Fire Me Up (5 page)

"No." She waved away my paranormal resume with an elegant
scarlet-tipped hand. "The ritual. The test that all apprentices must pass in
order to begin formal training. You have not passed it?"

Oh, great. There was a test I had to pass just to sign up to
be an apprentice? Why did no one ever tell me these things? "No, I haven't
passed it. I didn't know anything about it until you mentioned it. Is it
difficult? How long will it take? I don't have a lot of time to spend studying.
Is there a cheat sheet I can buy somewhere?"

Her tips pursed as she pulled out a thin gold notebook,
flipping through the pages until she came to one she liked. "I have time
tomorrow after the panel on troll rehabilitation but before the demon-tormenting
workshop. Shall we make an appointment to meet then? I will discuss with you the
ritual and my requirements in an apprentice."

"Great," I said, watching as she extracted a gold pen from
the notebook and made a note. "Maybe we can sit together at the demon-tormenting
thing."

She gave me a blinding smile. "Yes, it is always nice to have
an acquaintance at torture workshops. Be sure to bring a plastic raincoat. Until
tomorrow, Aisling."

"Thanks. I look forward to it."

She headed off toward the Mages in expensive suits, leaving
me standing by myself, feeling even more at sea than I had in the last month.

But at least I had an appointment with a potential mentor! At
last things were looking up.

By the time the evening was over, I'd been stabbed,
propositioned more times than I could count, and had my amulet stolen.

And that was before the real action started.

"Hello, I am Tiffany. You're a Guardian, aren't you? Here is
my card. I am a professional virgin. You will please let me know if you have any
need of my services." The pretty blond woman who sat next to me at the large
round table smiled an aggressive smile full of teeth and passed business cards
out to everyone at the table, laying one in front of Jim's plate. "Is that your
demon? How large it is! I knew a Guardian once who had a pet demon, but it
killed her one night when she was cooking a lobster. The demon tossed her into
the pot of boiling water. It was very sad. I wept pearly tears of sorrow."

I stared at her for a moment before turning my gaze to my
other side, where Jim sat, and gave the demon a good glare.

Its eyebrows rose. "Hey, don't look at me, I don't even like
lobster."'

"Who is new? This is my fifth GODTAM conference," Tiffany
chirped happily, giving us all another blast of her tooth paste -commercial-
white smile. "Oooh, fruit cups! I love the fruit cups. Fruit is the flower of
our souls, don't you think?"

There were eight of us at the round table, one of about two
hundred tables that filled the huge conference ballroom. We were sitting along
the left edge of the room, near enough to the podium that we could see the
speakers but out of the main crush in the center of the room.

"I am Monish Lakshmanan, and this is Tej, my apprentice. I am
a part-time oracle." The speaker was a small, dark-haired man with lovely large
brown eyes. He spoke English with great precision, biting off each word as if he
was afraid it was going to escape from him. Next to him was a friendly-looking
young man of about eighteen, dressed in a faded T-shirt and a sports jacket that
was probably two sizes too small for him. He smiled at us all as his mentor
continued, "We are from Bangalore. That is in India."

"Oracles! Part-time ones at that!" A woman on the other side
of Jim, with big moussed I980s hair, snorted in an Ozarky twang, digging her
elbow into the rabbity man next to her. "Honey, you haven't seen an oracle till
you meet my Hank. That's Hank O'Hallahan. You've heard of him, of course. We
were on Jerry Springer. Show 'em what you can do, Hank."

Hank, wearing a slightly hunted look, sat up straight as
everyone at the table looked at him. One hand automatically tugged at his tie
until it was a bit askew. "Oh. Uh. Here? You think here, Marvabelle? Is that
a... uh... good idea? Someone might overhear. There are those book people who
are interested in my thoughts, you remember."

A suspicious look stole over his wife's face as she narrowed
her eyes at the rest of us. "You're right, muffin. You shouldn't show them your
stuff, not right out here where anyone could steal your wonderful deep oracle
thoughts and sell them to publishers. You just never know about people."

Silence descended at our table with a thud. I stared at the
atrocious Marvabelle, surprised and outraged on behalf of everyone she'd just
insulted. Before I could inform her that I doubted anyone would be interested in
stealing Hank's oracular thoughts, the eighth person at the table, a middle-aged
black woman with bright red glasses and a dramatic white streak down the middle
of her ebony hair, spoke. "Hullo. My name is Nora Charles—no relationship to the
fictional character, I assure you—and I live in London. I'm a Guardian, and this
is my fifth conference. I have a dog as well," she added, smiling at Jim. "His
name is Paco. He's a Chihuahua, but he's not a demon."

"I see you're still blind as a bat," Marvabelle said, making
a grimace that no doubt passed as her version of a smile. "Just jokin', honey.
You know me."

"Yes," Nora said in a very neutral tone of voice that spoke
volumes.

"You know each other?" I couldn't help but ask, glancing from
the rather garishly made-up Marvabelle to the quiet Nora.

