Ride the Storm

by Karen Chance

  Leaving it all for her.

  It would have been perfect, if her fellow gods hadn’t fought back. But some did, and the battle drained her more than she’d expected. To the point that she was forced to hide among the human population, to avoid retaliation from the demon hordes who were now hunting her. She had become weaker and weaker over time, unable to hunt, to feed, at least enough to make a difference, for fear of betraying her whereabouts to those with memories as long as her own.

  Most of the world didn’t have that advantage, and they largely forgot great Artemis and her hunt. But the demons never did. Especially not Rosier, whose father had been one of my mother’s last victims. Which made it both awkward and seriously ironic that we were having to work together now. But while the demons might not like me, they understood one thing.

  We were all on the same side now.

  It was why the demon council of my day, who wanted the thorn in their side named John Pritkin very, very dead, had nonetheless relented and given me the counterspell. Not because they wanted to help the daughter of their greatest enemy, but because their paranoia was only eclipsed by their pragmatism. And they knew there was something worse out there.

  Namely, the ancient beings that my mother had tossed out on their godly butts, who were currently pounding at the door, trying to get back in. And she was dead now and the spell she’d cast all those centuries ago to bar the way was starting to feel a little threadbare. And if it fell, it was going to be open season on all of us, whether weak and puny or old and powerful, because to the gods, we all pretty much looked the same.

  And died as easily.

  I glanced at Rosier, to find him staring out over the moon-flooded city, lost in his own thoughts.

  “How did you do it?” I asked, because I really wanted to know.

  “How did I do what?”

  “Survive.”

  He shrugged. “The only way I knew how. I started bellowing orders in my best imitation of Father, acted like I knew what I was doing, cornered a few of his old advisers and stuck them to my side like burrs, and . . . made do. Mostly because of Father’s excellent preparations, but people gave me the credit anyway. And afterward, I simply kept going. Listening to my own judgment sometimes, which I discovered wasn’t so bad, after all; getting advice from people who might actually know what they were talking about when I could; and hoping for luck when nothing else worked.”

  I scowled. Great.

  He saw my expression, and this time, he was the one who laughed.

  “Did you think there was a trick to it? Cassie, do you think anyone is ever prepared for a job like yours? Do you think, had you been brought up at the Pythian Court, trained by the sainted Agnes herself, put through political instruction until it was coming out your ears—do you really think it would matter?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt!”

  “And it wouldn’t help. Not nearly as much as you seem to think.” He shook his head. “I came to be glad that I didn’t know what I couldn’t do. That I was too naive to read the signs, to realize how unlikely any of us were to survive. I remember pounding on the table in a war room—a leaky cave on some misbegotten world somewhere—with three armies outside and none of them ours, with half my forces thinking about changing sides and the other half so demoralized they couldn’t be arsed to care, and yet I was still strategizing. Too stupid to know we’d already lost.”

  “And . . . did you?” I asked, because it had kind of felt like that for me lately, too. Like I’d already lost and just hadn’t faced up to it yet. Because how did you fight a god?

  It wasn’t a question anybody could answer, since nobody had ever done it. Except for me and the guy I was currently chasing through time, but there had been some heavy caveats there. Like the fact that Apollo, the god in question, had already been crispy fried thanks to Mom’s protection spell, and so was almost dead by the time he got here. And even then we hadn’t fought him, because how the hell were we supposed to fight him? Instead, we’d led him into a trap where some hungry demons and a supernatural vortex had polished him off.

  The only thing we’d contributed was to run away.

  Fast.

  Which frankly still sounded like a plan, because I’d mostly taken after my very human father, and the idea of facing down the god of war made me feel incontinent again.

  But I couldn’t run this time.

  Not with a bunch of angry gods battering at the door, with a fractured supernatural community that it was my job to somehow bring together, and with a showdown coming that I had no idea—no idea—how to win.

  The only clue I’d managed to find had been on the search for Pritkin, fifteen hundred years in the past, and I wasn’t even sure I was right about that one. I was currently sitting on a ledge overlooking a big, open expanse, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like I was trapped in a cave, too, one with the walls closing in and the roof about to come down on my head. And me unable to avert the disaster I saw coming because the little less than four months between a life reading tarot cards in a bar and one supposedly leading the supernatural community wasn’t enough, wasn’t close to enough. It felt like I’d been set up to fail, and here I was, managing right on cue, and I couldn’t—I just—I didn’t—

  Damn it!

  I wiped an arm over my eyes and looked up to find Rosier watching me. Something passed over his face for a second, something I couldn’t read. And then it was gone again, and he was making another of those elegant gestures he was so fond of.

  “Well, obviously not,” he said, answering my previous question. “I’m sitting here, aren’t I? In this hideous thing.” He looked down at his ghostly tunic in distaste.

  I wondered why he didn’t change it. Ghosts couldn’t, but Rosier wasn’t one. But maybe he was tired, too.

  I leaned my head back against the wall. “So how did you get out of it?”

