by Sierra Dean
Not that I’d have anywhere to wear it ever again, but it was so beautiful I couldn’t imagine having to give it back. I’d hang it up in my apartment like art. Once, I wore this, and I felt like the most special woman alive.
I doubted I’d have another night in my life quite like this one. The reminder would be nice during those days I got really glum about my job.
A town car was waiting for us on the tarmac. Teddy was evidently well connected and very prepared. My initial distaste for him had petered off some. We weren’t going to be besties, but we’d reached a peace. We’d both had jobs to do, and like Leo had suggested, we had stayed out of each other’s way.
It had all worked out.
And, I reminded myself with a breath of relief, no sign of our serial killer. Perhaps he had been there, mingling with the crowd, but there hadn’t been an opportunity for him to attack. How does a mere mortal face off against someone wielding the power of a god?
They don’t.
So, I’d won. At least for tonight. If he’d been there or watching from elsewhere, he had to know I wasn’t going to let him walk up and kill me. If he wanted me dead, it wasn’t going to be as easy as offing a child.
I’d fight him.
I’d win.
I wasn’t stupid enough to believe he was gone forever. The guy was clearly unhinged, and there was still a full week of public events ahead of us featuring other clerics who weren’t as capable of defending themselves.
No, I’d see him yet. I felt absolutely certain of that. This was going to end with someone dead. I was just hoping it was him and not someone I cared about.
We got back to the hotel without much fanfare, though my dress did get a few second glances as we walked through the lobby.
Leo headed upstairs with Sawyer. I marched up to the concierge desk, my limbs still feeling wobbly, but I managed to project an air of confidence and surefootedness. Easier to do while standing still.
“I’m going to need some food delivered. Not room service.”
He didn’t bat an eyelash. I doubted this was the strangest request he’d ever had. “Of course, miss. What can I arrange for you?”
“Chinese food.”
He nodded. “Do you have a restaurant preference?”
“No, whatever you think is best. Loaded with MSG, though. Nothing frilly or organic or whatever. One of those off-the-Strip places that’s probably been in the same family for three generations. Sweet and sour sauce so thick you could caulk a window with it. That sort of place.”
This made him smile as he jotted down caulk a window. “I know just the place. What would you like?”
“One of everything on the menu.”
Here he stopped writing and blinked. “I’m not sure I—”
“One. Of. Everything,” I repeated. Right now I was so hungry I was tempted to swallow him whole, pen, notepad, and all.
“Very good.”
He didn’t ask what room I was in. Didn’t ask how I planned to pay. My gods I loved this city. Nothing was impossible in Las Vegas.
Leo had offered to let Sawyer sleep on his second bed for the evening so I would have my privacy after the night’s show. She had asked me roughly seven hundred questions in the car ride to the hotel, so he was probably right to keep her away from me for one night.
I swiped my key and entered my blessedly quiet suite.
Alone at last.
Dropping the bag with my street clothes in it, I stared at the inside of the dimly lit room, wondering what I ought to do. The food would take an hour or more, considering the quantity I’d ordered. Maybe I should take a bath. Let myself go for a little swim in the soaker tub.
I so rarely got a chance to relax and pamper myself, that might be the best option.
Of course, it was possible I’d end up falling asleep in there and drowning. I could think of worse ways to go.
While I debated my options, a soft, rapping sound came at the door. The food? It seemed much too soon.
I pulled open my room door, and Cade was standing outside. He had a bottle of wine in one hand and a plate of donuts covered in pink icing and sprinkles in the other.
He’d been about to say something, but whatever it was died on his lips the second he saw me.
He swallowed hard and took a half step back, like he needed a bit more room to see me better. Once again, he opened his mouth to speak, but then shook his head and kept staring.
“Are those for me?” I pointed to the plate.
“Of course,” he managed. His voice sounded a little strained, and he was still staring at me as if I were a stranger he’d never seen before, rather than the woman he’d known for more than a decade.
To be fair, he’d never seen me quite like this.
“Wow,” he said. “I mean…”
“Your vocabulary is extensive and impressive, sir.” I stepped out of the way, giving him access to my suite.
Cade hesitated, clearly torn. I could tell he wanted to come in, but he was stopping himself just at the threshold of entering.
“Is there a force field up I was unaware of?”
“I can’t come in.”
“Don’t be stupid, you were in here the other day. I know for a fact there’s no bomb strapped to your ankle that will go off if you step into the room. If you’re worried I might molest you, rest easy.”
Frankly, between earth-shattering sex with Cade and a room-service cart full of greasy Chinese food, I was much more excited about the latter. No offense to the man standing in front of me, but I barely had enough energy to draw a bath, let alone go toe-to-toe with him in the heat of passion.
He smirked a little but was obviously still uneasy. “It doesn’t look good. Room service shows up and I’m alone with you? That’s the sort of thing that gets back to Ardra and the temple.”
I got it now. Someone was going to rat him out, and if that happened, there went any chance he and I might have of being alone together. Sido had sent Leo along to do the same job for me, but where I had one chaperone who was very bad at his job, Cade had a whole hotel filled with prying eyes.
