by Karen Chance
“If you want to put it like—”
“Be sure,” she said, suddenly urgent. “Fate has many strings, Cassie, and when we pluck another’s, our own often resonates.”
Okay, I was beginning to think that maybe I wasn’t keeping up with this conversation. I was also starting to understand the problem people used to have with oracles. “In English?” I said hopefully.
“When you change someone else’s fate, it often changes your own.”
“For the better?” I asked, already knowing what the answer was going to be.
“There is no way to know. That is the essence of chaos, of stepping off a cliff, not knowing what you will find at the bottom.”
Yeah, only I knew what I usually found. “I think I like order better,” I muttered.
“Indeed?” She arched a slim eyebrow. “Then leave him to his fate, and go back to yours.”
“No.”
“Then you choose chaos.”
“All right, fine, I choose chaos!” I said passionately. “Just tell me what I need to know!”
Chapter Twelve
I rematerialized a few minutes later in my favorite secluded corner of the hotel’s lobby. It gave me a wall on two sides, and a fat faux stalactite blocked most of the view ahead. A stalactite I quickly had to grab on to the side of to keep from falling on my butt.
Okay, I thought, as the room whirled madly around my head.
Okay, I thought, as colors ran together and a wind-tunnel-like effect roared in my ears and the whole thing gave Roger’s toys a run for their money.
Okay, I thought, as my stomach joined in and my brain decided screw it and I fell on my butt anyway.
Okay.
There was a slight chance I needed a day off.
I let myself fall backward, since I was doing it anyway. And then lay there, watching the girders in the gloom high above my head wave around in ways girders weren’t supposed to. That was fairly entertaining, but I had to close my eyes after a while, because it was starting to make me sick.
And I was sick enough.
In hindsight, I probably should have hung around after dropping Pritkin off, and given myself a break before the next time shift. Which, judging by the way I felt, I’d been doing a little too often lately. But he had started to come out of the groggy phase, and I’d wanted to avoid a conversation I wasn’t prepared for, so I’d skipped out.
Not my best move, I decided, as the whirling thing got worse.
After a bit, I turned my head to the side, because if I passed out and threw up at the same time, I didn’t want to choke. But I didn’t pass out. And nothing came up, maybe because I didn’t have enough in my stomach to bother with.
Skipping meals had its perks, I decided, and wondered if anybody would care if I just slept here.
The carpet smelled like shoes and cigarette butts.
I decided I could live with it and rolled over, trying to find a comfy spot.
And instead found myself nose-to-toes with a pair of shiny, shiny Ferragamos.
“I knew it,” someone said bitterly.
It took a moment, but my eyes finally focused on the handsome face of a very pissed off vampire. Fortunately, it wasn’t Marco. Or Mircea. Or anyone else I might have had to think up a good story for, because I wasn’t up to that yet.
“I’ve been waiting,” the vamp told me grimly. “I have a thousand other things to do, but I knew, I knew, you’d show up at the worst possible moment. And look. Faith confirmed.”
“You don’t have any faith,” I slurred as my eyes tried to uncross.
The whirl of colors and sounds and music behind the vampire’s legs slowly coalesced into a picture of the Underworld, if the Underworld sold tacky tees and fruity drinks and had people wandering around in tuxes.
Wait.
Tuxes?
“Oh, I have faith,” the vampire said, dark eyes snapping. They went well with the tuxedo that was currently highlighting his Spanish good looks. “I have faith you’re going to ruin my life!”
His name was Casanova. Yes, the Casanova, or so he claimed, although he wasn’t and never had been. But the incubus possessing him had previously possessed the famous Latin lover, and the vampire community isn’t immune to celebrity worship. So “Casanova” had adopted the name and the lifestyle along with the spirit, which meant that he was more accustomed to lying around in silken sheets than doing any actual work.
It had surprised me, then, that he’d taken to his first real job with a vengeance, although that might explain why he was glaring at me. Once again, I was sullying his hotel with my presence. Considering what the place usually looked like, that thought would have made me smile, if I wasn’t too damned tired.
