Tempt the Stars

now that I’d met them, that didn’t make much sense, at least not as a long-term plan.
    The Spartoi were relentless. She had to know they’d find her eventually, and as soon as they did, it was game over. Her power was all but gone, Tony’s guys wouldn’t fight for her, and even if they did, the Spartoi would make mincemeat out of them in about a minute flat. And having fought them both, I doubted Roger’s crazy inventions would do much better. And even if I counted the forest as part of her defenses—and having been through it, I saw no reason why I
shouldn’t
—well, Pritkin and I had survived it. A bunch of ancient demigods were hardly likely to do worse.
    So, yeah, everything I’d seen had looked like a stopgap, something to buy my parents a little bit of time.
    But to do
what?
    “Here!” I was jolted out of a half sleep, half reverie by somebody thrusting something under my nose. Something that looked divine, I realized, as I managed to push a silver serving tray far enough away to focus on the contents.
    “That’s not tacos,” I said sleepily.
    “No, it’s better,” Casanova snapped. “Now get back up to your room before somebody sees you!”
    I would have snapped back, but I was feeling tender toward the guy who had just brought me a tray of luscious-looking hors d’oeuvres. It held equal parts gorgeous salmon, juicy sausages, fat shrimp wrapped in bacon, and hearty meatballs. My stomach woke up and started grumbling plaintively. Suddenly, I was starving.
    A phone rang and Casanova snatched it out of his jacket. “Of course you do,” he told it viciously. “I can’t take five minutes . . . all right, all right. I’m coming!”
    He thrust the platter at me and was gone, with that liquid speed vampires use when they aren’t messing about. And I didn’t waste any time, either. I grabbed a salmon sliver sitting on top of an artfully piped swirl of herbed cheese, which in turn was resting on a slice of fresh cucumber—
    Which would remain fresh forever, I realized a second later.
    Because it was made out of plastic.
    I managed to spit the thing out before I choked on it, and then just sat there, looking at the slimy thing in my palm. And wondering how my life had come to this. I threw it down, wiped my hand on my filthy top, and picked up a rubbery shrimp—that appeared to be made out of real rubber. And then a sausage with a beautiful sear that had come out of a spray-paint bottle. And then—
    “No,” I said, increasingly desperate, pawing through the whole tray. But it was all the same. They were fake. They were all fake.
    Casanova had just given me a tray of plastic food.
    It looked like one of the sample trays the restaurants used out front as an enticement. It seemed that the employees not only weren’t getting real champagne, but weren’t getting fed, either. And neither was I.
    “Son of a bitch!” I sat there, disbelieving and furious and utterly, utterly ravenous. For another second, before I was on my feet and pushing palm fronds around.
    The place was packed. If possible, even more beautiful types had squashed into the already stuffed-with-tourists lobby since the last time I looked. There was no way to shift without being seen, and I didn’t feel up to it anyway.
    Maybe I did look like a bag lady, but this was supposed to be hell. If they could have satyrs serving in the bar upstairs and incubi manning the salon and cocktail waitresses in devil ears wandering around, a random street person shouldn’t shock anybody. And if it did, that was just too bad. The universe might hate Casanova, but it was conspiring to starve me.
    And I had had enough.
    I was taking back control of my life, or at least my dinner.
    I was heading out.
    Or, you know, skulking behind the check-in desk, because I didn’t want to get tossed out on my ear.
    Fortunately, nobody was checking in at the moment. I got a couple of glances from the staff, but most of them knew me by now, and crawling behind the desk was one of the least strange things they’d seen me do. Nobody tried to stop me, and I scuttled from there to a service corridor, through the back of an ice cream shop and out into the lobby again. Right where the hellscape gave way to an Old West ghost town, if the Old West had featured plastic cactuses and neon cocktail signs and overpriced boutiques.
    And a fiberglass donkey cart with a flashing taco sign.
    I could have sworn a heavenly chorus started singing, if that hadn’t been