Karen Chance: Tempt the Stars

My head came up. “What is wrong with you?”

“You know how you said if I ran into problems to come back? Well, I’m coming back. And I got problems!”

“What kind of problems?”

“What kind you think?” he snapped. “I’m trying to lose ’em, but they know this place better than I do and I think they’ve finally found a reason to work together—”

“Wait.” I glanced around. Narrow corridor; isolated part of the house; nobody around but us and a couple of more-or-less indestructible vampires. “Don’t try to lose them.”

“What?”

“Just get back here—now.”

“You don’t get it, Cass. When I said problem , I meant—”

“I got it. Just do it.” I stood up.

“Cassandra?” Jonas was watching me narrowly. “What is it?”

“Um,” I said brilliantly, since explaining this sort of thing usually didn’t go well. But it didn’t matter because I didn’t have time anyway. A second later, a horrible wail cut through the air, making the shrieking wards sound like a melody in comparison.

I whipped my head around, but there was nothing to see. And Jonas didn’t look like he’d noticed anything. Until the air suddenly became thick and cold and hard to breathe, and the hallway started to shake perceptibly, and the light fixtures overhead blew out, one after the other in a long line.

“Cassandra?” Jonas said, a little more forcefully this time.

“I think it’s time for the midnight express,” I said, hoping I hadn’t just made a really big mistake.

“And what does that mean?” he demanded.

“It means choo-choo, motherfucker!” Billy screamed, swooping out of the ceiling. And right on his tail was a train, all right—of what looked like every damned ghost on the property.

Holy shit, I didn’t say, because I was busy grabbing Jonas and throwing us at the nearest door, just before the unearthly wind slammed into the hallway like a tornado.

We crashed into the floor on the other side as it hit, boiling down the hall like a freight train of fury. Merely the wind of its passing was enough to rip light fixtures off the walls, to puff a week’s worth of ashes out of the fireplace, and to send china figurines plummeting to their doom. Half a dozen books went flapping madly through the air over our heads, only to tangle in the wildly twisting drapes as I dragged myself back up.

Jonas lifted his head to stare at me. “What the—”

“Ghosts!” I told him, staggering for the door.

My ankle hurt, my lungs were still crying out for air, and my neck was on fire. But I didn’t stick around to assess the damage. I didn’t even wait until the storm was over. I stumbled out into the hall with Jonas on my heels, the two of us being buffeted here and there by late-arriving spirits.

And then I stopped for a second in awe.

Because there were no ghost trails here. The corridor in front of us was a solid rectangle of pulsing, angry green. There was no furniture dam anymore, either, just random bits of wood sticking out of the plaster like quills on a porcupine.

There was also no pissed-off vamp.

The one behind us was okay, judging by the renewed sounds of destruction battering the mound. But whoever had been on this end . . . well, I didn’t know where he had ended up. But I didn’t think it was a good idea to go looking for him.

Because the train was headed back this way.

“Run!” I screamed at Jonas, and sprang for the office door, just as the storm barreled back at us again, flinging a deadly cloud of debris ahead of it. He dove in behind me, damned spry for an old guy, as jagged shards of paneling whipped by outside like knives.

And then he slammed the door.

I stared at him incredulously. “Ghosts, remember?”

He looked a little shamefaced. “Right.”

And then they were back.

We hadn’t even made it into the inner office when Billy zoomed through the door, screeching something I couldn’t understand because an infuriated tornado was right on his nonexistent heels. Something tore through the outer office as we dove into the inner one, upending filing cabinets and sending a blizzard of paperwork dancing madly through the air. Jonas leapt for the hat rack, I leapt for him, and Billy grabbed me around the neck, still babbling something.

“What?”

“You owe me, you so owe me!”

“Did you get it?”

“Yes, I’m fine . Thanks for asking!”

“Billy! Did. You. Get—”

“Yes, damn it, yes! I got it! I got it!”

“Thank you,” I told him fervently.

And shifted.

“Don’t,” I told Marco, a decade and a half later, when he opened the door to the Vegas hotel suite I called home. “Just . . . don’t, okay?”

Marco is my chief bodyguard. He’s about six foot five, maybe two hundred and fifty pounds, and built like a freight train. My legs aren’t as big around as his arms, which might feel weird except that most men’s aren’t, either. He’s a swarthy, hairy, foulmouthed, cigar-munching, example of machismo who is usually covered in weapons he doesn’t need because he’s also a master vampire.

Which is why it’s annoying when he decides to play mother hen.

Not that that appeared to be happening tonight.

“Hadn’t planned on it,” Marco said, and yanked me inside.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked, because Marco was looking kind of freaked-out. That was worrying on someone who, I strongly suspected, had been assigned to lead my bodyguard because he was the oldest of Mircea’s masters. He’d seen it all and he didn’t rattle easy.

Although he was kind of looking rattled now.

“We got a problem,” he told me grimly.

I shook my head, letting loose a little cloud of Tony’s lousy housekeeping. “No.”

“What does that mean?”

I’d have thought that was obvious since I was dragging in at two a.m., covered in soot, plaster, and sweat, with a bruised ring around my neck and an all-but-destroyed T-shirt. But apparently not. I edged around him, balancing a cup and a bag of heart-destroying pastries from the coffee shop downstairs, because it wasn’t like I was going to live long enough to have to worry about cholesterol.

“It means I’ve had enough for one night. I’m tired; I’m going to bed. If there’s a problem, it can wait until—”

I stopped, because I’d just noticed the living room. It would have been called sunken if it hadn’t been on the twenty-second floor of the hotel. It was a tasteful medley of white and blue and yellow, since I’d had a say in redecorating after the last disaster hit. It was also usually deserted, the guards preferring to hang out in the lounge with the pool table and the beer fridge.

But that wasn’t true tonight. Tonight, every guard on duty was either sitting in the little conversation area, smoking out on the tiny balcony, or gathered by the bar. It was like a party.

Or maybe a wake; the guys were looking pretty damned grim.

“Why’s everybody out here?” I asked Marco, who had followed me down a short flight of stairs.

“’Cause of them in there,” he said, hiking a thumb at the lounge. Which I’d just noticed was closed off, with the pocket doors shut tight. I’d never seen them that way; the guys preferred an open floor plan to better keep an eye on me.

But it looked like they felt they could do without an eye on whoever was inside.

“Who’s ‘them’? I don’t have any appointments tonight.” At least, I really hoped I didn’t. The kind of guest I got at two a.m. tended to be of the fanged variety, and not the fun kind. “Tell me it’s not more senators,” I said, because I really, really wasn’t up to that.