Tempt the Stars

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