Tempt the Stars

by Karen Chance

  I paused for a second, my hand halfway under the bed. I’d known Pritkin mainly in his role as my Circle-appointed bodyguard/personal trainer/drill sergeant, but he’d had other titles at times. Like war mage assassin.

  “I don’t think he does that anymore,” I told Billy. Not since I’d popped in a few times unexpectedly.

  “Maybe not. But what about somebody else? It looks like this place was ransacked.”

  “It always looks like that.” Except for his weapons, Pritkin’s idea of orderly living was roughly that of a fourteen-year-old boy.

  “Yeah, but people gotta be wondering where he went off to,” Billy pointed out. “He’s a war mage, isn’t he? Isn’t anybody curious?”

  “Everybody.” I’d gotten asked about it daily by virtually everyone except Jonas, which was weird since Pritkin was technically his subordinate. But maybe Jonas felt that a guy like that could take care of himself. Or maybe it was like he’d told me: he didn’t ask Pythias too many questions.

  He so rarely liked the answers he got back.

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t be crawling around on the floor,” Billy said pointedly.

  “And maybe you should tell me what Laura said,” I pointed out right back.

  Billy gave up trying to reason with me, and parked his insubstantial rear a couple of inches above the ugly bedspread. “She said they’re in the boathouse.”

  I grabbed the card that had ended up halfway under the bed, pulled it out, and stared at him. “My parents?”

  He nodded.

  I frowned. “What boathouse? Tony’s farm is in the middle of the countryside. There isn’t a lake for miles.”

  “Yeah, I mentioned that. Seems she was talking about some ramshackle cottage that used to be behind the house. Former owner stored his boat out there, and the name stuck. Until Tony had the place bulldozed to build a parking lot, anyway.”

  I nodded. Among other things, Tony had been in the loan shark business. And not all the items he repossessed when people failed to pay up were small enough to be stored in the house. Eventually, he’d had an area out back paved to accommodate the cars, trucks, and motor homes he kept until the mark came through or he sold them off. I hadn’t gone out there much, since there wasn’t anything to interest a kid—the repos were always kept locked.

  “She said your folks didn’t like the main house,” Billy continued, “and Tony didn’t like ’em in it—or their little friends.”

  “What friends?”

  “Seems they attracted demons like nobody’s business, and they were creeping out the vamps.”

  “Demons?” My dad had had some abilities with ghosts, which was where I got mine, I guessed. But I hadn’t heard anything about demons before.

  But then, he wasn’t the only person out there, was he?

  Billy nodded. “There were some incidents—poltergeist-type stuff, fires, one vamp got torched—”

  “Who?”

  “Manny,” Billy said, referring to one of Tony’s more dim-witted vamps. “He recovered okay, but shortly after that, Mom and Pop got evicted.”

  “To the boathouse,” I said, staring at the card in my hand without really seeing it.

  “Yeah,” Billy said, sounding suddenly annoyed. “And don’t get that look.”

  “What look?”

  “That I’m-gonna-go-ask-Mom-how-to-get-my-buddy-Pritkin-back look. It’s not that easy!”

  “Tell me about it.” But that didn’t matter, because if anyone knew how to get me out of this mess, it would be her.

  Remember how I said the gods had different names in different places? Well, she’d been worshipped by the Norse as Hel, their goddess of death. Who, among other things, had been in charge of the regions that bore her name. And right now I really needed to know about those regions.

  Because Pritkin had traded his life for mine, but not in the conventional sense. Of course not—when did he ever do the conventional thing? No, he’d had to get fancy with it.

  By giving me energy when I was all but out, he’d saved my life. But he’d also broken a taboo that was the only thing allowing him to remain on earth. That had resulted in him being kidnapped by his bastard of a father, who had been waiting for something like a century for an excuse to put his only child back where he thought he belonged—on a throne in hell.

