"The girls?"

"Shit." I didn't know what to do about the girls.

Marco nodded in agreement. "They slept in the living room, in the lounge, in your bed, and in the spare room last night, and we still didn't have enough space. We were tripping over cots-"

"And then they needed baths," Fred said darkly. "And we didn't have enough of those, either. By the time they finally finished, the whole apartment was steamy. And they left their stuff everywhere-"

"They don't have stuff," I pointed out.

"-bobby pins and ChapStick tubes and those little things that hold ponytails-what're they called?"

"Ponytail holders?" I asked.

He frowned at me.

Marco didn't, but he leaned against the bedpost and crossed his massive arms. Which was code for I'm-not-leavinguntil-we-get-this-sorted, although I was damned if I knew what to do about it. Except the obvious, of course.

"This is a hotel, isn't it?" I asked peevishly. "Tell Casanova to find rooms for them."

"I tried, but nobody's seen him all day. And anyway, you know what he'll say."

Yes, I did.

If I hadn't known that Casanova was a vampire, I would have suspected Ferengi. He loved money like no one I'd ever seen, which meant he hated me because I didn't have any. But I assumed the Pythian Court was better off. It was a three-thousand-year-old institution that people regularly paid for a glimpse into the future, or at least, it had been once. I didn't know what it did for money now, but it had to have some, right? And either way, we were going to have to work something out, because this was not doable long-term.

"I'll talk to him," I promised.

"That should be fun," Marco said. But I guess it was good enough, because he left.

Fred didn't.

He pushed the pea thing over at me again. "Eat it. That way I can tell Rhea you had a vegetable."

"A deep-fried vegetable."

"The best kind."

I gave up and ate it. It was okay. Kind of bland.

"Well?" Fred asked curiously.

"I prefer my vegetables in salad form, preferably covered with Ranch dressing," I told him. "Or Caesar."

"Caesar's good," he agreed, bundling the remains of our feast into the damp bedspread and pulling it off like a bag. "By the way, when's that Pritkin guy getting back?"

"Why?"

"'Cause having another mage around might help with the girls. They, uh, they don't seem to like vamps too much."

"Soon," I said. Because it was soon or never.

"Good to know." Fred hoisted his bag like a greasy-faced Kris Kringle. Then he reached over and impulsively messed up my hair. "Get some sleep, Cassie."

Chapter Six.

Get some sleep. Sure. It was what I needed, but the aches and pains in my body and the burn of a wasabi-seared tongue said sleep wasn't in my immediate future. So I dragged myself off to get a bath instead.

And dear God, it was worse than I'd thought.

My clothes were stiff with brine, my skin was caked with salt and dust, and then I pulled a dead fish out of my bra. And freaked out and flung the thing into the trash, where it lay, staring back at me out of one fishy eye. I stared back, having one of those moments. You know the ones-where you suddenly get confronted by something so bizarre that makes you reexamine what you're doing with your life.

I'd had a dead fish in my bra.

I'd had a dead fish in my bra.

It was only one of the small silver ones that had hitchhiked back from Amsterdam, little more than a sardine, but still. Other people had lipstick-smeared tissues in their trash. Or empty nail polish bottles. Or napkins with cute guys' phone numbers scribbled on them.

What did I have?

A dead, possibly time-traveling fish.

I threw a tissue over the tiny corpse and got in the shower.

I bet Agnes had never brought back a fish-filled bra. I bet Agnes wouldn't even have been in Amsterdam in the first place, because she'd have grabbed Pritkin in London. I bet Agnes would have known what to say to Jonas.

Too bad I wasn't Agnes.

But, somehow, I was going to have to find a way to deal with him anyway. And to figure out what to do with the coven I'd somehow ended up with and didn't want. And how to handle a bunch of rogue acolytes, and a pissed-off demon lord, and to get Pritkin back- And I was. I was going to do all of it. But not right now.

Right now, I was going to wash my hair.

And I did, and it was glorious. Twenty minutes of soaping away salt and dirt and God-knew-what made me feel a lot better. And reek a lot less of whatever had been in those canals besides water. I even did the girlie stuff I never had time for anymore, the shaving and the plucking and the moisturizing, and felt almost human again by the time I got out and wrapped myself in a big white bath towel.

And swiped a hand across the bathroom mirror. And, despite everything, burst out laughing. Because guess who was scaly now?

Glamouries, the kind you bought out of a box anyway, had two parts: a base coat, which you spread over your face like lotion, and the control to tell it what to do. Rosier had removed the control when he wiped off the little patch, letting the real me shine through, because he knew a nemesis would get Pritkin's attention better than any femme fatale. But the base of the spell had remained, and was now flaking off in pieces like week-old sunburn.

Or like dried fish scales.

I shuddered a little and started peeling them off in strips, revealing the pale, freckled skin below. It was weirdly therapeutic. Or it would have been, if I'd been able to Zen out. But of course not. I decided that maybe my breakneck pace lately hadn't been such a bad thing. Too much free time and I started to think about all the stuff I didn't know how to deal with.

Like that dream earlier.

Because what the hell?

It was no big deal, I told my reflection. Just exhaustion mixed with the remnants of a powerful incubus' spell. That sort of thing was supposed to get a person hot and bothered, so the incubus could feed. Or in this case, so he could donate some energy to someone he needed to keep around a little longer.

