Tempt the Stars (32 page)

“There’s a toilet in there,” Pritkin told him, looking vaguely amused. “Many of the demon races have bodies, you know.”

“And what if one of those bodies attacks her?” Caleb demanded. “Or some spirit does?” He glanced around unhappily. “This place is crawling with threats.”

“Not for us. Once the trial started, we came under the council’s protection. And I believe you remember their security staff?”

Caleb scowled, but he didn’t seem satisfied. “I’m going with her,” he announced forcefully.

“You are not,” I told him, equally forcefully.

His eyes narrowed. “Then John goes. I don’t care which of us it is, but you go nowhere by yourself. Not here.”

“I just told you we’re under protection,” Pritkin said, looking at his friend impatiently.

“Yeah, the
council’s
protection. Why doesn’t that make me feel better?”

“It should. Nobody is going to test them, particularly not in their own building. Cassie will be perfectly safe.”

Caleb hiked up one of the straps holding some of the eighty pounds or so of weapons he was carrying. “I know she will. Because she’ll be with me.”

“This is ridiculous,” I told him.

“I’ll stay outside the stall—”

“You’ll stay here!”

“This is not up for discussion.”

“I agree.”

Caleb crossed his arms and glared at me. I glared back. Something squelched between my toes, which grossed me out and pissed me off in about equal measures, because I should be washing it away by now.

“This place isn’t as dangerous as you seem to think,” Pritkin told Caleb, trying again.

Caleb transferred the glare to him. “Did you get hit over the head?”

“Yes, several times—”

“Thought so.”

“—but that doesn’t change the facts. The Shadowland exists for trade. The proprietors have a vested interest in keeping some kind of order—”

“Yeah. I’ve felt really secure so far!”

“Most people are not being chased by an irate demon lord when they come here,” Pritkin said dryly. “The council finds it a useful meeting place because of its being neutral ground. But they’re a very small part of local life. I am not saying the place is without its dangers, but they can be navigated, even by humans. Mages come here fairly often to buy potion supplies, for example—”

“No sane ones!”

“Jonas gets most of his here—”

“You’re not helping your case,” Caleb muttered.

“—and Cassie is easily more powerful than him. If Jonas can navigate these streets on a semiregular basis, bargain for supplies, and get back out again safely, I think she can manage to go to the bathroom by herself!”

For some reason, Caleb was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind. His voice sounded like it, too. “Cassie is more powerful than Jonas,” he repeated.

Pritkin frowned. “Of course. She’s Pythia.”

“She’s—” Caleb seemed momentarily at a loss for words, so I seized the opportunity.

“I couldn’t shift before, because Mother was rerouting most of my power for . . . well, whatever she did in there. But I feel better now—”

“Yeah, you look it!”

“I didn’t say I’m a hundred percent,” I told him impatiently. “But I can defend myself—”

“Good. But it’s my job to see that you don’t have to.”

“If Agnes had told you to stay here, you’d stay here,” I said angrily.

“Lady Phemonoe wouldn’t be here! She’d be
at court
, surrounded by a crack security team! Meeting with dignitaries and mediating disputes and—and doing anything but running around almost getting herself blown up!”

“Did you ever
meet
Agnes?” I asked, but Caleb wasn’t listening.

“Did you see her today?” he asked John. “Those witches were right; she doesn’t even have
shields
, and I couldn’t reach her and all she had for protection was a damned vampire—”

“Hey, fuc’ you, too, buddy,” Casanova slurred, from behind us.

“—and she almost got killed! I almost let her get—” Caleb broke off, fuming.

“You didn’t let me do anything,” I told him. “We got in trouble, but it wasn’t your fault—”

“I can see me explaining that to the old man,” Caleb snapped. “See, sir, she ended up incinerated, but it wasn’t my fault!”

“It wasn’t! I wanted to come here—”

“Yeah, and I should have had the sense to say no. Just like I should have the other day!”

“You should have said no?” I repeated. “I thought war mages did what the Pythia wanted.”

“Pythias don’t want this!” Caleb said, suddenly furious. “Pythias don’t
do
this! They don’t invade hell and fight demons and
battle gods
—”

“They also didn’t live in these times,” Pritkin said, cutting in. “They didn’t have to face anything remotely like this. Do you think Lady Phemonoe could have done what Cassie did today? What she did yesterday? Do you think she would have
dared
?”

“I think she’d have found another way!” Caleb said, like a man who had been standing by that pillar for the last two hours, thinking. And coming to the conclusion that maybe Casanova’s drunken ramblings hadn’t been so far off the mark. And panicking, after all, because he’d had all this dumped in his lap at one time, literally overnight. And he didn’t know what to do with it.

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.”

“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.”

“I am,” I said dryly. Mom hadn’t exactly been on her best behavior in there. Or maybe she had.

At least she didn’t kill anybody this time.

