Tempt the Stars

Page 42

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 . .
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—”