“What if we weren’t alone?” I’d been yearning for a little alone time to decompress, but that plan was out the window now. Cade was here, and even if we couldn’t have one-on-one time, it would still be nice to keep him around a while longer.
He thought about it, then nodded. “I think that would be okay.”
Knowing Cade, the idea of spending the evening around other people would be agony. But he was willing to do it if it meant staying here.
I left the door open and collected my phone to send Leo a quick text inviting him and Sawyer to join us.
I guess I’d have to share the Chinese food.
Fuck.
Cade, now emboldened to enter, knowing we wouldn’t be at risk of getting busted in flagrante, handed me the plate of donuts and made his way into the sitting room.
I bit into one of the donuts, and the sugar hit my bloodstream like an actual drug. I could actually feel what the fat and sugar were doing to my body, sparking little parts of me back to life.
People could tease me about my eating habits all they wanted. It wasn’t like I was chowing down for kicks. The display I’d put on tonight had burned more calories than an entire Olympic swim team would spend combined for a whole meet.
I needed to regain some of what I’d lost, otherwise I would legitimately waste away to nothing.
Plus, I really fucking liked food.
The donut vanished with embarrassing speed, followed by a second. I was licking the icing off my fingers when I caught him looking at me.
“What?” I said.
I couldn’t read his expression. He was leaning against the back of the couch, his chin rested on one hand and the faintest hint of a smile on his lips.
“You’re something else, you know that?”
“You love it,” I retorted, not thinking before I spoke.
His eyes became clouded, and the smile flickered.
Suddenly I felt incredibly stupid, standing ten feet away from him holding a plate of donuts.
Before I could offer him a penny—or a pastry—for his thoughts, a knock at the door interrupted us.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When room service arrived, Cade, Leo, Sawyer, and I were sprawled out on the couches, watching a late-night comedy news show.
The food took up four full carts, all of them heavily stacked with paper bags and cardboard takeout boxes. The smell of it was so intense I thought I might have died and this was my perfect afterlife.
“Did you order one of everything?” Sawyer asked, goggling at the stacks of food.
Oh right, she was new here.
“Yes.”
She stared at me with a mystified expression, then started peeking through the bags. They were labeled with red Chinese writing and a drawing of a lucky cat. Go figure. The English name on the bag was Mr. Wong’s Chinese.
Mr. Wong was my new favorite person.
Cade had gotten up first and tipped the room-service guys—probably to make sure they knew he wasn’t getting up to any funny business with me—and had first crack at the carts. He swatted Sawyer out of the way.
“Lady of the hour gets first dibs. So, where do you want to start?” He looked over my options, smirking to himself.
“Kung Pao chicken,” I said, my tone greedy. “And some rice please.” I mean, if he was offering to serve me Chinese, I was not going to say no.
He dug through a couple of bags until he found what he was looking for, then joined me on the couch with some white-and-red takeout boxes loaded in his hands and two pairs of chopsticks tucked neatly between his lips.
I relieved him of the chopsticks and some of the boxes, and he settled in, kicking his feet up on the table and opening a box of chow mein. Leo and Sawyer didn’t wait for an invitation to help themselves to the remaining bounty. Soon the four of us were happily munching away on rice and noodles, all making happy little food groans as we carved a dent in my order.
Leo had taken control of the remote and paused on a station talking about the weather. “In somewhat related news, let’s revisit that amazing opening ceremony from the Convention of the Gods in Las Vegas, where the Rain Chaser of Seth, Tallulah Corentine, put on a show for the ages.”
I flushed. It felt very strange for anyone to know who I was. So much for my days of relative anonymity. I might have more trouble sneaking in and out of small towns unnoticed after this week.
The screen flipped to footage from the Grand Canyon, and for the first time in my life I was able to watch myself channel a storm.
I paused, a mouthful of Kung Pao chicken on my chopsticks, and watched the finale of the show the way everyone else had seen it. The lightning crackled next to me, and I looked absolutely wild. My eyes and skin were glowing, almost as if the lightning were coming from me rather than through me.
When the final bolt hit me on screen, I flinched in real life.
My bare arms wore the telltale marks of tonight’s efforts. I was covered in the spider-web red-purple vines of the Lichtenberg figures. They’d been worse, but they still made my skin feel exceptionally tender.
What I’d never realized before was you could see the exact moment they appeared.
When the bolt hit me, my skin turned pure white, as if I were made of solid energy rather than corporeal form. I radiated in the most literal sense of the word. It was stunning. Through that glow I could make out a purple light snaking its way across my skin, as if tiny bolts of lightning were crawling all over me.
The marks.
As the bolt vanished, I continued to glow.
I fucking sparkled.
I set down my food for a second and pointed my chopsticks at the TV. “Does it always look like that?”
Cade had been munching on a spring roll and didn’t appear as stunned by the video as I was. He’d probably already watched it. Plus, he’d been around when I’d put on a light show before. This wasn’t his first rodeo.
