Tempt the Stars

groaned again and sat up.
    “The Star is universally considered to be the most beautiful card in the tarot,” a smug voice informed me, from somewhere underneath my butt. “It is also one of the most fortunate, although not, perhaps, in the way that many people would prefer. The Star—”
    I fumbled around, groggy and still half-asleep, and didn’t find anything.
    “—indicates that success is possible, but only in time and through great effort. The Star shines in the night sky, a beacon of light in a dark world, pulling the querent forward onto a heroic quest—”
    I felt something stuck to the back of my leg. I peeled it off and brought it up to my bleary eyes. And saw a small rectangle with a night scene, a garden, and a naked chick with a jug.
    “—worthy of an equally great reward,” the little tarot card burbled at me. “Should the querent survive—”
    “Survive?”
    “—the undoubted dangers, snares, and, at times, mortal perils that lie in the way, the reward will be as sweet as the clear, cold water the lovely maiden pours into the pool reflecting the starlight. And if not—”
    “What?” I croaked. “What if not?”
    “—then one will have the knowledge that one fell in pursuit of an admirable goal,” the card said, its small voice rising passionately. “The heavens shall sing praises of your bravery, as they do for the heroes for which the constellations are named, and your renown shall echo down the ages to—”
    “Oh, shut up,” I said viciously, fumbling around on the nightstand for the card pack. And not finding it. Great, I thought, and rolled off the bed.
    But not mine.
    I hit the floor, blinking at the god-awful coverlet that had half fallen off with me. Instead of tufted satin, it was one of the scratchy, cheapo kind the hotel reserved for rooms priced at less than a trip to Tahiti. And instead of a tasteful pale blue, it had a full-on Halloween theme in yellow, black, and gray, with a ghostly moon caged by the branches of a gaunt and lifeless tree.
    Shit.
    I must have accidentally fallen asleep in Pritkin’s room, instead of dragging my weary butt back to my own bed. And wasn’t
that
just going to get me blessed out by Marco? Of course, I was kind of surprised that it hadn’t already, since I knew damned well the vamps kept a tracking spell on me. I’d had Pritkin take it off a few times, but it always ended up right back in place, usually within an hour or two. And since he’d been gone for a week, it was safe to assume that they knew exactly where—
    I’d hauled myself to my feet, in preparation for getting my shit together, but tripped over something and went right back down again. Only this time I hit the carpet beside a pair of dirty boots. They were old, with massive soles and scratched leather uppers, at least what I could see through a coating of mud. It was so thick that the steel cap over the toes was barely visible.
    Huh. That’s weird, some tiny, more awake part of my brain commented. But it didn’t explain why.
    I sat up and frowned at them some more.
    There was nothing particularly odd about them, except for the mud, which wasn’t exactly common in Vegas. But they were the kind Pritkin wore, useful for caving in doors or bad guy’s faces, and had been thrown in his usual haphazard fashion under the bed. Or beside it, but the dust ruffle had obscured most of them. Which maybe explained why I hadn’t—
    Okay, that was it. They weren’t weird, but the fact that I hadn’t noticed them last night was. Especially since I should have been able to smell them a couple of yards off. I wrinkled my nose at the locker room funk and pushed them to the side. And peered into the gloom beyond for the damned card pack, while a cheerful voice began to regale me with fun facts about the Star card.
    That was bad, but if I didn’t shut it up, it was going to segue into the possible meanings of the card in combination with others. And then into how it should be read in the different spreads. And if I remembered right, that would be followed by the whole history of the tarot, which could go on for literally hours before it finally wound down. And the way I felt, a migraine was going to explode my left eye long before then.
    After a fruitless search, I surfaced, gasping from a combo of boot funk and dust bunnies, and started sorting through the jumbled bedclothes for the pack that simply had to be there somewhere. But I didn’t see it. Maybe because it was hard to