Tempt the Stars

Chapter Twenty-three

I had the bath. And toweled my hair dry. And put on a T-shirt and jeans, because I was tired and fed up and had done all the pretending I was going to do for one night. Then I went on a witch hunt.

And found them in the lounge playing pool.

Well, two of them. The third was visible through the sliding doors to the living room, which were open again. Maybe because Marco had decided to turn on the charm. Or possibly to get himself a date; the jury was still out.

But he was talking to one of the witches, anyway, who I immediately christened Jasmine, because she looked like the Disney character. You know, if Jasmine had worn Armani and had her hair cut in a short, swingy style that framed her beautiful face. She was as lovely as a vamp, which might explain why Marco was chatting her up over by the bar. I couldn’t tell if he was getting anywhere, because her sultry eyes were half-lidded, and the faint smile on her dark red lips could have been amusement or scorn.

But the other two witches were definitely veering toward amusement.

One was standing on a stool beside the pool table, cue in heavily beringed hands, lining up a shot. The stool was needed because she was maybe four foot eight or nine, if you didn’t count a truly magnificent Afro, which must have added an extra five inches. She was wearing a green silk muumuu, had long nails painted a glittery gold, and had on a bunch of matching gold chains that clinked together as she took the shot. And sank the eight ball, causing her companion to say a bad word.

The tiny witch cackled and got off her stool, reclaiming a beer she’d left on a side table. Her opponent racked up another game, since she’d just lost that one. It didn’t appear to faze her. I had the impression that there wasn’t a lot that did.

She was the one who had attempted to talk to me in the lobby. I was kind of amazed that I’d just blown her off now, since she was maybe six foot two in her hose and easily six-four in the short-heeled black pumps she was wearing. The pumps complemented the rest of the look: hair short and gray, eyes piercing and steel-colored, suit pin-striped and more serviceable than stylish. She didn’t look like a witch. She looked like an aging Valkyrie. And more than a bit like Eugenie, my old governess, which probably explained why my stomach had started to hurt.

Since they weren’t paying me any attention anyway, I went to the kitchen to find something to settle it down. And instead found another witch. At least, I guessed so, although it sort of messed up the Macbeth thing the trio had going on. But I guess you couldn’t stick to that stuff all the time, especially if you thought you might need backup.

Not that she looked likely to provide very much.

She was young, for one thing, maybe five or six years younger than me. Or maybe even that was optimistic, because while the body was that of an adult, she was wearing a long white, high-necked gown that Eugenie would have called “genteel” and I called a nineteenth-century nightgown. It was one of the reasons I’d gone to miniskirts and thigh-high boots as soon as I got away from Tony’s and acquired a paycheck: I’d spent my youth dressed like Wendy Darling.

Eugenie would have liked the girl’s hairstyle, too, which was long and light brown and rippled down her back in a strangely familiar way. I could see it because she partly had her back to me, struggling with something on the counter. I recognized it about the same time I recognized her, or rather, who she reminded me of.

“Agnes?”

The brown head whipped around, but of course it wasn’t her. I hadn’t really thought so, since this chick was an inch or two taller than me, and Agnes had been a tiny little thing. But the overall look was similar, and her face was familiar, although I couldn’t place it. She was also looking a little stressed, which had been Agnes’ default, although it usually took more to get that expression on her face than a misbehaving coffeepot.

“It’s one of those pod things,” I told the girl helpfully.

She didn’t say anything.

“You know, with the little cups?”

She obviously didn’t know. Or maybe she didn’t care. She had turned around, and was plastered against the sink, staring at me blankly out of a pale face and huge brown eyes. I decided there was a chance she didn’t speak English.

“You need a pod,” I repeated, slower, and sketched a pod shape with my fingers.

Nothing.

“Here,” I told her, getting a box of coffee pods out of a cabinet and handing them to her. Or trying to. But she just stayed where she was, flat against the sink, hands gripping the counter and eyes big and freaked-out.