  He shrugged. “I seduced the leader of one of the opposing forces, who thereafter switched sides halfway through the battle. He was behind our enemies and we were in front, and after a while of being sandwiched between the two of us, they broke and ran. And never lived down the ignominy of being beaten by a ragtag group of incubi. I made damn well sure they didn’t.”

  “That was clever,” I pointed out. “And what was it? Strong, statesmanlike . . .”

  “And astute. And no, it wasn’t. It was desperation, but it worked. And when desperate gambles work, they call them brilliance. Do it enough, and people start believing that you always can, that you always will. They follow people like that. They write legends about people like that.”

  “But . . . you still know the truth. You know you’re faking it.”

  “Yes, but eventually you realize something: the other side is, too. At least as often as not. Learn what you can; do what you can; get others to do for you what you can’t. And fake it for all you’re worth in the meantime.” He shot me a look. “In other words, exactly what you’ve been doing.”

  I blinked at that. It wasn’t exactly a compliment, but it was close. Somebody was basically telling me that I wasn’t screwing things up as badly as I might be.

  Hell, I’d take it.

  Rosier just shook his head again. “Are you finished with that terrible thing?” he demanded, looking in distaste at the now stripped foot.

  “You don’t know what you missed,” I told him, flashing a greasy smile.

  “Come on,” he said, extending a ghostly hand. “Let’s go fake it some more.”

  Chapter Four

  Half an hour later, Rosier was back in hell, doing whatever he did to recover from these things, and I was back in the casino I call home, trying to follow his advice. Namely, to get some advice, and from someone who might know what she was talking about. Assuming I could get her attention, that is. But she was behind a cash register, halfway across a shop in the casino’s main drag, and I . . . w
as not.

  And I wasn’t about to get any closer.

  “Mommy, Mommy, look! It’s the corpse bride!”

  I looked down to find a munchkin in a tutu tugging at my skirts. My singed, dirty, old-fashioned skirts, which were complementing my ash-covered body. And face. And hair. A quick glance in the shopwindow in front of me showed that they did, in fact, make me look kind of corpse bridey.

  I sighed.

  “I’m not, actually,” I told the kid, still concentrating on the dark-haired beauty behind the counter.

  Her name was Françoise, and normally, I’d have just walked in and said hi. We’d been friends for a while, even before she got her current job, prettying up the salon of the magical world’s most famous fashion designer (according to him, anyway). But right now wasn’t a good time to interrupt. Right now would be a good time to get lost, only time wasn’t something I had a lot of. So I was skulking, trying to catch her eye through the hanging floral strands serving as a backdrop for a bunch of frolicking goddesses.

  A bunch of curly-haired blond goddesses, I noticed, frowning.

  And then frowned some more when I was tugged on again. “I want a picture! I want a picture!” the pixie demanded while trying to manhandle me into an appropriate pose, whatever that would be for a corpse.

  I would have manhandled her back, but my hands were full. And Françoise took that moment to notice me. And to open her dark eyes wide and to shake her head, pointing at the disturbance I’d already seen, because how could you not?

  I know, I mouthed. But I need to talk to you.

  More headshaking, along with an attempt to mouth something back, only I couldn’t tell what because the hand in my skirts had just become a fist, and I was being forcibly dragged away from the window.

  “Darling, I think she’s on her lunch break,” a woman said, running up.

  She looked a little odd, like maybe the airlines had lost her luggage and she’d had to cobble together an outfit from whatever she’d had in her carry-on. It had led to a mishmash of chic and street person: frizzy brown hair that looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in a while, but which complemented sharp brown eyes behind expensive glasses. She had on a blue business suit that had cost money, but which was sadly rumpled. And which was being worn with a T-shirt instead of a blouse, one that proclaimed: “Once upon a time, I was sweet and innocent, then shit happened.”

  I need to get one of those, I thought enviously.

  “I’m not on a break,” I told her, which drew a skeptical look, probably because of the ICEE and the two food bags I was juggling. “I mean, I don’t work here,” I clarified—not at all, apparently.

  Maybe because the ICEE was blue, and had stained my lips a deathly hue. And was in a coffin-shaped glass that was free with purchase because it cost all of ten cents when bought in bulk from across the border. But the kicker was where we were.

  Dante’s hotel and casino was a relic from the days when theme was big on the Vegas Strip. That was after the mob era, but before the short-lived family-friendly experiment, and definitely before the city’s latest incarnation as a sleek adult playground for the well-heeled. Theme was out now, unless the theme was money, which was never out in Vegas, but Dante’s didn’t care because its theme served a purpose. Like, for example, hiding a bunch of real supernatural beings in plain sight, by advertising costumed actors prowling around the drag.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said firmly, shoving a mass of fuzz out of her face. “But you’re her favorite character. One picture . . .”

  The sentence remained unfinished, but the idea was clear: I and my lunch, not to mention my mission, were to be held hostage to that pic.

  Or not, I thought, as an outraged genius suddenly appeared in my face. “You.”

  I started for the door with my armful of stuff, since it didn’t matter anymore. “That’s not my fault,” I told him, nodding at the disturbance.