And if tonight wasn’t the exception that proved the rule.
Dante’s hotel and casino was by turns tasteless and vulgar and gaudy and cheesy, but it wasn’t cheap. Nothing on a prime piece of the Vegas Strip was. But just because its guests were paying through the nose to poke more hard-earned cash into the casino’s gaping maw didn’t mean they dressed up. Despite what the movies would have you believe, standard Vegas evening attire was a T-shirt and shorts, except for the winter, when it might occasionally stretch to a hoodie and jeans.
But not tonight. Tonight, the stalactites and stalagmites and steam-shooting geysers in the overthemed lobby were being obscured—by the beautiful people. I’d never seen so many glittery dresses and sharp suits and sleek hairstyles around here at one time before.
And was that a string quartet?
“Are we having a party?” I asked, propping myself up on one arm.
“We aren’t having anything,” he said, snatching the glass of champagne a passing waitress had just bestowed on me. “And if I did believe in a Divine Being, he would have to be the biggest sadist since the marquis himself to have saddled me with you!”
“Okay, cut it out,” I said, making a face—at the glass, because the one sip I’d managed to get had been foul. “I just got back. And if that’s what you’re serving the guests, you’d better be prepared for some lawsuits.”
“They aren’t guests; they’re staff. And I’m not paying for champagne when the cameras can’t tell the difference!”
“What cameras?”
“The cameras you don’t need to be concerned about. Now twitch your nose or whatever it is you do and get out of here! And do it fast, before anyone sees you. There are bums credit-hustling the slots who look better than you!”
For once, he appeared genuinely offended.
I looked down.
And okay, I’d looked better.
The hoodie Pritkin had loaned me had largely protected my upper body during the melee. But my legs had been exposed and were covered in scratches and bug bites and dried mud and something I finally identified as patches of resinous tree gunk. My once white Keds were black, there was a layer of grime under my fingernails, and I thought it just as well that I hadn’t seen my face in a mirror lately.
But it felt scratchy, too.
I picked a pine needle out of my hair and tried for dignified. “I told you, I just got back. And I’m not going up to the room until I get something to eat.”
“I’ll have something sent up!”
“Yeah, right. In two hours, and I’ll be asleep by then.”
“I’ll tell them to hurry.”
“They never hurry.” Fred had been right about one thing—room service around here sucked. “I’m just going to run through the taco line—”
“That’s all the way over on the drag!”
“So?”
“Oh, for—wait here,” he told me, pointing to the floor in front of my filthy shoes. And then he stabbed the air a few more times for emphasis. “Right. Here. Do you understand?”
“I like them with guacamole and red sauce, but no lettuce,” I told him, and sat down against the base of the fake rock again.
He was back in a second, but not with food. But with a large potted fern in a bronze bucket, l
ike the ones that framed the check-in desk. I don’t know what ferns had to do with the ambience, but Dante’s didn’t worry about little inconsistencies like that. Or about the fact that even hell wouldn’t have had that carpet.
“Right. Here,” he repeated, slamming the fern down. And then he was gone again.
I pushed fronds out of my face, since he’d set the thing directly in front of me, and checked out the party/ convention/random assembly of beautiful people that was happening. I didn’t know if Casanova was trying to attract a more well-heeled group by parading his off-duty employees in Gucci, or if there was something else going on. And, after a minute, I decided I didn’t care.
I leaned my head back against the stalactite and closed my eyes. The room felt like it was spinning faster this way, but oddly, it made my stomach feel better. Which, of course, just meant that my brain woke up.
It started crowding me with thoughts of all the things I could have asked tonight, instead of just sitting around chatting with Roger’s ghosts. But I’d been a little high and more than a little freaked-out, and they’d been hard to ignore. And then with Mother—
Damn. My mother. I swallowed, and then I banged my head a few times against the rock, because it deserved it.