  Or, more likely, in a bedroom, since Pritkin’s father was Rosier, Lord of the Incubi. That made Pritkin a powerful half incubus who had been, in his father’s warped view, playing about on earth long enough. It was time for him to take up his birthright and help the family by whoring himself out to the highest bidders.

  The fact that that sort of existence would be worse than death to someone like Pritkin, who hated the demon half of himself and everything that went with it, was irrelevant to Rosier. He’d spent centuries trying to get a corporeal son to use as a bargaining chip, and he wasn’t about to lose him now. And unlike Persephone, Pritkin wasn’t even allowed visitation rights on earth.

  Rosier had him and he planned on keeping him.

  As if.

  “Why are you looking like that?” Billy asked warily.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re about to cut a bitch.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, and shoved the rest of the cards back into place.

  “Okaaaaay. But before you run off for a family reunion, there’s one other thing you might want to know.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as, if your parents were hoping for privacy in their cottage, they got it. Laura said nobody went out there—not even the other ghosts. Demons can feed off ghost energy even easier than human—there’s no body to get through first, you know? And they weren’t taking chances.”

  “So? I’m not a ghost.”

  “I said easier. Demons feed off humans just fine if they want to put in the effort, and there’s a crap ton of them out there.”

  I frowned. “How many?”

  “Laura didn’t know. She never went there herself, not being stupid. But some of the vamps came back spooked as hell, telling stories about hearing what had to be hundreds of demons, seeing crazy lights, feeling space warp around them, the whole nine yards. They were scared shitless.”

  I frowned harder. “What kind of demons?”

  “What difference does it make? The moral of the story is, if the scary-ass bastards at Tony’s were afraid of that cottage, maybe you should be, too!”

  “My mother is in there,” I reminded him. And it wasn’t like she couldn’t handle demons. From what I understood of the old legends, she’d practically ruled them at one point.

  “Yeah, sometimes,” Billy said, sounding crabby. “But what if she’s off somewhere when you pop in? And how exactly are you gonna do that when you don’t know the layout of the place? You’ll have to show up outside, where you can see where you’re going, and that means getting through the woods to the front door. And then waiting for somebody to let you in—assuming somebody’s home to start with. And that whole time, you’ll be a sitting duck for a bunch of hungry demons. ’Cause you know as well as I do that you don’t know how to fight ’em off—”

  “Stop it.”

  “Okay, sure. I’ll stop it. Just as soon as you tell me how you plan to get in.”

  I didn’t say anything for a minute. “Jonas knows about demons.”

  “Yeah. And I’m sure he’ll be thrilled about making another trip to Tony’s right now. And even if so, he wouldn’t be happy about helping you do something that could change your whole existence—”

  “I’m just going to talk—”

  “—and what excuse are you gonna give him for needing to see her, anyway? You can’t tell him about the mage, ’cause that would tell him what Pritkin is. And you know how the Corps feels about demons—”

  “I s
aid stop it!” I told him savagely. I didn’t need this. Another freaking roadblock in a week that had been full of nothing else. A week of trying to track Mom down, when she was busy avoiding anybody attempting to do just that. She’d had enemies of her own on her ass, and she’d turned evasion into an art form.

  I’d finally bitten the bullet and realized that I was going to have to go back to Tony’s, the only place I was sure I could find her. Only to discover—after tripping the wards and almost getting caught half a dozen times—that she wasn’t there, either. It had started to feel like she wasn’t anywhere.

  But then Jonas had shown up this afternoon, declaring that he simply had to be taken back in time right that moment. With his help, I’d avoided the wards—mostly—and Billy had pried the truth out of Laura. So now I discovered that I hadn’t been able to find my folks at Tony’s because they hadn’t been there. They’d been in the cottage.

  Which I now learned was surrounded by an army of freaking demons.

  “Cass . . .”

  “Don’t.” I said tightly. “Not now.”

  “Yes, now,” Billy insisted. “Look, I helped, right? I tried—we both tried. But he’s gone.”

  “He isn’t.”

