Tempt the Stars

Page 36

He looked terrible.
Pritkin’s idea of a beauty regimen included soap and deodorant; I’d never even smelled cologne on him before. But I was smelling it now, something wild and seductive and—and wrong. Pritkin smelled like sweat. He smelled like burnt gunpowder. He smelled like nasty potion ingredients and too-strong coffee and those little licorice candies he snuck around to eat because he didn’t want to set a bad example for my sweet tooth.
Only not now.
Now he smelled like this place.
Now he smelled like nothing.
“Where do you think?” Casanova said bitterly. “She told me we were coming here to look for John, but as soon as we arrived, she started asking after Rosier. When I demanded to know why, she left me and went to look for him on her own. And stupidly, I tried to warn—”
“I knew it was you,” Pritkin told me, quietly furious. “Before he said a damned word. As soon as I heard the bells, I knew—”
I slapped him. Hard. It came out of nowhere, to the point that I didn’t even realize I was going to do it until his head snapped back, until he was glaring at me over the imprint of my palm on his left cheek.
“I—we’ll talk later,” Casanova said, and slunk off somewhere.
“How’s it feel?” I asked, voice low and shaking. And I wasn’t talking about the slap.
“You—” Pritkin cut off and clamped his lips tight, as if he was afraid if he started he wouldn’t know where to stop. Which was fine by me. My adrenaline was pumping, my pulse was pounding, and anything he could throw— just any damned thing—
Except that, I thought, as I was dragged against a hard chest.
“You son of a bitch—” I began, only to have my voice choked off by something caught in my throat. It wasn’t sentiment. It was too dark for that. I thought it might be hate.
Yes, that was it. I hated him.
“Did you hear me?” Caleb barked, from across the room.
“What?” I snapped. And finally looked up. And blinked. Because a prison cell this wasn’t.
Instead of the cramped, potion-filled, messy room in Vegas, which even on a good day looked like it was inhabited by a cross between a hyperactive toddler and Rambo, this place was . . . beautiful. Graceful. Perfect.
It was huge, with couches and pillows and rugs scattered around, and a bed big enough for seven or eight people. And maybe designed for it, considering where we were. There were arched doorways on either end, leading off to even more space, but the big story was the balcony, which was easily as wide as the room and ran its entire length.
Pierced bronze lanterns swayed softly on silken chains, surrounded by geometrical halos. A breeze sent long white curtains wafting languorously into the room, so diaphanous the stars could be seen through them. Their edges caressed diamond-shaped stones on the floor, in every possible shade from honey to palest gold. I stared at them, trying to wrap my head around the idea of Pritkin living in a palace instead of the middle of Dante’s tacky clutter, of him wearing fine, embroidered clothes instead of old, scratched leather, of him inhabiting a space as beautiful as it was alien, with nothing, not a book, not a vial, not a picture, nothing, to remind him of the world he’d lost.
As if it hadn’t mattered. As if he hadn’t even missed—
“Cassie!” Caleb said, more urgently this time. “Look at this.”
I ran over to the balcony, which gave a pretty good view along the side of the cliff and over the sprawling city. But the twinkling lights didn’t hold my attention nearly as well as what was coming down from above. So that’s what’s up there, I thought, watching a bunch of dark figures literally running down buildings and spars of rock above the palace. They weren’t using the streets; they were leaping from roof to roof to outcropping as if making their own highway.
And every single one of them was headed straight for us.
“It looks like somebody called out the elite troops,” Caleb said grimly. “What we’re gonna do, we do now.”
“Get her into the study,” Pritkin said, coming up behind us. “Barricade yourselves inside. I can’t call off the guards, but I can call my father—”
“We’re not hiding; we’re leaving,” I said flatly.
“Not until I negotiate safe passage—”
“Your father isn’t going to grant safe passage for you!”
“That is irrelevant—”
“Bullshit.”
“—as you knew quite well before you started this insanity! Damn it, Cassie! I thought you had more sense—”
“Have you met her?” Casanova asked, sticking his bloody nose onto the balcony.
