Tempt the Stars

human.”
    “He is part human. It is his other half about which he has yet to learn.”
    “I don’t think he wants to learn about it,” I said dryly. Pritkin had been pretty clear on that point.
    “That is not his choice. We are who we are. All of us are governed by that, to some degree.”
    “And all of us choose to what degree—except him. The choice was made for him. He was
taken
—”
    “From you.”
    “Yes.”
    “And you resent it.”
    “Yes!”
    “Because he is yours.”
    “Y—” I stopped, suddenly confused. Until I remembered: the gods had always taken humans as their servants, or playthings, or whatever, without a second’s thought. Before her epiphany, Mother probably had, too. But I wasn’t a god, and that wasn’t what had happened here. “No. He’s his own person—”
    “Then should he not decide this for himself?”
    “You don’t understand. He wasn’t given a chance—”
    “But he was. To save you and be damned, or to let you die. He chose the former.”
    “No! He—that wasn’t a choice! It was forced on him by . . . by his father, by circumstance, by—”
    “By fate?”
    “Yes—I guess.”
    “And you wish now to remake his fate.”
    “If you want to put it like—”
    “Be sure,” she said, suddenly urgent. “Fate has many strings, Cassie, and when we pluck another’s, our own often resonates.”
    Okay, I was beginning to think that maybe I wasn’t keeping up with this conversation. I was also starting to understand the problem people used to have with oracles. “In English?” I said hopefully.
    “When you change someone else’s fate, it often changes your own.”
    “For the better?” I asked, already knowing what the answer was going to be.
    “There is no way to know. That is the essence of chaos, of stepping off a cliff, not knowing what you will find at the bottom.”
    Yeah, only I knew what I usually found. “I think I like order better,” I muttered.
    “Indeed?” She arched a slim eyebrow. “Then leave him to his fate, and go back to yours.”
    “No.”
    “Then you choose chaos.”
    “All right, fine, I choose chaos!” I said passionately. “Just tell me what I need to know!”

Chapter Twelve
    I rematerialized a few minutes later in my favorite secluded corner of the hotel’s lobby. It gave me a wall on two sides, and a fat faux stalactite blocked most of the view ahead. A stalactite I quickly had to grab on to the side of to keep from falling on my butt.
    Okay, I thought, as the room whirled madly around my head.
    Okay, I thought, as colors ran together and a wind-tunnel-like effect roared in my ears and the whole thing gave Roger’s toys a run for their money.
    Okay, I thought, as my stomach joined in and my brain decided screw it and I fell on my butt anyway.
    Okay.
    There was a slight chance I needed a day off.
    I let myself fall backward, since I was doing it anyway. And then lay there, watching the girders in the gloom high above my head wave around in ways girders weren’t supposed to. That was fairly entertaining, but I had to close my eyes after a while, because it was starting to make me sick.
    And I was sick enough.
    In hindsight, I probably should have hung around after dropping Pritkin off, and given myself a break before the next time shift. Which, judging by the way I felt, I’d been doing a little too often lately. But he had started to come out of the groggy phase, and I’d wanted to avoid a conversation I wasn’t prepared for, so I’d skipped out.
    Not my best move, I decided, as the whirling thing got worse.
    After a bit, I turned my head to the side, because if I passed out and threw up at the same time, I didn’t want to choke. But I didn’t pass out. And nothing came up, maybe because I didn’t have enough in my stomach to bother with.
    Skipping meals had its perks, I decided, and wondered if anybody would care if I just slept here.
    The carpet smelled like shoes and cigarette butts.
    I decided I could live with it and rolled over, trying to find a comfy spot.
    And instead found myself nose-to-toes with a pair of shiny, shiny Ferragamos.
    “I knew it,” someone said bitterly.
    It took a moment, but my eyes finally focused on the handsome face of a very pissed off vampire. Fortunately, it wasn’t Marco. Or Mircea. Or anyone else I might have had to think up a good story for, because I wasn’t up to that yet.
    “I’ve been waiting,” the vamp told me grimly. “I have a thousand other things to do,