I don’t know what I’d expected her to do. Welcome me with open arms? Shower me with kisses? Tell me she’d missed me?
And yes, I realized. Some part of me had expected that, or it wouldn’t have hurt so much. Some stupid part, because of course she hadn’t missed me. She’d never had the chance. She hadn’t spent decades wondering, searching, dreaming. . .
And she’d given me what I asked for. Well, more or less. And it had been nothing like I’d expected.
Not the information itself so much—after a week of contemplating breaking into hell, I’d been prepared for almost anything. But the fact that she hadn’t laughed at me, or told me I was crazy, or shot me in the butt . . . She’d just . . . told me.
She’d given me what I needed to get up to some next-level shit without much of an argument at all. So, either she was seriously overestimating me, or . . . or maybe I actually had a shot at this? Maybe she saw something in me I didn’t? Maybe . .
Maybe she thought the best way to get rid of me was to give me what I wanted and let me figure out for myself that it was nuts.
I didn’t know. I had this weird feeling that I knew less about my parents now than I had before. I sure understood less.
Like my father. I supposed the truth—if I’d even gotten the truth—was better than the rumors I’d heard, but it was no less bizarre. What was an ancient goddess doing with the magical version of a con man? And what had he been doing with the Black Circle?
He’d needed power, he said. But for what? Because a couple of ghosts couldn’t possibly use that much, even if they were going around playing Iron Man. So what was he using it for?
It couldn’t have been to help Mother. She’d been weak, yes. She’d needed magic, yes. But not the human variety. That was why the old legends spoke of the gods visiting earth, but living somewhere else—Asgard, Vanaheim, Olympus—whatever you wanted to call it. Because they couldn’t feed off human magic. I didn’t know if it was incompatible with theirs, or wasn’t strong enough or what. But they would get weak if they stayed here very long.
It was why Mother had ended up losing most of her power after trapping herself here. And why she’d finally gone to the Pythian Court after avoiding it all those centuries. Apollo, god of prophecy, had gifted the oracles of Delphi with some of his own power, back when they’d been good little worshippers, and it was still going strong. I guess the trickle the Pythias used was negligible compared to the amount needed by a hungry god.
But Mom hadn’t gotten to feast for long. Going to court had allowed her enemies to locate her, and she’d had to expend most of the power she’d gained fighting them off. So she’d ended up sitting in Tony’s guest cottage with Dad, who was avoiding the Black Circle, who presumably wanted to do violent things to him. And waiting . .
For what? Until tonight, I’d never really thought about it. I’d just assumed they were in hiding. That’s what you did when bad people were after you. But now that I’d met them, that didn’t make much sense, at least not as a long-term plan.
The Spartoi were relentless. She had to know they’d find her eventually, and as soon as they did, it was game over. Her power was all but gone, Tony’s guys wouldn’t fight for her, and even if they did, the Spartoi would make mincemeat out of them in about a minute flat. And having fought them both, I doubted Roger’s crazy inventions would do much better. And even if I counted the forest as part of her defenses—and having been through it, I saw no reason why I shouldn’t—well, Pritkin and I had survived it. A bunch of ancient demigods were hardly likely to do worse.
So, yeah, everything I’d seen had looked like a stopgap, something to buy my parents a little bit of time.
But to do what?
“Here!” I was jolted out of a half sleep, half reverie by somebody thrusting something under my nose. Something that looked divine, I realized, as I managed to push a silver serving tray far enough away to focus on the contents.
“That’s not tacos,” I said sleepily.
“No, it’s better,” Casanova snapped. “Now get back up to your room before somebody sees you!”
I would have snapped back, but I was feeling tender toward the guy who had just brought me a tray of luscious-looking hors d’oeuvres. It held equal parts gorgeous salmon, juicy sausages, fat shrimp wrapped in bacon, and hearty meatballs. My stomach woke up and started grumbling plaintively. Suddenly, I was starving.
