Tempt the Stars

Page 64

And I didn’t think he’d felt like that too often in his life.
“I had no idea—” He looked at me accusingly. “You made it sound like we were just going to sneak into some palace. Just grab John and hightail it out—”
“Which is what we did.”
“That is not what we did! We—” Caleb stopped and stared around again, but the bland, beige lobby didn’t seem to give him anything back. “This place, the hells, the size—” He broke off, staring from me to Pritkin, half in anger, half in wonder. “There’s whole worlds down here.”
Pritkin gazed at his friend, and his face changed. From exasperation working on pissed, to . . . understanding. Because maybe he’d felt like that once, too. Overwhelmed and inadequate, faced with a suddenly huge universe that he didn’t understand at all.
“Yes,” he said simply.
Caleb stared at him for a minute longer and then turned away abruptly, leather coat swinging.
And I finally got it.
I’d been dealing with stuff like this for more than three months now. And it had been hard. And scary. To the point that, most days, I’d felt like hiding under the bed, or just running and never stopping. And the truth was, if there’d been anybody else to stick with this job, I probably would have.
Like Caleb would probably love to run out of here. But he hadn’t. And he wouldn’t, because he was a decent guy. And because a lifetime of duty and discipline stood in the way. And because there was nowhere for him to go, either.
But right now he needed something to ground him. Something familiar. Something he knew how to do. Even if it was just something stupid.
Even if it was just escorting me to the bathroom.
“Come on,” I told him, sliding a hand on his shoulder. “If there’s nobody else in there, I’ll leave the door open.”
Chapter Thirty-two
“Are you really going to eat here?” Caleb demanded, fifteen minutes later.
“Damned straight,” I said, my mouth watering.
The restaurant wasn’t a cart, although it was about the size of one. It was a small rectangle wedged between the courthouse and a bunch of shops. The shops appeared to be closed, although there were some across the street that were open. Cars passed on the still-busy highway, zipping along with headlights that blurred slightly in my tired vision and doubled in the mirrorlike sheen of the street.
I looked up, and some rain hit me in the face. That might have been an illusion, too, for all I knew, but it felt real. Everything did. Just a dark blue, rainy street, closer to winter than summer, with people bundled up and hurrying along their way.
And a brightly lit slab of Formica in front of me, with a two-page menu taped to the top. And a bunch of smells emanating from a griddle in back that had me ready to crawl over the counter. Hot damn, I thought in wonder, I was actually going to get dinner.
Maybe.
I glanced around furtively, waiting for the hammer to drop. For someone or something to prevent me from getting any food. And it wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of candidates.
I couldn’t tell what time of day it was, since it always seemed to be dark here. But there were plenty of people on the streets. And I knew where I was; I knew what they were, or most of them, anyway. But none looked all that sinister to me.
A mostly human-looking woman came by, with a shock of pale purple hair that could have come as easily from a trendy boutique as genetics. She was carrying a bag of groceries and talking on a cell phone with the preoccupied, slightly annoyed look of someone running late who is also getting rained on. She passed within a few feet of me and never gave me a second glance. She also didn’t attack me.
I stared after her for a moment, faintly surprised. I knew from experience that the Shadowland had plenty of people who would try something, given half a chance. But then, that was true of most human cities, too, wasn’t it? Was this really so different?
Okay, yeah, it was different, but—
“Are you going to order?” Pritkin asked, dragging my attention back to the menu. Where freaking everything looked good.
And then the short, squat guy in a grease-splattered apron handed Pritkin something in a paper boat that made my eyes bug out of my head. “They have Phillies?” I said, in something approaching awe.
“This street belongs to the potion sellers, and this cart has a fair amount of human traffic,” he told me, taking the greasy bundle of awesomeness. “But elsewhere . . . you have to be careful. Not everything here is safe for human consumption.”
“Yeah, but what’s in it?” Caleb asked, peering suspiciously at the towering mound of meat and melty cheese and peppers and onions and mushrooms and—
“I’ll have one of those,” I told the cook quickly. Right now I didn’t care what was in it.
“The usual.” Pritkin shrugged. “You know how hard it is to glamourize food and get everything right: looks, smells, taste . . . It’s easier and cheaper just to cook the real thing.”
