Tempt the Stars

at least slow her down?”
    “If she stays inside his body, maybe. I don’t know. But she doesn’t have to. She can come and go as she pleases, and I don’t think he has any control over that.” At least none that I’d ever seen.
    Caleb used one of Pritkin’s favorite swearwords. And then he used a few more. “Fucking demons. You can’t trust them, not any of them. I
knew
better—”
    I didn’t bother pointing out that that was not exactly PC, because at the moment, I kind of agreed with it. “Fucking demons” sounded kind of like the phrase for the day.
    Especially since I was about to run a bunch of them down.
    “Where are we going?” I asked, ducking and dodging, and trying to avoid slamming into someone and putting a flashing arrow over our heads.
    “Away. She’ll be expecting us to stay put, to think we lost her in the crowd. She probably thought she’d be able to tell the guards right where to find us, while we wandered around, eating kebabs or some shit.”
    “So, what’s the plan instead?”
    “To find a place to hide!”
    “Hide?” I grabbed his arm, pulling him into the shade of a balcony someone had forgotten to roll up. It wasn’t much as a hiding place went, but at least it was off the street. “You know what the odds are of us avoiding them until morning?” I asked. “Or of making it back to the portal if we do?”
    “You got a better idea?” he demanded. “Because I’m good—I’m real good—but I’m not going to be able to fight our way out of here!”
    “Not on your own. But there’s somebody else here who knows the place at least as well as Rian.”
    Caleb made a disgusted sound. “Casanova’s her creature. He’s also petrified of ruining that pretty face of his. Even if he didn’t turn traitor, we can’t rely on him to do a damned—”
    “Not Casanova!” I said, because I pretty much agreed with that sentiment.
“Pritkin.”
    Caleb looked at me like I’d finally tipped the scales, like I’d been hovering in his mind between eccentric and downright nuts, and he’d finally decided where the arrow pointed. “And just how,” he said heavily, “do you expect us to reach him? The odds were bad enough before; any minute now, we’ll have the whole city on our asses!”
    “But the city will expect us to be hiding, if we figured it out, or hanging around the souk if we didn’t. They won’t expect us to be going after Pritkin.”
    “Yes, yes, that’s probably true.
And there’s a reason for that
,” Caleb hissed. And then he abruptly pulled up the hood on my robe.
    “What—”
    “Don’t look behind you, but a bunch more guards just ran into the souk.”
    So much for any lingering faith I had in Rian. Goddamnit! If she had a neck, I’d wring it, I thought, glaring through the space under his arm at a bunch of guards who were pulling off veils and jerking robes apart and generally acting like none of the people had any damned rights at—
    My thoughts screeched to a halt, just like something else had recently. Something else that was still poking out of a ruined shop front. Because around here, you were either a have or a have-not, and it looked like the haves could do whatever the hell they damned well pleased.
    And nobody questioned it.
    “Come on,” I told Caleb. “I have an idea.”
    *     *      *
    “You’d think we’d get more for a fine camel thing than that,” I grumbled at Caleb, ten minutes later.
    “Ever since the XP-38 came out, they’re just not in demand.”
    “What?”
    “You don’t get cultural references, do you?”
    I frowned. “I get them. You just have weird ones.”
    “That was from
Star Wars
. It wasn’t weird.”
    “I’ve seen
Star Wars
and that wasn’t in it.”
    “In the first movie, when they’re in the desert?” he asked. “When they have to sell Luke’s speeder?”
    “Oh. You mean the old ones.”
    “The old ones? The
old
ones? You mean the only good—” He saw my expression. “Never mind. What did we need more money for?”
    “So I could get an outfit like yours,” I said, looking enviously at the rich green woolly fabric of his long, caftanlike garment. It was warm. It was attractive. It covered his ass.
    “What’s wrong with the one you have on?”
    “Other than the fact that I look like a hooker?”
    I tugged at the back of the tight pink panties I was wearing, but it didn’t help. They were still at least two sizes too small and riding up my butt. But they’d been the closest