Tempt the Stars (29 page)

“Then give me a reason.”

“I . . . there’s so many—”

“Name one.”

“I can name a hundred—”

“I didn’t ask for a hundred; I asked for one. And you can’t give it to me.”

“Yes, I can!”

“Then do it!”

“I . . ” I stared at him, because he looked like there was a lot riding on my answer. Maybe everything. And I didn’t know what he wanted to hear, because I’d told him the truth. There were literally so many things that I didn’t know where to start. How could he not see all the ways he’d changed my life? How could he not know—

But he didn’t. It was in the way he turned his head away, when I just stood there. In the way he closed his eyes. In the small, self-mocking smile that played around his lips that I didn’t understand but knew couldn’t be good.

I had to say something, and it had to be the right thing, and I didn’t know—

Pritkin’s eyes opened, but I couldn’t read his expression. For once, the face that was usually flowing with a thousand emotions was . . . blank. Resigned. He was already distancing himself, already leaving me in every way that mattered, before his body ever walked out that door.

And I didn’t know what to do about it.

“You’re right,” I told him desperately. “I can get others to do what you do. They won’t be as good, but . . . okay. It could work. But it doesn’t matter because no matter how good they are, they can’t replace you. They can’t because I don’t need you only for what you can do. I need you . . . for you.”

I’d learned that the hard way, all week. I hadn’t realized how much I’d relied on his scowls or his shrugs or his grudging looks of approval to help me figure something out—until they weren’t there anymore. Or how I could talk to some people about a lot of things, but only to him about everything.

And how unbelievably valuable that was.

I stared into his eyes, wondering how to get through. I sucked at emotional stuff; I always had. It was easier to make a joke or some stupid quip than to try to put into words emotions I was never supposed to have. Emotions that were dangerous to have, because they left you vulnerable and I’d learned early that vulnerability was a
very bad thing.

When I’d heard that my governess had been murdered by Tony, I hadn’t cried. It had felt like someone had twisted a knife in my gut, but I still hadn’t, because I knew she’d hate it. Knew she’d view it as weakness. “Tears are useless,” she’d told me a hundred times. “Don’t cry; act!”

And I’d tried. I’d tried. Because mostly I agreed with her. But now I didn’t know what actions would help, and I didn’t have the words.

I didn’t have anything.

“You called me admirable,” I told him miserably. “But I’m not. I mess up all the time, and not all of them are things I know how to fix. The Pythia is supposed to have all this power, but there’s
plenty
I can’t fix! And some days, most days lately, I just feel like . . . like I’m going to explode. And there’s nobody around to tell me I’m being stupid or to bring me terrible coffee or to make me run a marathon until I’m too tired to worry about it anymore. Or just to
listen
—”

“To your unending babble?” Rosier snarled, turning away from Caleb. “If you want a confidant, buy a diary! My son is meant for better things!”

I met Pritkin’s eyes. “Yes. You are. But you asked. And I don’t know how to say it right; I don’t know what you want. I just know I need you, I need
you
, I can’t do this without you—” I was crying now, as I hadn’t for Eugenie, as I hadn’t for myself. But I couldn’t help it because I was screwing this up, I was getting this all wrong, and he was going to leave—

“Oh, spare us,” Rosier said, sounding disgusted, but I barely heard him. All I could see was Pritkin’s face. All I could think was that this might be the last time I ever saw it.

And that was enough to do what an army of demons hadn’t, and send me into a full-blown panic. “You can’t go! You can’t!”

Hard hands tightened over mine. “Cassie—”

“Just try. You just have to
try
.”

“It isn’t that simple. Even if—” He stopped.

“Even if
what
?”

“Cassie, the council . . . it isn’t like a human court, with rules and procedures and some semblance of justice. They are arbitrary and capricious at best, and at worst . . . they’re the definition of chaos.”

I blinked at him. Because I’d heard that word before. “Mother said chaos is like jumping off a cliff, not knowing what’s at the bottom,” I told him. “But she didn’t seem to think that was so bad. I didn’t understand what she meant then, but I think . . . maybe I do now. Sometimes there are no guarantees. Sometimes, if you want something badly enough, you just have to
jump
.”