Pritkin had wanted his damned map back, and if I ended up getting fried by an angry witch, that wasn't going to happen. But he couldn't fight her off and be sure of success, because he didn't know enough about modern magic. So he'd fed me some energy so I could do it for him. And he'd fed me a lot. It wasn't surprising that it had had some . . . lingering effects.

Like the perma-hard nips it appeared to have left me with.

I peered down the front of my towel, in case I was imagining it, but no. Things were definitely perky down there. Really perky. Uncomfortably perky.

"Stop it," I told them.

Nothing. Except two happy little nubs that shouldn't be there because it wasn't cold in here. Was exactly the opposite, in fact, after my marathon shower, but that didn't appear to matter to a body that was having incubus flashbacks.

And wasn't that just all I needed?

"Seriously, cut it out," I said, frowning.

And then frowned some more, when they listened to me about as much as anyone did. And, okay, this was starting to piss me off. Along with everything else I couldn't control, I had to include my own body now?

"Damn it!" I said, feeling ridiculous and not caring because there was no one around to see me anyway. "I mean it. Cut it out right-"

"Cassie?"

I jumped, because the voice came out of nowhere, and not from outside the door. It sounded like it was right on top of me, loud and strong and echoing in the small, tile-lined box. I whirled around, staring at the soggy bath mat. And the wet floor. And the walls running with condensation.

And then, slowly, down at my own chest.

"Cassie-"

"Auggghh!" I jumped back, because I could swear that the voice had come from me. And yes, for a second there I was getting Total Recall flashbacks, and that's not something you need when you have a life as freaky as mine.

"Cassie!"

Quaid, start the reactor, I thought hysterically, and grabbed my boobs.

"Cassie!"

"Auggghh! Auggghh! Augg-"

And then the door was kicked open by a horde of monsters.

Only, thank God, these were monsters I knew.

Things got a little crazy after that, with a dozen vamps flooding into the small space, guns drawn and faces grim. And then confused. And then looking at me like I'd lost my mind.

And maybe I had, because there was no obvious threat. Just me with my tits in my hands, my hair everywhere, and pieces of used glamourie spotting my body. I looked like a zombie stripper.

I swallowed.

"What?" Marco demanded.

I swallowed again. "I-thought I heard someone's voice."

"Someone's?"

"It . . . it sounded like-"

"There!" somebody shouted.

And then glass was shattering and bullets were firing-or maybe that should be the other way around, but who could tell while being knocked to the ground? And then, while reaching back up and grabbing the shooter's arm, trying to force it down, because the idiot was firing right through the mirror. And on the other side was- "Hold!" Marco bellowed, before I could.

Suddenly, there was silence.

My ears were ringing so badly, it actually sounded like the vamp was still firing. But although the gun was up, it was pointed at the floor, which appeared to be intact. As opposed to the wall which had held the mirror. And which now held a few shards and a lot of holes.

A lot of holes leading to the hall.

A hall that led to- "The girls," I breathed. And then, through the echoing in my ears, I heard cries of alarm coming from the living room.

I shoved a bunch of vamps aside and ran through the bedroom to the hall. Only to stop short at the sight of a dozen spears of light crisscrossing the darkness, where the brightness of the bathroom was leaking through the bullet holes. And highlighting floating dust motes and ruined wallpaper and a bunch of similar wounds on the other side of the hall-which also happened to form one wall of the living room.

And while no expense had been spared on the decor around here, the same couldn't be said for the drywall. I hiked up my towel and ran across a minefield of plaster and glass, hoping that the bar on the living room side had been enough to stop what the wall hadn't. And ran into Rhea, coming the other way. She looked as grim as I'd ever seen her, as grim as the night she'd dragged a bunch of little girls out of a house full of homicidal dark mages, while three witches and a clueless Pythia tried to hold off Armageddon.

And then she saw me.

And I don't think I've ever seen more relief on a human face. For a second, I honestly thought she was going to faint. So I grabbed her on my way past. And then we were through, into the lounge and then the living room, where- Where I sagged against the messed-up wall, feeling kind of dizzy myself, because they were okay.

They were okay.

But only by sheer luck.

I took in the sight of a couple bullet-riddled paintings, a smashed clock, and more wallpaper that was going to need replacing-again. And that was on the far wall of the room by the stairs, which now had a new pattern of lead slugs imbedded in it. Most of them were chest high on me, meaning that they'd missed the girls only because it was night and everybody had been lying down on a forest of cots. And were now sitting up, staring at me and Rhea with wide eyes.

But they weren't screaming. They weren't saying anything, after those first, startled cries. Just like they hadn't last night, even with a house coming down around their ears. But they were pale, and some of the littlest had their faces buried in the nightgowns of the older girls. And I felt my skin prickle with something I didn't try to define as I whirled around, meeting Marco coming out of the hall.

"Are they . . ." He stopped short at the sight of them, looking relieved.

"Barely!" My voice was shaking. "Who the hell-"

"A half-wit. But he said he saw something-"

"Saw something where?"

"In the mirror."

Anywhere else that would sound really strange. But this was Dante's, which redefined normal on a regular basis. And while I hadn't seen anything, I had sure as hell heard.