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His name was Casanova. Yes, the Casanova, or so he claimed, although he wasn’t and never had been. But the incubus possessing him had previously possessed the famous Latin lover, and the vampire community isn’t immune to celebrity worship. So “Casanova” had adopted the name and the lifestyle along with the spirit, which meant that he was more accustomed to lying around in silken sheets than doing any actual work.
It had surprised me, then, that he’d taken to his first real job with a vengeance, although that might explain why he was glaring at me. Once again, I was sullying his hotel with my presence. Considering what the place usually looked like, that thought would have made me smile, if I wasn’t too damned tired.
And if tonight wasn’t the exception that proved the rule.
Dante’s hotel and casino was by turns tasteless and vulgar and gaudy and cheesy, but it wasn’t cheap. Nothing on a prime piece of the Vegas Strip was. But just because its guests were paying through the nose to poke more hard-earned cash into the casino’s gaping maw didn’t mean they dressed up. Despite what the movies would have you believe, standard Vegas evening attire was a T-shirt and shorts, except for the winter, when it might occasionally stretch to a hoodie and jeans.
But not tonight. Tonight, the stalactites and stalagmites and steam-shooting geysers in the overthemed lobby were being obscured—by the beautiful people. I’d never seen so many glittery dresses and sharp suits and sleek hairstyles around here at one time before.
And was that a string quartet?
“Are we having a party?” I asked, propping myself up on one arm.
“We aren’t having anything,” he said, snatching the glass of champagne a passing waitress had just bestowed on me. “And if I did believe in a Divine Being, he would have to be the biggest sadist since the marquis himself to have saddled me with you!”
“Okay, cut it out,” I said, making a face—at the glass, because the one sip I’d managed to get had been foul. “I just got back. And if that’s what you’re serving the guests, you’d better be prepared for some lawsuits.”
“They aren’t guests; they’re staff. And I’m not paying for champagne when the cameras can’t tell the difference!”
“What cameras?”
“The cameras you don’t need to be concerned about. Now twitch your nose or whatever it is you do and get out of here! And do it fast, before anyone sees you. There are bums credit-hustling the slots who look better than you!”
For once, he appeared genuinely offended.
I looked down.
And okay, I’d looked better.
The hoodie Pritkin had loaned me had largely protected my upper body during the melee. But my legs had been exposed and were covered in scratches and bug bites and dried mud and something I finally identified as patches of resinous tree gunk. My once white Keds were black, there was a layer of grime under my fingernails, and I thought it just as well that I hadn’t seen my face in a mirror lately.
But it felt scratchy, too.
I picked a pine needle out of my hair and tried for dignified. “I told you, I just got back. And I’m not going up to the room until I get something to eat.”
“I’ll have something sent up!”
“Yeah, right. In two hours, and I’ll be asleep by then.”
“I’ll tell them to hurry.”
“They never hurry.” Fred had been right about one thing—room service around here sucked. “I’m just going to run through the taco line—”
“That’s all the way over on the drag!”
“So?”
“Oh, for—wait here,” he told me, pointing to the floor in front of my filthy shoes. And then he stabbed the air a few more times for emphasis. “Right. Here. Do you understand?”
“I like them with guacamole and red sauce, but no lettuce,” I told him, and sat down against the base of the fake rock again.
He was back in a second, but not with food. But with a large potted fern in a bronze bucket, like the ones that framed the check-in desk. I don’t know what ferns had to do with the ambience, but Dante’s didn’t worry about little inconsistencies like that. Or about the fact that even hell wouldn’t have had that carpet.
“Right. Here,” he repeated, slamming the fern down. And then he was gone again.
I pushed fronds out of my face, since he’d set the thing directly in front of me, and checked out the party/convention/random assembly of beautiful people that was happening. I didn’t know if Casanova was trying to attract a more well-heeled group by parading his off-duty employees in Gucci, or if there was something else going on. And, after a minute, I decided I didn’t care.
I leaned my head back against the stalactite and closed my eyes. The room felt like it was spinning faster this way, but oddly, it made my stomach feel better. Which, of course, just meant that my brain woke up.