  “Not your fault?” Augustine barred the way into his establishment with a long, spindly arm. He always reminded me of a blond praying mantis, all arms and legs on a model-slim body, a fact heightened today by a jumpsuit in his favorite iridescent green. “You brought them here!”

  “I brought them to the hotel,” I said, trying to limbo myself under the obstruction without spilling anything. “I don’t decide where they go—”

  “Get them out!” he told me, shoving a knee in my way.

  “From here?”

  “Yes, from here! You’re leaving—and so are they!”

  “Tell them that,” I said, looking past him. To where three cloth-covered mounds were roaming about, perusing the items on offer.

  At least, I guessed that was what they were doing, but who could tell? They looked like animated mountains of laundry, to the point that I only knew who they were by the gnarled, yellowish toenails protruding like claws from under trailing silks, taffetas, and laces. A lot of silks, taffetas, and laces. Like half the store’s worth.

  I could understand why Augustine was upset—his inventory was getting ravaged—but it was his own fault. He was the one who had decided to put an antishoplifting spell on his wares, resulting in any sticky-fingered customers turning literally sticky. To the point that everything they touched ended up adhered to them like superglue.

  It had caused grown men to return, blubbering in submission and missing some skin, after a wild ride on the outside of the taxi they’d become stuck to. But it didn’t seem to be bothering the current group, judging by the dirty hand that had just emerged from one of the piles to finger a cashmere sweater. And to casually pull it off its hanger and to smack it on the growing heap over her left shoulder.

  It did not stick to her hand.

  I hadn’t expected it to.

  Minor-level spells weren’t designed to ensnare ancient magical beings, who seemed to view this one as a useful alternative to a shopping basket.

  “You tell them that!” Augustine said furiously. “You brought them here!”

  “Oh, please,” I said, looking up at him in annoyance, not half because I was still stuck between him and the door. “That was almost four months ago!”

  It had been in the early days of this job, when I’d accidentally released the girls from the supernatural snare they were trapped in. Trapped for no good reason I could see, since the three old women known to mythology as the Graeae were usually fairly harmless. Of course, I didn’t make a habit of pissing them off.

  Unlike Augustine, who forgot about me when one of the mounds bent over to get a better look at a lower shelf, and bumped into an elegant display of hats. Which went flying when the table fell over, including a jaunty purple number that landed at a raffish angle on her long gray curls. And immediately transformed the wrinkled face beneath it.

  The Graeae usually looked like baked-apple dolls, with a Shar-pei’s worth of folds for a face and little else. That still held true. Only now the wrinkled visage peering out of the clothes pile also sported a full makeup job, including scarlet lipstick, rosy cheeks, and fake eyelashes, despite the fact that the latter had nothing to adhere to, since she was not currently in possession of the one eye the trio shared.

  The lashes fluttered anyway as she turned her head this way and that, and then up, trying to figure out what had just happened. And finally realized that something was stuck to her face. Which she dealt with by feeling around with one clawed hand until she located the problem and pulled it off.

  And ate it.

  “What . . . did she just . . . how . . . why?” the girl’s mother asked as Françoise all but flew over.

  “Holograms,” she told the woman firmly.

  “Holograms?”

  But Françoise had already pulled me inside and was hustling me away.

  “Holograms?” I whispered.

  “Eet is the standard reply. Most humans cannot see zee spells Augustine puts
on zee clothes. But some of zem ’ave a leetle magic in zere blood, and for zem”—she shrugged—“zere are zees holograms.”

  “While in reality?”

  She handed me a sign that had fallen off the display. IN A HURRY? CHAPEAU AND GO BY AUGUSTINE. YOUR MAKEUP AND HAIR DONE IN AN INSTANT. I blinked at it. You know, considering my schedule, I could really use—

  “Can you take zem somwhaire?” Françoise asked, gesturing at the trio. “He ees only going to get worse zee longair zey stay here.”

  The he in question being Augustine, I presumed, who was now slapping at the Graeae with one of the fallen hats.

  “I’m too pooped to pop right now,” I admitted. “At least and carry anyone else.”

  In fact, I wasn’t sure I could carry me. Spatial shifts were a heck of a lot easier than the time variety, but they still took energy. Which was why I planned on taking the elevator up to my suite, to rest and eat something more substantial than a few bites of pork.

  But I had a question first.

  “I have a question,” I told Françoise, who was attempting to corral the hats.

  She looked up, and the Grecian gown she was wearing slipped off one shoulder. It was the go-go version, with a too-short skirt and a plunging neckline, because Augustine knew how to get male customers into a woman’s clothing store, yes, he did. But it looked good on her, like the elaborate updo her long, dark hair had been woven into, held in place by thin bands of silver.

  She matched the shop, which I’d last seen dressed up like a circus tent. Now it was marble-floored and ionic-columned, with swags of diaphanous gauze draped here and there and pastoral murals covering the walls. Augustine was really going all out on this goddess thing, wasn’t he?

  “About zee chapeaux?” Françoise asked.

  “No, about zee fey—I mean, about the fey,” I said, bringing my attention back to her. “You lived with them for a while, didn’t you?”