Tempt the Stars

Chapter Twenty-one

I woke up the second time to the most wonderful smell ever being wafted around under my nose.

“That’s it,” somebody said as I instinctively followed it. “Just a couple . . . more . . . there!”

And before I knew it, some bastard had plopped a pillow behind my back, preventing me from reattaching myself to my lovely soft bed. But since whoever it was also slid a tray full of bacon and flapjacks and maple syrup and OJ and coffee and fresh fruit and toast under my nose, I didn’t complain too much. I also didn’t answer, because I was already stuffing my face.

God, this one-meal-a-day thing had to go. But it was a hell of a meal. I was halfway through with it before I looked up, to see Fred eyeing my plate jealously.

“You know, I’ve never really seen the reason for pancakes and toast,” he commented, sidling up next to the latter. “Not in the same meal, anyway. I mean, they’re both basically bread—”

“My bread,” I said, around a mouthful. And quickly slopped butter and strawberry jam all over the measly two pieces I’d been provided, because licking them would probably have been rude.

“There’s more downstairs,” Marco pointed out, earning him a grin. Had my back.

“Yeah, but I need ’em up here. You could have said you were ordering breakfast,” Fred pointed out.

“I didn’t whisper.”

“But I was out on the balcony, making a call. I didn’t hear—”

“Not my problem.”

“—and who orders breakfast at seven p.m., anyway?”

“Seven p.m.?” I asked, confused. Because it sure felt like I’d slept longer than that.

“You’ve almost slept the clock around,” Marco told me.

I stared at him a moment. And then—

“You’re not going anywhere,” he told me, which didn’t impress. Unfortunately, he also had a hand on the shoulder I was trying to leverage out of bed, and I guess that did. Because I wasn’t making any headway.

“I have to talk to Caleb, to Casanova—” I said, struggling. ’Cause despite the sleep, it didn’t feel like I could shift.

“That war mage called a while ago—”

“What did he say?”

“—and I don’t think Casanova wants to talk to you.”

“Marco.” I grabbed his shoulder in a grip that would have been painful on a human. Marco didn’t even flinch. “What. Did. He. Say?”

“That you’re not to worry, ’cause nothing’s happened.” Marco shot me a look. “Do I need to know what’s supposed to be happening?”

“No. And stop stealing my food.” That last was aimed at Fred, who appeared to have an appetite that would have done a trucker proud.

“It’s not food; it’s coffee,” he said, shooting me a look. “And you have a whole pot.”

“Not now,” I pointed out, moving the purloined pot farther away from him. He rolled his eyes. And then he stole some of my cream. “Why are you here?” I demanded.

“I live here.”

“Not in my bedroom!”

“Yeah, but the only alternative has witches in it.”

I stopped eating. “What?”

“They showed up an hour ago—” Marco began.

“Well, send them away!”

He just looked at me. “They have an appointment. Remember?”

And I did. I suddenly, definitely remembered telling one of them to make an appointment. And shit.

“What do they want?”

“They haven’t said.”

“You didn’t ask?”

He frowned. “I’m not your secretary. And they’re not forthcoming.”

“Marco!”

“Well, I asked,” Fred said, his mouth full of something.

“And?”

He swallowed. “And they told me to mind my business. Only they weren’t that nice. I think they’re mad they had to wait.”

I fell back onto the bed. For someone who had just had almost a day of sleep, I didn’t feel rested. I felt achy and stiff, and sluggish from the five pounds of breakfast I’d just consumed. I so did not feel like dealing with three irate witches.

“It’s your call,” Marco said, and he sounded serious. Like if I said I wasn’t up to it, he would march out there and tell them to get lost. If it was anyone else, I’d have assumed he was bluffing, but Marco had seen scarier things than a trio of pissed-off magic workers. I was afraid he’d actually do it.

And I didn’t know the reverse spell for chicken.

“It’s okay,” I told him.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Just give me a couple minutes.”

He nodded and they left me to finish eating, which I did because I needed the energy, but I’d sort of lost my appetite. I felt a little better once I’d finished, though. Still tired and sore as hell, but less like a good gust of wind might blow me away. I faced up to it, put the tray on the bed, and swung my legs off the side.

And crap.

“What’s wrong?”

I looked up to see that Fred had returned, maybe because there were no witches in my bedroom. Well, other than me, and I didn’t count. “Trying to remember where Marco put the codeine,” I told him truthfully.

“You can’t have that stuff. Messes up your Pythia power. Remember?”

“That doesn’t feel like it’s on board right now, anyway. And I feel like death.”

“No, you don’t. Death doesn’t hurt,” he told me, and presented something on a small tray. “Well, you know. Not after the first bit.”

“What’s that?”

“What does it look like?”

“An Irish coffee,” I said, perking up. And damn. It was like he’d read my mind.

“Better?” he asked, flopping on my bed.

I licked whipped cream off my nose. “Getting there.”

And I was, with a warm tingle that didn’t so much soothe away the aches as make me not care about them anymore. Until I peered into my closet. And realized that, in this case, the age-old lament was totally true.

“What now?” Fred asked as I just stood there, drinking and scowling.

