“Yes, well.”Sienna tossed her hair.“There’s a lot of that ahead of us.But we’ll get through it.And in the meantime—”
“I know,” Cyrus said.“We’ll try not to do anything crazy.”
“Anything else, you mean!”she said, getting in the last word.And then flouncing out when the healer showed up, a rotund Latina with an old-fashioned doctor’s bag and a no-nonsense attitude.
“I think Sebastian might have finally met his match,” I said to Cyrus.
“Or she has.”
“Fifty bucks on the Lupa.”
He grinned and kissed the top of my head.“I never bet against a Lupa.”
Chapter Fourteen
Shit,” I said, staring up at the biggest goddamned vampire I’d ever seen.
“I usually go with hello,” he said, eyeing me.
It might have been the outfit.I couldn’t go home right now to get something, as we had to assume the place was being staked out by Rand or one of their allies, whether it was or not.But the shops around here…
I’d have preferred to go to a regular store to pick up some jeans, underwear, and a few t-shirts, and maybe a pair of tennis shoes to tide me over.But that would have required taking several hulking Arnou guards along, as that appeared to have been part of the deal Sienna had worked out with Sebastian.I wasn’t sure whether they were for the bad guys or me right now, all things considered, and didn’t really want to know, so I’d decided to shop in-house.
It had been… a choice.
I was wearing the closest thing to regular clothes I’d been able to find, which wasn’t that close.The t-shirt was okay, as it was just one of the tacky casino ones, with a grinning devil on the front holding a hand of cards, the gates of perdition on the back, and “Dante’s: A Hell of a Good Time” blazoned underneath.But the jeans…
They looked pretty normal, except for built-in leather chaps that were impossible to take off.And every step I took had the sound of spurs chiming softly in the background.Step, chime, step, chime; I felt like Wyatt Earp.
But at least they were subtle and had been hard to hear with the rowdy casino floor not far off.They were louder in here, causing one of the vamp’s big, black eyebrows to raise when I shifted position.But they were better than the cowgirl skirt, which had had a stampede of embroidered bovines across it every few minutes, along with a slap and a “Yee Haw” screamed in time to some rodeo music.
“Lia de Croissets, I assume?”the vamp said, mercifully not commenting.
I cleared my throat.“Yeah.I’m looking for Marco Carales?”
“You found him.”
“The, uh, casino manager said you’d see me?”
“Yeah, he called a few minutes ago.You know the Pythia’s not here, right?”
“That’s okay,” I said, trying not to look as relieved as I felt.Cassandra Palmer, the current Pythia, had a reputation, but I wasn’t entirely sure what it was.
Half the time, she was depicted as the heroic champion of humanity, battling outrageous odds to save us all, and the other half… well, frankly, the other half, she looked like a lunatic.It was rumored that she was a demigoddess, so maybe that explained it.The Greek heroes with godly parents hadn’t exactly been known for stability.
Either way, her pale blue gaze was disconcerting enough from the pages of magazines.I could do without meeting it in person today.Or any other day.
The vampire gave me a look that made it clear he knew what I was thinking.But as with my outrageous attire, he didn’t comment.At his age, he’d probably seen it all.
But I wasn’t entirely sure that I believed his age.
“Are you really fifteen hundred years old?”I blurted out, before I could stop myself.
“Something like that,” was the laconic reply, which was absurd.
He was wearing a cotton-candy-pink polo shirt.According to Casanova, he had started life as a gladiator, which the six and a half feet of muscle, abundant body hair, and Italian good looks would tend to support.But that shirt!
It kind of killed the vibe, as did the feet sticking out of a pair of leather sandals, each toe of which had a different-colored nail polish.
