Free Reap the Wind by Karen Chance Page B

tender chunks of chicken and large, fluffy rounds of naan and—
    And I almost forgot what we’d been talking about.
    Until I looked up. And encountered a credible imitation of my former governess’s patented Look of Disapproval. It was so good, I felt a surge of the old, familiar guilt, despite the fact that I hadn’t done anything.
    Except picnic on the bed, which would have been enough for a Stern Talking-To, at the very least.
    “Who is giving you The Look?” I asked, confused.
    “Who do you think?”
    “I have no idea.” And I didn’t. Because living in a penthouse full of guys, even vampire guys, was sort of like hanging out at a frat house.
    The kitchen never had food but always had beer. The living room was filled with full ashtrays, cast-off suit coats that nobody had bothered to hang up, and the latest sports event on the TV. But the salon was where people mostly lived because it had the pool table and the newly installed poker table and the dartboard that someone had made out of a picture of Casanova’s face.
    He was the casino manager, and yes, usually looked pretty constipated, at least when he was around me. But he didn’t have The Look. As far as I knew, nobody did.
    “Rhea,” Fred said, glancing over his shoulder, like he was afraid he might find her standing there.
    “Rhea?”
    “Yes, Rhea. Your acolyte. Or whatever she is.” Fred looked like he might have some suggestions for other titles.
    I frowned.
    “What’s wrong with her?”
    “That’s what I’d like to know,” Fred said, and started on a local specialty, the Rock and Roll roll. It had spicy barbecued eel and creamy avocado and crunchy cucumber, and toasted sesame seeds sprinkled all over the top of—
    “Stop it,” he told me.
    “Stop what?’
    “Stop lusting after my roll. And start figuring out what to do about your court.”
    “Didn’t they eat?” I asked, feeling guilty again. I hadn’t thought—but then, I wasn’t used to having to feed anybody but me. Which was hard enough around here.
    “Oh, they ate,” he said heavily. “I told them they could call up for pizza or whatever from room service, but no. Rhea wasn’t having it.”
    “Then what did they have?” I asked. Because I was pretty sure that the only food in the fridge was a few stale beer nuts and some ketchup.
    And I wasn’t sure about the ketchup.
    “Stuffed chicken. Roasted potatoes.
Broccoli
.” Fred made a face.
    “Where did they get that?” Vegas was not known for home cooking. You could get everything from a twenty-four-ounce prime rib topped with goat cheese and lobster, to a ninety-nine-cent shrimp cocktail that might or might not give you Mobster’s Revenge. But stuffed chicken?
    Fred mumbled something around a mouthful of eel.
    “What?”
    He swallowed. “I said, she got it at the grocery store.”
    “What grocery store?”
    “The one she made me go out to. In the middle of the day.” He shuddered. “She decided that, since we have a double oven, she’d cook.”
    “We have a double oven?”
    “I know, right?” He munched cucumber. “Who knew?”
    “So she sent you to the grocery store,” I said slowly, because I was trying to imagine a girl who’d just narrowly escaped death deciding that what she really needed right then was a stuffed chicken.
    And because of something else.
    Rhea wasn’t just some teenager. She was a member of the Pythian Court, and one who’d been handling the weirdness a lot longer than I had. If there was a way for me to go back fifteen centuries without turning inside out, she ought to know.
    Well, maybe. I’d gotten the idea that she’d mostly worked in the nursery, taking care of the little kids we seemed to have a bunch of for some reason, instead of doing crazy time leaps. In fact, I seemed to remember her saying that she wasn’t really an acolyte at all, just an initiate, although I wasn’t totally clear on the difference.
    But still, she might know something.
    “—lettuce. Spinach.
Bean