“You can leave the shmoozing to Sebastian,” I added.“He’s better at it anyway.And come have dinner with your new clan.”
“Dressed like this?”He indicated the ruin of a perfectly good tux.That was two in two days, which was impressive, even for a Were.
“We’ll find you something.”I looked over his shoulder to where two plastic bags from a popular local chain store lay by the door, spilling what looked like jeans and t-shirts onto the rug.The aforementioned supplies, I assumed.“Looks like the boys came through.”
“Yeah, but will it chime like cowboy spurs?”
I tilted my head because I hadn’t realized he’d enjoyed that.“Do you want it to?”
“Under the right circumstances, it could be interesting,” he whispered, nuzzling my ear.“Does Dante’s have a lingerie line?”
“Didn’t see one, but we can ask.Not sure if they’ll have much guys’ stuff, though.”
“I wasn’t thinking about for me.”
“Yeah,” I grinned.“But I was.”
Chapter Eighteen
The casino’s basement had undergone some changes.The winding corridors had been a hodgepodge this morning, just a bunch of junk-filled rooms with white tile flooring, a maze of corridors branching out everywhere, and too bright fluorescents overhead.Where they hadn’t burned out, that is, as maintenance was slipshod around here.
But now the storerooms filled with seasonal décor, housekeeping supplies, battered furniture, cans of paint and tarping, boxes of paper cups with the Dante’s logo, and old slot machines had given way to… I wasn’t sure.But at least I could see it.
Some of the fluorescents still worked, illuminating the corridor with bright puddles, and the dark spots had largely been filled in by the people who had colonized every square inch down here and found ways to light things up.
Hideous, hideous ways.
A life-sized hula dancer with a tattered grass skirt, a leering metal skull peeking out of a partially burnt away face, and witchy hair—some relic from Dante’s checkered past, I guessed—had been plugged back in, probably because of the lamp she held in one hand.She was twitching up a storm in a mechanical parody of a dance, causing the lantern to tremble and throw shadows on the walls.There were also fake torches that someone had found in a box somewhere and spliced into the electrical system, incongruous Christmas lights that had decked the halls, and illuminated Halloween decorations adding to the crazy.
And that was just what I could see from the elevator doors, with much of the rest obscured by bends in the hall and somebody’s wet clothes.A lot of somebodies, who must have located the main hotel laundry, which might be down here for all I knew.Because lines of damp bras, blankets, t-shirts, and jeans were flapping overhead on lines that crisscrossed the hallways, clutching at us with clammy, corpse-like hands.
I ducked under someone’s damp sleeping bag into a hall, and Cyrus followed, staring around at the décor, or maybe at the rooms full of people, because I don’t think it had hit him before exactly how many three hundred was.Although it was looking like more at the moment.A lot more, I thought worriedly, moving to the side as a bunch of kids came running by, laughing and kicking a soccer ball ahead of them.
“There arechildren?”Cyrus said, and I just shook my head.I hadn’t seen any before, but we had ‘em.As well as some old people, including a guy in a wheelchair parked in the hall playing checkers on a folding table with another old timer wearing just a pair of jeans, although the hair on the latter’s back was thick enough to count as a pelt even in human form.
But most of the people were younger, and a good three-quarters of them were men.But instead of causing trouble, they were helping people move in, squeezing by us carrying somebody’s worldly goods, or whatever of them could be rescued from Tartarus.Or setting up camping cots in some of the rooms, which I guessed the Guardians had supplied, because I was ashamed to say I hadn’t thought of it.Or following people in nurses’ scrubs who were attending to the wounded, while the young men looked on watchfully, or hefted their heavy backpacks full of medicine to the next room.
Seeing the state of many of the people, I was glad I’d donned some of the supplies Cyrus had sent the guys for, namely a pair of jeans, a red T-shirt, and a yellow hoodie.Because I guessed Fireborn had chosen our colors, after all.And damn was I grateful that I’d left the finery upstairs!
This was where I should have been all day, I thought, gazing around.This was what I should have been doing.As soon as I left Sebastian—
“Don’t,” Cyrus said, reading my face because I hadn’t said a word.“We’re here now.”
And yeah, we were.So we got to work,with him grabbing some of our boys to checkon the food situation andme findingDave, who was still here, clipboard in hand and a pencil stuck behind his ear.It had joined the ever-growing number of items he had misplaced, I guess, because he was writing with a Dante’s pen and going room to room, peering into the darkness with his glasses still crowning his head, and trying to figure out who everybody was.
He wasn’t having much luck until I turned up, but as soon as I did, people started looking at me whenever he would ask them anything.And when I nodded, they would answer, making me feel even worse, because I could have been saving him a lot of work all day.And because they were treating me like their Lupa when I hadn’t done shit.
But it didn’t seem to matter.Everywhere I went, hands were reaching out to me, wanting to touch me, to thank me, to be near me.And whatever strange, altered state of mind I had been in earlier, when that had felt right and normal and expected, was long since gone.
All I felt now was guilt, because they were hurt and hungry, and I hadn’t been here.And afraid, because there were so goddamned many.And worried, because now that I was seeing them through clear eyes, my God.
They neededeverything.
But if Cyrus was feeling the same, you couldn’t tell.He was soon meeting and greeting and laughing with them, and half an hour or so after Dave and I got to work, he came into the latest storeroom-turned-dormitory with Noah, Jace, and Lee behind him.Each of them was carrying a cardboard box that had been turned into a tray overflowing with what looked like the entire menu from Guac and Rock, a local hole-in-the-wall with Tijuana-style tacos, vividly colored murals, and Mexican rock and roll blaring from a dozen speakers.
The guys loved it, and it looked like when Cyrus had said a feast, they’d taken him at his word.
“What’s that?”I asked, pointing at something dripping in sauce, and was gifted a package of whatever the hell.It was still warm and greasy enough that a line of liquified fat was immediately coursing down my arm, while my stomach woke up to make demands.Loud ones.
