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I sat there for a moment, wanting to ask what the hell Jonathan had done to him, what there was that I didn’t already know. But I bit my tongue. He would tell me when he was ready, or he wouldn’t. He’d already made a big concession tonight, one that he obviously did not want to make.
It was enough.
“I promise,” I said.
Chapter Sixteen
Dory, Cairo
Finding Hassani, I realized, might be harder than I’d thought. The party that we joined after a quick trip upstairs had spilled out onto multiple rooftops, with vamps casually jumping from one to the other on a whim. That wasn’t such a big deal in some cases, where the buildings were basically sitting cheek by jowl, but with others there was a significant gap. Giving me the visual of men in tuxes and women in sparkly, high fashion gowns leaping through the air like gazelles.
Not that everybody was all dressed up. I’d worried about my outfit being too touristy or too spangly or too something, but it would have been hard to pick something that wouldn’t have fit in here somewhere. Because each rooftop seemed to be doing its own thing.
One had sleekly dressed people in mostly Western clothing holding champagne flutes, although they were probably filled with the same nasty, non-alcoholic stuff we’d been served since we got here. Hassani did not approve of the devil’s brew, despite the fact that vamps can’t get drunk, at least not off Earth hooch. But the partiers made it look good, quietly talking or slow dancing together as if they were at a high-end supper club or a refined house party.
Another gathering, right next door, had the vibe of a bunch of old friends, casually attired and sitting on plastic chairs, playing cards, smoking hookahs, and relaxing. Well, except for the three guys in the back. They were trying to hide the keg they’d smuggled in by nonchalantly throwing a tablecloth over it and planting a candlestick in the middle.
Damn, I thought enviously.
Should have brought the cognac.
Their group, in turn, were bordered by some pretty raucous, nightclub type celebrations, one playing jazz, one with a thumping disco beat, and a third blasting Top 40 karaoke, while a vamp who ought to know better tried to hold a tune.
Our roof was somewhere in the middle, with a bunch of musicians with colorful tablah drums and a dozen female belly dancers in bright yellow and gold spangled outfits. And, okay, what the heck was the rule, I wondered, sizing up the low-cut bras and bare bellies of the dancers. I thought we were being restrained!
But all bets were off tonight, it seemed, because there was some serious shimmying going on.
“It is an interesting art form, is it not?” Louis-Cesare asked, watching one girl’s impressive undulations.
She had smooth golden skin, washboard abs, and a belly button piercing. She also had hair, not as much as Maha, but enough to hit the small of her back. And, like a lot of Egyptian women’s hair, it was thick, dark, curly and beautiful.
“Yeah, interesting,” I said, and pulled him off to what passed for a bar.
The rooftops were open to the stars, although there were numerous wooden pergolas with diaphanous draperies scattered around, as well as some big, square boards that looked like massive T.V.s or small movie screens. They were neither; there were no wires or cables around the bottoms and I didn’t see any projectors. But something was being shown on them nonetheless.
“What the—” I stopped to stare at one on the next roof over, which was big enough to be perfectly visible from here.
“Oh, yes. I forgot to mention,” Louis-Cesare said, handing me a glass of non-alcoholic punch.
“You forgot to mention what?”
He shrugged. “This is a celebration. They wanted to show people what they had to celebrate.”
He drank his own punch, and then frowned at the glass.
“Yes, but—” I stared at the big board some more. It was currently showing me in all of my crispy-fried glory: clothes blackened and half missing, skin burnt, hair—what was left of i
t—a complete disaster, and mouth open as I thundered across the room on a bright red motorcycle, yelling obscenities at an ancient god.
It was as embarrassing as all hell, and it wasn’t the only one. Similar boards were scattered around the rooftops as far as I could see, playing the greatest hits from the day’s event. We were all there: Louis-Cesare, climbing up a massive cobra’s body with a sword on his back; Hassani, doing his Gandalf routine at the top of the stairs; the vamp squad, carving their way through zombies like they did it every day; and me, trying to shoot a god.
I put my weak-ass punch down and started to look around for a way out of here, but Louis-Cesare knew me. “Not a chance,” he said.
And the next second, he’d pulled me into his arms, taken a running leap, and—
“Hey! Some notice next time!” I said breathlessly, as we landed on another roof maybe twenty feet away, but so lightly that Louis-Cesare didn’t even spill his drink.
He just laughed and kept going, jumping from rooftop to rooftop all along the block that Hassani owned. In the process, we dodged a trio of dwarves with musical instruments, a line of well-dressed conga dancers, and then almost collided with some more dancers in orange and red fluttery outfits, who streamed across our path without warning. I looked back to see their bodies painting a glittery rainbow across the darkness for a moment before we landed—
