Embrace the Night

by Karen Chance

  “No. I just—”

  “Because I don’t want you coming to me at the last minute saying you need a charm to make you dance better or hold your liquor or be a scintillating conversationalist and just forgot to mention it—”

  “You can do that with a dress?”

  “Darling, I can do anything with a dress. Anything legal, that is. So don’t go asking for a love potion or some nonsense, because I’m not about to lose my license.”

  “What else can you do?” My mind was racing with the possibilities.

  “What do you want?” A bolt of blank white fabric began draping itself around the form.

  “Can you make me invisible?”

  Augustine sighed and flipped the edge of my wig with a finger. “A bad outfit and worse hair can do that.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Then what about spell-proofing? Can you make it so if someone slings something nasty at me it bounces off?”

  “Jealous rival?” he asked sympathetically.

  “Something like that.”

  “How powerful is the little cat?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it does! I have to know how strong to make the counterspell,” he said impatiently. “If it’s something petty, like making you smell like a garbage truck—”

  “No. I need to stop a major assault, like a dark mage could cast.”

  Augustine blinked at me owlishly. “Darling, what kind of party are you attending?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know.”

  “Well, maybe you should think about skipping it. Who needs that kind of stress? Take the night off, do your nails.”

  “It’s sort of mandatory.”

  “Hmm. This isn’t really my line,” he said doubtfully. “The war mages use charmed capes sometimes, to reinforce their shields, but I don’t think fashion is their main priority.”

  Françoise poked her head in. She appeared to be wearing a small animal over the top half of her body, one with a lot of brown quills extending outward in all directions. “I ’ave found somezeeng,” she told me.

  Augustine stiffened. “Where did you get that? It’s a prototype.”

  “What is it?” I asked, eyeing it warily.

  “A jacket, of course,” he told me. “Porcupine. Wonderful for getting rid of unwanted attention. Unfortunately, that one tends to launch quills without warning at anyone who upsets the wearer, so I don’t think—”

  “I’ll take eet.” Françoise piled an armload of other items onto the table. “And zese.”

  “What is all this?” I asked. Behind her were a couple of walking mountains of clothes, which I assumed to be the shop assistants, although no heads were actually visible.

  “Pour les enfants,” Françoise said, holding up a tiny T-shirt with WORLD’S GREATEST KID written on it in what looked like crayon.

  I frowned at it and Augustine snatched it out of her hand, looking aggrieved. “An image of the child wearing it will appear under the title,” he told me loftily.

  “There’s a place at the mall that can do that.”

  “And it makes the wearer have a sudden, uncontrollable fondness for vegetables.”

  I sighed. “We’ll take it.” He snapped his fingers at his over-burdened assistants, who began running around, adding things up. “About my dress,” I said, now that he was in a better mood. “I thought creative geniuses like you appreciated a challenge.”

  He patted my cheek, which was a bit much considering that he didn’t look a lot older than me. “We do, love, we do. But there’s also the little matter of payment. This isn’t ready-to-wear we’re talking about. And for what you’re asking—”

  “Send the bill to Lord Mircea,” Françoise said, playing with a scarf that, oddly enough, was just lying there being scarflike.

  I started slightly. “What? No!”

  Her pretty forehead wrinkled slightly. “Pourquoi pas?”

  “I don’t…that isn’t…it wouldn’t be appropriate,” I said, very aware of Augustine listening avidly.

  “Mais, you are his petite amie, non?”

  “Non! I mean no, no I’m not.” The frown widened, then Françoise shrugged in a way that suggested she knew denial when she saw it. “Send the bill to Casanova,” I told Augustine. If he complained, I’d tell him to take it out of my overdue paycheck.

  “Casanova,” Augustine repeated, with an evil glint in his eye. “You know he actually expects me to pay for the damage to the conference room? He presented me with a ridiculous bill just this morning.”