A phone rang and Casanova snatched it out of his jacket. “Of course you do,” he told it viciously. “I can’t take five minutes . . . all right, all right. I’m coming!”
He thrust the platter at me and was gone, with that liquid speed vampires use when they aren’t messing about. And I didn’t waste any time, either. I grabbed a salmon sliver sitting on top of an artfully piped swirl of herbed cheese, which in turn was resting on a slice of fresh cucumber—
Which would remain fresh forever, I realized a second later.
Because it was made out of plastic.
I managed to spit the thing out before I choked on it, and then just sat there, looking at the slimy thing in my palm. And wondering how my life had come to this. I threw it down, wiped my hand on my filthy top, and picked up a rubbery shrimp—that appeared to be made out of real rubber. And then a sausage with a beautiful sear that had come out of a spray-paint bottle. And then—
“No,” I said, increasingly desperate, pawing through the whole tray. But it was all the same. They were fake. They were all fake.
Casanova had just given me a tray of plastic food.
It looked like one of the sample trays the restaurants used out front as an enticement. It seemed that the employees not only weren’t getting real champagne, but weren’t getting fed, either. And neither was I.
“Son of a bitch!” I sat there, disbelieving and furious and utterly, utterly ravenous. For another second, before I was on my feet and pushing palm fronds around.
The place was packed. If possible, even more beautiful types had squashed into the already stuffed-with-tourists lobby since the last time I looked. There was no way to shift without being seen, and I didn’t feel up to it anyway.
Maybe I did look like a bag lady, but this was supposed to be hell. If they could have satyrs serving in the bar upstairs and incubi manning the salon and cocktail waitresses in devil ears wandering around, a random street person shouldn’t shock anybody. And if it did, that was just too bad. The universe might hate Casanova, but it was conspiring to starve me.
And I had had enough.
I was taking back control of my life, or at least my dinner.
I was heading out.
Or, you know, skulking behind the check-in desk, because I didn’t want to get tossed out on my ear.
Fortunately, nobody was check
ing in at the moment. I got a couple of glances from the staff, but most of them knew me by now, and crawling behind the desk was one of the least strange things they’d seen me do. Nobody tried to stop me, and I scuttled from there to a service corridor, through the back of an ice cream shop and out into the lobby again. Right where the hellscape gave way to an Old West ghost town, if the Old West had featured plastic cactuses and neon cocktail signs and overpriced boutiques.
And a fiberglass donkey cart with a flashing taco sign.
I could have sworn a heavenly chorus started singing, if that hadn’t been really unlikely around here. I lurched forward, drawn by the siren call of seared meat and habanero sauce, my mouth watering and my eyes glazed. And ran right into the front of a starched dress shirt.
“You thin’ I don’t know you by now?” Casanova demanded, his Castilian lisp showing up along with what looked like a full-on snit.
“Oh, for the love of—get out of my way!” I told him, trying to muscle past.
But I didn’t have much muscle left, and Casanova, despite acting like a little bitch half the time, was a master vampire. I didn’t go anywhere. Goddamnit!
“You are not ruining this for me,” he told me menacingly.
“I’m just trying to get in the freaking taco line! I don’t even know what ‘this’ is!”
“This is my attempt to save a failing business,” he hissed, grabbing me by the arm and jerking me behind a couple of fake hay bales. “I am about to be on television, coast-to-coast coverage, in prime time!”
“For what?”
“For that!” Casanova said, gesturing at a big-toothed guy with a lapel mike who had just emerged into a cleared area in front of the lobby. He and the dozen black-shirted guys he had running interference were blocking most people’s access to the elevators around the corner, but nobody seemed to mind. They were too busy watching him as he grinned at a professional-looking video camera.
“Fiends,” he told it suddenly, with every appearance of relish. “Ogres. Giants. Freaks of all kinds. If you don’t believe in monsters, you’re part of a tiny minority. Throughout history, almost every culture on earth has believed. Even odder, they have all believed in the same monsters.
