by Sierra Dean
“Our paths cross pretty often for work,” he said.
Her gaze drifted down to his name tag and the little black cat sigil. “Ah,” was all she said.
Someone dropped into the seat beside Sunny, and she visibly recoiled, which wasn’t a normal response from her. My sister was the type to always see the good in everyone, so for her to react in a negative way so obviously had to mean…
I leaned forward in my chair. “Prescott.”
“Corentines.” He nodded. “Cade. Sunny, you’re looking…vital.”
I bit back a smile. As much as I hated Prescott sometimes, I liked how nonplussed he was to be around Sunny. Her beauty never seemed to affect him. In fact, he was fiddling with his cufflinks rather than looking at her. I also knew he had chosen his compliment specifically to make her squirm.
It was a little funny to see someone able to throw Sunny off. She was normally so poised.
“You look well,” she forced out through gritted teeth.
It sometimes amazed me how uncomfortable people were around Prescott. Yes, he could kill with a touch, but he didn’t just go around doing that. Bumping into him wouldn’t end with someone keeling over any more than bumping into me would result in a lightning storm. Clerics, who should all know this better than anyone, still squirmed in his presence like he had a terrible disease they might catch.
To her credit, after her initial reaction, Sunny settled back into her chair, only leaning away from him imperceptibly. Cade did little more than grunt his acknowledgment.
“Kill anyone interesting recently?” I blurted.
Oh my gods, Tallulah, how have you survived this long?
Sunny gaped at me, and Cade shook his head, barely containing a chuckle. I just gave a half shrug as if to say, What do you expect from me?
“Nothing too out of the ordinary.” Prescott was looking at me in a funny way, and I wondered if he thought I was referring to the dead kids. “I caught your show on TV last night, though. Impressive.”
It almost sounded like a compliment.
“Oh,” Sunny said. “Oh, yes. Lula, I saw it on my flight in. I totally forgot to say something. It was magnificent. Job well done. I can’t remember ever seeing anything quite like it.” Her voice dropped. “Put that silly snowstorm to shame.”
My heart glowed.
“Lula.” Cade tested the nickname out so quietly I don’t think anyone else heard him say it. I poked him in the thigh with my pinkie finger, and he caught it with his own, our hands joined in the smallest of ways for half a second, before he withdrew and crossed his arms over his chest.
The gray suit strained.
I wanted to bite his biceps.
“It was quite the dress you were wearing,” Prescott added.
“Thank you.” I suddenly felt shy, and I didn’t know why. Could this presentation just start already?
I craned my neck around, scanning the area. Media types were chatting with each other, cameras dangling from their necks. The regular civilians were looking bored. I spotted Sawyer, and the second we made eye contact she waved. I nodded and smiled.
The chairs all around us had been filled, and now the seating area was completely full. I noticed Deedee sitting at the back next to a cleric for one of the fertility goddesses. She gave me a funny look when she saw how close I was sitting to Prescott, as if I were working with the enemy.
When would I get a chance to explain to her the only enemy we had was one outside the fold? I’d have to make time once the convention got rolling to set her mind at ease about Prescott. Then she could go back to disliking him for the same reasons everyone else did, and not because she was convinced he was killing children.
Security guards were everywhere in the lobby. I could see them milling around above us as well, poised and ready for anything.
I hoped.
A slight woman took the stage, and all the chatter came to a stop. Imelda, the master of ceremonies, wasn’t much to look at size-wise. She was barely five feet tall and built as small as a doll, but she commanded the respect and attention of the room without saying a word. Her dark hair was cut into a smoothly polished bob, which she tidied for no reason as she waited for us to pay attention.
Without using a microphone she said, “Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the annual Convention of the Gods. I want to thank you all for taking the time to join us once again.” Like this was optional. “We have a very exciting event schedule for the week, and lots of great, informative content. Remember, if you need to settle any disputes between your liege gods, that’s only to take place during allocated grievance sessions. Physical fights will not be tolerated.”
