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“This is only temporary. They’ll be gone soon.”
“Yes, leaving me with a trashed hotel, a ruined conference schedule and debts out my ears!”
“Mircea will understand—”
“Mircea doesn’t give a shit about this hotel,” Casanova said viciously. “Mircea cares about the damn war. If I drown in red ink, it’s all the same to him. He writes it off as a tax loss and transfers me to some dead-end job where I can molder away for another century or so.” He suddenly rounded on me, shining the light in my eyes and making me wince. “And that’s not going to happen, you understand? This is my one shot at the big time. Those old crones aren’t going to ruin it for me, and neither are you!”
“I’m not trying to—” I began, but he was already pushing forward again, muttering something indistinct in Spanish.
I scowled and started to follow, when a grizzled head popped out of nowhere in front of me. It was hanging upside down, the long, gray curls streaming earthward like moss on a plantation. It was Deino, the one who had always had a soft spot for me—at least until I started hunting her.
Like all the girls, she had a scrunched-up dried apple of a face with enough wrinkles to make a shar-pei jealous. It was a little hard to read the expression that was probably buried under there somewhere. But she wasn’t smiling.
Her chin dipped toward the trap I still clutched, and a few more wrinkles appeared on the weather-beaten face. “Um,” I said awkwardly.
It was hard to know what to say, since I’d been caught red-handed. And how much English she understood was problematic, anyway. But it didn’t matter, because before I could figure it out, she suddenly leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
“Heh,” she said, and popped back out.
And so did the box.
I whipped my head around, but I didn’t see anything. Except for Casanova looking behind some stacked crates. “Uh, we may have a problem,” I told him nervously.
“What’s wrong now?” he demanded, brushing at a cobweb that had dared to sully his formerly pristine linen.
I didn’t answer, because I was staring at another ancient crone who was prowling toward him over the tops of the crates. Her movements weren’t remotely old, ladylike or, for that matter, particularly human. Enyo had gotten her hair cut, I noticed irrelevantly, right before Casanova winked out of existence.
For a moment, I just stood there while she bared toothless gums at me and cackled. Then she held up the black box and shook it suggestively. There was no doubt at all what had happened to the vampire.
“Oh, shit,” I said. Enyo cackled again and then paused, before holding the box out like a gift. I eyed it suspiciously. “You’re giving him to me?”
She nodded, grinning like a fiend. I suspected a trap, but, then, if the girls had wanted me in that box, they could have managed it easily enough. So maybe they were just trying to teach Casanova a lesson.
I tentatively took a step forward, then two. I put out a hand and almost had my fingers on it when Enyo flicked her wrist
, tossing it over my head to Pemphredo, the third member of the trio. She was crouched on top of a nearby van, wearing grizzled pigtails and a “Vegas Made Me Do It” T-shirt, and peering at me out of the one eye they all shared.
She watched me silently for a moment, then slowly held out the box. Like I was actually going to fall for that again. “No, I don’t want to play,” I told her. “Really.”
That was too bad, because it looked like I was in the minority.
“I want him back,” I said. Pemphredo shot me a look. “Okay, maybe not actually want, but you know how it is.”
She tilted her head inquiringly. Clearly, she didn’t know.
That was a problem, because I didn’t, either.
“See, it’s like this,” I said, trying to come up with a reason why they should let him go. “He’s annoying.”
The girls nodded. This, apparently, we could all agree on.
“And . . . and obviously he had no right to try to trap you like that. I mean, it’s not like you’ve been doing anything wrong.”
More nods.
“It’s just . . . um . . .” I stopped, trying to recall why I wanted the guy back. I thought about it while they all waited politely. I gave up. “Look, I don’t really have a good reason for you to give him back,” I said honestly. “He’s a crabby, self-centered, egotistical, money-grubbing snob. His own employees don’t even like him much. But it could be worse. If you cart him off somewhere, they’ll have to get a new manager. And he might be a lot more of a hard-ass.”
They exchanged glances.