Pritkin still didn’t move, but something shifted in his face as he looked at me. I wasn’t sure what it was, but his father didn’t seem to like it. At all.

“Fine,” Rosier said flatly. “We’ll do this the hard way.”

The hard way turned out to be pretty damned hard.

“Shit!” Caleb cursed as the door blew open and the bar was swarmed by a mass of familiar blue-robed guards. Who looked like they remembered us, too. And no way could the two of us take on that many.

But then Pritkin grabbed Rosier and threw him into the first wave. Who staggered back into a table full of the locals, sending mugs and arcs of hell juice flying. And knocking a bunch of dusty, gray-garbed patrons to the floor.

That didn’t seem to bother the guards too much, who were busy thrashing back to their feet, more than one of them drawing those damned curved blades. Until a gnarly, lumpy, gray-green limb, less like a hand than a proboscis, snaked out from under one of the patrons’ cloaks. And crumpled the nearest sword like tinfoil.

And okay, that works, I thought, right before guards and furniture started flying.

I had to hit the disgusting floor to avoid a chair, which splintered against the wall behind me in a hail of bits. But by then I was under the table, grabbing Casanova and the bottle he was still holding. “Give me that!”

“Getcherown,” he slurred, and grabbed it back. And blinked around blearily, before focusing on the veiled guard who had just dove after me. Only Casanova apparently thought he was also after his precious hell juice.

So he bonked him on the head with it.

“Was’ goin’ on?” he demanded as the guard slumped over, leaving us with a view of struggling legs and flashing blades. And a gray-green fleshy lump that appeared to be eating a chair.

“Bar fight!”

“Oh. I haven’t been in one of those in—” A curved sword cleaved the table clean in two. “And now I ’member why.”

We scrambled back as the sides fell away, leaving us staring at a massive blue-robed warrior, his blade sheened with black blood. I stared at him and he stared back, and underneath the veil he wore, I saw him smile. Because we didn’t have any weapons and Caleb and Pritkin had been jumped by half a platoon and the closest cover was a pillar a few yards behind him, which might as well have been on another
planet
—

And then the sword was slashing down and there was no time to scream, no time for anything except shifting or dying, and I couldn’t shift and I
knew
I couldn’t—

And I didn’t.

At least, not us.

I knew that because a second later, we were still sitting in the same puddle of spilled hell juice, inside the same cleaved-in table, in front of the same murderous guard. But the pillar that had been over there . . 

Was now over here.

With a wicked-looking blade stuck halfway through the middle of it.

“What did you
do
?” Casanova screeched, his voice reaching into the falsetto. Maybe because the tip of the blade had stopped inches away from his crossed eyes.

I stared at the blade, and then out the window, which was still shuffling like a deck of cards. And thought maybe I knew. “This is the
Shadowland
,” I hissed as the guard started trying to pull his blade out.

“So?”

I grabbed Casanova’s head and turned it toward the window. “So you can think things how you want them!”

“But . . . but that’s just about how it
looks
.”

“You sure?” I said as the frustrated warrior gave a roar and punched the stubborn post.

Which promptly moved a foot backward and smashed into his face.

And punched him back.

“See what you mean,” Casanova said as the guy fell on his ass, an imprint of the day’s specials stamped onto his forehead.

And then several more guards rushed to their buddy’s aid. And had the table halves slung at their heads by a rapidly sobering vampire. And then we were rolling and yelping and crawling along the filthy floor, trying to keep the bar’s pillars between us and the guys trying to kill us.

But that’s a little hard when you’re rattling around between wildly shuffling pieces of wood, like a pinball in a particularly aggressive game.

Or make that impossible. A pillar suddenly appeared in the space right in front of me, causing me to almost break my nose. Casanova banged into another, fell back into a sprawl, and had a third slam into being between his legs.

An expression of mingled pain and fury came over his wine-flushed face. And then an unfortunate guard decided to hit a vamp while he was down, and lunged for him. And got batted back toward the door like a baseball when Casanova jumped up, grabbed a chair, and started swinging.

“Shift us!” he yelled.

“I can’t!”

