“You don’t care if they kill each other?” I demanded, as Enyo righted herself, looked around, and tossed the gutted slot machine straight at Alphonse.

Sal pulled me back a few yards, to where a small bench sat near the ornate glass doors leading to the promenade. She lit a cigarette, her numerous rings catching the light better than the cobweb-covered chandeliers above our heads. “They gotta establish boundaries,” she said, shrugging.

“This isn’t why I brought you here!”

“Honey, this was gonna happen sooner or later anyway. Better it be now, when they still need each other.”

Casanova took a flying leap, landed on Alphonse’s back, and started choking him with the plastic cord from a comp card. “They don’t look like they’re pulling any punches to me.”

“Relax. They can’t afford to kill each other with Mircea’s life on the line. It’s just a pissing contest—let ’em get it over with and then we’ll talk.”

Apparently, Casanova had grabbed Enyo’s comp card, and she wanted it back. Or at least I assume that was the reason she ripped him off Alphonse and threw him through the glass doors. Sal appropriated a tray of drinks from a server, who was scurrying to get out of the way, and regarded me narrowly, long red nails tapping slightly against her glass.

She’d gone all out dress-wise. Her silky white pants clung like they loved every inch of her, and her gold lamé top plunged here and was cropped there until it was really more of a concept than an actual shirt. Her honey blond hair was pulled back into a curly ponytail, and her makeup was flawless. She took in my rumpled T-shirt and jeans, which I’d thrown on while still bleary-eyed from sleep, and my rat’s nest hair. “You gotta step it up, girl. You’re with Lord Mircea,” she informed me, in tones of awe.

I decided that attempting to explain my actual relationship with Mircea would be a mistake, since I wasn’t even sure what it was. “So?”

“You represent the family. And this?” A dismissive gesture indicated my complete lack of sartorial elegance. “Is downright embarrassing.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You can’t go around looking like this,” Sal said clearly, as if she thought I might be a little slow. Her boyfriend, who’d gotten up some momentum swinging from a chandelier, dropped onto one of Casanova’s boys, who’d been beating the vamp whose name I didn’t know to a pulp.

“I wasn’t exactly expecting you tonight,” I said defensively. “Not to mention that I’m in disguise.”

“As what? A homeless person?”

I should have remembered: Mircea was in the minority among vamps for preferring understated attire. Most believed in the old adage that said, if you had it, flaunt it, and for all you were worth. Alphonse was an enthusiastic convert to that mind-set, so much so that he’d gotten into trouble more than once at court for being flashier than the boss. Tonight he was sporting one of the bespoke suits he had tailored in New York for three or four thousand bucks a pop and enough bling to make a rap star jealous. Maybe I should have at least brushed my hair, I thought belatedly.

Casanova staggered back in from the hall, grabbed a drink from the tray Sal had put on the end of the sofa, and belted it before sending the dish slicing through the air toward Alphonse’s neck. Alphonse ducked at the last minute and it would have hit Deino, except she caught it like a Frisbee and sent it right back. Sal plucked it out of the air and set her now empty glass on it before putting it back on the sofa cushion.

“You’re gonna need a look,” she said thoughtfully.

“What?”

“A persona.”

I blinked. It was disconcerting to hear words like “persona” come out of Sal’s mouth. I’d never known her very well at Tony’s—mostly, she’d been draped over Alphonse, dressed in something short, tight and revealing, doing a damn good impression of a dumb blonde. Actually, until that second, I’d thought she was a dumb blonde. “Take me, for instance. I’m an ex-saloon girl and a gun moll. You think anybody’s gonna take me seriously if I show up in Dior?”

“Maybe Gaultier,” I offered, before yanking my legs out of the way of a vampire, who slid across the carpet face-first before disappearing under the couch. When he didn’t immediately crawl back out again, I peered underneath, only to have a hand wrap around my throat.

Sal ground her shiny silver heel into the side of his arm and he abruptly let go. I got a close-up view of her shoe and realized that stiletto heels were, in her case, aptly named. The thing was made of metal—alloyed steel by the look of it—and was sharp as a knife.

“You have to play to your strengths,” she said, as I tried to rub my throat without being too obvious. “I’m a tough broad and everybody knows it, so I go with that. But in your case”—she gave me the once-over—“you ain’t never gonna carry off tough.”