The cleric for Ares grumbled something under his breath. Yeah, Todd, we know. You love punching people.
Imelda continued to talk about how the week would go. Sunny, in her first year, was absolutely rapt in her focus. She didn’t even seem to care that she was sitting next to Prescott anymore. She flipped through her program book, trying to keep up with everything Imelda was saying.
Imelda was a former cleric, now high priestess for Chronos, god of time. It occurred to me I should find an opportunity to talk to her this week, since one of the dead initiates had been destined for her temple. I doubted she would have any answers, but she might be amenable to giving me some more open access to the event if she knew I was trying to find the killer.
Once she finished talking about all the banquets and panels, she reminded us we were strongly recommended to attend all the public addresses—times were listed in our guides—and that missing them would be frowned upon.
Public speeches were mandatory. Check.
I was starting to get restless, poking through my tote bag to see what other goodies we’d been provided. There was a nice metal pen. Score.
Cade elbowed me, and I realized, much to my chagrin, everyone was staring at me. Like everyone.
Imelda cleared her throat and gave me a glare so withering I might as well have been seven years old again. “As I was saying, thank you, Ms. Corentine, for the impromptu opening ceremony last night. You certainly did Seth proud.”
I gave her a nod of thanks, and everyone clapped politely.
I wanted to stab myself in the neck with my new pen.
So much for getting Imelda to feel any good will towards me. Sunny patted my leg. “It wasn’t that bad, I promise.”
Which meant it was terrible, and she was lying through her teeth. This was why I should never have to be the center of attention. I was very bad at it.
“Imelda is pretty forgiving. She’ll get over it in about ten or fifteen years,” Cade whispered, leaning against me just long enough for me to feel the heat of his body, then he was sitting up straight again. I stared at the stubble on his jaw and hoped no one would look at me for the next few minutes, because I was too absorbed in the profile of his face to care if anyone caught me drooling over him.
Imelda finished the rest of her speech, and then we were all free to go. The first slate of panels was going to be presented in about thirty minutes, and like a sucker I had agreed to moderate one on how to keep expenses low while working on the road.
I bet Sido had thought it would be funny to make me do that one, because she knew how much I looooved budgeting.
Sunny gave me an apologetic look, knowing we probably wouldn’t have many sessions together today. “I have a civilian session right now. Managing expectations in a social media era. Second floor.”
“What even is that?” I made a face.
“Oh, you know, people have started trying to use hashtags for their prayers instead of proper tithes, and other people have started tweeting to us, and we really need to help direct people to the right outlets for their needs.”
“There’s a wrong way to pray?”
Sunny shrugged in a don’t ask me, I just work here gesture, totally oblivious to having said anything wrong. Cade noticed the way my face had changed, however, and gave me a sympathetic smile, just the slightest upturn at
the corner of his mouth.
No time to dwell, though.
I had to teach some idiot clerics how to balance a checkbook.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The whole first day seemed to sail by in a blur. Before I knew it, it was five o’clock, and people were returning to their rooms or dispersing back to their hotels elsewhere.
There were no official dinners on the first night, so we were free to do what we wanted at this point.
Apparently this meant Sunny, Cade, Leo, Sawyer, and I all found ourselves in the lobby of the Luxor, debating what we wanted to do for dinner. I’d found a panel for initiate clerics on the program and had suggested Leo take Sawyer, hoping they might be able to learn something. I wanted a chance to grill them on how it had gone.
Prescott appeared out of nowhere, hovering at the periphery of the group. Leo and Sunny both looked at him like he was a leper, but Cade was the one who finally grumbled and asked, “Prescott, would you like to join us? We’re just deciding dinner options.”
Sunny gave Cade an indignant glare that said How dare you, but she was too polite to withdraw the invitation. Prescott pretended this hadn’t been his goal all along and said, “Oh, I suppose.”
