Tempt the Stars

too?”
    “They never had the chance,” I told him, grimacing at the memory. “The vamps were broadcasting the coronation, and the whole damned thing was seen live by a few hundred thousand people. Not to mention however many saw the newspaper articles and the photos and—”
    “Then they know. And likely more than was reported. They would have investigated even without the incident with Apollo. And with it—that’s two major attempts to circumvent the ouroboros in as many months. They could not possibly have failed to notice. And yet the response to your mother’s announcement . . . it almost sounded as if most of them had no idea.”
    I frowned. “Maybe the leaders are trying to keep from panicking everyone, until they can decide what to do.”
    “Cassie, the council
are
the leaders. There is no head; each member has a single vote. It was set up that way after the wars, when no one wanted more bloodshed over who would rule. That isn’t to say that they have no factions, and of course some members’ votes carry others. But we’re not talking about a vote, we’re talking about information they simply do not seem to have had.”
    I thought about that for a moment, and ate mushrooms. I was stuffed, but they had been browned on the griddle in butter, and then covered with melted cheese and crusty meat bits and, well. “But somebody has to decide what is brought up. I mean, they couldn’t talk about
everything
—they’d never do anything else.”
    “That is what the Adramelech does.”
    “The what?”
    “Your mother referred to him as Adra, for short. I am not sure why.”
    “I am,” I said dryly. Mom hadn’t exactly been on her best behavior in there. Or maybe she had.
    At least she didn’t kill anybody this time.
    “She didn’t seem pleased about the composition of the council,” Pritkin agreed. “But while not, perhaps, polite, the term was not an insult. Adramelech is a title, not a personal name. He functions as the speaker or president of the council.”
    Damn. And he’d seemed like the nice one. “I thought you said the council doesn’t have a head.”
    “It doesn’t, if you mean someone with more power than anyone else. He is mainly there to maintain order.”
    “So he’s the one who should have maybe got around to mentioning that the old gods were about to stage a comeback?”
    “Not necessarily. The Adramelech only organizes matters to be discussed and attempts to keep the debate on topic. He doesn’t usually propose topics himself.”
    “Then who does?”
    “Whoever has the oversight of the region in question.”
    “And who has oversight of earth?” I asked, because Pritkin was sounding grim.
    “You saw. That was the reason he was called forward. Asag of the Asakku.”
    Great. “So, what reason does this Asag guy have for just ignoring the return of one god and the kids of another?”
    Pritkin shook his head. “I don’t know. And I’m not likely to. I had difficulty even obtaining the basics on your mother. No one wants to talk about the ancient wars—or how they ended. Most go about trying to pretend they didn’t happen.”
    “So they’re about to let them happen again?” I asked, in disbelief. “They can’t be that blind!”
    “It’s not a matter of being blind,” Pritkin said, drinking beer. “It’s . . . fear, terror even. You have to understand, Cassie, the demons who dared to face the gods once . . . they were ancient compared to the ones you saw, powerful beyond belief, and bloodthirsty to a fault. They gloried in battle, lived for it, reveled in it. And yet they fell, as one of the few who would talk to me about it said, like a sky full of falling stars. Those who survived believe they cannot fight—”
    “They can’t if they won’t even try! Would they prefer to be slaughtered?”
    “They’d prefer not to think about it at all. The ones who lived—remember, they were those who didn’t interest your mother or the other gods. Who weren’t powerful enough to be pursued, or who survived by hunkering down, by playing it safe, by being cautious—”
    “You can be too cautious. You can die hiding under a bed or whatever the demon equivalent is, as much as on your feet, fighting.”
    Pritkin sent me an odd look.
    “What?”
    “When I met you, you preferred running, liked hiding. You told me several times it was what you were best at.”
    “Yes, but it made sense then, when all I had to worry about was Tony. But it won’t