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I didn’t know if that was a good sign or not, but I decided to push ahead anyway. “And if you let him out, I’ll talk to him for you. Maybe if he gives you a suite, you can promise not to go breaking into the others anymore?”
Further glances were exchanged.
“A nice suite?”
Enyo made a little come-hither movement with her hand. It looked like I was getting warm.
“With room service?”
Ding, ding, ding, we had a winner. At least I guessed so, because she handed me the box.
I tucked it under an arm instead of letting him out, because I didn’t want to deal with the drama right now. “I, uh, I had another reason for coming down here,” I told them.
Pemphredo had been about to crawl off, but at that she came back and settled down, brushing off her filthy shorts. Deino crossed her legs. Enyo stopped picking at her fingernails with a knife and put it politely away.
I kind of felt like I should be serving tea.
“It’s like this,” I said. “It’s starting to feel like Grand Central around here for demigods. You know what I mean?”
They nodded.
“First it was this Morrigan person. She’s this half-Fey child of Ares who tried to possess me. And that really sucked.”
More nods.
“But it didn’t work, so then she possessed this mage who tried to kill me and almost succeeded.”
That got me a little pat from Deino.
“And then, last night, a bunch more demigods showed up. A guy I know thinks they may be something called the Spartoi, which would make them also children of Ares. Plus, I think they were also after my mother way back when—at least, they fought the same as those other guys and . . . Anyway, I don’t think these attacks are just going to stop, you know?”
Nods all around.
“I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to deal with them, only I don’t know how. But there’s this prophecy that says I can get help if I find a goddess. The one they used to call Artemis back in Greece.”
Deino frowned.
“I know the gods were all banished. But I thought that maybe, since it was her spell, she might still be around somewhere—”
The others just looked at me, but Deino slowly shook her head.
“You’re sure?”
A nod.
Damn. So much for that theory.
“Okay, then how about this? The prophecy said that Artemis and Ares were supposed to fight, but he isn’t here, either. It’s his kids who have been causing the trouble. So I was thinking, maybe I need to find her kids, you know?”
The girls exchanged some looks.
“I mean, she was supposed to be this virgin goddess, but I gotta think after a few thousand years, that’s gonna get kind of old. So I thought maybe—”
I broke off because the girls’ heads jerked up, all at the same time, like they were on a string. I hadn’t heard anything, but when I looked back over my shoulder, I saw a mob of Casanova’s security guards heading for us at a dead run. They must have been watching on CCTV, or maybe they felt it when the boss went pop. Either way, not good.
“No!” I yelled. “Don’t—”
That was all I got out before they were past me, ruffling my hair with the unnatural speed of vampires in a hurry. They didn’t ruffle the Graeae’s, because the girls were no longer there. I’d been looking at the vamps, so I hadn’t seen them move. But there was suddenly nothing where they’d been, except for a few gray hairs drifting slowly earthward.
