Rise of the Blood

encouragement.

“Tell you what,” I said, “I’ll give her your number. If she calls, she calls.”

“That’s the kind of tit for tat I can expect? Honey, I credited you with much better tits.”

I looked down at myself. “Really?”

“Well, perhaps not. Anyway, this will barely touch your debt.”

“Fine, whatever. Are we done here?” Before the spa folk come at me with straightjackets.

“Unless you want to hear about—”

“I don’t,” I said quickly, slapping at the mirror to torque it away and break our connection.

“—the plot—” I heard as he spun away from me. I rushed to grab the mirror back into position again, but he was gone.

There was a knock at the door, followed almost immediately by it opening. “Everything okay in here?” Brittany asked, looking around like I was a babysitter who might have snuck my boyfriend in after hours.

“Sure, except I think my face might be starting to crack.”

She smiled at the thought. Great. “That just means you’re done! You lay back down and I’ll clean you up and turn you over to Valencia.”

“Oh goody.”

If there was more torture, I didn’t even notice. I was too busy thinking about Hermes’s last words. As soon as Torquemada here was finished with me, I was going for the cell phone I’d actually left in my spa locker along with my clothes. Then I was going to blackmail Hermes into telling me what I’d missed.

But Hermes wasn’t taking calls—at least not mine—and Valencia waited outside the locker room door to take me to some fresh hell, pacing and looking in impatiently while I tried my call again, as though her time was more precious than mine. Probably it was, if we were talking hourly rates.

I left a message and surrendered myself.

Christie was already sitting in what looked like a dental chair, her feet soaking in a solution tinted by the Tidy Bowl man.

“Polish,” Valencia said.

It was like she was speaking Greek, only that I’d have understood.

“Um, no, I’m good.”

She snapped a finger toward a wall rack of nail color. “Pick your polish,” she ordered.

“Oh.” I’d been afraid that after all of Brittany’s work, she’d been talking about some kind of buffer or something that would shine me up to a high gloss. “Uh, you pick.”

“What color is your bridesmaid’s gown?” Christie asked.

“Puke green.”

She lowered the magazine she was holding—the one with the star who cheated on the other star, making their new movie promo a study in awkward. “Seriously?”

“For reals. Only I’m sure they call it something a lot fancier.”

Christie canted her head like she was trying to envision me in puke green.

“Val, give her the crushed shell shellac.”

“Wait, shellac?” I asked. But clearly I had no power here; Val was already off to do Christie’s bidding.

“The way you live, yeah. It lasts for, like, ever, and I know you won’t just go home and take it all off with nail polish remover.”

“How do you know?”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“How does it work?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“You know, lady, you have an evil streak. I have a friend who would be just perfect for you. And by perfect, I mean that you two together would be truly terrifying.”

“Sounds intriguing. Is he cute?”

“Why don’t you call him and find out for yourself?”

Then I proceeded to tell her all the reasons why it was a very bad idea. The warnings were barely out of my mouth before I realized they were like waving a red cape at a bull or a flame before a moth. Christie had terrible taste in men. Hermes was just her type.

I’d have felt a lot worse if Christie a) wasn’t a grown-up, and b) hadn’t just had me shellacked against my will.

We were followed when we left the salon. With plots afoot and escaped enemies on the loose, I didn’t think I was being paranoid at my concern when a black SUV with tinted windows followed us out of the parking lot.

“Christie, I’m going to pull over here,” I said, keeping an eye on the SUV in my rearview mirror.

She looked where I indicated. “This grease pit? Are you kidding me? You can have a heart attack just breathing the air.”

“They only gave us rabbit food back at the salon. I’m starving. And anyway, I’m testing a theory.”

“How much the seams of your bridesmaid’s gown are likely to hold? Do you hate it that much?”

I did, but that was beside the point. At the last possible second, I cut across two lanes of traffic to take the turn into a fast food drive-thru. I checked the rearview mirror as I switched to see the front of the SUV jerk suddenly into the nearer lane, leaving the back still sticking out. Next came a brake-squealing, metal-crunching impact as another car struck the back of the SUV, causing it to rock on its wheels. I was recalled to my own driving by my front wheel thumping over a concrete piling. I righted our trajectory, pulled into the drive-thru line and grabbed my phone out of the car’s cup holder to report the accident. It was still ringing when the SUV raced off, leaving the scene and the driver of the other car staring stunned after it, half out of her own vehicle. She looked around then, as if to see if anyone else planned to report the rear-ending, shrugged and got back into her car. Just another L.A. day.

I ended the call and relaxed back into my seat.

“What was that all about?” Christie asked.

But, crisis averted, the munchies had kicked in with a vengeance, and I was totally focused on the drive-thru menu board. “They serve sweet potato fries now? Awesome!”

“Tori.”

“Oh, sorry.” I turned a sheepish grin on her. “I don’t know. It might have been those enemies who escaped. Or someone they hired to follow me. Or…”

“Tori!”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it covered.”

“How?”

“Tomorrow, I leave for Greece.”

Where the old gods would have the home court advantage.

Chapter Three

“Is it bad or is it Tornado Tori bad?”

—Tori’s father, assessing a messy situation

I surveyed the wreckage of my apartment. Well, the apartment I was housesitting for Detective Helen Lau, Armani’s former partner, until her return from traveling with honest-to-gods dragons. I knew I’d forgotten something. I just couldn’t think what it was.

“It’s not like they don’t have stores in Greece,” Armani said, frustrated. He’d been fully packed before we