Tempt the Stars

yeah, it was
different
, but—
    “Are you going to order?” Pritkin asked, dragging my attention back to the menu. Where freaking everything looked good.
    And then the short, squat guy in a grease-splattered apron handed Pritkin something in a paper boat that made my eyes bug out of my head. “They have
Phillies
?” I said, in something approaching awe.
    “This street belongs to the potion sellers, and this cart has a fair amount of human traffic,” he told me, taking the greasy bundle of awesomeness. “But elsewhere . . . you have to be careful. Not everything here is safe for human consumption.”
    “Yeah, but what’s in it?” Caleb asked, peering suspiciously at the towering mound of meat and melty cheese and peppers and onions and mushrooms and—
    “I’ll have one of those,” I told the cook quickly. Right now I didn’t care what was in it.
    “The usual.” Pritkin shrugged. “You know how hard it is to glamourize food and get everything right: looks, smells, taste . . . It’s easier and cheaper just to cook the real thing.”
    “You sure?” Caleb asked, looking longingly at his buddy’s meal. “What about that old rule, eat in hell and you never leave?”
    Pritkin arched an eyebrow. “I lived here for years. And I left.”
    “Yeah, but you keep coming back.”
    “Not by choice.”
    In the end, Caleb ordered a Philly, too. Casanova eyed up the demon cook, who shot him the bird, and then we all got beers. And leaned against the front of the diner to drink them, since there was nowhere to sit.
    Pritkin snared a cheese-covered mushroom off the top of his sandwich, and my stomach gave off a roar that sounded like thunder.
    His lips twitched, but he ate it anyway, the bastard. Watching me as I watched him in hopeless desperation. And then licked his fingers while I salivated.
    And then he handed it over.
    Oh God. So
good
. I practically dove in face-first, and for a while, I didn’t know anything else.
    When I came out of my food-induced stupor, it was to see that Pritkin had gotten what I guess was my order, and had eaten about half of it, while Caleb was just being handed his. “I’m gonna go sit on the bench,” Caleb said, nodding at one alongside the courthouse where Casanova was already slumped with his beer. I guess he was trusting Pritkin to save me from everything but cholesterol.
    Pritkin nodded. Caleb took off with his food and a handful of napkins. And we ate, in my case until I was so full I thought I might pop.
    I thought about undoing the top button on my jeans, but when I surreptitiously glanced around, Pritkin was watching me. And I suddenly realized what he must be seeing—hair everywhere, mouth and probably half my face shiny with grease, T-shirt dirty and sweat-stained. I swallowed the last bite I’d taken, feeling suddenly self-conscious, the way I’d been too hungry and tired to be before. I licked my lips.
    And his eyes followed the movement.
    My own eyes widened slightly, and then looked away, because that was what I always did when something like that happened. Not that it did often. Other than for a few bits of metaphysical lifesaving, Pritkin mostly acted like I was a boy.
    Which was good. Which was how I liked it. Which was how it should be.
    I drank some beer. “So, uh, how do you think it went?”
    Pritkin went back to his food. “Difficult to say. But they seemed to take your mother’s warning seriously.”
    “That’s good, right?” I asked. Because he had that particular crease between his eyes, the one that said he was puzzled about something.
    “Perhaps. But then, they shouldn’t have needed it.”
    “Come again?”
    He made an unsatisfied sound, halfway between a grunt and a sigh. “The Circle might have managed to hide Apollo’s brief return to the supernatural community as a whole, but do you really think the lords didn’t know? When the battle took place at Dante’s? Where half the damned payroll are demon-possessed?”
    “Well, yeah, but those are incubi. And maybe Rosier didn’t want them to say anything. Maybe he was afraid . . . I don’t know . . . that it would help your case—”
    “But I didn’t have a case then,” he pointed out. “I didn’t until after you killed the Spartoi, which alone should have been enough to raise some eyebrows. It certainly caused me to start asking questions, when I woke up in my father’s court. It could hardly have done less for the council, unless the Circle covered that up,