Up In Smoke (36 page)

“If you're no longer a demon lord,” Gabriel said, a little frown between his brows, “then May is no longer your consort
or
servant.”

“Consort, no. But servant . . .” Magoth's smile turned truly appalling. I wanted to throw something at him. “She was bound to
me,
not to my position, so she is most definitely mine to command again. And she can start by getting me something cold to drink. Something tasty. Champagne will do nicely.”

I felt my jaw drop as the horrible realization sank into my brain. “You don't mean—”

“That's right,” he said, leaning back, his hands behind his head as he gave me a sultry look. “Until my powers are returned, I'm staying with you. Shall we discuss the sleeping arrangements? I like boy, girl, boy, for aesthetic reasons, but if you absolutely insist, I can take the middle spot.”

Gabriel and I exchanged identical horror-stricken looks.

“So much for a happy future,” I said, sighing as I slumped back against the headboard.

Coming in December 2008 from Signet:

 

Katie MacAlister returns to the world of
the Dark Ones with

 

Zen and the Art
of Vampires

 

Read on for a sneak peek!

Before I could mull over what I wanted to do next, a dark-haired woman plopped down in the chair across from me and shot a glare over her shoulder toward a very handsome blond man as he bumped her back while escorting two children wearing blue-and-white horns past us. “You look like I feel. Did you hear? The trip to the forest is off for tonight. And a good thing, too. I could do without being eaten alive by mosquitoes and God knows what other kind of insects there are around here. I don't suppose you've seen Audrey? She disappeared right after she told me about the cancellation, and I didn't have time to have a word with her about the serious lack of men on this tour.”

“Not since lunch, no,” I answered, digging out my disposable camera to snap a picture of the behorned kids as they waved flags madly. “I think she said something about checking on the accommodations in Amsterdam.”

Denise, the fifth woman on the tour, and my least favorite of all the members, curled a scornful lip at my answer. “Bah. We don't go there for three days. Not that I won't be glad to get out of this country. I've just been in the most appalling bookshop there on the square. Ugh. Nothing there printed in the last hundred years. And the spiders! Who'd have thought that Iceland would have such big spiders? Positively tarantulas. Here, you! Diet Coke. Coca-Cola. You understand?” Denise grabbed a passing waitress and shook her arm. “Pia, you have a phrasebook—how do you say that I want a Diet Coke?”

The waitress gave her a long-suffering look. “I speak English. We do not have Coke. I will bring you a Pepsi.”

“Whatever, just so it's cold.” Denise released the waitress and used my napkin to mop at the sweat that made her face sparkle in the bright afternoon sunshine. “Sorry I just sat down without asking you, but we big girls have to stick together. You weren't waiting for anyone, were you?”

Sharp, washed-out hazel eyes peered at me from beneath overplucked eyebrows, a gloating glint indicating that an answer in the affirmative would surprise her greatly. I adopted a polite smile and shook my head, my teeth grinding at both her gloating expression and the big-girl comment.

“Didn't think so,” she answered with sour pleasure. “Women like us never get the guys. It's always the ones who put out who end up having all the fun. That Magda. Did you hear her last night? She was at it all night long. I asked Audrey to change my room, but she says the hotel is full and they can't. Honestly, why on earth did I spend two grand on a single's tour of romantic Europe if the only men on the trip are old, perverted, or gay, and I have to spend every friggin' night listening to Magda get her jollies. Oh, Raymond! Harder! Harder, my stallion of love!” she all but yelled in an obscene parody of Magda's Spanish-inflected voice.

“Shhh,” I cautioned, frowning at the startled looks we received from people seated around us. “Others can hear you.”

“So what?” She shrugged. “They can't understand us, and even if they could, I'm not saying anything that isn't true. Have you ever seen such a motley collection of men as the ones on this tour? Audrey sure has some sort of a scam, and we're the suckers who fell for it. Romantic Europe, my ass.”

