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Yes, that was it. I hated him.
“Did you hear me?” Caleb barked, from across the room.
“What?” I snapped. And finally looked up. And blinked. Because a prison cell this wasn’t.
Instead of the cramped, potion-filled, messy room in Vegas, which even on a good day looked like it was inhabited by a cross between a hyperactive toddler and Rambo, this place was . . . beautiful. Graceful. Perfect.
It was huge, with couches and pillows and rugs scattered around, and a bed big enough for seven or eight people. And maybe designed for it, considering where we were. There were arched doorways on either end, leading off to even more space, but the big story was the balcony, which was easily as wide as the room and ran its entire length.
Pierced bronze lanterns swayed softly on silken chains, surrounded by geometrical halos. A breeze sent long white curtains wafting languorously into the room, so diaphanous the stars could be seen through them. Their edges caressed diamond-shaped stones on the floor, in every possible shade from honey to palest gold. I stared at them, trying to wrap my head around the idea of Pritkin living in a palace instead of the middle of Dante’s tacky clutter, of him wearing fine, embroidered clothes instead of old, scratched leather, of him inhabiting a space as beautiful as it was alien, with nothing, not a book, not a vial, not a picture, nothing, to remind him of the world he’d lost.
As if it hadn’t mattered. As if he hadn’t even missed—
“Cassie!” Caleb said, more urgently this time. “Look at this.”
I ran over to the balcony, which gave a pretty good view along the side of the cliff and over the sprawling city. But the twinkling lights didn’t hold my attention nearly as well as what was coming down from above. So that’s what’s up there, I thought, watching a bunch of dark figures literally running down buildings and spars of rock above the palace. They weren’t using the streets; they were leaping from roof to roof to outcropping as if making their own highway.
And every single one of them was headed straight for us.
“It looks like somebody called out the elite troops,” Caleb said grimly. “What we’re gonna do, we do now.”
“Get her into the study,” Pritkin said, coming up behind us. “Barricade yourselves inside. I can’t call off the guards, but I can call my father—”
“We’re not hiding; we’re leaving,” I said flatly.
“Not until I negotiate safe passage—”
“Your father isn’t going to grant safe passage for you!”
“That is irrelevant—”
“Bullshit.”
“—as you knew quite well before you started this insanity! Damn it, Cassie! I thought you had more sense—”
“Have you met her?” Casanova asked, sticking his bloody nose onto the balcony.
And I lost it. I grabbed the front of Pritkin’s gold-embroidered caftan—and since when did he wear a goddamned caftan?—and dragged him down to me. “I am going to say this one time. You are my servant. Sworn to my service until death. I never released you from that obligation. And if I want to come after you, I’ll damned well come after you!”
Something shifted behind his eyes, something dangerous. “And I’ll shut up and like it.”
“Right now I don’t give a damn whether you like it or not. But I’m not leaving without you, so you may as well—”
The door blew open, and Caleb and Pritkin both flung out a hand. And whoever it was blew right back out again. The door clicked softly shut.
Pritkin glared at me for another second, and then transferred the look to Caleb. “The rugs,” he snarled, and for a second, Caleb looked as confused as I was. And then—
“Aw, hell no!”
“You have a better idea?” Pritkin snapped, striding over and grabbing a big gold one that was anchoring a pleasant conversation area just inside the bedroom.
Caleb looked heavenward, but then apparently remembered where he was and gave up. And snatched up a red one from the balcony floor. And in the
process sent one of the guards tumbling over the railing and into the night, who had just jumped down on top of it from the floor above.
Caleb grabbed Pritkin’s arm as his buddy tossed what looked like an expensive rug after the demon. “My magic’s weak here,” he warned.
“That down in the souk was weak?” I asked, in disbelief.