“I don’t have anything to wear.”

“You got a whole closet full of stuff.”

“Yeah. But not the right stuff.”

“What difference does it make what you wear?” he asked. “We’re talking about people who show up, uninvited, in the middle of the night and terrorize everybody. Why dress up for them?”

“They’re not uninvited tonight,” I pointed out. “And it’s not for them.”

“Who, then?”

“Me,” I said grimly, flipping through the hangers. Like the perfect outfit was just going to magically appear.

But no. Magic gets me into trouble; it rarely gets me out. And this obviously wasn’t one of those times.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’m tired, stressed, and my power is feeling wonky—”

“But you can’t afford to look like it.”

I turned, surprised, even though I shouldn’t have been. Fred wasn’t stupid. He was just . . . Fred.

Who was staring at something in my hand and scowling.

“What is that?” he asked, pointing at the hanger I was holding.

“A skirt,” I said defensively. It was cute, a multicolored tie-dyed creation I’d bought from a street vendor, which swirled around my ankles whenever I wore it. And caused the vamps to make pained faces.

Fred didn’t disappoint. “Put that back.”

“Well, I don’t have a lot of choices!” In fact, my closet had a serious identity crisis at the moment.

On the one side were my old clothes—T-shirts and jeans mostly, with a few pairs of shorts and sweats thrown in for variety. They were the kind of stuff I’d worn for years, and which had worked fine when my job was reading tarot cards at a nightclub or doing secretarial stuff at a travel agency where I never saw the public. They were comfortable and familiar and just the sight of them made me feel better.

Unfortunately, even I realized that they said Girl Who Dips Your Ice Cream at the Mall more than World’s Chief Clairvoyant.

Of course, the other side wasn’t any better. Not that it was bare; quite the contrary. There was hardly enough room to pack everything in, which explained why the rainbow spill of extravagant ball gowns had started to slum it with the 2-for-$10 tees.

It was doubly annoying, since I’d never worn any of them. Because who needs twenty ball gowns? No one, that’s who. Least of all me, since I didn’t get invited to those kinds of parties anyway.

Well, not usually.

And when I did, someone tried to kill me.

I put the skirt back and kept looking.

“Go with a power suit. They’re mostly wearing power suits,” Fred advised.

“I don’t have any power suits.”

“Why not?”

“Because my wardrobe keeps getting blown up!”

“Then wear something Pythia-like. What do they wear for official visit–type things?”

“Damned if I know.” I’d seen Agnes in little-girl white, a retro-fifties cocktail dress, and an eighties standard evening gown. But if there was an official Pythia costume, I must have missed it.

“I bet it’s something Grecian,” Fred said. “You know, all flowy stuff and sandals like you see on those old statues. When they wear clothes, I mean.”

I frowned. “I don’t know. Delphi was a long time ago. They’ve probably modernized.” Hell, even nuns didn’t wear medieval habits anymore.

“Yeah, but does the average witch know that?” he asked shrewdly. “Besides, you should probably play up the whole goddess thing. For the intimidation factor.”

“I’m not a goddess.”

“But you’re related to one.”

I stopped thumbing through outfits but didn’t turn around. This was the first time anybody had brought it up, at least in my hearing, since we all found out a week ago. I’d been too busy to really worry about it, but now I wondered. “Is that a problem?”

“You’d think it would be an asset, although they don’t seem to be real impressed so far. I mean, who breaks into a goddess’ penthouse, anyway?”

I finally turned around, and met gray eyes that looked exactly the way they always did—vague. And staring approximately at my left ear. Fred had had terrible vision before the change, which usually restored stuff like that. But his eyes must have been really bad, because he was still pretty myopic. He was the only vamp I knew who wore glasses, although he did it on the sly.

“You can put them on, you know,” I told him. “Nobody else is here.”

“Yeah, but they could come in. Besides, I can see. ’Specially if you keep coming out with stuff like that tie-dye. I mean, if it looks garish to me—”

“Fine. Just thought I’d offer.” I stood there a minute. “So, how are the guys taking it?”

“They don’t know. At least, I don’t think so. The ones back home could have mentioned it, but they mostly gossip about the master. And I don’t think anybody’s seen me with glasses since I got here.”

“No, I mean, about my, uh, lineage. How is everybody taking it?”

“Oh, that.” He shrugged. “I heard a couple say it made sense. That no human woman could possibly get in as much trouble as . . . uh, that is, they didn’t seem too bothered about it. If you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean.” And I was suddenly, profoundly grateful to be living with creatures hundreds of years old, who took things in stride. Vampires were hard to impress, but they were also hard to rattle. I felt my spine relax a little as one fear evaporated, at least.

“Of course, they’re a little worried that this makes you more high-profile, so people are gonna start trying to kill you more. But I told them, hey, remember last time? I mean, if a bunch of other demigods couldn’t take you out, who are they gonna send? It’d have to be something really weird, something really unusual, something really dangerous—”

“Like a trio of coven witches?”

Fred blinked. “Naw,” he finally said. “There’s only three of them. If they were gonna off you, they’d probably have sent more than that.”

“Thanks,” I said sourly. “That makes me feel a lot better.”