I'd lived with Denise's negativity and overall nastiness for three days now, and was sorely tempted to tell her just what I thought, but I reminded myself that we had another eighteen days together, and it wouldn't actually kill me to turn the other cheek. Instead I indulged in a fantasy wherein she was left behind on a remote fjord.

“Have you dated much lately?” she asked, obviously sharpening her claws for another attack.

I smiled and threw in a couple of hungry wolves prowling along the edge of the fjord. “I live outside of Seattle in a small town in the mountains. There aren't a lot of people there to begin with, so it's kind of hard to meet guys. That's why I decided to go on this tour, to open my horizons.”

“At least you're not opening your legs for everything with a penis, like some people I could mention,” she said with another waspish look toward Magda. “I think we've been had, though. The men on the tour are useless, and as for these Icelanders . . . they may be descended from Vikings, like Audrey says, but I don't see any of them panting over us. Mind you, if you said the words ‘green card' to them, that would change things fast enough, but that's not going to happen.”

“We've only had three days so far—” I started to object, but I was cut short when she slammed her glass down on the little table.

“You don't get it, do you? Pia, look at yourself! You're what, forty? Forty-five?”

“Thirty-nine. I won't be forty for another ten months,” I said defensively, trying to keep a grip on my temper.

“Face it,” Denise said, grabbing my arm as she leaned forward across the table. “Women like us get the shaft our whole lives. You may think that there is a man out there for you, a Mr. Wonderful who will be everything you want, but there isn't. Look around you, Pia. Look at who has all the handsome men—it's the pretty ones, the skinny ones, the ones who don't give a fuck about anything but getting what they want. They've got no morals and don't care who knows it.”

“I don't buy that,” I said, jerking my arm out of her grip. “I know a lot of nice women who get men. Sometimes it just takes a while; that's all.”

“Let's cut the crap, shall we, and get real. We're the last pick on the volleyball team, Pia. We get the leftovers. I can tell you don't like to admit it, so I'll prove it to you.” She scooted around in her chair, waving a hand toward the stage. “That guy, that one there—the blond guy with the receding hairline. You think he'd like you? Or how about that one, the man with the beard. He looks like an accountant. Maybe he'd go for you.”

My lips tightened. I refused to tell her that she was perfectly welcome to live in her misanthropic world, but I preferred a much happier place.

“Oh! Those two! Those two across the square, coming out of that building. Oh, my God, they're gorgeous. That's what I'm talking about—perfect eye-candy specimens. Both tall, both dark haired, although I don't like long hair on a man, and both absolutely and completely out of our reach.”

“Women don't always go for a handsome, incredibly sexy man,” I pointed out. “And some men like more than a body. It's perfectly within the bounds of reality to have one of those eye-candy men.”

A hard look settled on her face. “You just refuse to face reality, don't you? Well, let's put our money where our mouth is, OK? You go talk to those two hunks and see what happens.”

“I didn't mean those two specifically,” I said quickly, my palms suddenly sweating at the thought of the humiliation that would follow should I even think of approaching the two men in question. “I just meant eye candy in general.”

She flicked the wadded up paper straw wrapper at me. “That's a cop-out, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. How about this—you walk past the two guys, just walk past them, and see if one of them is interested enough to watch you.”

I opened my mouth to protest that catching a man's eye wasn't going to prove anything, but the triumphant gleam in her eyes was too much for the tenuous grasp I had on my temper. If nothing else, I would be able to escape her presence. “All right, you're on. I'll walk past them.”

“I'll be here, waiting, when you come back. Alone,” she said with a smile that made my palm itch with the need to smack her.

The square was still partially empty as people took the opportunity offered by the band switch to refresh themselves at the cafés and food stands that lined the area. I paused a moment at the edge of the square, having no trouble in finding my quarry.