“What?”

“My power is acting up—”

“What?”

I jumped to the side to avoid a guard who came sliding by on his back. And then again to miss the creature chasing him. And then had a third start a weird dodging dance with me, his sword and the pillar I was somehow keeping in front of me as a shield.

Because it looked like Rosier’s oath not to kill me didn’t extend to his people.

And, okay, this was no time for an explanation of the difficulty of using my power outside earth. Or the fact that I was having problems with it even back home. Or the fact that I didn’t understand what those problems were. There was only one thing that mattered right now, with Casanova staring daggers at me because I couldn’t twitch my nose and get us out of every possible situation.

“I can’t shift, damn it! Think of something else!”

But Casanova didn’t want to think; he wanted to bitch at me.
“You came to hell with no way to get out? Are you insa—”

He broke off as three guards jumped him, apparently mistaking constant whining for weakness.

But Casanova wasn’t weak. He preferred to let other people to deal with his problems, preferably while he stood around and informed them about what they were doing wrong. But when it came down to it, he was perfectly capable of throwing down—and to the side, and through a window—as the guards quickly learned.

“Make for the bar,” he yelled at me.
“The bar!”

And yeah, the massive old looked-like-oak-butprobably-wasn’t rectangle was the only cover available, except for flimsy tables that broke when you looked at them. But the bar seemed a long way away, and we were fast running out of pillars. And then I
was
out, as the one in front of me was finally hacked in two, and a blade came slicing at my jugular.

And missed.

Because the guy holding it lurched and staggered back, which made no sense.

Until I noticed that he was suddenly a lot shorter.

“Ha!” Casanova said, having just pulled the rug out from under him Shadowland-style, and wished away a large hunk of floor.

And then a customer was thrown into him and they staggered into me and we all went down. I hit a table and bounced off, only to get knocked to my knees by somebody’s elbow. And then to the floor by somebody’s knee. And then my chin hit down hard, and when I looked up, dazed and hurting—

It was to see a bloody and thrashing Pritkin being dragged toward the door.

He was surrounded by what had to be a dozen demons, while Rosier and half a dozen more fended off Caleb. And suddenly, I got it. The old adage about possession being nine-tenths of the law must hold true for the demon realms as well, because Rosier was going to take him.

And then defy the council to violate his sovereignty and come take him back.

Our eyes met for an instant across the bar, and triumph flashed across his. Because we both knew they weren’t going to set a dangerous precedent for the daughter of an old enemy. Once Pritkin went back into his father’s realm, he wasn’t coming out again.

Pritkin must have realized that, too, because he was fighting hard. But he had no weapons and one of his arms was dangling uselessly at his side and the other had five guards hanging off it—who suddenly staggered back, screaming, when a fireball erupted around Pritkin’s shielded arm and set their robes ablaze.

But a bunch of reinforcements were streaming inside, despite the fact that the odds were already ridiculous. Six of them grabbed tabletops to use as shields and jumped Pritkin and the rest ran to help Rosier. Which left him able to turn toward his son and lift a hand—

And the fire abruptly went out.

Pritkin still had his own shields up, at least for the moment, but it didn’t matter. The guards had obviously had enough of trying to drag a reluctant demon lord anywhere, and with the extra numbers, they didn’t have to. They just hoisted him up, off the floor, and there were too many for even him to fight, and he was almost out the door—

So I did the only thing I could.

And moved it.

Specifically, I moved it onto the ceiling, which was the only place I could think of that might help. But that appeared to have surprised the guards, who were still trying to use it to come in. And who ended up falling through the roof instead, and onto the ones surrounding Pritkin.

Bonus, I thought blankly as they kicked and thrashed and he sprang free, looking a little crazed.

But not as much as Rosier when he spun toward me, and screamed something in a language I didn’t know. And every warrior in the place abruptly stopped. And looked up, too.

And then came rushing straight at us.

“Jodor,”
Casanova breathed.

I didn’t say anything, because I was struggling to get on my feet—why, I don’t know. It wasn’t like I had time to do anything, or even to form a plan. But it didn’t matter, because my legs weren’t taking orders, and my eyes kept losing focus and then something hit me on the head.