“I’m here to help. Now, what are you gonna wear?”

“I don’t know.” I started looking through the dresses again, but they were hopeless, more ball-gown-y than goddess-y. And while I wanted to dress to impress, I didn’t think looking like I was waiting on Prince Charming was the way to go.

“Those aren’t gonna work,” Fred agreed, slurping coffee. “But I bet Augustine has something.”

“Augustine sent these,” I pointed out, talking about the best—according to him, anyway—magical designer around. His boutique occupied the largest of the overpriced shops in the drag downstairs.

“Well, yeah. But he was just sending regular party stuff. I bet he has something that would work.”

Augustine closed at six. And no way was I up to shifting back a couple of hours to try to catch the great man before he left.

“No problem,” Fred said, suddenly businesslike. “What size do you wear?”

“Anywhere from a two to a six, depending on the outfit. But it doesn’t matter. Augustine closes at—”

“Yeah, I know. What color you want?”

“White. But you can’t get in, and he doesn’t live around here. And by the time he could get back and open up, assuming he’d even do that for me—”

“Oh, he’d do it,” Fred said cynically. “He might not like it, but he’d do it. Have you seen his sign lately?”

“What sign?”

“The one outside his shop. The one that says ‘Couturier to the Pythia.’ He left off the official part, but it’s implied.”

Well, that explained the gowns I kept getting. I should have known Augustine wasn’t being generous. He wasn’t known for the softer emotions.

Or, you know, any.

“He’s been making a mint off all the wealthy women who want to dress like you,” Fred added.

I blinked at him. “Have they seen me?”

He laughed. “Point is, he’s in no position to complain. We’ll just take what we need, and let him know tomorrow. If he puts up a fuss, you can tell him to take his damned sign down.”

“Yeah, but you aren’t listening to me. We can’t get in.”

“Wanna bet?”

It took me a moment to realize what he was getting at. “No,” I said sternly. “We can’t.”

“Fifty bucks? Or do you want to make it interesting?”

“It’s interesting enough. Didn’t you hear about those guys last week?”

“What guys?”

“Two teens with sticky fingers tried to rip off some T-shirts or something. So Augustine spelled them to actually get stuck.”

Fred’s forehead wrinkled. “To what?”

“To everything. He did some spell that made it like they were human Velcro. Only once something stuck, it didn’t come off. One of the guys turned up at the end of the day, sobbing and freaked out, dragging a massive train of street trash, a folding chair, some kid’s baby stroller . . . and a homeless person’s grocery cart full of stuff.”

“Well, that don’t sound so—”

“And the homeless person, who was beating him over the head with a rolled-up newspaper.” They’d been stuck together all day, since the guy had grabbed the kid’s arm, begging for change.

“Oh. Well, yeah, that would kind of—”

“And he was the lucky one. They had to pry another guy off a taxi—after it went ten blocks!”

Fred’s lips pursed. “Ten’s not so bad if you’re just riding along on the trunk or something.”

“He was jogging along behind! He’s just lucky it was a bad traffic day, and they weren’t going too fast. . . ”

I trailed off, because Fred was no longer listening. He was staring at the wall instead, with unfocused eyes. “What’s your shoe size?” he suddenly asked.

“An eight. Why?”

“No reason.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Tell me you’re not breaking in right now.”

“Me? I’m just sitting here.”

“And what about the others?” Fred was part of an unholy trio Mircea had gifted me a little over a week ago. At first, I’d thought he was just beefing up security after a couple of recent incidents. But lately, I’d begun to suspect that he might have had other reasons.

Selfish, selfish reasons.

“What others?” Fred asked, trying to look innocent, just as my door was flung open.

“Those others!” I said, pointing at the two guys who appeared in the doorway. Well, one guy, since I couldn’t see the other under a mountain of clothes, although I knew he’d be there. “Damn it, Fred!”

But Fred wasn’t listening to me. “Well?” he asked, turning around.

“I hate you,” the mountain snarled.

And then started to stagger in the direction of my food-strewn bed, before everybody yelled, “No!”

The mountain cursed, and the handsome brunet vamp who sauntered in after it grinned, a quick flash of teeth in an olive face. “We got out clear,” he told me. “Well, more or less.”

“How much less?”

“We ran into a little ward. Or one of us did.”

“Here. Put everything down on the chair,” Fred said, coming over with an armchair from the window.

“You put it down!” the mountain snapped.

“What’s the problem? Just drop them.”

“I can’t just drop them!”

“Why not?”

“You aren’t stuck to them, are you?” I asked apprehensively.

A blue eye managed to glare at me through a gap in a layer of chiffon. “No! I’m stuck to me!” he said. And then raised both arms, causing a terribly expensive landslide onto my carpet.

My mouth fell open, but not because of the indignity to Augustine’s work.

“Oooooh,” Fred said, looking impressed.

“Do something!” The mountain had resolved into a stressed-looking blond named Jules, who held out his hands. Or, I should say, his hand, since there was no longer any separation between the two. The fingers of one ran straight into those of the other, with no break in the smooth, pale skin. Leaving the thief stuck in handcuffs.

Made out of his own hands.