Tempt the Stars

Chapter Twenty

The neon cactuses dancing on a bar sign opposite us abruptly went dark. The couple of dozen cell phone screens, which people had been holding up to record the show, went dead. The strings of Christmas lights draping the fake donkey winked out. And then all of it was replaced by a huge blue-black nothingness that tore at my mind.

And a presence that screamed of age. It was old, old, so very old; I could usually guess vampire ages, but this . . . I didn’t have words for this. Or air, when its power slammed into me.

I struggled just to gasp in a breath, and didn’t have to ask what was happening.

If this wasn’t the demon council, it damned well ought to be.

A voice that spoke every language and none came from all directions at once. “You summoned us?”

“How kind of you to finally notice!” Rosier snarled as I climbed to my feet.

And then went back down again when what felt like an invisible fist tightened around my throat.

Rosier was saying something, something I couldn’t hear over the vast ocean crashing into my ear canals.

I would have thought I was being strangled by a disembodied Allû, come to wreak vengeance, only they couldn’t without bodies. And anyway, I knew that hand. I just didn’t know what it was doing down here since the bastard of a demon lord it was attached to was on a carpet five stories up.

Pritkin was shouting something, but I couldn’t tell if it was at me, at his homicidal father, or at whoever was speaking. All I could hear was the rushing of waves and the pounding of my heart, a slow, sluggish beat like I was about to pass out. But if I did, this would all have been for nothing. If I did, Pritkin would go back to his prison, if not face a worse fate for daring to leave it. If I did, the creatures who had sent their damned guards after him might find something else to finish the job, and remove a problem permanently.

So I didn’t.

I didn’t try to stand again, since that was about as likely as flying right now. I didn’t even try to follow whatever was being said, because that clearly wasn’t happening, either. I concentrated everything I had on just getting my damned tongue to quit lolling around my mouth and do something besides drool. To somehow form the words I’d dragged Pritkin across three worlds to say.

And I guess I managed, even though I couldn’t hear my own voice. Because suddenly, the dark was eclipsed by a light, like a single star glowing in the distance. And then right in front of my face, blindingly bright and uncannily beautiful this close, showering me with a prism of changing colors.

I stared into it, half-mesmerized, and would have had to fight an urge to reach out and touch it, if I had been able to move. As it was, I swallowed and tried again, unsure if I’d spoken aloud, or only in my head. “Artemis . . . would address the council.”

“The one you call Artemis is no more,” the light informed me. “How would the dead speak to the living?”

I tried to answer, but the only thing that came out was a gagging wheeze. It felt like the horse that had been sitting on my chest had just been joined by an elephant. Rosier really didn’t want me to speak, which only made me that much more determined.

“She gave me . . . a message,” I gasped. “She said . . . there are things . . . you need to under—awk.” My little speech was abruptly terminated when the elephant was joined by a couple of its buddies.

And okay, that was it. I couldn’t talk anymore, couldn’t even breathe. It felt like my chest had just been caved in.

Until the light moved forward and engulfed me, its shining rays blocking out the rest of the room, and the power that went with it.

“You . . . you’re the council?” I gasped as the pressure abruptly eased.

“I am the Gatekeeper, child. I summon the council, if the need is sufficient. Tell me, why should I summon them for you?”

“To hear . . . my mother’s message.”

The light reflected on this for a moment as I struggled to reinflate my lungs. “Give it to me, and I will relay it to them.”

And maybe it was me, but the nonvoice had taken on a sly note I really didn’t like.

“She said . . ” I licked my lips and forced out the words. “She said . . . it would only work . . . if I play it in front of the full council.”

“Play.” The light fluctuated. “It is a recording?”

“Yes. Sort of.” I wasn’t really clear on that part, but this didn’t seem the time to bring it up.

“From she whom you call Artemis . . . to us?”

“Yes. And it’s about more than Pritkin . . . John . . . Emrys,” I gasped, my oxygen-starved brain finally coming up with the name Rosier used for his son. “There are other things . . . you should know.”

The light flickered again for a long moment, or maybe that was me. I was starting to have trouble seeing now, too. I reached for my last reserves of strength, only to find that I didn’t have any. This needed to be over. . .

And then it was.

“We will hear what the Huntress would say to us,” the light told me. “You will be summoned.”

And then good old-fashioned electricity came rushing back, and a wave of furious clapping and whistling broke over me, and a couple of empty rugs spiraled out of the sky, their contents gone like the star, like the Allû, like the whole room as I fell into nothingness.

I woke up with a gasp, my hand on my throat, feeling like I was being choked. And that I was stuck in some twilit nothingness, waiting for a verdict that was so important, it meant everything, but that I couldn’t control. Or even predict . .

But I wasn’t in dim light; I was in no light. And if anybody was here with me, they were being damned quiet about it. I stared around, panting, but as far as I could tell, nothing stared back. There was only velvety darkness, the soft shush of air-conditioning, and the familiar scent of the fabric softener the hotel used on my sheets.

