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“I’ll do that,” I said, staring at my empty shower.
After all, tomorrow was going to be hell.
Chapter Fourteen
Hell, it turned out, looked a lot like Vegas.
Not the neon, glitz-and-twinkly-kind. More the arid-sand-littered-with-desperate-people kind, but still. There was a vague sort of familiarity to it. I wondered why a certain green-eyed demon had never mentioned it.
Of course, he hadn’t mentioned much, I thought angrily, just as the guy at my side went sprawling.
There was nothing to have caused it that I could see, except for his own dusty pair of Pradas, but he hit hard nonetheless. I stopped abruptly and went into a crouch, afraid we’d just tripped some ward or other his senses had missed. But I guess not. Because a second later, he flipped over, sand clinging to one side of an elegant profile, and stared at the pale blue sphere I’d decided to call the sky. And cursed inventively.
I took a swig from the too-warm water in my canteen and waited it out. “Do you want to ride the camel thing?” I asked when the tirade finally tapered off.
The only answer was another spate of cursing.
“Guess not,” I said, and passed the canteen to the third member of our trio, who finished it off in one hearty swallow.
“Did you just drink all the water?” Casanova demanded, struggling to sit up. Only to have the beast’s ratty tail smack him in the face.
I’d have had some smart-aleck response to that. Something about Casanova being a vampire and not really needing water. Or about the likelihood of his spilling it, considering his current lack of grace. Or about the fact that we’d gone to a lot of trouble to find someone willing to sell us one of the camel things just so he could ride instead of staggering through the dust like a drunken frat boy.
But Caleb just looked down at him impassively. He did impassive well, along with big, black, bald, and intimidating. In fact, I hadn’t seen anything Caleb didn’t do well, except for putting up with Casanova’s histrionics. I guess war mages were made of sterner stuff. At least, war mages willing to go into hell to rescue a buddy were. But even Caleb’s patience was starting to wear thin.
As a dusty boot to Casanova’s couture-clad posterior made plain. “Get up.”
Brown eyes that were currently neither rich, nor mellow, nor enticing glared up at him from under a fall of silky dark hair. “If you’d release this infernal spell, I wouldn’t be on the ground to begin with!”
“A hobble spell doesn’t keep you from walking,” Caleb said, crossing his arms.
“No, it keeps me from walking properly. Or running, which I might damned well need to do!”
“It wouldn’t have been necessary if you’d volunteered.”
“Oh, of course!” Casanova said, fighting with the voluminous robes that we’d bought off a fellow traveler to cover up his Armani. “Of course this is my fault! Of course it is. I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t volunteer to walk into hell!”
Caleb just continued to look at him. As one of Pritkin’s oldest friends in the Corps, and the only other person besides Casanova who knew who he really was, he’d been a natural addition to the rescue posse. Casanova had been less so—a lot less—but we needed him. Or, more precisely, we needed the camouflage his body provided to our guide.
Said guide was looking at him in mild reproach at the moment. “I’ve told you—you aren’t in any danger, Carlos,” Rian said, using his birth name. I’d gotten the impression that she found his pretensions a bit trying. “A host is not responsible for the actions of his demon. If we are caught, I will tell them I forced you—”
“I was forced,” he said viciously. “No one in his right mind would be here otherwise!”
Rian didn’t comment. She did that a lot. It was probably why she and Casanova had managed to maintain their relationship for so long. Of course, the fact that she chose to manifest as a beautiful black-haired, vaguely Persian-looking woman, with huge dark eyes, honey-colored skin, and ruby red lips probably hadn’t hurt.
And unlike her host, Rian had volunteered to help out. She’d known Pritkin a long time, from his days as a young man at his father’s court, and she’d always been sympathetic to his situation. Which was lucky, since getting into said court was turning out to be more complicated than I’d thought.
Casanova, on the other hand, clearly felt that he was better suited for lounging around someone’s boudoir than for slogging through hell. Not that he was slogging particularly well.
But he did finally drag his six feet of outraged litheness off the sand.
“How much farther?” he demanded.
Rian glanced at the sky. “Don’t worry, I’ve timed it perfectly. We’ll reach the city by nightfall. I’ll need to merge with you at least an hour before that, or risk being detected.”
“Yes, and we wouldn’t want that,” Casanova muttered.
“No, you wouldn’t,” she said seriously. “You’re in no danger, Carlos. But if I am discovered, the master may well revoke my rights to any more time on earth. He feels it has been unfairly extended as it is.”