  “Then present him one right back. A big one.” I eyed Françoise’s pile of assorted oddities. “And tack those on.”

  Augustine’s smile took on an almost Cheshire cat quality. “Cinderella, I do believe you’re going to the ball.”

  That evening, after I finished another shift in Hell, Françoise and I slipped out of Dante’s in a shiny black Jeep. While I waited for Alphonse and my backup to arrive, I had a few errands to do, and she had volunteered to help. Neither of us had a car, but I’d managed to find us a ride.

  The tag on the front of the Jeep read 4U2DZYR. It belonged to Randy, one of the boys who worked in Casanova’s version of a spa. He would have been a perfect California beach bum, complete with deep tan, sun-bleached hair and toothy white smile, except that his voice still had a Midwest twang. He was possessed by an incubus, of course, but so far he’d been on his best behavior.

  “You’re serious?” Randy asked me for the third time, as we pulled into the giant Wal-Mart parking lot. “You want to shop here?”

  “Yes, I want to shop here!” I said, exasperated. There’d been a time when Wal-Mart had been pretty upscale for me, in comparison to the 25-cent bin at Goodwill or the Salvation Army. But I got the impression that there weren’t a lot of Randy’s clients who felt the same way. He’d had to ask one of the waitresses for directions.

  He pulled into the closest available parking space, tires squealing, and stopped on a dime. He looked at me seriously over the tops of his Ray-Bans. “As long as you make sure Lord Mircea knows that I had nothing to do with this. I’m only following orders. If the boss’s lady wants to go slumming—”

  “You sound like I’m going to a strip club or something!” I said irritably, getting out. “And I’m not the boss’s lady!”

  “Oookay.” Randy pried Françoise, who had the backseat in a death grip, off the upholstery. I’d forgotten to ask if she’d actually been in a car before, and judging by the wide eyes and dead white complexion, I was betting the answer was no.

  “I nevair want to do zat again.”

  “I’m not that bad a driver,” Randy said, offended.

  “Yes, you are,” she said fervently.

  “Well the wheels have stopped rolling, sweet thing,” he told her, getting an arm around her waist. He deposited her on the concrete. “You know, I’ve done some of my best work in backseats.” This was accompanied by a huge how-could-anyone-not-think-I’m-cute? grin. Which is probably the only thing that saved him.

  I hauled the extensive shopping list out of my purse and waved it at them before Randy said anything else. “Can we get going? Because we don’t have all day.”

  Eight kids plus a baby, I had discovered, need a lot of things, especially when their entire existing wardrobe was literally the clothes on their backs. And except for a few T-shirts for the tourists, Augustine’s establishment didn’t specialize in children’s anything. He preferred his customers to be adult and very well-heeled. Hence the list.

  An hour later, I was leaning against a shelf stacked with Fruit of the Loom T-shirts while Françoise terrorized various underpaid store employees. She had commandeered no fewer than four, whom she had racing back and forth, trying to find all the needed sizes. She looked a little out of place, as she was wearing one of Augustine’s sophisticated creations: a long, basic black dress with a chic jacket covered in a newspaper print. I hoped no one noticed that all the headlines were today’s.

&nbs
p; Randy was standing in front of a mirrored column, admiring the flex of his bicep. “What do you think?” The muscle shirt he’d poured himself into was bright blue and perfectly matched his eyes. He knew damn well what I thought, what half the women in the store did. Either that, or we just happened to go shopping the same day every young mother in the state needed to restock her son’s closet.

  “I thought you didn’t shop at places like this.”

  “A T-shirt’s a T-shirt.” He shrugged, causing a ripple of muscle that prompted a squeak from a nearby customer. “So, listen. You got a lot of kids.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  For a minute, he just stood there, looking at me awkwardly, like a big kid himself. A big kid with a lot of muscles and a see-through mesh tee. “So you’re putting them up in the casino, right? In a couple free rooms?”

