Tempt the Stars

Chapter Twenty-two

“Where’d your fingernails go?” Fred asked, showing his bald spot as he bent to take a look. He seemed more curious than grossed out.

“How the hell should I know?” Jules screeched. “Just fix it!” And he thrust the creepy-looking finger cages out again—at me.

I managed not to shy back, but it was a close thing. Because Fred had been right; there were no little buffed ovals in sight. Just what looked like an extra joint where the fusion had taken place. And from the expression on Jules’ face, he found that every bit as disturbing as I did.

But not as disturbing as suddenly having three sets of eyes on me, all at once. And all expectant, because the guys were new and hadn’t picked up on a few things yet. Like the fact that I might be a clairvoyant, but I wasn’t a witch.

Well, okay, yeah. Technically, I fell into that category, but only because every female magic user did. It was a catch-all term, like “wizard” was for guys, which said nothing about a person’s level of ability, training, or specialty. Or in my case, whether I could even manage a basic spell.

Of course, I had the Pythian stuff, but that was only useful for its own special brand of crazy. It could send me hurtling across time but it couldn’t do a simple ward, or a glamourie to cover my freckles or help me cheat at cards. Which was why Billy always won.

According to Pritkin, I had a decent amount of the normal kind of magic, but it was all potential since I’d never learned how to use it. That was down to Tony the bastard, who had been afraid I might use anything I learned against him one day. And to my usual luck.

After running away from Tony, I’d ended up living with a null witch, one with the rare talent of being able to cancel out any magic done around her. That had been great for hiding from the bad guys, whose trace charms had slid over Tammy’s house like water over glass. But it also meant that she couldn’t do any magic herself, or teach it to me.

Then I went back to Tony’s for three years, to try to set him up for what he’d done to my parents, so that was a wash. And then the second time I ran away, after my attempt at revenge went spectacularly wrong, I’d spent most of my time in the human world. Because it’s a lot bigger than the sup community, giving me a bigger crowd to hide in.

It had worked—it had taken him another three years to find me, despite being really motivated. And in the meantime, I bet his boys had spent hundreds of hours checking all the places a young, untrained witch might go to rectify that little problem, and had found nothing. Because I hadn’t gone to any of them.

That had been partly paranoia, and partly the old sour grapes thing. I’d done a good job of convincing myself I didn’t want any part of the world I couldn’t have anyway. But now it left me with a problem, and one I hadn’t had a chance to remedy since having all the Pythian stuff dumped in my lap.

Not that any of that mattered to Jules, who was obviously close to tears.

His attitude wasn’t a shock. Augustine’s little joke would have freaked out anybody, but it was especially cruel in Jules’ case. His hands were as emblematic of the man as Marco’s cigars or Fred’s big gray eyes or Rico’s one-liners. I’d wondered a few times if he was part Italian, as he had the same tendency to gesture when he talked. Or when he was arguing with the other vamps. Or when he was listening to music, following the notes with flutelike trills from those expressive fingers.

Fingers that, for once, were completely stiff and still.

And suddenly, I felt a genuine anger toward the smug shop owner. The other stuff had been sort of funny; this was just plain cruel. And he could damned well get his elegant ass out of bed and come and fix it.

“Get Augustine on the phone,” I told Fred. “Tell him—”

“No!” Jules said, looking panicked. “No, you can’t—”

He broke off abruptly. And whipped his head back and forth frantically. And then made a run for my bathroom, where we heard him clanging around while we stared at each other. And then finally went to take a look.

We found him in the shower.

He seemed to be trying to turn it on, only that didn’t work so well with only elbows. Help me, he mouthed at Rico. Who sighed but obligingly went over and turned the knob. Water burst out of the wall at the same time that another burst—of noise—made me jump. Fred had hit the button for the radio, blasting Beyoncé’s latest from every built-in speaker until it echoed off the tiled walls and rattled the towel bar.

And then Jules put his arms over my head and dragged me into the stall.

That wouldn’t have been so bad, since I knew what he was doing. I’d done it myself a few times, trying to add to the ambient background noise of a loud casino and a louder Strip to confuse vampire hearing. But then the other two crowded in behind us.

And while it was a big shower, it wasn’t that big.

But Jules didn’t care what I thought. Jules was all about making his point. “You can’t—promise me you won’t call Augustine!” he whispered.

“Why not?” I demanded, trying to duck under his arms, since he couldn’t very well let me go the usual way. But that didn’t accomplish anything, since Rico was right on my ass. Resulting in me pushing Jules back into one of the shower levers—and I didn’t have to ask which one.

The lukewarm stream suddenly jumped to the approximate temperature of lava.

A pain-filled gasp was all I got out before a hand clasped over my mouth. Rico’s, I identified, from the nice gold bracelet around the elegant wrist. One I was going to make him eat if he didn’t—

There was some rustling around. And then the temperature abruptly dropped back to bearable, leaving me only half-scalded. But no less furious. And no less mute, because the hand-over-my-mouth thing didn’t change.