I relaxed back against the bed with a relief so profound it made me dizzy.

Or maybe that was something else. It felt like the bed was slowly revolving beneath me, a faint, drifting feeling, like the lazy roll of the carpet before Rosier arrived. . . . Rosier.

And suddenly, everything came rushing back.

Pritkin, I breathed, and started up—

Which was when the lazy drift became a tidal wave threatening to sweep me off to some other shoreline altogether.

I lay back slowly, carefully. And the crashing waves gradually diminished to nauseating undulations. Which wasn’t a great improvement, but at least I was conscious. But lying there, trapped by my body, virtually helpless when I had about a thousand questions to ask—

I almost wished I was unconscious.

Because this was torture.

But, slowly, my eyes adjusted. Enough to see a strip of light leaking in under the door, some night-in-the-city faux dark sifting in through a minuscule gap in the blackout curtains over the windows, and the soft glow of my alarm clock, too dim to read. And a small rectangle gleaming on the nightstand, just below it . .

And I found I could move, after all, because it was my phone.

My hands were shaking so much that I almost dropped it, and the light from the screen was blinding up close. But my fingers somehow found the right buttons. U K?

I hit SEND. And then I waited, feeling dizzy and sweaty and hopeful and sick. And keeping an eye on the door because the vamps usually knew when I’d woken up. Changes in my heart rate and breathing told them, even when I wasn’t about to hyperventilate.

For a long moment, there was no response. And my breathing started to get ragged, which was stupid, because it wouldn’t help. I told myself to calm down, that signs of distress were only going to get me noticed faster, that the last thing I needed was a bunch of questions I couldn’t answer. . .

But it wasn’t working.

And then I got a text back, and felt my spine unknot slightly.

Until I read it.

Yes, now let me sleep.

Sure, Caleb, I thought viciously, jabbing in a response. S P K? tel me w@ hapnd!

There was no response for a long moment. My hand flexed and I had to almost physically restrain myself from throwing the phone at the wall. And then—

I am too old for this shit.

I stared at the little screen: w@?!

Stop doing that.

I took a deep breath. Caleb rarely used text speak, and he hated when I did. He was also a grammar Nazi, so I tried to be careful as I translated.

Is P. okay? What happened?

H & r dis. tt C. P held. U sum.

I just stared at that bit of nonsense for a long moment, wondering if I was going crazy or if Caleb was. No wonder he hated text speak. He sucked at it.

In English?

I waited while Caleb typed. And typed. And typed. Was he trying to give me a heart attack?

He and Rosier disappeared. I talked to Casanova. He said P. is being held until the hearing. You’ll be summoned.

I stared at that, but it still didn’t make much sense.

Held where?

Where do you think?

Damn it, Caleb!

Well, what did you expect? That they were just going to leave him here?

YES! We went through all that, and they let R just TAKE him?

More interminable typing. I was beginning to think Caleb only used one finger. One that I was going to break off . . .

He doesn’t have him. He’s with the council. And before you freak out, Casanova said there are rules.

Rules? These are demons!

And he’s part of their ruling class. And they have privileges, in case you didn’t notice.

I flashed on the crazy chariot driver in the souk, and the way everyone had practically kowtowed while he ran them down. Yeah, I’d noticed. But Pritkin was half human, and his other half was incubus, and they didn’t seem to get a lot of respect. The council sure hadn’t seemed to mind the idea of losing Rosier.

Of course, that might just be good taste.

What privileges? I typed.

Like they can’t kill him w/o a trial.

Great. That made my stomach feel so much better. Wens it?

What?

WHEN IS IT?

Don’t yell at me. And I don’t know. Casanova said it could be anything from hours to days.

How am I supposed to know when that is? I didn’t subscribe to the Hell Gazette.

C. said you’ll know. Now get some sleep. Or at least let me!

Yeah, right, I thought, and started typing in another message. But Caleb had the usual war mage stubbornness, either that or he’d turned off his phone. Because I didn’t get anything back.

I lay there for a while, trying again. And again, and again, because I can be stubborn, too. But I finally gave up, panting, because even texting was exhausting me. So I just lay there, staring at the ceiling instead.

I didn’t understand a goddamned thing. I’d spent a week, desperately trying everything I knew, in order to get to Pritkin. And when I finally did, what happened? He ended up right back where he started, only possibly even worse off. Because at least his father didn’t want to kill him!

And the council shouldn’t have, either. I’d expected to have to deal with Rosier; I’d anticipated problems with his court. But I hadn’t thought much about the demon council, except as a sort of finish line. Because they shouldn’t give a damn about any of this!

But there’d been plenty of evidence to the contrary downstairs. And it just seemed crazy to me. Why would the council send what had to be a large percentage of their own guards to watch over one little half demon? And an incubus to boot? You’d have thought Pritkin was Godzilla or something, by the way they were acting.

And okay, he’d tried to kill one of them once. But since the one in question had been Rosier, who they didn’t appear too fond of anyway, I’d have thought a century would be enough time to get over that. His father obviously had.