“You sure?” Caleb asked, looking longingly at his buddy’s meal. “What about that old rule, eat in hell and you never leave?”
Pritkin arched an eyebrow. “I lived here for years. And I left.”
“Yeah, but you keep coming back.”
“Not by choice.”
In the end, Caleb ordered a Philly, too. Casanova eyed up the demon cook, who shot him the bird, and then we all got beers. And leaned against the front of the diner to drink them, since there was nowhere to sit.
Pritkin snared a cheese-covered mushroom off the top of his sandwich, and my stomach gave off a roar that sounded like thunder.
His lips twitched, but he ate it anyway, the bastard. Watching me as I watched him in hopeless desperation. And then licked his fingers while I salivated.
And then he handed it over.
Oh God. So good. I practically dove in face-first, and for a while, I didn’t know anything else.
When I came out of my food-induced stupor, it was to see that Pritkin had gotten what I guess was my order, and had eaten about half of it, while Caleb was just being handed his. “I’m gonna go sit on the bench,” Caleb said, nodding at one alongside the courthouse where Casanova was already slumped with his beer. I guess he was trusting Pritkin to save me from everything but cholesterol.
Pritkin nodded. Caleb took off with his food and a handful of napkins. And we ate, in my case until I was so full I thought I might pop.
I thought about undoing the top button on my jeans, but when I surreptitiously glanced around, Pritkin was watching me. And I suddenly realized what he must be seeing—hair everywhere, mouth and probably half my face shiny with grease, T-shirt dirty and sweat-stained. I swallowed the last bite I’d taken, feeling suddenly self-conscious, the way I’d been too hungry and tired to be before. I licked my lips.
And his eyes followed the movement.
My own eyes widened slightly, and then looked away, because that was what I always did when something like that happened. Not that it did often. Other than for a few bits of metaphysical lifesaving, Pritkin mostly acted like I was a boy.
Which was good. Which was how I liked it. Which was how it should be.
I drank some beer. “So, uh, how do you think it went?”
Pritkin went back to his food. “Difficult to say. But they seemed to take your mother’s warning seriously.”
“That’s good, right?” I asked. Because he had that particular crease between his eyes, the one that said he was puzzled about something.
“Perhaps. But then, they shouldn’t have needed it.”
“Come again?”
He made an unsatisfied sound, halfway between a grunt and a sigh. “The Circle might have managed to hide Apollo’s brief return to the supernatural community as a whole, but do you really think the lords didn’t know? When the battle took place at Dante’s? Where half the damned payroll are demon-possessed?”
“Well, yeah, but those are incubi. And maybe Rosier didn’t want them to say anything. Maybe he was afraid . . . I don’t know . . . that it would help your case—”
“But I didn’t have a case then,” he pointed out. “I didn’t until after you killed the Spartoi, which alone should have been enough to raise some eyebrows. It certainly caused me to start asking questions, when I woke up in my father’s court. It could hardly have done less for the council, unless the Circle covered that up, too?”
“They never had the chance,” I told him, grimacing at the memory. “The vamps were broadcasting the coronation, and the whole damned thing was seen live by a few hundred thousand people. Not to mention however many saw the newspaper articles and the photos and—”
“Then they know. And likely more than was reported. They would have investigated even without the incident with Apollo. And with it—that’s two major attempts to circumvent the ouroboros in as many months. They could not possibly have failed to notice. And yet the response to your mother’s announcement . . . it almost sounded as if most of them had no idea.”
I frowned. “Maybe the leaders are trying to keep from panicking everyone, until they can decide what to do.”
“Cassie, the council are the leaders. There is no head; each member has a single vote. It was set up that way after the wars, when no one wanted more bloodshed over who would rule. That isn’t to say that they have no factions, and of course some members’ votes carry others. But we’re not talking about a vote, we’re talking about information they simply do not seem to have had.”
I thought about that for a moment, and ate mushrooms. I was stuffed, but they had been browned on the griddle in butter, and then covered with melted cheese and crusty meat bits and, well. “But somebody has to decide what is brought up. I mean, they couldn’t talk about everything—they’d never do anything else.”
“That is what the Adramelech does.”
“The what?”
“Your mother referred to him as Adra, for short. I am not sure why.”