  “How do you know that?” The kitchen staff hadn’t had space in the minuscule quarters that Casanova had allotted them for another nine people, so I’d had to get creative. It helped that I worked the front desk occasionally.

  “Everybody knows. The staff have been working to keep the boss from finding out. But he does check the books sometimes, you know?”

  “What’s your point, Randy?”

  “I just wanted to say that, if you need, well, any money or anything…” He trailed off, while I looked at him incredulously. I had no idea what his incubus was teaching him. Apparently, they hadn’t gotten to the part where women were supposed to pay him.

  “We’ll be fine.” If Casanova gave me any grief about the rooms, I’d have Billy rig every damn roulette game in the house. Come to think of it, he was pretty good with craps, too.

  “You sure? ’Cause, I mean, I kind of get paid a lot. It wouldn’t be, like, hurting me any, you know?”

  Françoise was giving him the kind of look I expected to see incubi giving her. She saw me notice and gave a shrug that could have meant anything from “I was just looking” to “I haven’t had sex in four hundred years, so sue me.” I decided I didn’t want to know.

  “Thanks. I’ll be in Shoes,” I said, snagging the lightest of the remaining carts.

  Sixteen feet—I wasn’t counting the baby because so far she hadn’t proven able to keep up even with socks—need a lot of shoes. I stood up from fishing around on the bottom row, trying to find a pair of Converse look-alikes in Jesse’s size, and hit my head on somebody’s elbow. Somebody who looked like he’d escaped from Caesars Palace and forgotten to take off the costume.

  “Why are you here?” The voice echoed loudly in the large space.

  I looked around frantically, but nobody seemed to be paying the ten-foot golden god in the shoe department any attention. “I could ask you the same question!” I whispered.

  “I came to remind you that time grows short. Your vampire will die if the spell is not lifted.”

  “I’m aware of that!” I snapped.

  “Then I ask again, why are you here? Have you made any progress?”

  “Yes, sort of. I mean, I know where the Codex is.”

  “Then why have you not retrieved it?”

  “It isn’t that easy! And why do you care? What is Mircea to you?”

  “Nothing. But your performance has not been as…focused…as I had hoped. This is an important test of your abilities, Herophile. And thus far you have let yourself be distracted by unnecessary tasks. These children are not your mission. The Codex is.”

  “Uh-huh.” For someone who didn’t care about the Codex, he sure brought it up a lot. “Well, maybe I could do a better job if I had some help! How about sticking around for a while? And while you’re here we can get in a few of those lessons I keep hearing about.”

  “I cannot enter this realm, Herophile. This body is a projection; only you can see it. And I cannot maintain it for long.”

  “Then how about telling me a little more about the Codex?” Why, for example, Pritkin was willing to kill to keep it safe.

  “You know all you need. Find it and complete your mission. And do it soon. There are those who would oppose you.”

  “I kind of noticed.”

  “What has happened?” he asked sharply.

  “You’re a god. Don’t you know?”

  His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Do not forget yourself, Herophile.”

  “My name is Cassandra.”

  “A poor name for the Pythia. Your namesake opposed my will and lived to regret it. Do not make the same mistake.”

  It was more than a little surreal, even for me, to be discussing a myth with a legend in the middle of the Wal-Mart shoe department. Especially with a clerk giving me the hairy eyeball from the next aisle over. He didn’t say anything, though. Maybe a lot of his customers talked to the shoes before buying them.

  “Maybe so, but it’s still my name and I’m doing the best I can. Threats aren’t going to speed up the process.”

  “Find something that will,” he told me flatly, and vanished.

  I sighed and fought the urge to bang my head against the metal rack and just not stop. The clerk was peering at me around the size twelves with an expression that said he was thinking about calling for security. I decided not to risk it.

  I held up the red Converse wannabes. “You have these in a nine?”

