Tempt the Stars

attention nearly as well as what was coming down from above. So that’s what’s up there, I thought, watching a bunch of dark figures literally running down buildings and spars of rock above the palace. They weren’t using the streets; they were leaping from roof to roof to outcropping as if making their own highway.
    And every single one of them was headed straight for us.
    “It looks like somebody called out the elite troops,” Caleb said grimly. “What we’re gonna do, we do now.”
    “Get her into the study,” Pritkin said, coming up behind us. “Barricade yourselves inside. I can’t call off the guards, but I can call my father—”
    “We’re not hiding; we’re leaving,” I said flatly.
    “Not until I negotiate safe passage—”
    “Your father isn’t going to grant safe passage for you!”
    “That is irrelevant—”
    “Bull
shit.
”
    “—as you knew quite well before you started this insanity! Damn it, Cassie! I thought you had more sense—”
    “Have you met her?” Casanova asked, sticking his bloody nose onto the balcony.
    And I lost it. I grabbed the front of Pritkin’s gold-embroidered caftan—and since when did he wear a god-damned
caftan
?—and dragged him down to me. “I am going to say this one time. You are my servant. Sworn to my service until death. I never released you from that obligation. And if I want to come after you, I’ll damned well come after you!”
    Something shifted behind his eyes, something dangerous. “And I’ll shut up and like it.”
    “Right now I don’t give a
damn
whether you like it or not. But I’m not leaving without you, so you may as well—”
    The door blew open, and Caleb and Pritkin both flung out a hand. And whoever it was blew right back out again. The door clicked softly shut.
    Pritkin glared at me for another second, and then transferred the look to Caleb. “The rugs,” he snarled, and for a second, Caleb looked as confused as I was. And then—
    “Aw,
hell
no!”
    “You have a better idea?” Pritkin snapped, striding over and grabbing a big gold one that was anchoring a pleasant conversation area just inside the bedroom.
    Caleb looked heavenward, but then apparently remembered where he was and gave up. And snatched up a red one from the balcony floor. And in the process sent one of the guards tumbling over the railing and into the night, who had just jumped down on top of it from the floor above.
    Caleb grabbed Pritkin’s arm as his buddy tossed what looked like an expensive rug after the demon. “My magic’s weak here,” he warned.
    “That down in the souk was weak?” I asked, in disbelief.
    Caleb glanced at me. “With the amount of power I let loose, the whole damned market should have been in flames. As it was, we barely made it here. And I don’t know—”
    “It’ll have to be enough,” Pritkin said grimly.
    “Sure. Says the half demon.”
    “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
    “After this?” Caleb rolled his eyes. And then he grabbed Casanova. “Are we taking this one?”
    “Yes!” Casanova said heatedly. “I don’t want to be here when Rosier finds out what you’re doing!”
    “What
we’re
doing?”
    “None of this is my fault!”
    “Oh, you’ll be here,” Pritkin said grimly. But then he threw him over the balcony, too.
    I was about to freak out, because that was a damned long way down, even for a vampire. But I didn’t get a chance. Because I was next.
    I didn’t even have time to scream before my butt was bouncing on something firm but soft, not two yards under the balcony’s lip. I didn’t have time to see what it was before Pritkin landed beside me. And before we took off, in a blur of wind that had my eyes tearing up.
    Or maybe that was the spell that flashed through the air right in front of my face, and set something on fire.
    I turned back around, because that had come from above. And saw a bunch of guards hanging over the railing of the floor above Pritkin’s, firing what looked like balls of pure lightning at us. They burned like it, too, I thought, smelling singed wool.
    And realized that the something on fire was the something we were sitting on.
    Something big and gold and—
    And missing a corner when Pritkin pulled a knife and sliced off the burning bit of what had been a nice rug. No, not a rug, I thought blankly, gripping the suddenly very flimsy feeling sides. Now it was a flying—
    Target, floating around over the city on a gentle wafting