“Let her go,” someone said as I started thrashing around.

It took a second for me to recognize the voice, because it held a surprising note of command. And because it was coming from the little guy squatting under the toiletry shelf, since he’d hit his head if he stood up. Fred scowled at Rico, and to my further surprise, Rico let me go and moved off a pace, giving me room to turn around and glare at him.

He didn’t look too repentant, though, maybe because he wasn’t exactly practiced with the expression. I doubted many women stayed mad at him for long, with his dark curls and his stubbly jaw and the six-pack visible under his rapidly dampening shirt. But it wouldn’t have helped him with me—after dealing with Mircea for three months, it took more than a few muscles to fog my brain.

“And we’re not calling Augustine because . . . ?” I demanded again.

“We can’t,” Jules said, going back into panic mode. “If we do the master is sure to find out!”

“So? It’s not like he’s going to assault Augustine—”

“Who cares about Augustine? I’m worried about me!”

I struggled back around to see what looked like genuine panic in those blue eyes. “Mircea doesn’t go around assaulting his vampires, either,” I pointed out. He didn’t have to. Most of them acted like he was the second coming already.

“It’s not so much assault that’s the problem,” Fred said, apparently in Zen mode, despite getting deluged by a waterfall from off the shelf.

“What, then?”

The three exchanged glances. At least, I guessed they did. I couldn’t see Rico anymore, but Fred looked behind me and then at Jules. “I’m gonna tell her,” he warned.

Nobody said anything.

“Tell me what?” I demanded.

“It’s like . . ” Fred thought for a minute. “You know how the Brits used to send convicts to Australia?” he finally said.

I stared at him through the streams of muddy water cascading off my dirty bangs. “What?”

“You know, in the bad old days. When they needed to dump some troublemakers who hadn’t done enough to hang but weren’t good enough to keep around? How they’d load ’em up on ships and send ’em off to Oz?”

“No!”

“Australia is a bad example,” Rico protested. “People died there. And before that there were hardship and pain and suffering—”

Fred raised an eyebrow. “And?”

Rico thought for a second. “Good point.”

I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. And then opened them to glare at Fred. “Why are you telling me this?”

Gray eyes met mine with a hint of compassion. “Because you’re Australia?”

I wanted to bang my head on the tiles, but I couldn’t reach them. So I just stood there for a minute, wondering how much trouble I’d be in with Mircea if I killed three of his guys. If I was getting what they were saying, not all that much.

Rico huffed out a laugh. “I wish I could see her face.”

“No,” Fred told him. “You don’t. But we don’t have time for diplomacy.”

“Just as well,” Rico said, somehow managing to light a cigarette. “We all suck at it.”

“So you’re saying you screwed up and Mircea punished you by sending you to me?” I summarized.

“See?” Rico said. “I keep telling everyone she isn’t really a dumb blonde.”

I turned around, elbowing Jules in the gut in the process, and grabbed the cigarette out of Rico’s mouth. And dropped it onto the soggy tiles, where it went out with a little hiss. “That was a compliment,” he protested.

“The point is, we can’t screw up again,” Fred said quickly. “Or . . . well, I don’t know what might happen. But I think it’s safe to say that none of us wants to find out. But you know how Augustine is. The guy’s touchy even on a good day—”

“They call it the artistic temperament,” Rico said, sounding amused.

“Well, I call it being a dick,” Fred said sourly. “But if he has to get out of bed, and come all the way up here, and reverse his hex or whatever, and then he sees the mess you guys left in the workroom—”

“You left a mess?” I asked Rico, squirming back to face him.

“You were in a hurry.”

“I was—I didn’t ask you to do a damned thing!”

“They’re always telling us to be proactive,” Jules said, sounding aggravated. “Back home, that is. A good servant knows what his master wants before his master does—”

“I’m not your master!” I told him, finally managing to duck under those encircling arms.

“Well, you’re the closest thing I’ve got right now!” Jules said, using his wrists to shove a swath of wet blond hair out of his face. “And I went down there to take care of you. Now take care of me!”

I stared at him, feeling angry and waterlogged and pissed. But also strangely understanding. Because in two sentences, he’d just perfectly articulated the vampire code.

Real vampires were not the lone wolves of the movies, living out a solitary but sexy existence in a castle somewhere, pining for the love of a good woman. In fact, pretty much the opposite was true. If anything, they reminded me of ants, living in sprawling, social families, sometimes hundreds or even thousands strong, with each member slotted into a complex hierarchy that would have made most people’s heads explode trying to comprehend it.

And all of those members—save one—were servants of varying ranks. Who were ordered around, controlled, and dictated to by those further up the ladder in ways that would have appalled most humans. But along with the restrictions came a strange sort of freedom most of those same humans would never know.