  “Yes, he is. And you can’t bring him back by sheer force of will. Look, even if you got in there somehow, and even if she told you how to get into Rosier’s court, what then?”

  “Then I go get him,” I said fiercely.

  “Uh-huh.” Billy looked at me, and he was solid enough that I could see the compassion in those hazel eyes. “Only you know that’s not happening, right? Cass, don’t take this the wrong way, but you couldn’t even burglarize Tony’s without help. And now you think you’re just gonna waltz into hell—”

  “Shut up.”

  “—and break Pritkin out? When Rosier is probably expecting something exactly like that from you? When he’s prepared?”

  “Billy! Shut up!”

  “Not this time,” he said flatly. “You need to hear this, and since nobody else knows what you’ve been up to, I’m the only one who can try to snap you out of it. Cass, it’s suicide. Pritkin gave up everything to save you; think he would want you to throw your life away trying to get him back?”

  I got up abruptly, because I couldn’t stay still anymore. But it didn’t shut Billy up. Of course it didn’t. I’d never found anything that did.

  “And even if, by some million-to-one chance, you were to get him out of there, what do you think would happen then?” he demanded. “It’s not like anything would change. He broke his parole, or whatever you want to call it. Rosier would just drag him back—”

  “We don’t know that!”

  “Yes, we do. Pritkin told you—”

  “What he knew! But maybe he didn’t know everything,” I said, trying to pace and not being able to because of the damned glass. I kicked an arc of it out of the way and the shards flashed in the glow from outside for a moment, like licking flames.

  “Oh. So you know more about hell than a guy who lived there.”

  “No, but maybe my mother does!” I rounded on him. “She lived there, too, if the old legends were right. And for centuries! If there’s a loophole, she’ll know it!”

  “And if there isn’t?”

  “Then there isn’t,” I said, crossing my arms and glaring at him. “But until I hear that—from her—I’m not going to just give up. I can’t, Billy—don’t you get it?”

  “Oh, I get it,” he muttered. “I’m just not sure that you do.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Just . . . nothing. But the fact remains, you can’t get to her to ask.”

  I sat down on the bed, suddenly exhausted. It had been a long day at the end of a long week, and my chest hurt. I wanted to scream, to cry, to throw things, but I didn’t have the energy. I wanted to black out and find Pritkin there when I woke up. I wanted . . .

  God. Sometimes I didn’t even know.

  “Not tonight,” I admitted, rubbing the back of my neck. If I hadn’t felt up to dealing with a few nosy witches, I sure couldn’t take whatever was guarding dear old Mom.

  “Come back to the suite,” Billy told me softly. “Before you give Marco a heart attack. Get some rest. Tomorrow . . . maybe things will look different.”

  In other words, tomorrow maybe I’d come to my senses.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said, because I didn’t want to argue anymore.

  Billy nodded, and winked out, looking relieved. Which did exactly nothing to make me feel better. Despite the way he’d been sounding lately, Billy Joe wasn’t the timid type. Billy Joe had been a high-stakes gambler in life, until he ended up in a sack at the bottom of the Mississippi for cheating the wrong guys. When Billy thought something was too risky . . .

  Well, let’s just say the odds weren’t great.

  And it wasn’t like everything he’d said wasn’t true. But so was something he hadn’t bothered to mention. That if our positions were reversed, Pritkin would have come after me. Whether I’d liked it or not, whether I’d wanted him to risk it or not, he wouldn’t have just left me there. It probably wouldn’t even have crossed his mind. I knew that, with more certainty than I knew which direction the sun would rise tomorrow.

  So how could I just leave him?

  I curled up on his messy bed, and even after a week, the sheets still smelled good. Like soap and gunpowder and magic. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, and didn’t cry. Because it was weak, and I couldn’t afford to be weak.

  And because you only cried for people who weren’t coming back.

  And that wasn’t the case here, no matter how it looked. I had to get to him, had to get him away from his loathsome father, had to find a way to keep him. And for that, I had to get to my mother.