Leo, too, looked nonplussed. He might be new to my little song and dance, but he’d also seen how it all worked up close and personal. Sawyer, however, was staring at the screen with her chicken paused halfway to her mouth.
She’d seen the same show in person only hours earlier, but maybe something about the camera angle was reminding her just how crazy it had been.
Cade was the first to answer my question. “Yeah. That time Seth touched you was different. Scarier. But normally it’s like this.” He nodded at the screen, then glanced over at me. “You’ve never seen yourself do it before? Not in all these years?”
I shook my head. “I’m not usually all that preoccupied with the idea of setting up a camera. I’m normally doing it for a reason, not an audience.”
I wanted to rewind the broadcast and watch it again, but this TV apparently only did live streams.
Leo set his carton down and scratched his chin. “It’s a pretty impressive show.”
“You look so…shiny,” Sawyer offered. “I mean you actually look like you’re a goddess.”
“Shh,” I scolded her, as if someone might be listening. It was sacrilegious to compare yourself to a god. Especially for those of us who used their power. If anyone suspected we might be anything other than humble and obedient, we could be killed. Still, my cheeks flushed with a weird kind of pride to hear her say it.
“Oh you shhhh,” Leo countered. “If the girl wants to tell you you look beautiful, let her tell you. I’m the only one in this room who is remotely godlike, and I say it’s fine.”
“You really did look beautiful,” Cade whispered. His voice was so low I wasn’t sure if Leo or Sawyer heard it or if they were just too polite to acknowledge it. Cade glanced at me, and I rubbed my scarred arms self-consciously.
He had seen me at my most powerful, my most ferocious. He’d seen me at my worst, when I was covered in the dirt of a stranger’s grave. And he’d seen me like this, shoving takeout food into my mouth like it might be the last Chinese food on Earth.
He’d seen all that and still thought I was beautiful.
In that moment, I let myself think the words I hadn’t dared admit up until right then.
I love you, you unlucky motherfucker.
Chapter Twenty-Six
A few hours later I woke up to the sound of Sawyer snoring. The guys had left a bit after midnight, after a huge dent had been made in the food.
The leftover Chinese food had been neatly arranged on the coffee table in the living room, and the four room-service carts were gone.
According to the clock it was almost three in the morning. I wondered when I’d passed out. I didn’t even remember getting into bed, and I was still wearing my gown from the Grand Canyon show.
I undid the dress with little fanfare, then hung it in the closet beside my black dress. The jersey cotton was so sad and basic next to the gown. How could a dress still be that beautiful and alive without anyone in it? It seemed unfair.
With my belly full of food and a nap under my belt, I decided I might as well indulge in the bath I’d promised myself earlier. Sawyer seemed to be out cold, and I doubted the sound of running water would bug her. Plus, my muscles felt tense and sore, something that would only get worse if I didn’t take care of it now. The bath would probably go a long way to making me a less horrible person in the morning.
I started the long process of filling the big soaker tub, and paced around the room to make sure everything was in its right place.
Fen, who had stayed out of the way for much of the evening, was sniffing at the remains of my dinner on the table and giving me big, shiny brown please eyes.
I was in a pretty giving mood at the moment, so I took some sweet and sour chicken and put it in his food dish. I added some scraps of beef from the beef and broccoli. The whole platter was topped off with a piece of fried shrimp.
“There you go. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
He pipped with appreciation then dove on
the pile of meat like I’d never fed him in his whole life. He made funny little scarfing sounds, and I worried he might forget to breathe and I’d have killed my fennec by literally spoiling him to death.
At least he’d die happy.
An hour later I had thoroughly spoiled myself with a long bubble bath, my playlist was finished, and I’d just slipped into my rattiest Metallica T-shirt and sweatpants when a knock came at the door.
My heartbeat jumped, and I wondered for one brief, glorious moment if it might be Cade. Forgetting I was wearing possibly the ugliest pajamas in history, I skipped quietly over to the door and pulled it open, saying, “Miss me already?”
A familiar but almost forgotten face blinked back at me in surprise.
“Constantly,” she announced. “Although in my head I don’t usually picture you like that.”
I stared at her, and it was like looking into a funhouse mirror, if funhouse mirrors made you more attractive.
“Sunny?”
My sister beamed at me. She was the absolute definition of beauty. Her skin was a rich, sun-kissed tan, her hair the kind of effortless blonde that women paid a fortune to imitate. Her cheeks were flecked with freckles, and her smile was so intense she could have been a billboard for a dental clinic.
My breath caught in my throat. I could barely comprehend she was here, standing mere feet from me.
I shook off my stupor and grabbed hold of her, wrapping her in the tightest, most crushing embrace imaginable. I wanted to squeeze the life out of her so I could absorb every particle of her into my skin.
She laughed merrily and returned the hug, smoothing her hands over my hair, kissing my cheeks and forehead with furious delight.
“Gods I’ve missed you.” She held me back to get a better look at me.
“I can’t believe you’re here.” I’d known she’d be at the convention of course, but I had assumed I’d see her during orientation or milling around the event center. This was so unexpected.
“I told you I was coming.” She gave me a perplexed look.
“No you didn’t.”