And I lost it. I grabbed the front of Pritkin’s gold-embroidered caftan—and since when did he wear a god-damned caftan?—and dragged him down to me. “I am going to say this one time. You are my servant. Sworn to my service until death. I never released you from that obligation. And if I want to come after you, I’ll damned well come after you!”
Something shifted behind his eyes, something dangerous. “And I’ll shut up and like it.”
“Right now I don’t give a damn whether you like it or not. But I’m not leaving without you, so you may as well—”
The door blew open, and Caleb and Pritkin both flung out a hand. And whoever it was blew right back out again. The door clicked softly shut.
Pritkin glared at me for another second, and then transferred the look to Caleb. “The rugs,” he snarled, and for a second, Caleb looked as confused as I was. And then—
“Aw, hell no!”
“You have a better idea?” Pritkin snapped, striding over and grabbing a big gold one that was anchoring a pleasant conversation area just inside the bedroom.
Caleb looked heavenward, but then apparently remembered where he was and gave up. And snatched up a red one from the balcony floor. And in the process sent one of the guards tumbling over the railing and into the night, who had just jumped down on top of it from the floor above.
Caleb grabbed Pritkin’s arm as his buddy tossed what looked like an expensive rug after the demon. “My magic’s weak here,” he warned.
“That down in the souk was weak?” I asked, in disbelief.
Caleb glanced at me. “With the amount of power I let loose, the whole damned market should have been in flames. As it was, we barely made it here. And I don’t know—”
“It’ll have to be enough,” Pritkin said grimly.
“Sure. Says the half demon.”
“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“After this?” Caleb rolled his eyes. And then he grabbed Casanova. “Are we taking this one?”
“Yes!” Casanova said heatedly. “I don’t want to be here when Rosier finds out what you’re doing!”
“What we’re doing?”
“None of this is my fault!”
“Oh, you’ll be here,” Pritkin said grimly. But then he threw him over the balcony, too.
I was about to freak out, because that was a damned long way down, even for a vampire. But I didn’t get a chance. Because I was next.
I didn’t even have time to scream before my butt was bouncing on something firm but soft, not two yards under the balcony’s lip. I didn’t have time to see what it was before Pritkin landed beside me. And before we took off, in a blur of wind that had my eyes tearing up.
Or maybe that was the spell that flashed through the air right in front of my face, and set something on fire.
I turned back around, because that had come from above. And saw a bunch of guards hanging over the railing of the floor above Pritkin’s, firing what looked like balls of pure lightning at us. They burned like it, too, I thought, smelling singed wool.
And realized that the something on fire was the something we were sitting on.
Something big and gold and—
And missing a corner when Pritkin pulled a knife and sliced off the burning bit of what had been a nice rug. No, not a rug, I thought blankly, gripping the suddenly very flimsy feeling sides. Now it was a flying—
Target, floating around over the city on a gentle wafting motion that was going to get us roasted any minute now. I stared across the void at Casanova, who was also clinging to the edge of his carpet with both hands, peering over the side with his ass in the air. And with an expression that somehow managed to combine pissed off and terrified.
And you know things are bad when you start agreeing with Casanova.
“They’re still shooting at us!” I told Pritkin, who was crawling around, muttering something at the carpet.
“And this surprises you?”
“Yes! They have to know you’re up here!”
“Obviously.”
“But they could kill you!”
“That would be the idea.”
“You’re saying there are people here who want you dead?” A terse nod, but no information. Of course not. “Damn it, Pritkin! I don’t understand—”
“No, you don’t!” he said, turning on me savagely. “Which is why you shouldn’t have come!”
“That’s why you shouldn’t have left!”
“I didn’t have a choice!”
“Neither did I!”
“Get a room!” Casanova screeched as another spell flashed through the space between us. “And put these damned things into high gear or we are all going to die!”
“Layering spells isn’t easy under the best of terms,” Pritkin told him. “Which these are not!”
“What layering? Just move this thing!”
“Levitation spell—one,” Caleb said, holding a finger in front of his face. “Keeping the damned carpet stiff and level—two.” Another finger. “And now you want a propulsion spell, which is three, and which ain’t happening.”
Casanova stared from him to Pritkin and back again. “You mean, you threw us off the balcony and you didn’t have a plan for getting us down?”