Pale Demon (The Hollows #9)(103)
Author: Kim Harrison

My eyebrows rose, and I met his gaze glancing to me as he helped her with her chair.

"You seem unusually cognizant tonight," he muttered, taking the purse that appeared as she handed it to him.

Newt, now wearing a blond pageboy cut, sniffed. "It’s amazing what one remembers given time." Hand long and thin, she gestured for Brooke to bring her a drink, then focused on me, black eyes wide and wondering. "Did you bring me my ruler, Rachel?"

My mouth opened, then shut. "Um, I forgot," I said. "Sorry."

"Newt, love." Al took her hand and gave it a kiss. "Let’s not talk business. Not tonight."

Newt pulled her hand from him with a little tug, looking disgusted. "No, let’s talk of the future. Did I not say I could see the future? I’d like to hear of your day, Rachel Mariana Morgan."

My gaze fell, and I remained silent. She saw the future, all right. But seeing that I had a pattern of being screwed over, it wasn’t hard to predict.

Al cleared his throat as if bothered that I was unhappy, and Newt tried again.

"Rachel," she said, leaning back in her chair with her glass, "do you enjoy looking like a rung-climbing peon who has to sacrifice the fruits of her ovaries to have status in a man’s world?"

"No," I muttered.

"Then go put on something new in the jukebox," she said, handing me a coin. "My treat. Something exotic and old, when women were recognized for the goddesses they are."

Al’s eyes widened in wonder as I took the tarnished gold coin she slid across the table to me. It felt slimy, almost, and I glanced to Al for guidance. Was I being gotten rid of?

"Go," he encouraged, indicating what looked like an accurate representation of a jukebox, complete with colored bubbles and 45s. It didn’t fit the decor, but it still looked as if it belonged there in the corner.

I stood, not appreciating that Newt’s smile was probably because I’d looked to Al for direction. My shoes hurt me, and I kicked them off, leaving them under my chair as I padded across the carpet, my head up and not looking at the demons watching me as I gave them a wide birth.

"She’s sweet," I heard Newt say as I left. "Look, she’s afraid."

"No, she isn’t," Al grumbled. "That’s the problem."

"Mmmm. If she ever has sex with you, I’ll kill you."

"You don’t think I know that?" he muttered.

"So give her to me now and be done with it. You can’t handle her," Newt coaxed.

"Yes, we all saw how well you did with Ku’Sox."

And then I was out of easy hearing range, with a whole lot more to think about.

I came to a halt before the jukebox, fingering the greasy coin in speculation. I’d never held a chunk of demon smut given real form before. And I was going to buy a song with it?

Everyone in the place was watching me. I could feel them taking in my knee-length skirt and the blah nylons, my hair in that ugly bun, and that I was barefoot thanks to Al putting me in too-small shoes-I think they might have fit Ceri. My back to them all, I forced my shoulders down and looked over the titles. None of them was remotely familiar. Not a single Barry Manilow or Rob Zombie. The titles seemed to be places and dates, only a smattering in English.

"Cuneiform?" I mused aloud, never having actually seen it in use, but that’s what that weird writing among the French, German, and Latin had to be. Immediately I dropped the coin in, hearing it clunk through the machine before I pushed the proper button.

Behind me, the lights dimmed. A wave of conversation rose along with masculine groans from the bar as the modern, loud thumping shifted to an ancient set of drums and flutes. I wrinkled my nose, thinking someone’s dinner smelled like a barn, and when I turned, I could do nothing but stare. Wow.

"Most familiars can’t handle the shifts." Now I understood that Al hadn’t been talking about lengthy hours but shifts of reality. The restaurant had changed. There were reed mats on the dirt floor, and the tables were made of rough wood and were lit by candles and tarnished metal lamps filled with flaming oil and hanging from an overhead shade. We were outside, and a breeze shifted a strand of hair that had escaped my bun. It was night, and beyond the glow of a central cooking hearth, more stars than I’d ever seen stretched in a sparkling wash, brilliant all the way to the horizon because there were no city lights to dim their glow. The wind carrying the scent of salt to me was warm. It was incredibly realistic, reminding me of Dali’s seaside office on casual Friday. The grit of sand was beneath my feet and the reed mats, and the muggy air smelling of horse and wet wool was hot.

One by one, the clientele sitting at the rough-hewn benches was changing, flashes of ever-after cascading over them to leave the much skimpier attire of homespun robes and sandals. Dressed in a business suit, I was totally out of place.

"Oh for the two worlds colliding!" Dali shouted as he burst from a maroon tent that had once been the kitchen, his new black robes flapping. "Who the hell put in Mesopotamia? You know how hard it is to get lamb to taste good?" he finished, sputtering to a halt when he saw me standing before the jukebox in my nylons and machine-made fabric.

Embarrassed, I looked at Al, seeing that he’d changed into sandals, his chest and much of his legs bare but for a draping gold cloth. Regal and confident, Newt reclined beside him on a cushion with a silver goblet that she distantly toasted me with. Her hair was in beaded dreadlocks, and she’d ringed her eyes with a dark pigment.

"Al!" Dali said, red faced. "She fits in, or you go."

Al grinned and blew me a kiss. I shivered as the wind brushed me with his intent, and my uptight gray suit melted into a robe of rich golds, purples, and reds. Little green rocks had been sewn into the fabric, and I felt the new weight of it settle comfortably on my shoulders.

"Nice," I said, my hand jerking up to keep my headdress on when I leaned over to see my new sandals. Yuck, my hair was oiled flat to my head. That was going to take forever to wash out. But I fit in now, and grimacing, Dali turned and vanished back into the cooking tent, his voice raised as he yelled at the staff.

Okay, I’m a Mesopotamian princess. Pulse faster, I headed back to the table amid whistles and a few complaints from where the bar had been. Everyone there was now sitting on the sand around a huge fire pit in the open air. Instead of a kitchen, waitstaff brought wooden bowls and platters from a second cooking fire, and apparently lamb wasn’t a favorite.

"Interesting choice," Al said dryly as I wove my way past the benches and cushions the upper echelon were seated on and eased onto a smooth, tooled chunk of wood.