"Oookay." Randy pried Françoise, who had the backseat in a death grip, off the upholstery. I'd forgotten to ask if she'd actually been in a car before, and judging by the wide eyes and dead white complexion, I was betting the answer was no.

"I nevair want to do zat again."

"I'm not that bad a driver," Randy said, offended.

"Yes, you are," she said fervently.

"Well the wheels have stopped rolling, sweet thing," he told her, getting an arm around her waist. He deposited her on the concrete. "You know, I've done some of my best work in backseats." This was accompanied by a huge how-could-anyone-not-think-I'm-cute? grin. Which is probably the only thing that saved him.

I hauled the extensive shopping list out of my purse and waved it at them before Randy said anything else. "Can we get going? Because we don't have all day."

Eight kids plus a baby, I had discovered, need a lot of things, especially when their entire existing wardrobe was literally the clothes on their backs. And except for a few T-shirts for the tourists, Augustine's establishment didn't specialize in children's anything. He preferred his customers to be adult and very well-heeled. Hence the list.

An hour later, I was leaning against a shelf stacked with Fruit of the Loom T-shirts while Françoise terrorized various underpaid store employees. She had commandeered no fewer than four, whom she had racing back and forth, trying to find all the needed sizes. She looked a little out of place, as she was wearing one of Augustine's sophisticated creations: a long, basic black dress with a chic jacket covered in a newspaper print. I hoped no one noticed that all the headlines were today's.

Randy was standing in front of a mirrored column, admiring the flex of his bicep. "What do you think?" The muscle shirt he'd poured himself into was bright blue and perfectly matched his eyes. He knew damn well what I thought, what half the women in the store did. Either that, or we just happened to go shopping the same day every young mother in the state needed to restock her son's closet.

"I thought you didn't shop at places like this."

"A T-shirt's a T-shirt." He shrugged, causing a ripple of muscle that prompted a squeak from a nearby customer. "So, listen. You got a lot of kids."

"Yeah. So?"

For a minute, he just stood there, looking at me awkwardly, like a big kid himself. A big kid with a lot of muscles and a see-through mesh tee. "So you're putting them up in the casino, right? In a couple free rooms?"

"How do you know that?" The kitchen staff hadn't had space in the minuscule quarters that Casanova had allotted them for another nine people, so I'd had to get creative. It helped that I worked the front desk occasionally.

"Everybody knows. The staff have been working to keep the boss from finding out. But he does check the books sometimes, you know?"

"What's your point, Randy?"

"I just wanted to say that, if you need, well, any money or anything…" He trailed off, while I looked at him incredulously. I had no idea what his incubus was teaching him. Apparently, they hadn't gotten to the part where women were supposed to pay him.

"We'll be fine." If Casanova gave me any grief about the rooms, I'd have Billy rig every damn roulette game in the house. Come to think of it, he was pretty good with craps, too.

"You sure? 'Cause, I mean, I kind of get paid a lot. It wouldn't be, like, hurting me any, you know?"

Françoise was giving him the kind of look I expected to see incubi giving her. She saw me notice and gave a shrug that could have meant anything from "I was just looking" to "I haven't had sex in four hundred years, so sue me." I decided I didn't want to know.

"Thanks. I'll be in Shoes," I said, snagging the lightest of the remaining carts.

Sixteen feet—I wasn't counting the baby because so far she hadn't proven able to keep up even with socks—need a lot of shoes. I stood up from fishing around on the bottom row, trying to find a pair of Converse look-alikes in Jesse's size, and hit my head on somebody's elbow. Somebody who looked like he'd escaped from Caesars Palace and forgotten to take off the costume.

"Why are you here?" The voice echoed loudly in the large space.

I looked around frantically, but nobody seemed to be paying the ten-foot golden god in the shoe department any attention. "I could ask you the same question!" I whispered.

"I came to remind you that time grows short. Your vampire will die if the spell is not lifted."

"I'm aware of that!" I snapped.

"Then I ask again, why are you here? Have you made any progress?"

"Yes, sort of. I mean, I know where the Codex is."

"Then why have you not retrieved it?"

"It isn't that easy! And why do you care? What is Mircea to you?"

"Nothing. But your performance has not been as…focused…as I had hoped. This is an important test of your abilities, Herophile. And thus far you have let yourself be distracted by unnecessary tasks. These children are not your mission. The Codex is."

"Uh-huh." For someone who didn't care about the Codex, he sure brought it up a lot. "Well, maybe I could do a better job if I had some help! How about sticking around for a while? And while you're here we can get in a few of those lessons I keep hearing about."

"I cannot enter this realm, Herophile. This body is a projection; only you can see it. And I cannot maintain it for long."

"Then how about telling me a little more about the Codex?" Why, for example, Pritkin was willing to kill to keep it safe.

"You know all you need. Find it and complete your mission. And do it soon. There are those who would oppose you."

"I kind of noticed."

"What has happened?" he asked sharply.

"You're a god. Don't you know?"

His eyes narrowed dangerously. "Do not forget yourself, Herophile."

"My name is Cassandra."

"A poor name for the Pythia. Your namesake opposed my will and lived to regret it. Do not make the same mistake."

It was more than a little surreal, even for me, to be discussing a myth with a legend in the middle of the Wal-Mart shoe department. Especially with a clerk giving me the hairy eyeball from the next aisle over. He didn't say anything, though. Maybe a lot of his customers talked to the shoes before buying them.

"Maybe so, but it's still my name and I'm doing the best I can. Threats aren't going to speed up the process."

"Find something that will," he told me flatly, and vanished.

I sighed and fought the urge to bang my head against the metal rack and just not stop. The clerk was peering at me around the size twelves with an expression that said he was thinking about calling for security. I decided not to risk it.

I held up the red Converse wannabes. "You have these in a nine?"

Chapter 14

I slipped inside Pritkin's room the next morning, on a mission to find that rune I'd promised Radella, and stopped dead. I'd expected it to be a quick search; for some reason, I'd assumed he would keep his belongings in military precision. Only this wasn't it.

The bed was still unmade from whenever he'd slept in it last, and clothes were strewn on the floor like a hurricane had just blown through. And he'd been right—it did, indeed, have an odor. But I was less inclined to blame its onetime residents for that than the vile-smelling potions that lined a shelf on one wall.

The rickety-looking contraption was directly above the bed, something that would have worried me, since most of the substances he carried around were lethal. Still, I supposed he hadn't had a lot of choice. The opposite wall was taken up with a closet, the one facing into the club by a door and the one looking out over one side of the casino by a huge stained-glass window.