Sawyer, not realizing she was supposed to hate him, stuck her hand out. “Hi, I’m Sawyer.” I guess she’d been watching us shake hands to introduce ourselves all day long, so this seemed like the natural, grown-up thing for her to do.
Prescott appeared genuinely shocked to have someone offer to shake his hand without any hesitation. Sunny moved like she was going to push Sawyer’s hand away, but I took my sister’s arm and held her back. I wanted to see what would happen.
I didn’t think Prescott had any connection to the killer. After watching him all day, seeing the way he interacted with others aside from me, I was beginning to realize he was exactly the kind of person who might ask a stranger to track my steps. He was just a hair too awkward to function around the living, like he didn’t quite know how to be normal. Whatever normal was to people like us.
Probably a byproduct of spending all his time with animated corpses and the goddess of death. That would mess just about anyone up.
He shook Sawyer’s hand a few beats too long, seeming to relish the human contact. He was smiling now, and it wasn’t even remotely creepy. It was almost sweet.
“Is she yours?” he asked Sunny.
“Mine?” She didn’t understand his question. Obviously the fifteen-year-old wasn’t Sunny’s daughter. That would have been absurd on a number of levels.
“Is she an initiate, I mean?”
Sawyer opened her mouth as if she was about to announce what she really was, when I interjected.
“She’s with me.” I would have liked to leave it there but knew Prescott wouldn’t let it drop until he had an explanation. Like other normal-person things, he sometimes didn’t pick up on social cues. I made up a lie that was close enough to the truth to be believable. “She’s thinking of joining the temple, and I want to show her what the culture is like before she makes any decisions.” The lie came out so easily.
“So it’s a take your juvenile delinquent to work day, then,” Prescott said.
Sawyer sighed dramatically. “Ugh, please. She won’t let me do anything cool.”
Leo and I exchanged glances, and I almost reminded her she’d gotten to fly a helicopter just the night before, but if she wanted to tell people this was the worst trip of her life, she was welcome to. Maybe if she believed that, she would go home and stop her quest to become a cleric. Her obliterated mark meant she could lead a normal life still.
We had yet to come up with any food ideas we could agree on when Deedee sauntered up to our little huddle. She was accompanied by three other clerics whose faces were familiar but whose names I couldn’t remember to save my life.
I’d forgotten over the course of the year how stunning Deedee was. One look at her and you knew without a doubt whose cleric she was. She had the classic girl-next-door round cheeks that had once been so popular in the pages of Playboy, before fake breasts and lip implants became the standard. Her golden-blonde hair hung in perfect waves down to the small of her back and her figure was, in a word, enviable. Currently she was flaunting every inch of it in a tailored black mini-dress and towering Louboutin heels.
Her pale-blue eyes flashed and she looked ready to spit venom when she saw Prescott standing with us, but since she’d made it clear she was headed our way, she couldn’t run off because he was here.
“Tallulah. Good show last night.”
“Thank you.”
“A real shocker,” one of the girls with her added with a titter.
“Oh man, that’s one I’ve never heard before.” I sighed. “Let me add it to my list of great Rain Chaser puns.” Glancing down at the woman’s name tag, I saw the arrow sigil of Artemis. One of the others had a heart to match Deedee’s, and the third had the intertwined rings of the goddess Frigg.
Clerics of lust, virginity, and marriage. Sounded like a pretty stellar knock-knock joke waiting to happen. That or a really risky choose your own adventure for any poor man who might engage them in conversation.
Granted, anyone looking at our group would see storms, bad luck, and death. I imagine given the two options folks would probably gravitate towards Deedee’s posse instead of ours.
Deedee ignored my jab at the Purist—whose name was Constance—and went ahead with what she had come to say. “So, the girls and I are meeting up with some of the other clerics for a bit of an impromptu opening-day mixer.”
Nothing out of the ordinary with that, though the thought of a big group of clerics out on the town unprotected made the small hairs at the back of my neck rise. I couldn’t stop the cleric from going out, but it still made me nervous.