And as far as his connection with me went, that was even more WTF. When had I ever done anything to the council? I’d even helped them out once, by assisting Pritkin to bring down some ancient demon that had its panties all in a twist. Admittedly, that had been mostly due to not wanting to get killed by said demon, but still. They had made out okay, too.

So what the hell was the deal?

Based on what Rosier had said, it seemed like they had somehow gotten it into their heads that Pritkin and I were making some elaborate plan to shift back in time and destroy them. Which was the biggest WTF of all, because since when did I go around changing time? I’d been doing my best to try to avoid it, despite some pretty severe temptation.

And if I was going to go on some time-traveling journey of vengeance, I’d be targeting the gods anyway. Not a bunch of demons I didn’t even know. Assuming I had the power, which I didn’t, which made this even crazier . .

My head was spinning harder now, but I wasn’t sure what to blame. It could be exhaustion. It could be the lack of food since breakfast, because I hadn’t had time to eat any of the luscious-smelling sausages in the souk, even if I’d been willing to risk Rosier’s Revenge. It could be the council being staffed by a bunch of paranoid nut jobs.

But I knew which I had my money on.

The waves finally reduced to a gentle lapping motion, and I decided I was tired of looking at the ceiling. I got up, carefully, and staggered over to the dresser. God, everything hurt. I messed about until I found some aspirin, then toted it off to the bathroom to get some water because no way was I up to running the gauntlet to the kitchen. Marco had been taking the I-see-nothing line lately, which had been really nice. But I thought even he might be a little curious about an epic battle taking place in the middle of the drag.

God, why did it have to happen here? Why did it always have to—

I stopped, blinking. And okay, maybe the bathroom had been a bad idea. Because it meant I got a glimpse in the mirror.

And one was enough. I looked away. And found myself staring at the massive bandage somebody had slapped over my stomach instead.

I stood there for a minute, trying to remember why my stomach deserved mummification.

And then it came back to me: the Allû, its nonface staring down at me while the jagged wounds in its body were punching matching holes in mine.

I had to lean against the sink suddenly, but not out of remembered fear. More out of a feeling of complete dissociation. Things like that didn’t happen to normal people. Or even to the normal-if-you-squinted-and-ignored-a-few-things people, like I was.

Or like I’d been.

I looked at myself in the mirror again, even though I’d decided not to, and it didn’t help.

Because I didn’t look like me.

Of course, part of that was the aforementioned exhaustion, which had pinched my face and washed out my skin to the color of chalk. And the dirt, which was still mostly there, since nobody had wanted the hell once I woke up and found out I’d been bathed like a baby. For the same reason, I hadn’t been stripped and popped into one of my pairs of shorty PJs. Leaving me looking like I Dream of Jeannie had gone on a two-day bender in bad company.

I smiled slightly, despite everything, and wondered what Caleb would say if he heard me describe him that way. Mr. So-Proper War Mage, who had laughed and whooped his way across the skies of hell like a madman. “You’re as crazy as she is,” Pritkin had told him.

And maybe he was. And maybe I was. Because the eyes in the mirror looked different tonight. Not in color or shape or anything I could put a finger on. Just different. Like maybe they’d seen things that had changed the mind behind them a little.

I fingered the fabric of the trousers, what there was of it, and realized that it wasn’t silk. It wasn’t from an insect or an animal I’d ever seen before. It wasn’t from this planet. Like the dirt clinging to my temple.

I brushed it away, and it didn’t feel any different under my fingertips.

But it was.

Three months. That’s all it had been, since Agnes left me that heads-up on my computer, starting all of this. I wondered what that Cassie would think, what she’d say, if I told her what I’d seen today. If I described driving a chariot through—what had Caleb called it? A rose red city, half as old as time? Or riding a carpet high above an alien world, while spells exploded around me like fireworks. Or watching three moons rise in a deep blue twilight, under a canopy of stars I couldn’t name . .

Or being chased by a demon lord, or targeted by a bunch of bad-tempered guards, or almost eviscerated by a mass of vengeful golems.

I didn’t have to guess; I knew what the old Cassie would have told me. In a word: run. Get out, get lost, go somewhere else, go somewhere safe. But that was the real trick, wasn’t it? There was no place safe anymore. And once, quite recently, that thought would have terrified me.

It still did. Of course it did. It wasn’t like I enjoyed getting chased or beaten up or almost killed. . .

But there were things, about this new life . . . things I had sort of enjoyed. Or been in awe of. Or, like Caleb, wished I’d had longer to explore . .

Or something. I frowned at my reflection and swallowed my pills. I didn’t understand myself and I was starting to think in circles. I went back to bed.

It was soft and the room kept gently swirling underneath me, to the point that I closed my eyes, just to get it to stop. I’d get up in a minute. I’d go try to wring some more answers out of Casanova, like what a summons from the demon high council was supposed to look like. I’d get a bath, because I could certainly use one. I’d try to figure out what I was going to tell everyone about the whole thing on the drag. I’d . . . I’d . .