  Chapter 14

  I slipped inside Pritkin’s room the next morning, on a mission to find that rune I’d promised Radella, and stopped dead. I’d expected it to be a quick search; for some reason, I’d assumed he would keep his belongings in military precision. Only this wasn’t it.

  The bed was still unmade from whenever he’d slept in it last, and clothes were strewn on the floor like a hurricane had just blown through. And he’d been right—it did, indeed, have an odor. But I was less inclined to blame its onetime residents for that than the vile-smelling potions that lined a shelf on one wall.

  The rickety-looking contraption was directly above the bed, something that would have worried me, since most of the substances he carried around were lethal. Still, I supposed he hadn’t had a lot of choice. The opposite wall was taken up with a closet, the one facing into the club by a door and the one looking out over one side of the casino by a huge stained-glass window.

  The windows were Dante’s trademark, and I guess the designers had situated this one behind the dressing rooms because its Gothic splendor didn’t go too well with the bar’s tiki theme. But the result of such a huge window in such a small space was a room completely bathed in jewel tones: ruby, sapphire, emerald and pearl. They stained the comforter in watery, diffuse shades and splashed the floor with pools of light. I’d have found it pretty hard to get any sleep myself, but at least the subject suited him: a group of soldiers waving antique weaponry.

  I reluctantly went to work, and was soon wondering more about what I didn’t find than what I did. Along with some wadded-up T-shirts and enough firepower to conquer a small country, I found several pairs of jeans, a new pair of tennis shoes, a few basic toiletries and some socks still in their packages. All of said purchases bought in haste by a guy who wasn’t dressing to impress. He was just replacing necessities that, presumably, couldn’t be reached because he didn’t dare to return to his apartment. With the Circle after him for a couple dozen reasons, most having to do with helping me, I didn’t blame him there. But it still didn’t explain where the wardrobe for his alter ego was stashed.

  I finally picked up a small wooden case on the nightstand. I’d deliberately left it for last, hoping that I’d find the rune tucked into a sock and not need to pry into something that practically screamed personal. If I hadn’t needed the damn thing so badly, I’d have been out of there like a shot. As it was, I reluctantly opened the lid.

  There was no rune in sight, just a few yellowing letters and a badly faded photograph. The woman it depicted was wearing a dark hat and a high-necked dress that made her face stand out like a pale thumbprint. It was pretty indistinct, but she looked young, with regular features and light-colored eyes. She was pre
tty, I decided—or would have been if she’d been smiling.

  I turned the box over, but if there were any hidden compartments, I couldn’t find them. It was just a plain pine rectangle, without even a lining that anything could have been hidden under. I flipped the photo over. It had a studio’s name on the back: J. Johnstone, Birmingham.

  Pritkin had mentioned once that he’d lived in Victorian England, which made him a hell of a lot older than his thirtysomething appearance, but what with the fighting and the running and the almost dying, I’d never gotten around to asking him about it. And he’d never mentioned any family. I didn’t know if the picture might be his mother, his sister or even a daughter. I realized with surprise that although I could have written a book about the mage, I didn’t know much about the man at all.

  Billy drifted through the door, interrupting my thoughts. “Did you get it?” I asked eagerly. He spread empty hands and I sighed. I put the letters back unread—a quick feel had been enough to show that the rune hadn’t been tucked into one—and centered the box carefully back on its square of dust-free wood. “What now?”

  Billy gave me a look. “You know what now. You searched this room; I ransacked the den downstairs. And he wouldn’t stash something that valuable just anywhere. He’s got it on him.”

  It was worst-case scenario, so of course that had to be it. “How are your pickpocket skills?”

  “Depends on whether he’s paying attention. I lifted a rune for you once before, but only because you two were so busy yelling at each other that he didn’t notice. You’ll need to cause a distraction.”

  Great. Normally, picking a fight with the ever prickly mage wouldn’t have been a problem, but now…“I don’t think so,” I said fervently.

  “Then you may want to get gone, ’cause I passed him on my way here.”