  Somehow.

  But it had been a week, and so far, I hadn’t even managed that first step. I’d exhausted myself flipping around through time like a crazy woman. I’d been chased by guards through the old Pythian Court, almost gotten myself run over in London, been shot at by Tony’s thugs. And for what? I was no closer to finding Pritkin than I’d been a week ago.

  When he left me.

  Chapter Five

  “The Star . . .”

  A soft chime woke me.

  “The Star . . . The Star . . . The Star . . .”

  A soft, annoying chime.

  I groaned and rolled over, because it was too damned early, and the chime suddenly became more muffled. “The Star . . . The Star . . . The Star . . .”

  I groaned again and sat up.

  “The Star is universally considered to be the most beautiful card in the tarot,” a smug voice informed me, from somewhere underneath my butt. “It is also one of the most fortunate, although not, perhaps, in the way that many people would prefer. The Star—”

  I fumbled around, groggy and still half-asleep, and didn’t find anything.

  “—indicates that success is possible, but only in time and through great effort. The Star shines in the night sky, a beacon of light in a dark world, pulling the querent forward onto a heroic quest—”

  I felt something stuck to the back of my leg. I peeled it off and brought it up to my bleary eyes. And saw a small rectangle with a night scene, a garden, and a naked chick with a jug.

  “—worthy of an equally great reward,” the little tarot card burbled at me. “Should the querent survive—”

  “Survive?”

  “—the undoubted dangers, snares, and, at times, mortal perils that lie in the way, the reward will be as sweet as the clear, cold water the lovely maiden pours into the pool reflecting the starlight. And if not—”

  “What?” I croaked. “What if not?”

  “—then one will have the knowledge that one fell in pursuit of an admirable goal,” the card said, its small
voice rising passionately. “The heavens shall sing praises of your bravery, as they do for the heroes for which the constellations are named, and your renown shall echo down the ages to—”

  “Oh, shut up,” I said viciously, fumbling around on the nightstand for the card pack. And not finding it. Great, I thought, and rolled off the bed.

  But not mine.

  I hit the floor, blinking at the god-awful coverlet that had half fallen off with me. Instead of tufted satin, it was one of the scratchy, cheapo kind the hotel reserved for rooms priced at less than a trip to Tahiti. And instead of a tasteful pale blue, it had a full-on Halloween theme in yellow, black, and gray, with a ghostly moon caged by the branches of a gaunt and lifeless tree.

  Shit.

  I must have accidentally fallen asleep in Pritkin’s room, instead of dragging my weary butt back to my own bed. And wasn’t that just going to get me blessed out by Marco? Of course, I was kind of surprised that it hadn’t already, since I knew damned well the vamps kept a tracking spell on me. I’d had Pritkin take it off a few times, but it always ended up right back in place, usually within an hour or two. And since he’d been gone for a week, it was safe to assume that they knew exactly where—

  I’d hauled myself to my feet, in preparation for getting my shit together, but tripped over something and went right back down again. Only this time I hit the carpet beside a pair of dirty boots. They were old, with massive soles and scratched leather uppers, at least what I could see through a coating of mud. It was so thick that the steel cap over the toes was barely visible.

  Huh. That’s weird, some tiny, more awake part of my brain commented. But it didn’t explain why.

  I sat up and frowned at them some more.

  There was nothing particularly odd about them, except for the mud, which wasn’t exactly common in Vegas. But they were the kind Pritkin wore, useful for caving in doors or bad guy’s faces, and had been thrown in his usual haphazard fashion under the bed. Or beside it, but the dust ruffle had obscured most of them. Which maybe explained why I hadn’t—

  Okay, that was it. They weren’t weird, but the fact that I hadn’t noticed them last night was. Especially since I should have been able to smell them a couple of yards off. I wrinkled my nose at the locker room funk and pushed them to the side. And peered into the gloom beyond for the damned card pack, while a cheerful voice began to regale me with fun facts about the Star card.