“She didn’t seem pleased about the composition of the council,” Pritkin agreed. “But while not, perhaps, polite, the term was not an insult. Adramelech is a title, not a personal name. He functions as the speaker or president of the council.”

Damn. And he’d seemed like the nice one. “I thought you said the council doesn’t have a head.”

“It doesn’t, if you mean someone with more power than anyone else. He is mainly there to maintain order.”

“So he’s the one who should have maybe got around to mentioning that the old gods were about to stage a comeback?”

“Not necessarily. The Adramelech only organizes matters to be discussed and attempts to keep the debate on topic. He doesn’t usually propose topics himself.”

“Then who does?”

“Whoever has the oversight of the region in question.”

“And who has oversight of earth?” I asked, because Pritkin was sounding grim.

“You saw. That was the reason he was called forward. Asag of the Asakku.”

Great. “So, what reason does this Asag guy have for just ignoring the return of one god and the kids of another?”

Pritkin shook his head. “I don’t know. And I’m not likely to. I had difficulty even obtaining the basics on your mother. No one wants to talk about the ancient wars—or how they ended. Most go about trying to pretend they didn’t happen.”

“So they’re about to let them happen again?” I asked, in disbelief. “They can’t be that blind!”

“It’s not a matter of being blind,” Pritkin said, drinking beer. “It’s . . . fear, terror even. You have to understand, Cassie, the demons who dared to face the gods once . . . they were ancient compared to the ones you saw, powerful beyond belief, and bloodthirsty to a fault. They gloried in battle, lived for it, reveled in it. And yet they fell, as one of the few who would talk to me about it said, like a sky full of falling stars. Those who survived believe they cannot fight—”

“They can’t if they won’t even try! Would they prefer to be slaughtered?”

“They’d prefer not to think about it at all. The ones who lived—remember, they were those who didn’t interest your mother or the other gods. Who weren’t powerful enough to be pursued, or who survived by hunkering down, by playing it safe, by being cautious—”

“You can be too cautious. You can die hiding under a bed or whatever the demon equivalent is, as much as on your feet, fighting.”

Pritkin sent me an odd look.

“What?”

“When I met you, you preferred running, liked hiding. You told me several times it was what you were best at.”

“Yes, but it made sense then, when all I had to worry about was Tony. But it won’t help us now. Like it won’t help them!”

If anything, it would help our enemies, if the council decided to hide its collective head in the sand until a hungry god came along and ripped it off. No wonder Mom had been pissed. She must have looked over the group and wondered what had happened to the kind she’d fought. Or maybe she’d wished she’d left a few of the scarier ones alive.

“You look furious,” Pritkin said, watching me.

“I just—I can’t understand not fighting for your life— for what you want. Just giving up—”

A corner of his mouth quirked. “No. You would not understand that. You never stop trying, do you?”

“What else is there?”

“Despair. Hopelessness. Anger. Depression.”

“But those don’t get you anywhere.”

He huffed out something that might have been a laugh, only it didn’t sound happy. “No. They don’t.”

I drank beer and didn’t say anything. Because I got the impression that we suddenly weren’t talking about the council anymore. But I wasn’t sure, since I couldn’t see his expression.

The proprietor had apparently not trusted scent to drum up enough business, and had draped strands of twinkly lights around the front of the shop. As a result, darkness shaded Pritkin’s eyes, which were above the lights, but under the shade of the awning. But cheerful, incongruous colors splashed everywhere else—green over a cheekbone, amber along a toned arm, rose across his neck. It looked like he was swimming in rainbow water.

He ducked his head slightly, and his eyes caught the light when he moved, flashing brilliant emerald. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Stay so . . . hopeful. Optimistic.
Certain
. You grew up around some of the most cynical creatures outside of demons. You saw the way they view the world, always hungry, always scheming. How their every waking thought is about improving their position in some way—”

“They’d say that it also improves their families’ position, and their allies’,” I reminded him. “Vampires aren’t selfless in the human sense, maybe, but they take care of their own. Sometimes better than humans, since it hurts their power base if they don’t.”

“Which is my point. It always comes back to them somehow. And you grew up in that, were steeped in it, and yet . . . you came for me.”

“Yeah, well, you know. That wasn’t entirely . . ”

“Wasn’t entirely what?”

“I just meant, I got something out of it, too, so you can’t say—”

“What did you get?”

“I—we covered that, remember?”

“No. No, I don’t remember. I thought we decided that you could find many other people—”

“Not
many
. I don’t know too many half-demon war mages.”

“—others, then. To assist you in my place. Such as Caleb. Or Jonas.”

“Yes, well . . . that’s . . ”

“But no, that’s not quite right, either, is it?” He tilted his head. “You said something else . . . something about needing me, for me. What did you mean?”

“I meant—I mean, well, we’re friends—”

“Are we? Are we friends?”

“I—yes. What else would you, uh . . ”

“I am not sure what I would call it. I had never given it much thought until recently. There did not seem to be a point.”

“Yes, yes, exactly. And there’s no reason to suddenly—”