You might not make the rules, but you didn’t have to deal with the fallout. You might not have the power, but you also didn’t have the responsibility. Unless you were the head of your own household, everything was always somebody else’s problem, somebody else’s burden, whether said somebody had had anything to do with whatever mess you’d created or not. You might be disciplined, if you screwed up enough, but you’d never know the stress of having to deal with things all by yourself.

Because you would never be all by yourself.

And because the buck never stopped with you.

And right now that was sounding really attractive.

“It’s all right,” Fred said, after a minute. “He can wait.”

Jules looked at him incredulously. And then at me. He didn’t look like a guy who could wait.

“No!” he said, voice rising in alarm. “Fix it! Fix it now!”

And yeah. That’s probably how I’d feel in his place. Like I wanted to rip my hands apart, or tear them off my body like the alien things they’d become. The only difference was Jules had vampire strength. He could do it. And sure, they’d eventually grow back, but not all scars heal. Like the memory of clawing off your own flesh, for instance.

“Okay,” I told him, trapping his hands in mine. “Okay. Just . . . give me a second.”

I closed my eyes again, not so much to think, because there was nothing to think about. But to avoid having to meet his. But it didn’t help much since I could still see the afterimages of the hands I’d been staring at so intently.

And in the afterimage, they looked normal, handsome even, with fine bones and elegant lines. They were an artist’s hands, an actor’s hands. Not surprisingly, I guess, since that’s what Jules had been once.

He’d been an aspiring Hollywood up-and-comer sometime in the early days of movies, when Mircea had met him and offered him a different kind of deal. Only it hadn’t turned out as well as Jules had hoped. Maybe because, while he had talent, intellect, and drive, he was also hotheaded, blunt, and had a bad tendency to leap before he looked.

Like Rico had said, he was a terrible diplomat.

Which wouldn’t have been so bad, but Mircea’s family was all about diplomacy. So yeah, for a guy who didn’t have much but his looks left, something like this would hurt. Which probably explained why his hands were suddenly trembling in mine.

Damn it! Pritkin could have handled this in a heartbeat, probably without even breaking a sweat. But thanks to Rosier, he wasn’t here. And I couldn’t very well call Jonas, who would find a bunch of coven witches in my living room and probably burst a gasket. Which would equally probably spark a retaliation, since the coven’s leadership hadn’t exactly impressed me with their restraint so far. And then both sides would call for help and then—

And then we’d all end the night clucking.

“Cassie?” Jules’ voice came again, more timid this time. Like maybe the amount of time my examination was taking had started to worry him.

It had started to worry me, too, because I wasn’t coming up with anything. Well, other than Roger’s old mantra of fake it till you make it. Which might not help matters, but might keep Jules from running amok until I could find something that would.

“Yeah,” I said thoughtfully, stroking the backs of his hands, and trying to channel every doctor I’d ever heard. “Yeah. I thought so.”

“You thought what?”

“You shouldn’t worry,” I told him, opening my eyes and meeting his head-on. “This is no big deal.”

“No big deal?” Jules sounded incredulous.

“Well, sure, it probably doesn’t seem that way to you. But it’s an easy spell. More a prank than anything else. The mages’ kids sometime use it on each other for fun.”

“For—” He broke off with a choked sound. “Mages are crazy.”

“Tell me about it. Look, just take a load off and stay out of sight. I’ll get rid of our guests as soon as I can, and we’ll get you all fixed up. All right?”

He blinked at me through water-beaded lashes, sort of dazed, as if he’d been bracing for a death sentence. But then he nodded, looking a little calmer. And let Rico lead his sopping-wet form out of the shower.

Fred didn’t follow. “Who you want me to call?”

I scowled at him. “How do you know I want you to call anybody?”

He just looked at me.

I sighed. “Central, the Corps’ HQ. Ask for Caleb Carter.”

“Who?”

“One of Pritkin’s friends. You met him that night at the pizza place. Tell him what happened and ask him to get over here.”

Fred sent me a look. “So I guess it’s bad, huh?”

“I don’t know. But Caleb will. And he knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

“So does Pritkin,” Fred pointed out. “Why not just call him?”

“He’s . . . busy.”

“Busy where? We haven’t seen him all week. Some of the guys have been wondering—”

“I didn’t think they’d miss a war mage.”

“Miss might be a little much,” he admitted. “But he’s less of a pain than most, and he brings beer. So where’d he go again?”

“I sent him on an errand.”

“Oh, jeez. Not back to Faerie? Didn’t he almost get killed the last time?”

“He isn’t—” I stopped myself. I wasn’t getting caught up in this. The fewer lies I told, the better.

Unlike Roger, I wasn’t that great with them.

“Look, just get Caleb, okay? Before Jules has a nervous breakdown.” Or I did.

“Too late. He’s Jules. He was born that way.”

“Fred!”

“All right, all right. Relax. Have a bath.” He looked me up and down, and then he smiled slightly. “Or, you know. Another one.”