The workroom was so crowded with racks of garments and bolts of fabric that I couldn't even see Augustine, but I heard someone muttering in a far corner. It turned out to be the great man himself, wrestling with a piece of golden fur that appeared to be trying to eat him. He threw it off and slapped a chair down on it, then started digging in the pile of papers on a nearby desk and muttering more.
I approached with caution, because the fabric was bucking and making a valiant attempt to throw off the chair. "Uh, hello?"
"It's no use complaining," he told me quickly. "There was no show, so nobody gets paid. Including me."
"I'm not here about that."
The fur gave a heave and almost dumped him onto the floor. He pretended not to notice, but he surreptitiously slid the edge of the heavy desk over to join the chair. "Then I'm at your disposal."
"I'm thinking about a dress. Something French."
"You can't mean that complete hack Edouard," he said, sounding appalled. "Darling, please. I can design you something better with my eyes closed. Hell, I could design you something better dead!"
"I don't mean I want a French designer," I tried to explain. "Just something that looks—"
"Forget Paris. Paris is done," he told me airily. "Now, at what occasion are you planning to showcase my work?"
"I need an outfit that would fit into the late eighteenth century."
"Oh, a costume party. I don't do costumes." Considering that Augustine's personal style was a cross between Galliano and Liberace, I thought that was debatable. At the moment he was wearing a saffron yellow tunic with puffy sleeves over a pair of purple harem pants. A gold sash tied around his waist pirate style held not a saber but a pair of scissors, a measuring tape and a tomato-shaped pincushion.
"I don't think you understand," I told him patiently. "It's kind of important."
"Ah, you want to dress to impress," Augustine said archly. "Well, in that case, you've come to the right place." He pulled me over to a dressmaker's form in one of the few open spaces in the room. With a mumbled word, it took on a very familiar, very detailed shape. I had a sudden urge to throw a towel over it. "Any special orders I need to know about?" he demanded. "Some of those can affect the design."
"No. I just—"
"Because I don't want you coming to me at the last minute saying you need a charm to make you dance better or hold your liquor or be a scintillating conversationalist and just forgot to mention it—"
"You can do that with a dress?"
"Darling, I can do anything with a dress. Anything legal, that is. So don't go asking for a love potion or some nonsense, because I'm not about to lose my license."
"What else can you do?" My mind was racing with the possibilities.
"What do you want?" A bolt of blank white fabric began draping itself around the form.
"Can you make me invisible?"
Augustine sighed and flipped the edge of my wig with a finger. "A bad outfit and worse hair can do that."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Then what about spell-proofing? Can you make it so if someone slings something nasty at me it bounces off?"
"Jealous rival?" he asked sympathetically.
"Something like that."
"How powerful is the little cat?"
"Does it matter?"
"Of course it does! I have to know how strong to make the counterspell," he said impatiently. "If it's something petty, like making you smell like a garbage truck—"
"No. I need to stop a major assault, like a dark mage could cast."
Augustine blinked at me owlishly. "Darling, what kind of party are you attending?"
"That's the problem. I don't know."
"Well, maybe you should think about skipping it. Who needs that kind of stress? Take the night off, do your nails."
"It's sort of mandatory."
"Hmm. This isn't really my line," he said doubtfully. "The war mages use charmed capes sometimes, to reinforce their shields, but I don't think fashion is their main priority."
Françoise poked her head in. She appeared to be wearing a small animal over the top half of her body, one with a lot of brown quills extending outward in all directions. "I 'ave found somezeeng," she told me.
Augustine stiffened. "Where did you get that? It's a prototype."
"What is it?" I asked, eyeing it warily.
"A jacket, of course," he told me. "Porcupine. Wonderful for getting rid of unwanted attention. Unfortunately, that one tends to launch quills without warning at anyone who upsets the wearer, so I don't think—"
"I'll take eet." Françoise piled an armload of other items onto the table. "And zese."
"What is all this?" I asked. Behind her were a couple of walking mountains of clothes, which I assumed to be the shop assistants, although no heads were actually visible.
"Pour les enfants," Françoise said, holding up a tiny T-shirt with WORLD'S GREATEST KID written on it in what looked like crayon.
I frowned at it and Augustine snatched it out of her hand, looking aggrieved. "An image of the child wearing it will appear under the title," he told me loftily.
"There's a place at the mall that can do that."
"And it makes the wearer have a sudden, uncontrollable fondness for vegetables."
I sighed. "We'll take it." He snapped his fingers at his over-burdened assistants, who began running around, adding things up. "About my dress," I said, now that he was in a better mood. "I thought creative geniuses like you appreciated a challenge."
He patted my cheek, which was a bit much considering that he didn't look a lot older than me. "We do, love, we do. But there's also the little matter of payment. This isn't ready-to-wear we're talking about. And for what you're asking—"
"Send the bill to Lord Mircea," Françoise said, playing with a scarf that, oddly enough, was just lying there being scarflike.
I started slightly. "What? No!"
Her pretty forehead wrinkled slightly. "Pourquoi pas?"
"I don't…that isn't…it wouldn't be appropriate," I said, very aware of Augustine listening avidly.
"Mais, you are his petite amie, non?"
"Non! I mean no, no I'm not." The frown widened, then Françoise shrugged in a way that suggested she knew denial when she saw it. "Send the bill to Casanova," I told Augustine. If he complained, I'd tell him to take it out of my overdue paycheck.
"Casanova," Augustine repeated, with an evil glint in his eye. "You know he actually expects me to pay for the damage to the conference room? He presented me with a ridiculous bill just this morning."
"Then present him one right back. A big one." I eyed Françoise's pile of assorted oddities. "And tack those on."
Augustine's smile took on an almost Cheshire cat quality. "Cinderella, I do believe you're going to the ball."
That evening, after I finished another shift in Hell, Françoise and I slipped out of Dante's in a shiny black Jeep. While I waited for Alphonse and my backup to arrive, I had a few errands to do, and she had volunteered to help. Neither of us had a car, but I'd managed to find us a ride.
The tag on the front of the Jeep read 4U2DZYR. It belonged to Randy, one of the boys who worked in Casanova's version of a spa. He would have been a perfect California beach bum, complete with deep tan, sun-bleached hair and toothy white smile, except that his voice still had a Midwest twang. He was possessed by an incubus, of course, but so far he'd been on his best behavior.
"You're serious?" Randy asked me for the third time, as we pulled into the giant Wal-Mart parking lot. "You want to shop here?"