Tempt the Stars

ends, cars appeared and disappeared, trees and planters and mailboxes strutted and fretted their brief moment upon the stage and then, poof, were replaced by a parking lot. And the light constantly changed, as lamps and streetlights and lit billboards winked in and out of existence, each flip, flip, flip of the scene causing the shadows in here to move and shift, like a club with a lousy DJ.
    It was giving my migraine a migraine, which was ironic.
    Since that was exactly what it had been designed not to do.
    The spell that masked whatever the real city looked like had been intended to be comfortable, even homey. It was supposed to make the place look like your hometown, or at least an area you’d be familiar with, which I supposed made sense for a place that served as a giant crossroads for the hells. No one look was going to work for everyone, when “everyone” was a thousand different species with totally different senses. So the Shadow-land’s proprietors had said screw it and just given everybody what they wanted.
    Or they’d tried. It never worked quite as planned, since it didn’t cover the people, most of whom would have gotten a double take even on the Vegas Strip. But it also didn’t normally look like the origami creation of a possibly insane artist.
    But then, it didn’t usually have a pissed-off demon lord messing with it, either.
    At least, that’s why I assumed that the street outside, which was supposed to lead to the council building, had suddenly acquired a severe case of ADHD. Rosier was clearly intent on me not being allowed to make my case. And so far, he was doing a damned fine job.
    My power worked, to a limited degree, in the Shadowland, at least when I wasn’t exhausted. But I couldn’t shift when I didn’t know where I was going. And when the road was changing even as I looked at it. And while dragging along a guy who apparently didn’t want to go anyway.
    “Yes, it’s relevant!” Pritkin said. “I am trying to make Cassie understand why she needs to drop this and go home!”
    “I’ll be happy to,” I told him evenly. “After we see the council—”
    “We don’t need the council—”
    “We do when you can’t go back to earth without them!”
    “I’m not going back to earth.” It sounded final.
    Like hell it was final.
    “I didn’t come all this way, go through all that”—I waved an arm wildly, because I didn’t have words for the last week—“just to go home without you!”
    “Well, get used to the idea,” Pritkin said curtly, and sloshed some more hell juice into his glass.
    “What is this stuff?” Caleb asked, looking at his drink suspiciously. He had yet to touch it.
    “Local specialty. They ferment it from berries that grow in the hills,” Pritkin said curtly, knocking back the majority of his.
    “Is it strong?”
    Pritkin shrugged.
    “If it gets a vamp drunk, it’s strong,” I warned.
    Caleb raised an eyebrow and glanced at Casanova. But it was hard to tell if the vamp was actually sloshed or just overwrought. He’d been crying into his not-evenclose-to-beer since we got here.
    I guess Caleb must have decided he was just being his usual overly dramatic self, and took a healthy swig. And somehow kept it down. But under all that dirt, he turned about as white as a black guy can.
    “Pritkin told me once that alcohol doesn’t affect him much—something about what he was raised on,” I told Caleb.
    Caleb glared at his buddy. “What the fuck were you raised on?”
    Pritkin held up his glass. “This.”
    “Figures,” Caleb wheezed, and frantically gestured the bartender over to order some water.
    I went back to glaring at Pritkin.
    It was vaguely satisfying in a way I couldn’t immediately define. Maybe because it was the only normal thing in my life right now. I glared at Pritkin all the time. It was what I did. I decided to do it up right and put some oomph behind it.
    “You can look at me that way all you like. It doesn’t change the facts,” he snapped.
    “And what facts are those?”
    “That getting to the council, even assuming we could manage it, won’t help. They hate me—”
    “I bet they hate the gods more!”
    “And that would be the point,” he said viciously, and gulped the equivalent of paint thinner.
    “Okay,” I said, reaching tilt. “Okay. I’ve had kind of a bad week, and I’m not much for hints right now. So why don’t you just cut to the chase, and tell me what is wrong with you? Do you
want
to go back