Tempt the Stars

place anywhere, I assumed there was a reason he had decided to go all out. Probably the same one that had Tony forcing a family on a strict diet to sit through a feast every night.
    For a second I wished I could have seen Tony, his three-hundred-plus pounds stuffed into a penguin suit, for once as supremely uncomfortable at one of his dinners as everyone else. But I wasn’t going to. Because the vamp at Mircea’s side, the one with the dark curly hair and the goatee and the deceptively kind brown eyes, wasn’t Tony.
    Shit,
I thought viciously, and backed swiftly into the room I’d just run out of.
    Which was absolutely the right thing to do.
    At least it was until they followed me in.
    In a panic, I shifted—also the right move, since there were no other doors out of there. But shifting in a split second in a panic isn’t easy, and this time I didn’t manage it. Or, rather, I didn’t
completely
manage it.
    Son of a bitch!
I thought desperately, finding myself trapped in the fireplace as two high-level master vampires walked into the room.

Chapter Two
    I tried shifting again but went nowhere, almost as if I was stuck. Which might have been because I was, I realized a second later. Half of my body was in the next room, having shifted back through the fireplace all nice and proper. But the other half . . 
    The other half was still on this side of the wall, protruding through the blackened old bricks from just above the waist.
    I twisted and turned desperately but went nowhere. And then I tried to shift again in a frenzy. But half a dozen attempts in quick succession only left me dizzy and with a serious desire to throw up. And no freer than I’d ever been.
    A glance down at my waist showed that at least I hadn’t been cut in two, like an inept magician’s assistant, which is what I’d always assumed happened in these cases. Instead, an annoyed-looking bunch of bricks had puddled up around me in a working ring, like commuters jostling for space they weren’t finding. And giving off the subtle grind of stone on stone in the process.
    I freaked a little at that, because if it was audible to my ears, it probably sounded like an avalanche to the vamps. But when I looked up, only the fireplace screen was looking back at me. Literally, since it was one of those fake Tiffany things with a hundred colors and a bunch of bug-eyed insects all over it.
    But there were no vamps, bug-eyed or otherwise. Amazingly, they hadn’t noticed my struggles, any more than they had my heartbeat or my panicked breathing. Either the darkness in the big old fireplace or the tackiness of the screen had shielded me from sight. And I guessed the storm had covered any noise I made, or else I was still barely inside the sound shield Jonas had laid. He’d linked it into a section of the house wards, and I wasn’t sure how far that extended.
    Not that it mattered. Because sight and hearing aren’t the only senses that are stronger for a vamp. And despite the temperature, I was sweating like a—
    “It’s the girl, isn’t it?” the second vampire said abruptly.
    I stopped struggling for a second, when it felt like even my heartbeat froze.
    “Cassandra.” Mircea nodded, handing his companion a drink. “She plays all over the house.”
    And then it started back up again.
    Of course the house smelled like me, I thought dizzily. Of course it did. My younger self slept at the other end of the hall; why wouldn’t it?
    I swallowed and wondered, not for the first time, what the life expectancy was for Pythias.
    Why didn’t I think it was very high?
    “No. I meant, that’s why you’re here,” the other vamp said, dark eyes narrowed in suspicion.
    That wasn’t unusual. He could be as charming as any of his kind, but unlike with Mircea, it wasn’t his job. His name was Kit Marlowe and he’d long ago transitioned from spying for Her Majesty, queen of England, to doing the same for another queen, this one in charge of the dreaded North American Vampire Senate.
    Well, dreaded to most people, including most U. S. vamps because it served as their less-than-benevolent government. But for me, it didn’t seem quite so scary anymore, maybe because I was dating one of the senators. The one who was currently looking with amused tolerance at Kit.
    “What gave you that idea?”
    “Don’t be coy. I’ve seen you put less effort into charming countesses—”
    “Who normally require little effort,” Mircea murmured, sipping