Only no, I realized, she didn’t look freaked-out.

She looked terrified.

I whirled around, box of pods in hand, because you never knew around here. But no one was there. Not even one of the vamps, who tended to have an effect on sensitive-minded guests. But they were obviously traumatizing people elsewhere, because the doorway was empty.

I turned back around, but the horror-movie-victim pose hadn’t changed, and it was starting to freak me out. I slid the pods onto the counter. I grabbed a beer out of the fridge. I backed slowly out of the door.

And ran into Marco, who was coming in. “Let’s do this,” he told me quietly. “I’m running out of jokes.”

“You could always feed them.”

A lip curled. “If we feed them, they’ll stay longer.”

“Not if the quality of the cuisine is anything like last time,” the Valkyrie said, from across the room. “Or was that deliberate?”

She sank a ball.

Marco looked at me.

Enhanced hearing, I mouthed.

The wards are supposed to stop things like that, he mouthed back.

“And your wards are shit,” the witch added, causing Marco to mutter something. “I heard that.”

I sighed and walked over.

“At least most of them are,” she amended, leaning on her stick and watching me. “There was a bastardized fey spell that gave us some trouble, mainly from us not expecting it.”

“Woven with holly all around,” the small witch added, in a singsong. “Shot through with sunlight and lightened by air, call on water, call on fire, call on wind—protect, protect, protect.” She took a swig of her beer. “Three elements are a bitch.”

“But we got past it,” her companion added. “Mainly from your lot not maintaining it.”

“The guy who usually does is out of town,” I said evenly.

“Well, you need to get him back.”

“Working on it.” Although it would be easier to do that if they’d go away, so I could track down Casanova and find out what he knew about the council. But that didn’t appear to be happening. And since I’d already pissed off the witches as much as I dared, it looked like I was going to have to practice my diplomacy for a while.

“You play?” the Valkyrie asked, racking up another game, even though they’d barely started the last one.

I looked over at the little witch, who grinned at me toothily. “I’ll sit one out,” she offered.

I shrugged. “Okay.”

Marco looked surprised, probably because he’d never seen me play. Something about almost dying on a weekly basis took the fun out of it. “I used to work in a bar,” I reminded him.

“Doing what?” the Valkyrie demanded.

“Bar-backing. Bartending sometimes, when somebody called in. Mostly reading tarot.”

“The Pythia read tarot in a bar,” the witch said, as if she thought I was lying to her.

“I wasn’t Pythia then. And I like eating.”

“You must have been quite the draw,” she said dryly.

“Not really.” I paused as she lined up the break, which she’d taken without bothering to flip me for it. “Most people didn’t like what I had to tell them.”

“And what was that?”

“The truth.”

Her cue stuttered on the velvet, and she flubbed the break. She scowled at me, as if I’d done that deliberately. I fished the cue ball out of a corner pocket and tossed it to her. “Redo it.”

She looked surprised that I was giving away my advantage. But I wasn’t feeling real competitive right now. And I doubted they’d broken into my suite and trashed the lobby in order to play pool.

The witch racked ’em up and broke again, leaving herself a couple of easy shots to start with. She took one of them before looking up at me through a fringe of gray bangs. “Didn’t expect to find you so polite.”

“Why? Because I didn’t talk to you after you broke in here?”

“No. But we have plenty of other reasons. Care to hear them?”

By the tone in her voice, I had a feeling I was going to anyway. “Sure.” I walked over to the wall and chose a cue stick.

“You didn’t invite us to the coronation, despite the fact that the damned Circle were there—in force.” She sank her first shot with a savage little motion. “You haven’t sent us the usual greetings or otherwise acknowledged our existence, despite having more than enough time to do so.” She sank two balls with her second shot, clack-clack. “And you’re living with a bunch of goddamned vampires!” She attempted a tough bank shot, and missed—barely.

