“No. But if I see something coming, something potentially disastrous for our world, I expect them to listen to me. I expect them to trust me. And right now, I don’t know that they respect me enough to do that.”
Marco sighed and looked at me, his elbows resting on massive thighs. “Look, I’m gonna tell you something, and if you repeat it, I’ll deny it. But the master shouldn’t have given that order. He ought to know you well enough by now to know what was gonna happen. But he did it anyway, because he’s scared and he’s stressed and he don’t always see so clear where you are concerned. But that don’t mean he don’t respect you.”
“Well, it sure doesn’t mean that he does!” I said, swirling the soap around, a little more forcefully than necessary.
“He talks about you a lot in the family. He’s proud of you—anybody can see that.”
“Anybody but me.”
“He may not say it to you, but that’s the truth.”
“Then why doesn’t he say it to me? Right now, I feel like . . . like one of those floozies you talked about —”
“I never used the word ‘floozy’—”
“—who is supposed to hang around, shopping and doing her nails and waiting for her lord and master to show up! That’s how he treats me, so why shouldn’t I believe that’s how he sees me?”
“Because he probably does like the thought of you shopping and doing your nails instead of the kind of shit you usually get up to! And because he’s a politician and don’t want to give up an advantage.”
“Advantage in what?”
“In the power games you two got going—”
“This isn’t about power.”
“The hell it’s not.”
“It isn’t! I don’t want to order Mircea around. I don’t want to order the Senate or the Circle around. I just want them—”
“To take you seriously. To listen to you. To be guided by what you tell them. And that translates into power, don’t it?”
“It translates into doing my job.”
Marco looked at me for a moment and started to say something, and then he just shook his head. “I thought I’d never meet somebody as bullheaded as the master,” he told me. “But what do you know.”
“I’m not trying to be stubborn.”
“I know. It’s like with Mircea; you don’t got to try. It comes naturally.”
I sighed. “I guess I need to talk to him.”
I don’t know what my expression looked like, but Marco laughed. “Yeah, but you get a reprieve. He said he’ll call you tonight, late. He’s got a thing all day.”
“What kind of a thing?”
He shrugged. “Senate stuff, I guess. You’ll have to ask him.”
“What about Jonas?” I might as well get one awkward conversation out of the way.
“He called a while ago, while you were asleep. Said—Hang on.” Marco fished a notebook out of his back pocket and flipped it open. “Said he thought he might know what attacked you last night. He’s not sure, but thinks they could be something called the Spartoi.”
“Spartans?”
“No—that’s what I thought, too, but he spelled it for me. And it’s Spar
I looked up from shutting off the water. “Dragon?”
“Yeah, one of the Fey. They can shape-shift, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. And that would explain why the damn dragon had been so hard to kill. I’d seen Pritkin and a friend of his, Mac, take on one before, and it hadn’t been anything like that. But then, that other dragon hadn’t been a half god, either.
“Anything else?” I demanded. “Like how we’re supposed to fight these things?”
“I think the idea is not to,” Marco said drily. “He said for you to stay in the hotel today. He’s tripled the guards, so nothing should get in here. He needs to do some more research, but he’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Marco flipped over a page in his notebook, but must not have found anything, because he flipped back. “And that’s it.”
I kind of thought that was enough. Apparently, Marco did, too, because he was looking a little worried, like he was afraid I was about to break down on him again. I wasn’t. I was too pissed off. It looked like the other side didn’t worry about little things like playing fair. One not-so-great clairvoyant against five freaking demigods seemed a little onesided to me. No wonder it had almost gotten Pritkin killed!
“You okay?” Marco asked.
“Yeah.” I forced a smile, because none of this was his fault. “I was just thinking—I have all day with nobody bitching at me.”
He grinned. “Well, I can, if it’ll make you feel better.”
“You just did!”
“Naw, that wasn’t bitching. You should hear me when I get going.”
“I’m afraid.”
“Hold that thought.” Marco ruffled my hair and left. I stripped and got in the tub, sinking down in the water up to my chin.
It felt good. It felt better than good, and not just because of my sore muscles. Three days ago, something had tried to drown me in this very tub, and now I was back, relaxing in it. I had a stinky charm around my neck and a vampire probably listening at the door, but still. That was progress.
My feet floated to the top of the water and I stared at my poor, chipped toenail polish. I thought about redoing it. I thought about making Augustine’s life miserable. I thought about going to the salon and seeing if any of the guys could do something about my hair.
But none of that had much appeal. It was hard to concentrate on my to-do list with the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. It felt like I was just marking time, waiting for the next attack. And that was getting really old.
I was sick and tired of playing defense. But to play offense, I needed some help, and I didn’t know where to get it. Or, rather, I did, I just didn’t know how.
Assuming Jonas’s crazy theories weren’t quite so crazy after all, I needed to find a goddess—fast. And I thought there was a tiny chance that the one I needed was still hanging around. It had been her spell that banished the other gods, after all, so maybe it hadn’t affected her. And maybe she hadn’t wanted to go back to a world filled with a bunch of pissed-off fellow gods. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like helping humanity might have stuck her with us. If she had gone home, wouldn’t her fellow gods have forced her to lift the spell by now? They obviously wanted back in pretty badly, and she could hardly have stood up to all of them. And gods were supposed to be immortal, weren’t they? So if she hadn’t gone home, it was at least possible that she was still here.
But even if that was the case, she hadn’t been seen in three thousand years. And anyone who had hidden that long had probably gotten pretty good at it. Barring a vision with a map, I had no freaking clue where to start looking. And without a clue, I wasn’t likely to get a vision. It was a vicious catch-22.
I needed somebody who could point me in the right direction.
I needed somebody who knew about gods.
I needed
Fortunately, I knew three of them.
Chapter Thirty-two
For a hotel designed to look like hell, Dante’s wasn’t so bad. It had been themed to within an inch of its life by someone who subscribed strongly to the “more is more” concept of decorating. But this was Vegas, where