“I can be tough,” I said, stung.

“Right.” Sal cracked her gum. “With those little stick arms. I think we’re gonna go with elegant, so you’ll match Mircea.”

“But Mircea doesn’t—”

“And don’t you think that makes him stand out? He’s saying, ‘I’m so strong, I don’t need to play dress-up for you assholes.’ But even though he don’t wear some weird medieval shit like some, he always looks good.”

“I have more important things to worry about than—”

“There’s nothing more important than your image,” Sal told me flatly. “You gotta be impressive, or you’re gonna be fighting all the time. If you don’t look important, everybody’s gonna assume you’re a pushover. Then we have to defend you for the boss’s sake and a lot of people end up dead. Just ’cause you couldn’t be bothered to put on a little makeup.”

My time at court had been about blending in, fading into the background, trying to avoid attention that usually didn’t end well. Nothing in my past experience had taught me how to make an impression. “I don’t usually dress up,” I said lamely.

Sal gripped my arm, those bloodred talons denting but not quite piercing the skin. “Oh, we’ll take care of that.” And the calculating look on her face was the scariest thing I’d seen all night.

Chapter 16

“I can’t breathe,” I complained.

Sal shot me a look in the full-length mirror in front of us. “You don’t need to breathe. You need to look good,” she said, ruthlessly lacing up the back of my bodice. We were in the penthouse suite that she’d appropriated along with a bottle of champagne, half a dozen bellboys and the dress I’d ordered from Augustine. He had not been pleased to be woken up in the middle of the night or to have his workroom invaded, and had loudly declared that feats of genius take time and he wasn’t finished yet, thank you. Then Sal bought two outfits outright and put in an order for an even dozen more and he shut up so fast his mouth made a popping sound.

“No, you don’t need to breathe. I’m pretty sure it’s a necessity for me.”

“Did you always whine this much?”

“I don’t think asking to be allowed to breathe constitutes—”

“Because I don’t remember it.” Sal paused to admire the very rude slogan that had just written itself across her chest. One of the outfits she’d gotten from Augustine was a black cat suit that displayed neon-colored graffiti on itself at random moments. Sal had discovered that she could influence the choice of words if she thought very hard, and she was having fun corrupting her outfit.

“Of course, I don’t remember much about you at all,” she continued. “You never had two words to say to anybody, except those imaginary friends of yours—”

“They were ghosts!”

“—always slinking around in the shadows, looking spooked if anyone so much as noticed you—”

“I wonder why?”

“—which as far as I can tell hasn’t changed.”

I sucked in a breath, planning to teach her suit a new word, except that she cinched in the waist at that moment and all the air was forced out of my lungs. “Keeping your head down is the very worst thing you can do! It makes you look vulnerable.”

“Which is fair enough since I am, in fact—”

“You gonna hide all your life? You gotta show everybody that they need to be afraid of you, not the other way ’round. That thing you did with the Consul, that was good. It made ’em pull back a little, made ’em think. You haven’t had any more problems with the Circle lately, right?”

“Other than the huge bounty they put on my head?”

“Huh. Maybe we need to make the point a little more obvious.”

“Any more obvious and I’ll be dead.” Sal turned to pick up her champagne and a very rude phrase flashed across her backside. I scowled at it, but I wasn’t going to lower myself to fight with a piece of fabric. “I haven’t had any problems because they don’t know where I am.”

Sal paused to tip the last of the exhausted-looking bellhops. He’d just dumped a trunk big enough to conceal a body in the middle of the living room floor. And considering who it belonged to, it just might. “Honey, everyone knows where you are!” she said, as soon as he’d left. “I mean, come on. What do you think we’re doin’ out here?”

“Planning to beat up Casanova?”

“Other than that.”

“I don’t know. Rafe called you—”

“And we usually jump when he snaps his fingers,” Sal said, rolling her eyes. “Alphonse’s come to suck up to the new boss. And since he ain’t around, you’ll do.”

“Uh-huh.” Alphonse sucking up to me was about as likely as the earth suddenly deciding to change direction, just for a switch.

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Sal looked genuinely puzzled. “There’s a war on. Everybody’s choosing sides. The smart ones are aligning themselves where the strength is. Like with Mircea. Like with you.”