Tempt the Stars

don’t we—”
    “Unhand me, vampire,” she snarled, harsh enough to make him blink. And draw his hand back. And look at me.
    “Cassie—”
    “You know, I would like some of that coffee, after all,” I said brightly, not really expecting it to work.
    But it did.
    The girl curtsied—yeah, that’s what I said—deep and elegant and perfect. The kind Eugenie had always tried to teach me, but I’d never quite mastered. And then she withdrew, fading back through the swinging doors almost before I could blink.
    Okay. That had gone . . . surprisingly well.
    And then I turned back around to find the three witches still staring at me. And still unhappy. In fact, one was now actively glaring.
    Take a guess which.
    I sighed.
    “Look, if it helps, I’m sorry, okay?” I told them. “I would have invited you to the party, if I’d known there was going to
be
a party, and I would have greeted you if I’d known you existed—”
    “Knew we
existed
—” the Valkyrie spluttered.
    Crap.
    “And I’ll make sure there are no more oversights where you’re concerned,” I added quickly. “Not that there’s anything scheduled right now that I know of, but if and when I find out—”
    “If?” The Valkyrie turned to look at her companions, spreading her hands.
“If?”
    “I’ll make sure you get an invitation. Are we okay?”
    “No!” she said severely. “Nothing about this is okay!”
    I sighed again and leaned on my cue stick, wondering what the hell it was they wanted. And what it would take to get them to go away. And why my hand, which had reached for my beer, had come back empty.
    Damn Marco.
    “Would it help if I let you win?” I asked sourly. Because Jules wasn’t the only one who had problems with this diplomacy thing.
    The Valkyrie puffed up, but Jasmine intervened, her voice a cool river through the heated room. “It would help,” she told me gently, “if you could tell us what your court is doing.”
    I looked back and forth between the three of them, thoroughly confused now. Like I’d been anything else all night. And then I said the words that I knew—I
knew
— I’d regret.
    “What court?”

Chapter Twenty-four
    That went over about as well as I’d thought it would. The Valkyrie blew up, the others started trying to talk her down, and then the fourth member of their party burst onto the scene again and things really got hot. I was tired and wanted my beer, so I started for the kitchen, only to be intercepted by Marco coming out of the living room.
    I hadn’t heard him leave, but then, that wasn’t unusual. Vampires make little cat feet sound loud. “Hey, where did you put my—” I started, only to stop at the look on his face.
    It was enough, but if I’d had any doubts, Caleb was right behind him.
    “You need to see this,” he told me grimly.
    I was moving before he got all the words out.
    Jules wasn’t in the bedroom anymore. The living room sofa had been pushed against a wall, leaving a large cleared spot in front of the balcony doors. He was lying in it, on top of a sheet that must have been used to carry him in here.
    I didn’t have to ask why they’d wanted the sheet.
    “What’s wrong with him?” I whispered, feeling Caleb come up behind me.
    “I don’t know.”
    I whirled. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Look at him!” I gestured at Jules, who was all but unrecognizable. His beautiful blond hair was the same, just curling a little in the damp from the shower. But as for the rest . . 
    “I think I’m going to be sick,” one of the vamps said, and sounded like he meant it.
    “You’ve seen wounds before,” Marco snapped.
    “That’s not a wound. That’s . . . the opposite of a wound.”
    And he wasn’t wrong. Instead of fissures opening up in Jules’ body, like a knife or a bullet would have caused, he was . . . closing up. I didn’t know what was going on inside him, but his face looked like a mask before anyone cut any holes in it. His ears were all but gone, melted back into his head. His nose and mouth were mere indentations in the paleness of his skin, which looked like it might have lost its pores, it was so unearthly smooth. And his eyes . . 
    I shuddered and grabbed Marco’s sleeve.
    If Jules had been human, he’d have been dead by now, deprived of oxygen at the very least, since he no longer had openings to breathe through. And that was assuming worse changes weren’t going on inside. But he wasn’t human. Which was