But it wasn’t a guard.

It was—

“Good one,” Casanova breathed. And started rapid-firing bottles over the bar that we were somehow suddenly behind.

I grabbed my throbbing head, which had connected with the underside of the bar top, feeling dizzy and confused and really pretty unwell. And saw the bartender stooped in a crouched position over by the wall, looking equally bemused. Maybe because he suddenly had nothing to be crouched in back of.

Because we hadn’t moved to the bar; the bar had moved to us. But I hadn’t done it. And then someone came sliding across it, and someone else jumped on top of him, and—

“Was that you?” I asked Pritkin, who was somehow over here now, on his back, his one good hand wrapped around his father’s throat.

“The door,” he said, half-strangled, because the same was true in reverse.

“No,
I
did the door,” I said, and hit Rosier over the head with one of our dwindling stash of bottles.

“
That
door!” Pritkin rasped, his eyeballs rolling up.

Which I took for a bad sign until I looked up, too.

And was hit in the face by something hairy.

I pulled it off and found a coil of rope in my hands. Weird, I thought. And then Rosier was somehow gone and Pritkin was looping it around my waist.

I tried to help him, because his hand didn’t seem to work right. But then, neither did mine. “Wer’ we going?”

“Out.”

“Oh, good.”

“Come on!” I heard Caleb’s voice and looked up again. And saw him hanging out of the bar’s front door, which was now opening out of the ceiling above our heads.

And then I was being hauled on a fast ride up and out, onto the roof, where I landed on some nasty shingles that bruised my butt. And then froze it, because the Shadowland was always cold. But that was okay, because it cleared my head slightly.

Enough that I realized that Pritkin and Casanova were still down there.

I scrambled back to the edge of the door, where somebody else was on the rope, somebody heavy enough to cause Caleb to strain. I grabbed for the end of it, but before I could do anything, Casanova was climbing out of the opening.

“I saved one,” he told me, looking a little disheveled.

“What?”

He hauled a bottle of hell juice out of the darkness and set it on the shingles. “Only one left.”

The building shook as some kind of serious spell went off in the room below, and I grabbed his lapels. “Where’s
Pritkin
?”

And then there he was, struggling to pull himself past the doorjamb with only one functional arm. But he managed, even before Caleb could help him, like he was in one hell of a damned hurry. And a second later I realized why.

When the section of roof I was kneeling on suddenly caved in.

I had a split second to see Rosier’s evil face and a forest of shiny swords and the floor all rushing up at me—

And then my arm was almost snatched out of its socket when someone caught me.

I looked up to find Casanova staring at me, as if he couldn’t believe he’d managed that, either. Especially one-handed, because the damned bottle was still clutched in the other. And then he was screaming and yanking me up and screaming again, because his feet were slipping on the widening edge.

And then Caleb jerked him back and Pritkin grabbed me. “Run!”

Which, yeah. But the cascade of old tiles and half-rotten ceiling beams and moldy plaster that had been the roof made it seem like we were running in place even as we pelted for the edge. Because the precipice was coming along with us, nipping at our heels.

And then consuming them, in a boiling mass of debris, just as Caleb grabbed me and swung me up, which seemed the wrong direction but I couldn’t scream with a throat full of plaster dust. And then we were going down again, fast, but I couldn’t figure out why until—

“Shiiiiiiit!”
I screamed, finding dust no match for a zip-line ride down a sparking electric wire, dangling off the bit of rope Caleb had thrown over the top and speeding fast, fast, too damn fast toward a one-story building across the street.

Which we reached just as a bunch of indigo guards burst out of the bar behind us, and took off like bats out of hell. Or servants of one very pissed off demon lord, anyway. And then I couldn’t see them anymore because we were running up some stairs, and then pelting across the second building’s flat roof and running to the edge and no, no,
no
—

And then jumping across a too-wide cavern we almost didn’t make, Casanova’s feet slipping on the edge and his arms spiraling wildly, and me grabbing him and spinning around, and then Caleb grabbing me and all three of us doing a strange, death-defying dance on a two-inch ledge before Pritkin grabbed us and yanked us back.