Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,21

up moseying around the foyer. “He should go back where he came from. The boy is obviously unstable.”

“He’s new,” I told her, zeroing in on the door via the sliver of space between two of the biggest boxes. I remembered the troll, or whatever he’d been, on the mall. I could have really used his floating setup right now.

But I didn’t have it, so I made do. And kicked the door with my shoe. And almost fell over in the process, because that put me off balance, and I’d never counted gracefulness as one of my attributes.

“Careful,” Saffy said, steadying me. With a hand.

How the hell did she have one free?

I couldn’t tell because I couldn’t see. And then the vamp was back, even though elevators don’t work nearly that fast, but then, he hadn’t taken one. He’d taken the stairs.

And even for a vamp, running up twenty-something flights will piss you off.

“All right, listen up!” he began shrilly.

Then he was gone again.

“Hilde!” I said.

“What?” she demanded, from the other side of the foyer.

“First of all, don’t do that, and second of all, the door’s over here.”

“Where?” she asked, and then she cursed. Probably because she’d just run into a potted plant. “All right, I’ve had enough!” she said.

And the next thing I knew, my tower of packages was levitating into the air to join the multitude that were already floating overhead, studding the high, domed ceiling like brightly colored birds let loose from their cages.

Exactly like, I thought, looking up. The ceiling was white with gold ribs every four feet or so, giving it a cage-like look, and the packages had been wrapped in a rainbow of different-colored papers. It was all very pretty.

It was also well above my reach.

“Okay,” I said, admiring the view. “But how do we get them down?”

“She has a point,” Saffy said. “Some of that’s breakable. We can’t just drop the spell, or—”

The vamp was back.

And this time, he came in shooting.

“Son of a bitch!” I heard someone say, I think it was Saffy. I wasn’t sure, because the door behind me burst open at almost the same moment, and a bunch of people ran out. And one of them tackled me to the floor.

Make that several of them, I thought, as someone else opened fire.

Fortunately, it didn’t last long.

“That’s enough!” a familiar voice bellowed, loud enough to threaten my ear drums. The gunfire abruptly stopped. I looked up, trying to see past whoever was on top of me, but it was at least two and possibly three guys, so all I saw was expensive couture.

Even worse, I couldn’t breathe.

I decided to do a Hilde and say to hell with it, and shifted out from under the little mountain of vamps, who hit the floor with an oof. I looked up from my own bit of floor, winded and pissed off and seriously worried that one of those bullets had connected with somebody. But all I saw was legs.

I hauled myself back to my feet in time to see Saffy—with a wand out and glaring—and Hilde having a standoff with Marco, my lead bodyguard. Marco is six-foot-five in his stocking feet, and probably six-foot-six or so in the expensive Italian loafers he favors. Which is why the gun-happy vamp’s toes weren’t even touching the floor. Marco had him in one hand and was shaking him like a maraca, even while he informed Saffy that this was his vamp and—

“Your idiot, you mean!” Hilde was red-faced and pissed, probably because the shield she’d erected in front of her was riddled with bullets.

She dropped it a second later and they rattled to the floor, rolling around underfoot and threatening to trip people up. Meanwhile, the overflow from her magic, which had been a little sloppy due to speed, was sending sparks pinging off the marble, shocking some of the vamps who had poured into the room and were standing too close to the sides. A few of them jumped like they’d been bit, while others stared upward at the slowly rotating packages, some of which now had holes in them.

“What . . . the hell . . . just happened?” I wheezed, trying to get my breath back.

“Somebody earned himself a one-way ticket back home,” Roy snapped. He was a red-haired charmer—a broad-shouldered Southern vamp who liked checkered suits and inventing new cocktails to get us all plastered on a regular basis. Although he wasn’t looking so charming at the moment.

Maybe because the idiot in question