She swore and moved off, and I took her place. Because no way was I giving her a second advantage after that. I took a moment to size up the table.

“Who I live with is my business,” I said, chalking up. “And I didn’t send you greetings because I didn’t know I was supposed to.” Or that you existed, I didn’t add, because I decided it was barely possible that the head of a whole coven might have an ego. “As for the other, well, if it helps, I wasn’t invited, either.”

“Wasn’t invited to what?” she demanded as I bent over the table.

“My coronation.” I took the shot. It was an easy two ball in the side pocket. It went in—just. I was rusty.

“What do you mean, you weren’t invited?” the witch repeated, as if I wasn’t making sense. Which, okay. It hadn’t made much sense to me at the time, either.

“The Circle and the senate got together and decided it was too dangerous for me to be there with all the death threats I’ve been getting,” I explained. “So they moved the date up without telling me. I barely found out in time to make it.”

“They moved the date?” She still looked confused.

“And when I did show up, they threw me out.”

“Of what?”

I looked up from lining up my next shot, to find her frowning. “The building. Marlowe—that’s Kit Marlowe—”

“I know who he is!”

“Well, then you know he can be pretty . . . persuasive. Not that he bothered that night. He just pushed me onto the back steps and slammed the door. They had some chick pretending to be me, and it would have been awkward if there were two of us running around.”

The Valkyrie didn’t say anything, but her lips tightened perceptibly.

“Then why not shift back in?” Afro asked, dark eyes dancing. Like she was expecting to hear about some serious shit going down. Too bad I was about to disappoint her.

“Because they had the damned thing warded. Some weird spell that parked the house in the middle of a ley line, basically taking it out of this world. It looked like it was there, but as far as my power was concerned, it wasn’t. And I can’t shift into nothing.”

I sank the three ball easily, as her face fell.

“I’d have found a way to make them pay!” she declared, stamping the floor with a walking stick I hadn’t noticed before, but which it didn’t look like she needed. It was black and old and gnarly, but shined to a high gloss. Like the eyes that met mine defiantly.

“Too bad you weren’t there, then,” I said mildly. And sank the six as Jasmine wafted in, a highball in hand and Fred close behind her.

He was making weird faces and gestures at me, until he suddenly froze, one hand and one knee up, toes pigeoned and tongue lolling. He looked like he’d decided to join the Ministry of Silly Walks. He looked frankly demented. He looked like he was making fun of our guests, which was not likely to go down well.

And then he abruptly spun and ran out of the room, with the awkward gait and surprised look of a man who has a huge hand at the small of his back, helping him along. One look at Marco’s face, and I decided that was probably not far from the truth. I sighed.

I didn’t know what Fred’s problem was, but I didn’t try to follow. Because I had plenty of my own. Like the fact that all three witches were now looking at me judgmentally, especially the Valkyrie.

“You let the bloody Circle and a bunch of vampires push you around like that?” she demanded.

And okay, I’d had about enough. I opened my mouth to point out a few salient facts, but I didn’t get a chance. Because someone beat me to it.

“She killed a Spartoi!”

The voice had come from behind me, so I turned around. To see that the girl from the kitchen had decided to come shake in the doorway, instead of by the counter. Her face was still white, but there were two little spots of color high on her cheeks. She was either furious or about to pass out, and considering her actions so far, I knew which way I was betting.

“Move,” I told Marco softly.

He looked at me, halfway through a sip of his whiskey sour. “What?”

“Go to the living room or something.”

“Why?”

“Because I think you’re scaring her.”

He looked over at the girl and then back at me. “I’m just standing here.”

Yeah, that was the problem. Some vamps managed to pass as human, if you squinted, even without a glamourie. But Marco wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t the looks so much, although two hundred and fifty pounds of predator is not easily disguised by a pink golf shirt, or the casual slouch he affected when standing so he didn’t loom over people. But mainly, it was the ’tude. The guy could be smiling and he still looked like he could rip your throat out in less than a second.

