“You can’t have that stuff. Messes up your Pythia power. Remember?”
“That doesn’t feel like it’s on board right now, anyway. And I feel like death.”
“No, you don’t. Death doesn’t hurt,” he told me, and presented something on a small tray. “Well, you know. Not after the first bit.”
“What’s that?”
“What does it look like?”
“An Irish coffee,” I said, perking up. And damn. It was like he’d read my mind.
“Better?” he asked, flopping on my bed.
I licked whipped cream off my nose. “Getting there.”
And I was, with a warm tingle that didn’t so much soothe away the aches as make me not care about them anymore. Until I peered into my closet. And realized that, in this case, the age-old lament was totally true.
“What now?” Fred asked as I just stood there, drinking and scowling.
“I don’t have anything to wear.”
“You got a whole closet full of stuff.”
“Yeah. But not the right stuff.”
“What difference does it make what you wear?” he asked. “We’re talking about people who show up, uninvited, in the middle of the night and terrorize everybody. Why dress up for them?”
“They’re not uninvited tonight,” I pointed out. “And it’s not for them.”
“Who, then?”
“Me,” I said grimly, flipping through the hangers. Like the perfect outfit was just going to magically appear.
But no. Magic gets me into trouble; it rarely gets me out. And this obviously wasn’t one of those times.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’m tired, stressed, and my power is feeling wonky—”
“But you can’t afford to look like it.”
I turned, surprised, even though I shouldn’t have been. Fred wasn’t stupid. He was just . . . Fred.
Who was staring at something in my hand and scowling.
“What is that?” he asked, pointing at the hanger I was holding.
“A skirt,” I said defensively. It was cute, a multicolored tie-dyed creation I’d bought from a street vendor, which swirled around my ankles whenever I wore it. And caused the vamps to make pained faces.
Fred didn’t disappoint. “Put that back.”
“Well, I don’t have a lot of choices!” In fact, my closet had a serious identity crisis at the moment.
On the one side were my old clothes—T-shirts and jeans mostly, with a few pairs of shorts and sweats thrown in for variety. They were the kind of stuff I’d worn for years, and which had worked fine when my job was reading tarot cards at a nightclub or doing secretarial stuff at a travel agency where I never saw the public. They were comfortable and familiar and just the sight of them made me feel better.
Unfortunately, even I realized that they said Girl Who Dips Your Ice Cream at the Mall more than World’s Chief Clairvoyant.
Of course, the other side wasn’t any better. Not that it was bare; quite the contrary. There was hardly enough room to pack everything in, which explained why the rainbow spill of extravagant ball gowns had started to slum it with the 2-for-$10 tees.
It was doubly annoying, since I’d never worn any of them. Because who needs twenty ball gowns? No one, that’s who. Least of all me, since I didn’t get invited to those kinds of parties anyway.
Well, not usually.
And when I did, someone tried to kill me.
I put the skirt back and kept looking.
“Go with a power suit. They’re mostly wearing power suits,” Fred advised.
“I don’t have any power suits.”
“Why not?”
“Because my wardrobe keeps getting blown up!”
“Then wear something Pythia-like. What do they wear for official visit–type things?”
“Damned if I know.” I’d seen Agnes in little-girl white, a retro-fifties cocktail dress, and an eighties standard evening gown. But if there was an official Pythia costume, I must have missed it.
“I bet it’s something Grecian,” Fred said. “You know, all flowy stuff and sandals like you see on those old statues. When they wear clothes, I mean.”
I frowned. “I don’t know. Delphi was a long time ago. They’ve probably modernized.” Hell, even nuns didn’t wear medieval habits anymore.
“Yeah, but does the average witch know that?” he asked shrewdly. “Besides, you should probably play up the whole goddess thing. For the intimidation factor.”
“I’m not a goddess.”
“But you’re related to one.”
I stopped thumbing through outfits but didn’t turn around. This was the first time anybody had brought it up, at least in my hearing, since we all found out a week ago. I’d been too busy to really worry about it, but now I wondered. “Is that a problem?”
“You’d think it would be an asset, although they don’t seem to be real impressed so far. I mean, who breaks into a goddess’ penthouse, anyway?”
I finally turned around, and met gray eyes that looked exactly the way they always did—vague. And staring approximately at my left ear. Fred had had terrible vision before the change, which usually restored stuff like that. But his eyes must have been really bad, because he was still pretty myopic. He was the only vamp I knew who wore glasses, although he did it on the sly.
“You can put them on, you know,” I told him. “Nobody else is here.”
“Yeah, but they could come in. Besides, I can see. ’Specially if you keep coming out with stuff like that tie-dye. I mean, if it looks garish to me—”
“Fine. Just thought I’d offer.” I stood there a minute. “So, how are the guys taking it?”
“They don’t know. At least, I don’t think so. The ones back home could have mentioned it, but they mostly gossip about the master. And I don’t think anybody’s seen me with glasses since I got here.”
“No, I mean, about my, uh, lineage. How is everybody taking it?”
“Oh, that.” He shrugged. “I heard a couple say it made sense. That no human woman could possibly get in as much trouble as . . . uh, that is, they didn’t seem too bothered about it. If you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean.” And I was suddenly, profoundly grateful to be living with creatures hundreds of years old, who took things in stride. Vampires were hard to impress, but they were also hard to rattle. I felt my spine relax a little as one fear evaporated, at least.
“Of course, they’re a little worried that this makes you more high-profile, so people are gonna start trying to kill you more. But I told them, hey, remember last time? I mean, if a bunch of other demigods couldn’t take you out, who are they gonna send? It’d have to be something really weird, something really unusual, something really dangerous—”
“Like a trio of coven witches?”
Fred blinked. “Naw,” he finally said. “There’s only three of them. If they were gonna off you, they’d probably have sent more than that.”
“Thanks,” I said sourly. “That makes me feel a lot better.”
“I’m here to help. Now, what are you gonna wear?”
“I don’t know.” I started looking through the dresses again, but they were hopeless, more ball-gown-y than goddess-y. And while I wanted to dress to impress, I didn’t think looking like I was waiting on Prince Charming was the way to go.
“Those aren’t gonna work,” Fred agreed, slurping coffee. “But I bet Augustine has something.”
“Augustine sent these,” I pointed out, talking about the best—according to him, anyway—magical designer around. His boutique occupied the largest of the overpriced shops in the drag downstairs.
“Well, yeah. But he was just sending regular party stuff. I bet he has something that would work.”