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“And don’t you think that makes him stand out? He’s saying, ‘I’m so strong, I don’t need to play dress-up for you assholes.’ But even though he don’t wear some weird medieval shit like some, he always looks good.”
“I have more important things to worry about than—”
“There’s nothing more important than your image,” Sal told me flatly. “You gotta be impressive, or you’re gonna be fighting all the time. If you don’t look important, everybody’s gonna assume you’re a pushover. Then we have to defend you for the boss’s sake and a lot of people end up dead. Just ’cause you couldn’t be bothered to put on a little makeup.”
My time at court had been about blending in, fading into the background, trying to avoid attention that usually didn’t end well. Nothing in my past experience had taught me how to make an impression. “I don’t usually dress up,” I said lamely.
Sal gripped my arm, those bloodred talons denting but not quite piercing the skin. “Oh, we’ll take care of that.” And the calculating look on her face was the scariest thing I’d seen all night.
Chapter 16
“I can’t breathe,” I complained.
Sal shot me a look in the full-length mirror in front of us. “You don’t need to breathe. You need to look good,” she said, ruthlessly lacing up the back of my bodice. We were in the penthouse suite that she’d appropriated along with a bottle of champagne, half a dozen bellboys and the dress I’d ordered from Augustine. He had not been pleased to be woken up in the middle of the night or to have his workroom invaded, and had loudly declared that feats of genius take time and he wasn’t finished yet, thank you. Then Sal bought two outfits outright and put in an order for an even dozen more and he shut up so fast his mouth made a popping sound.
“No, you don’t need to breathe. I’m pretty sure it’s a necessity for me.”
“Did you always whine this much?”
“I don’t think asking to be allowed to breathe constitutes—”
“Because I don’t remember it.” Sal paused to admire the very rude slogan that had just written itself across her chest. One of the outfits she’d gotten from Augustine was a black cat suit that displayed neon-colored graffiti on itself at random moments. Sal had discovered that she could influence the choice of words if she thought very hard, and she was having fun corrupting her outfit.
“Of course, I don’t remember much about you at all,” she continued. “You never had two words to say to anybody, except those imaginary friends of yours—”
“They were ghosts!”
“—always slinking around in the shadows, looking spooked if anyone so much as noticed you—”
“I wonder why?”
“—which as far as I can tell hasn’t changed.”
I sucked in a breath, planning to teach her suit a new word, except that she cinched in the waist at that moment and all the air was forced out of my lungs. “Keeping your head down is the very worst thing you can do! It makes you look vulnerable.”
“Which is fair enough since I am, in fact—”
“You gonna hide all your life? You gotta show everybody that they need to be afraid of you, not the other way ’round. That thing you did with the Consul, that was good. It made ’em pull back a little, made ’em think. You haven’t had any more problems with the Circle lately, right?”
“Other than the huge bounty they put on my head?”
“Huh. Maybe we need to make the point a little more obvious.”
“Any more obvious and I’ll be dead.” Sal turned to pick up her champagne and a very rude phrase flashed across her backside. I scowled at it, but I wasn’t going to lower myself to fight with a piece of fabric. “I haven’t had any problems because they don’t know where I am.”
Sal paused to tip the last of the exhausted-looking bellhops. He’d just dumped a trunk big enough to conceal a body in the middle of the living room floor. And considering who it belonged to, it just might. “Honey, everyone knows where you are!” she said, as soon as he’d left. “I mean, come on. What do you think we’re doin’ out here?”
“Planning to beat up Casanova?”
“Other than that.”
“I don’t know. Rafe called you—”
“And we usually jump when he snaps his fingers,” Sal said, rolling her eyes. “Alphonse’s come to suck up to the new boss. And since he ain’t around, you’ll do.”
“Uh-huh.” Alphonse sucking up to me was about as likely as the earth suddenly deciding to change direction, just for a switch.
“You really don’t get it, do you?” Sal looked genuinely puzzled. “There’s a war on. Everybody’s choosing sides. The smart ones are aligning themselves where the strength is. Like with Mircea. Like with you.”
