but nobody seemed to be paying the ten-foot golden god in the shoe department any attention. "I could ask you the same question!" I whispered.

"I came to remind you that time grows short. Your vampire will die if the spell is not lifted."

"I'm aware of that!" I snapped.

"Then I ask again, why are you here? Have you made any progress?"

"Yes, sort of. I mean, I know where the Codex is."

"Then why have you not retrieved it?"

"It isn't that easy! And why do you care? What is Mircea to you?"

"Nothing. But your performance has not been as…focused…as I had hoped. This is an important test of your abilities, Herophile. And thus far you have let yourself be distracted by unnecessary tasks. These children are not your mission. The Codex is."

"Uh-huh." For someone who didn't care about the Codex, he sure brought it up a lot. "Well, maybe I could do a better job if I had some help! How about sticking around for a while? And while you're here we can get in a few of those lessons I keep hearing about."

"I cannot enter this realm, Herophile. This body is a projection; only you can see it. And I cannot maintain it for long."

"Then how about telling me a little more about the Codex?" Why, for example, Pritkin was willing to kill to keep it safe.

"You know all you need. Find it and complete your mission. And do it soon. There are those who would oppose you."

"I kind of noticed."

"What has happened?" he asked sharply.

"You're a god. Don't you know?"

His eyes narrowed dangerously. "Do not forget yourself, Herophile."

"My name is Cassandra."

"A poor name for the Pythia. Your namesake opposed my will and lived to regret it. Do not make the same mistake."

It was more than a little surreal, even for me, to be discussing a myth with a legend in the middle of the Wal-Mart shoe department. Especially with a clerk giving me the hairy eyeball from the next aisle over. He didn't say anything, though. Maybe a lot of his customers talked to the shoes before buying them.

"Maybe so, but it's still my name and I'm doing the best I can. Threats aren't going to speed up the process."

"Find something that will," he told me flatly, and vanished.

I sighed and fought the urge to bang my head against the metal rack and just not stop. The clerk was peering at me around the size twelves with an expression that said he was thinking about calling for security. I decided not to risk it.

I held up the red Converse wannabes. "You have these in a nine?"