Tempt the Stars

hundreds of years old, who took things in stride. Vampires were hard to impress, but they were also hard to rattle. I felt my spine relax a little as one fear evaporated, at least.
    “Of course, they’re a little worried that this makes you more high-profile, so people are gonna start trying to kill you more. But I told them, hey, remember last time? I mean, if a bunch of other demigods couldn’t take you out, who are they gonna send? It’d have to be something really weird, something really unusual, something really dangerous—”
    “Like a trio of coven witches?”
    Fred blinked. “Naw,” he finally said. “There’s only three of them. If they were gonna off you, they’d probably have sent more than that.”
    “Thanks,” I said sourly. “That makes me feel a lot better.”
    “I’m here to help. Now, what are you gonna wear?”
    “I don’t know.” I started looking through the dresses again, but they were hopeless, more ball-gown-y than goddess-y. And while I wanted to dress to impress, I didn’t think looking like I was waiting on Prince Charming was the way to go.
    “Those aren’t gonna work,” Fred agreed, slurping coffee. “But I bet Augustine has something.”
    “Augustine sent these,” I pointed out, talking about the best—according to him, anyway—magical designer around. His boutique occupied the largest of the overpriced shops in the drag downstairs.
    “Well, yeah. But he was just sending regular party stuff. I bet he has something that would work.”
    Augustine closed at six. And no way was I up to shifting back a couple of hours to try to catch the great man before he left.
    “No problem,” Fred said, suddenly businesslike. “What size do you wear?”
    “Anywhere from a two to a six, depending on the outfit. But it doesn’t matter. Augustine closes at—”
    “Yeah, I know. What color you want?”
    “White. But you can’t get in, and he doesn’t live around here. And by the time he could get back and open up, assuming he’d even do that for me—”
    “Oh, he’d do it,” Fred said cynically. “He might not like it, but he’d do it. Have you seen his sign lately?”
    “What sign?”
    “The one outside his shop. The one that says ‘Couturier to the Pythia.’ He left off the official part, but it’s implied.”
    Well, that explained the gowns I kept getting. I should have known Augustine wasn’t being generous. He wasn’t known for the softer emotions.
    Or, you know, any.
    “He’s been making a mint off all the wealthy women who want to dress like you,” Fred added.
    I blinked at him. “Have they
seen
me?”
    He laughed. “Point is, he’s in no position to complain. We’ll just take what we need, and let him know tomorrow. If he puts up a fuss, you can tell him to take his damned sign down.”
    “Yeah, but you aren’t listening to me. We can’t get in.”
    “Wanna bet?”
    It took me a moment to realize what he was getting at. “No,” I said sternly. “We can’t.”
    “Fifty bucks? Or do you want to make it interesting?”
    “It’s interesting enough. Didn’t you hear about those guys last week?”
    “What guys?”
    “Two teens with sticky fingers tried to rip off some T-shirts or something. So Augustine spelled them to actually get stuck.”
    Fred’s forehead wrinkled. “To what?”
    “To everything. He did some spell that made it like they were human Velcro. Only once something stuck, it didn’t come off. One of the guys turned up at the end of the day, sobbing and freaked out, dragging a massive train of street trash, a folding chair, some kid’s baby stroller . . . and a homeless person’s grocery cart full of stuff.”
    “Well, that don’t sound so—”
    “
And
the homeless person, who was beating him over the head with a rolled-up newspaper.” They’d been stuck together all day, since the guy had grabbed the kid’s arm, begging for change.
    “Oh. Well, yeah, that would kind of—”
    “
And
he was the lucky one. They had to pry another guy off a taxi—after it went ten blocks!”
    Fred’s lips pursed. “Ten’s not so bad if you’re just riding along on the trunk or something.”
    “He was jogging along behind! He’s just lucky it was a bad traffic day, and they weren’t going too fast. . . ”
    I trailed off, because Fred was no longer listening. He was staring at the wall instead, with unfocused eyes. “What’s your shoe size?” he suddenly asked.
    “An eight. Why?”
    “No reason.”
    I