"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.
Newt set her tarnished silver goblet down. "I rather like Mesopotamia," she said airily. "It's so easy to distinguish the haves from the have-nots." Smiling, she regally motioned for Brooke to bring us a plate of cheese and flat unleavened bread. "And the wannabes."
"No need to be catty, Newt," Al replied, then nodded at Brooke-who was now in rags. "See, I told you she was good. It takes an unusually skilled familiar to stockpile all the changes needed to run this place. On a busy day, there might be three shifts an hour."
"Three shifts?" I said, now understanding why you didn't bother to order from a menu. You got what you got. "So Brooke has to change herself? It doesn't just happen?"
Al grunted his answer, grabbing a handful of bread as Brooke set it down. "Newt, can you remember the last time you saw Mesopotamia?"
"I can't remember the last time I was here," Newt shot back, and I smiled nervously, not sure if she was kidding or not.
"So all those buttons are different restaurants?" I asked, looking at the jukebox, now totally out of place, like a British police call box on the deck of the Titanic.
Al bobbed his head and downed a glass of red wine. "They are memories," he said, looking at Newt. "Apart from the last one, we've not had a new one for thousands of years."
Newt's brow furrowed, and she flicked a grape at him. "I apologized formally for that," she muttered. "It was Ku'Sox's fault."
"Ku'Sox." I breathed in, wondering if Al had made this memory as I snatched up something that might be a cracker after a few thousand years of civilization. How Ku'Sox had anything to do with the lack of new memories at Dalliance was beyond me. Maybe he'd broken the machine. He certainly had broken my life. He and Trent. Stupid elf. You can summon me back any time now, Ivy.
"Stay away from Ku'Sox, Rachel," Al offered as he filled my empty glass from a flaccid wineskin.
My nose wrinkled. No way was I drinking anything that came out of a bag with fur still on it from its previous owner. "Not a problem," I said. "Besides, last I saw him, he was hiding out in reality, and what are the chances that he'd come back here?"
Newt sipped from her silver goblet, her fingers playing in the candle flame. "Everyone finds his way home eventually," she said, and as I watched, her eyes changed. Though she made no move as she reclined in idleness like a goddess on a throne, the light behind her black orbs went from complaisant to virulent hatred.
Al noticed, too, and he motioned for me to shut up.
"You want to kill him?" Newt asked me, her mild tone a stark contrast with her hidden anger.
"Yes!" I blurted out, then hesitated when I saw her fondling a knife on her hip. "Uh..."
"That's two of us, then," she said, interrupting me. "Give me enough time, Gally, and I'll have the majority."
"No one likes the little genetic designer dump," Al said, trying not to look at her, but it was hard not to. "But we can't kill him. Same as we can't kill you, love," he said to Newt, clinking his glass to hers. "Genetic material is genetic material."
"Al," Newt pouted as I puzzled over the designer-dump comment. "Is that what I am to you? Genetic material?"
"Of course not, love," he said, playing with her. "I want your library, too."
I watched Newt's mood sour as she stabbed a grape and ate it off the point of her knife. "I despise the bastard even more than you do, Rachel, though that might change as he takes everything you love. You need to be clever to best him. Are you clever, Rachel?"
Oh God. She wants to know if I'm clever. I glanced at Al, and he stared at me, then shrugged. Licking my lips, I said, "It's the shiny pot that puts a hole in the sky."
Al's mouth dropped open, but Newt thought about it, her expression thoughtful and her fingers finally leaving her knife. "Very true," she said as she eased back into the cushions.
With a soft click of his teeth, Al's mouth shut. His eyes were cross, and he seemed peeved that I'd found a way to satisfy her without compromising myself at all. Hunching into his drink, he muttered, "Dali is headed this way. Newt, I swear, if you get me kicked out of here tonight, I'll never sell you another familiar as long as I live."
"Boohoo," Newt said, a wiry arm rising delicately to the demon approaching behind her, an invitation to take it, I suppose.
Sure enough, the robe-bedecked, extravagant civil servant gone tent restaurateur elegantly touched his lips to her fingers before gesturing for more fruit and cheese. "Is everything to your liking?" Dali said, only the slightest hesitation hinting at his annoyance with Newt being here. Inside me, a feeling of warning coiled tighter. There were too many eyes on our table.
"As always, Dali," Al answered, and the demon frowned at him.
"I was asking Newt."
Newt beamed, fully aware that she wasn't welcome and relishing the fact that they had to put up with her. "I can truly say I don't remember a more perfect evening, Dali. As Algaliarept says, it's as wonderful as always."
A brief flash of teeth, and Dali turned to me, his veneer of pleasantry becoming transparent. "And you, Rachel? Enjoying Mesopotamia?"
"U-uh," I stammered, not liking being put on the spot. Crap, the demons watching us were pointing now. "I can honestly say I've never had an evening quite like this." Dali was hunched a little too close, his mood a little too aggressive, even for a demon. If everyone in the place hadn't been watching us before, they were now. Why is he over here?
Al seemed to be thinking the same thing as he set his cup down and pointedly looked at Dali. Newt, too, cocked her head, clearly waiting. "It's not me, of course, but others," Dali said, a thread of his eagerness to cause trouble coloring his voice. "Some of the clientele feel that a member of your party is not a demon and therefore should wait outside."
"Rachel not a demon!" Al shouted dramatically, and I twitched. "Who dares?"
"I do!" exclaimed a strong voice, and my head turned to the tattered awning that now marked the entryway to the restaurant.
Shit, it was Ku'Sox.