It didn’t help that it happened to be true.

He’d never worried me, possibly because I’d grown up with Alphonse, a Marco clone except not as good looking. But I’d learned early on that, despite the fiction, vampires weren’t mindless predators and they didn’t kill for no reason. And anyway, the smallest, most ineffectual one imaginable—Fred, for instance—could wreak just as much damage on a human as Marco, so what difference did looks make? But most people didn’t see it that way, and in Marco’s case especially, I’d seen grown men flatten themselves against a wall when he walked by, instinctively dropping into prey mode, hoping they wouldn’t be noticed.

God only knew what effect he was having on a girl who apparently thought I was scary.

“Go on.” I pushed on him, which of course was useless. “Get me a drink.”

“You’ve got a drink.”

“And now I want another one.”

“You don’t need another one. You had an Irish coffee earlier—”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, like Fred did more than wave the cork over the—”

“—and now you’ve got a beer. I don’t want you yakking all over the place again.”

“I never yak—” A bushy eyebrow went north. “Okay, one time. But that wasn’t from a hangover.”

“And this one isn’t going to be, either.” And he took my beer.

“Hey!”

“Is that coffee I smell?” he asked the girl, going over with a swagger and a grin, because despite all evidence to the contrary, Marco believed himself to be charming. And okay, sometimes he was, in his own big, hairy, swarthy, muscley way. But I didn’t think she was likely to be impressed.

She wasn’t, but not quite in the way I’d feared.

She shoved his outstretched hand away and pushed past, as if she barely even saw him. And maybe she didn’t. Because her eyes were on the witches and I decided I might have been wrong earlier. They weren’t afraid.

They were pissed.

“You . . . you dare . . ” she gasped.

“It’s all right, Rhea,” the Valkyrie said, looking uncomfortable.

“It is not all right! You weren’t there—you didn’t see! She saved us, she saved us all, and with nothing—and you dare—”

I didn’t know what was going on, but the witches were going frowny, and the air was getting tense and things had been bad enough as they were. Marco must have thought the same, because he put an avuncular hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Hey, why don’t we—”

“Unhand me, vampire,” she snarled, harsh enough to make him blink. And draw his hand back. And look at me.

“Cassie—”

“You know, I would like some of that coffee, after all,” I said brightly, not really expecting it to work.

But it did.

The girl curtsied—yeah, that’s what I said—deep and elegant and perfect. The kind Eugenie had always tried to teach me, but I’d never quite mastered. And then she withdrew, fading back through the swinging doors almost before I could blink.

Okay. That had gone . . . surprisingly well.

And then I turned back around to find the three witches still staring at me. And still unhappy. In fact, one was now actively glaring.

Take a guess which.

I sighed.

“Look, if it helps, I’m sorry, okay?” I told them. “I would have invited you to the party, if I’d known there was going to be a party, and I would have greeted you if I’d known you existed—”

“Knew we existed—” the Valkyrie spluttered.

Crap.

“And I’ll make sure there are no more oversights where you’re concerned,” I added quickly. “Not that there’s anything scheduled right now that I know of, but if and when I find out—”

“If?” The Valkyrie turned to look at her companions, spreading her hands. “If?”

“I’ll make sure you get an invitation. Are we okay?”

“No!” she said severely. “Nothing about this is okay!”

I sighed again and leaned on my cue stick, wondering what the hell it was they wanted. And what it would take to get them to go away. And why my hand, which had reached for my beer, had come back empty.

Damn Marco.

“Would it help if I let you win?” I asked sourly. Because Jules wasn’t the only one who had problems with this diplomacy thing.

The Valkyrie puffed up, but Jasmine intervened, her voice a cool river through the heated room. “It would help,” she told me gently, “if you could tell us what your court is doing.”

I looked back and forth between the three of them, thoroughly confused now. Like I’d been anything else all night. And then I said the words that I knew—I knew— I’d regret.

“What court?”