The two men continued to stand in the shadows cast by a tall, sculpted stone building, evidently having some sort of a conversation since one of them periodically nodded, while the other spoke, his hands gesturing quickly. They were both clad completely in black, one carrying a leather jacket, the other wearing one despite the heat of the day. The jacket wearer was farthest from me, his face too shadowed to see in detail, but I did notice he had short curly chestnut brown hair. The one turned slightly away from me, holding on to his jacket slung casually over his shoulder, had long black hair pulled back in a ponytail.

I glanced back at Denise, hoping against hope that she might have given up on me and gone to see the fireworks, but doubting she'd miss the opportunity to do a little old-fashioned gloating when I failed at my goal.

“I hate being right,” I said under my breath. Denise stood at the table, the café nearly empty now as more and more people headed to the park. She made shooing gestures toward me.

I edged my way past a tiny clothing shop and pretended interest in racks of dusty books that sat outside an even dustier bookseller. This must be the spider-filled shop Denise had mentioned. I glanced toward her. She had her back to me as one of the men on the tour stopped to talk, gesturing in the direction of the park. Excellent! She was distracted! Now was my chance.

I ducked into the spider-filled bookshop, scurrying to the back, grabbing a couple of books to pretend interest. “She's not likely to come looking in here for me if the spiders are as bad as she said. I'll just hide out for a little bit. There's no shame in hiding. She'll figure I skipped out, and go look elsewhere for me, right? Right.”

My relief lasted about two minutes, after which shame got the better of me. Being a coward wasn't my style. A careful and covert survey of the square from inside the bookshop confirmed my thoughts. Denise was disappearing down a street opposite, clearly on the hunt for me. “Yay for insight into human nature.”

I paid for the books and strolled out of the bookshop, adopting a casual, not in the least bit stalkerlike air as I meandered toward the two men. “Maybe I could bribe them. Maybe I could offer them a few bucks if one of them would walk back to the hotel with me . . . ugh. Is this what it's coming to? Bribing men to pretend an interest in you? For shame, Pia. For sha—
oof!
”

A woman whumped into me with enough force that it sent us both reeling, my books and her large bag falling to the ground.

“I am so sorry; I am very late for an appointment and wasn't watching where I was going,” the woman said in a delightful French accent. “Did I step on you? No? Excellent. I am very distressed, you see. I've lost the address where I'm supposed to go, and none of the bookshops seem to be the right one. Ah, there is another one. I will try there.”

“Beware of spiders,” I warned as she tucked the books away in her bag. The smile she flashed me faded.

“Spiders?”

“Yeah, evidently some big hairy ones.”

She shuddered. “I detest spiders! Perhaps that shop is not the one . . .” She eyed it with obvious distaste.

“If you're looking for a current book, they probably aren't going to have it. There seemed to be mostly antique books.”

“Antique,” she said thoughtfully. “That does not sound correct. The Zenith was most specific it was an English book with the man and woman on the cover dancing . . . oh, la-la! The time!” She had glanced at her watch, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder. “I will try another one; that does not look like a shop to have the dancing books, does it?”

“Naw, the only thing I found there was an old Agatha Christie and some Regency romance,” I said, gesturing toward my books.

“
Bien.
It is good I run into you, I think!”

“No problem,” I called after her as she started off. “Always happy to save a fellow tourist from death by dusty spiders.”

I turned back to face my horrible task. The two men were still standing in close conversation.

“Boy, I give you guys a chance to go away and cut me a little slack, and you refuse. Fine. Be that way. I might as well get this over with, not that Denise is here to witness it.”

I clutched my books and took a deep breath, then, without any further dillydallying, marched myself toward the two men, determined to . . . I didn't know exactly what I was determined to do. Maybe smile at them as I passed, and hope one of them smiled back? If I did that, at least I could face Denise with a clear conscience over the breakfast table.

“Well, hell,” I said out loud, stopping abruptly as the two men, evidently having finished their conversation, split up, heading in two different directions, neither of which encouraged them to so much as glance in my direction.