Tempt the Stars

true.”
    “Was it?”
    Jules choked on a laugh. “I wet myself. And then I sobered up, and asked him how he did that. And he offered me a new sort of contract. An immortal one.”
    “But you don’t sound happy.” And he didn’t. Bitter, with a side of world-weary and maybe an edge of hysteria thrown in there for good measure. But definitely not happy.
    “Some days—” His voice broke, and he paused before continuing, stronger. “Some days, I wish Mircea had missed.”
    “What? Why?”
    “Think about it, Cassie!” he said fiercely. “Eternity when you’re a screwup is a very long time! I thought I would eventually get good at this, learn to be the suave, überconfident vampire, start to feel comfortable—but it never happened. I just learned new ways to be a failure. Mircea’s vampires are either diplomats or soldiers, and I’m neither.”
    I didn’t bother to point out that there were other jobs. Jules wasn’t the type to be happy doing the laundry. He was talking about prestige positions, and yeah, that about summed it up.
    “You could always ask for a transfer,” I said instead. “Go to a different house—”
    “And do
what
? Look good?” Jules laughed again, and this time, it was humorless. “A face like mine may make you a fortune in the human world, if you go about it right. But you know what it means in the vampire? When any third-rate glamourie can give you the same result?”
    “You’re more than just your looks, Jules.”
    “Am I? How many thespian vampires do you know? Or performers of any kind?”
    “Vamps have . . . hobbies,” I offered, a little lamely, but it was true. They did a variety of things in their spare time. Paint, sculpt, sing . . . I used to know one who took weird photos of people’s worst features, a sort of beauty pageant in reverse.
    “But not as a profession,” Jules insisted. “Not as a way to leave a mark, to
count.
There are people who are good at this life, who take to it naturally, and then there’s the rest of us. But there’s no way to know which you’ll be before you get in, and once you do, there’s only one way out.”
    And yeah. The kind of contract vampires were offered didn’t have an expiration date. It was something all those eager applicants often forgot.
    “I’m sorry,” I told him, and meant it.
    “Don’t be. Just promise—if this doesn’t work— promise me you’ll end it.”
    “Jules—”
    “Or have Marco do it. I don’t care, I just—I can’t live like this. You understand? I
can’t
—”
    “Jules!” I said, sharply, because the hysteria was creeping back, big-time.
    “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, sounding a little calmer. “But I want your word.”
    “Listen to me,” I said, striving for calm, because I wasn’t doing so great myself. “I won’t promise you—”
    “Cassie—”
    “No, listen!” I said, my voice shaking slightly. “I’m being straight with you, okay? No bullshit.” Not this time; not ever again. Not with people I cared about.
    What a way to learn a lesson.
    “Okay.”
    “And I won’t tell you that this is going to work. I’m not a witch; I can’t undo a hex their way—”
    “And it wouldn’t help, even if you could.”
    Apparently, those missing ears still worked just fine. And yeah. That must have been fun, lying helpless, and listening to everybody sound his death knell.
    “No,” I confessed. “But I can try to take you back to before the damned thing was laid in the first place. Basically, I’m going to put you in a time bubble—”
    Jules made a choking sound. “Spare me the details.”
    Yeah. I probably wouldn’t want them in his place, either. He’d been through enough tonight already, but I couldn’t leave well enough alone because he wasn’t well enough. And he wasn’t going to be if I didn’t manage this.
    And we both knew it.
    I nodded, licked my lips, and tried to concentrate.
    It was just as well that Jules hadn’t wanted details, because he wouldn’t have liked them anyway. Not only because I hadn’t done something exactly like this before, but because I wasn’t the best at precision timing. It was why I hardly ever got away with anything when I shifted. Agnes had been able to come back to her body at virtually the second she left it, so nobody ever knew she’d even been gone unless she chose to tell them. But she’d had either a gift or a heck of a lot more practice, because I usually missed by a mile. Fortunately, there