“Is she tagging along to make sure you don’t accidentally sprinkle sex magic on everyone?” I nodded to Constance.
The girl pouted in return. Must suck being a born wet blanket.
“Now now. Aren’t we all meant to be temple pure?” Deedee reminded. “Tawny and I excluded, naturally.”
I grimaced. “Yeah. Sure.”
Deedee’s gaze cut meaningfully to Prescott, then back to me. I doubted there was a single person in the group who missed the implication of that stare. Especially when my neck started to burn. It was probably bright red.
For someone who was supposed to be my friend and called me for help when she was scared, Deedee was being a bitch. Was she just pissed that I wasn’t condemning Pres as guilty like she had?
I reminded myself she didn’t know the truth of Prescott’s innocence, and as far as she was concerned I was being buddy-buddy with a guy she thought had killed one of the newbie Infatuates. That might make me pretty surly too.
I’d get a drink in her then explain things the best I could. Maybe then she’d lighten up and stop acting like the villain in a high school drama.
“So, the mixer,” I offered, hoping to change the topic back to something friendlier.
“It’ll be great,” enthused Frigg’s cleric, Ana. There was nothing sarcastic or mean-spirited in her delivery. She seemed genuinely excited about the prospect of a night on the town with other clerics.
“We’ve got VIP at Foxtail.” Tawny beamed from ear to ear with this proclamation until she saw my blank stare. With an exaggerated sigh she said, “It’s a club at SLS. One of the best in the whole city.”
“Very exclusive,” Ana whispered.
Cade, who had been patiently listening to all of this, showing no sign that he was interested in any of it, cleared his throat. “Sorry, are you telling us this because you’re bragging, or because you want to invite us?”
Deedee gave our group a collective, disgusted once-over then sighed. “What do you say, Lulu? Share a drink for old time’s sake?”
In spite of every bone in my body warning me against it, I said, “Sure.”
Chapter Thirty
One bad decision.
One bad
decision is all it takes to change the course of a night, or even the course of a life. I couldn’t speak for the rest of my future, but I was willing to bet agreeing to go to Foxtail had permanently fucked up my evening.
I’d have much rather spent the night in my room eating cold Chinese food and enjoying some quality time with my sister. Or discussing the cleric-initiate panel with Sawyer to see if it had stirred up any inklings for her.
Instead, I was sitting in a leather booth, staring at an open-air patio, watching half-drunk clerics dance while equally half-drunk normies jumped in and out of the pool.
The music was so loud I couldn’t hear myself think, let alone carry on any kind of conversation.
Sawyer was in her glory.
I had managed to convince the club to let her in because of her status as my initiate—something they wouldn’t be able to verify one way or the other—and explaining the gods needed her to stay by my side. I had to promise not to let her drink—duh—and keep an eye on her at all times.
This, of course, meant I had forbidden her to leave the VIP booth and was stuck sitting with her instead of doing any mingling at all. Fine by me, honestly. There weren’t a lot of people here I wanted to mingle with anyway.
We hadn’t even been in the club fifteen minutes before the bulk of our group vanished onto the dance floor. Deedee, Tawny, Ana, and Constance found the rest of their friends and were currently shaking their groove things around the pool with full glasses of vodka-crans to keep them going.
It seemed like every time a bottle of booze emptied another one would magically appear to replace it.
Leo had seized the opportunity to impress my sister by inviting Sunny to join him on the dance floor. I could see them both, his huge frame and her shiny pale hair, writhing to the DJ’s intense beat. Judging by their matching smiles and the fits of laughter Sunny lapsed into every minute or so, they appeared to be having the time of their lives.
Even Prescott had astonished me. After downing his first tequila shot, he ignored all the stares and sneers of the girls we’d come with and joined a group of strangers near the stage. He was currently dancing with a woman in a bachelorette party sash, and was wearing her plastic tiara in his perfectly coifed hair.
