Tempt the Stars

the sup community, giving me a bigger crowd to hide in.
    It had worked—it had taken him another three years to find me, despite being
really
motivated. And in the meantime, I bet his boys had spent hundreds of hours checking all the places a young, untrained witch might go to rectify that little problem, and had found nothing. Because I hadn’t gone to any of them.
    That had been partly paranoia, and partly the old sour grapes thing. I’d done a good job of convincing myself I didn’t want any part of the world I couldn’t have anyway. But now it left me with a problem, and one I hadn’t had a chance to remedy since having all the Pythian stuff dumped in my lap.
    Not that any of that mattered to Jules, who was obviously close to tears.
    His attitude wasn’t a shock. Augustine’s little joke would have freaked out anybody, but it was especially cruel in Jules’ case. His hands were as emblematic of the man as Marco’s cigars or Fred’s big gray eyes or Rico’s one-liners. I’d wondered a few times if he was part Italian, as he had the same tendency to gesture when he talked. Or when he was arguing with the other vamps. Or when he was listening to music, following the notes with flutelike trills from those expressive fingers.
    Fingers that, for once, were completely stiff and still.
    And suddenly, I felt a genuine anger toward the smug shop owner. The other stuff had been sort of funny; this was just plain cruel. And he could damned well get his elegant ass out of bed and come and fix it.
    “Get Augustine on the phone,” I told Fred. “Tell him—”
    “No!” Jules said, looking panicked. “No, you
can’t
—”
    He broke off abruptly. And whipped his head back and forth frantically. And then made a run for my bathroom, where we heard him clanging around while we stared at each other. And then finally went to take a look.
    We found him in the shower.
    He seemed to be trying to turn it on, only that didn’t work so well with only elbows.
Help me,
he mouthed at Rico. Who sighed but obligingly went over and turned the knob. Water burst out of the wall at the same time that another burst—of noise—made me jump. Fred had hit the button for the radio, blasting Beyoncé’s latest from every built-in speaker until it echoed off the tiled walls and rattled the towel bar.
    And then Jules put his arms over my head and dragged me into the stall.
    That wouldn’t have been so bad, since I knew what he was doing. I’d done it myself a few times, trying to add to the ambient background noise of a loud casino and a louder Strip to confuse vampire hearing. But then the other two crowded in behind us.
    And while it was a big shower, it wasn’t
that
big.
    But Jules didn’t care what I thought. Jules was all about making his point. “You can’t—promise me you won’t call Augustine!” he whispered.
    “Why not?” I demanded, trying to duck under his arms, since he couldn’t very well let me go the usual way. But that didn’t accomplish anything, since Rico was right on my ass. Resulting in me pushing Jules back into one of the shower levers—and I didn’t have to ask which one.
    The lukewarm stream suddenly jumped to the approximate temperature of lava.
    A pain-filled gasp was all I got out before a hand clasped over my mouth. Rico’s, I identified, from the nice gold bracelet around the elegant wrist. One I was going to make him
eat
if he didn’t—
    There was some rustling around. And then the temperature abruptly dropped back to bearable, leaving me only half-scalded. But no less furious. And no less mute, because the hand-over-my-mouth thing didn’t change.
    “Let her go,” someone said as I started thrashing around.
    It took a second for me to recognize the voice, because it held a surprising note of command. And because it was coming from the little guy squatting under the toiletry shelf, since he’d hit his head if he stood up. Fred scowled at Rico, and to my further surprise, Rico let me go and moved off a pace, giving me room to turn around and glare at him.
    He didn’t look too repentant, though, maybe because he wasn’t exactly practiced with the expression. I doubted many women stayed mad at him for long, with his dark curls and his stubbly jaw and the six-pack visible under his rapidly dampening shirt. But it wouldn’t have helped him with me—after dealing with Mircea for three months, it took more than a few muscles to fog my brain.
    “And we’re not calling Augustine