Tempt the Stars

ghosts. It was more like she was on an intertemporal version of Skype.
    And the signal was running straight through me.
    So it took me a moment to pull myself together, to pay attention to something besides the forceful complaints of my too-human body, and to notice—that she looked exactly the same.
    Okay, maybe not exactly. There were a few changes; the mane of bright hair was a copper flame in the darkness, the violet eyes were huge and luminous, the porcelain skin glowed like it had its own light source. But she was still dressed in simple white, she wasn’t thirty feet tall or a mass of boiling energy like the last god I’d seen, and she wasn’t carrying any of the props I suppose I’d subconsciously expected: bows, arrows, shield, crown. . . 
    It wasn’t that I was disappointed . . . exactly. It’s just that, well, we could have used a little intimidation factor right now. Instead, she took a moment to survey the scene and then smiled, almost coquettishly. “It has been a long time, my lords. Miss me?”
    Not cool, Mom, I thought a little desperately, as an unhappy rumble reverberated around the room.
    But it didn’t seem to bother her. Long eyelashes shadowed porcelain cheeks for a moment as a wry smile tugged at her lips. “No. I suppose not.”
    “We know you, oh, Ninmesarra.”
    One of the stars dropped from the sky, transforming into a pleasant-looking man in a dark business suit. He was blond, like Rosier, but the similarities ended there. His hair was thin and sleeked back, his face was round and not particularly memorable, except for a noticeable cleft in an otherwise unremarkable chin. He looked young, maybe my age, maybe a few years older, and his voice was mild, almost sweet.
    I frowned at him.
    He had no business being a demon.
    “What we do not know is why you come before us,” he added, stopping a few feet away from the glow Mother was shedding on—yes, there was a floor down there, I guess for the use of us corporeal types. I could see it when he walked, in the shadows shed by his body. Because Mother’s light did throw them.
    And it was amazing how much better I felt, just seeing those few square feet of normality. I picked my feet up, one at a time, and put them back down again, deliberately scraping them over the floor I could actually feel now. And the weird loop-de-loop my brain had been do
    ing quieted down somewhat.
    Too bad it didn’t do anything about the power drain.
    Mother glanced at me. “Communication using Seidr is difficult for humans, and my daughter must carry the burden alone. I will therefore be blunt, for my time here is brief. She has come to ask you for the life of one man. I . . . have not.”
    That did get a reaction, in the form of a dull blink, from me. And a mental replay of some of Pritkin’s history lesson. Please tell me I haven’t fucked this up, I thought blankly. Please, please, please . . 
    “Then why are you here?” the man asked, frowning slightly. As if he wasn’t any happier with her answer than I was.
    “To grant you a boon, Adra. Or should I say, another?”
    “When has the World Destroyer ever done us anything but harm?” It was a harsher voice this time, but I couldn’t tell where it came from.
    Until a shorter, stouter figure stomped onto the bit of floor Mother’s light was illuminating.
    And, okay, that was better. The first guy might have lulled me into a false sense of security, had I met him anywhere else, but that wasn’t an issue with this one. Not that that meant a damn—for all I knew, the new guy was a pushover. I’d learned from dealing with vamps that it didn’t do to judge on looks.
    But that was kind of hard when the looks in question were so bizarre.
    He—and I was guessing that solely based on voice— was pasty-pale and lumpy under a dark robe. And as far as I could tell, he had no facial features a human would recognize. He did have a head; at least I was assuming that was what the bulge on what I was also assuming were shoulders could be called, although it was a toss-up. But in place of eyes, nose, and mouth, he had a bunch of feelers or tentacles or, hell, I don’t know, white waving things emerging from pustules on the lump like the strands on an anemone. They were surrounding a hole lined with what had to be at least a couple of hundred tiny, pointy teeth.
    And okay, maybe that was the mouth. I didn’t know, because I didn’t want to get close enough to find out. And yeah, that was