"I was a Guardian, too, years and years ago, when I was young
and foolish," MarvabeLle said, cutting across Nora's response. "Nora and I
studied under the same mentor for a year. But I gave it up when I married Hank.

"Oracles are just so much more important than Guardians, you
know."

"And you?" Monish looked at Jim and me, thankfully ending the
embarrassed silence that had followed Marvabelle's verbal slap in the face.

I tried my best to look poised and not at all like the sort
of woman who falls down in hotel lobbies. "Oh. Hi, everyone, it's a pleasure to
meet you all. I'm Aisling, and this is Jim, my demon. This is our first
conference, and as you might have guessed, I'm a Guardian. Kind of. Not quite,
but I hope to be. I think. It depends on whether I find a mentor or not."

Five sets of eyes opened wide, then hurriedly looked away
from me. The sixth, Nora's, watched me with a faint frown wrinkling her brow.
"You are not yet a fully trained Guardian?" Her eyes slid over to Jim. "But you
have a demon."

"Yeah, but Jim is kind of a mistake."

The demon sniffled in mock sadness. "You mean that you and
Daddy didn't plan to have me? Oh, the pain! Oh, the heartache!"

I pinched its paw, "When I say mistake, I mean—" My hands
waved around in an inarticulate sort of manner. The rest of the table watched me
with silent avidity, waiting expectantly. I gave up trying to come up with a
lucid explanation of just how I'd come to summon Jim. There was no way I could
explain without taking up the rest of the evening. "Well, I guess mistake is as
good a word as any. No, I'm not a trained Guardian. I'm here hoping to find
someone who'll be willing to teach me all the ins and outs of the job. I don't
suppose you're looking for an apprentice?"

"As it happens, I am," she said, her gaze dropping to the
bowl of chilled fruit that a waiter had set before her.

"Ah." She looked less than thrilled with the idea of me. Then
again, she might just be shy. "Perhaps we can talk later?"

The waiter placed a bowl on Jim's plate, then slid one in
front of me. Nora murmured something about setting up an appointment.

I heaved a mental sigh over her lack of enthusiasm and
shook out a napkin to tuck into Jim's collar.

"I believe we can start. Everyone else is eating," Tiffany
said, flicking a long blond corkscrew curl over her shoulder, suddenly freezing
into a pose with pouting lips and arched neck. I was just about to ask her if
she was all right when a flash went off behind me.

A photographer skulked over to another table.

"That was Shy Eyes," Tiffany said to me, her soft European
accent giving an odd but pleasing lilt to the words.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Shy Eyes. It is one of my fabulous looks. I have many of
them. In addition to being a professional virgin, I am a model very much
successful. I do it because being a professional virgin doesn't take up much of
my time, and you know, the world would be much happier if everyone used their
time to smile. I like to share my smile with people everywhere. It is a duty
when you are as beautiful as me, do you not think?"

"Uh . . . sure." I picked up my spoon, stirring the fruit and
wondering why weird people always seemed to sit next to me. Then again, I was
the one with a demonic Newfie.... Oh, lord, I had become one of the weird
people!

On the far side of the table, a man passed behind Mon-ish and
Tej on his way to his own table, pausing to look me in the eye and say, "You
will spill fruit juice on your breasts."

The spoonful of chopped fruit and fizzy citrusy dressing that
I was in the process of piloting to my mouth splattered down my front.

"What the—dammit!" I swore, throwing down the spoon and
grabbing the thick linen napkin to mop up the big wet globules of fruit that
plastered the thin gauze of my peasant blouse to my left breast. "Who the hell
is that man, and why is he doing this to me?"

"Oh, tsk," Tiffany said, making a sad little face as I dipped
one corner of my now sticky napkin into my water glass. She actually said the
word tsk. "Maybe your demon could lick it off for you?"

"Yeah," Jim said with a leer on its canine lips. "It seems
such a shame to waste good soul flowers like that."

"You move your tongue one inch toward my breasts, and I swear
I'll get a grapefruit knife and saw off your—"

"Sheesh, I was just offering to be helpful. Some people!" Jim
turned its attention back to its own fruit cup, one massive black paw holding
down the flared bottom of the sorbet dish.

"That gentleman is Paolo di Stephano," Monish said. "He is a
Diviner most extraordinary. He also works with me for the committee."

"Ha! Diviner. Or so he claims" Marvabelle added with a sniff,
patting her husband's hand. "Hank could be a Diviner if he wanted. But I told
him no, his talents would be wasted doin' simple divinations. His gift is much
more profound than that."

Spoons clinked on glass as everyone slurped down the fruit. I
finished cleaning off my blouse, trying desperately to shift the sodden material
so that the wet spot wasn't quite so obvious. Mentally, I cursed my decision to
wear the sheerest and most elegant of my bras under the peasant top. It did
nothing to disguise my breast beneath the almost transparent wet gauze. "Bully
for Hank," I murmured, jerking my blouse to the side so the wet spot was more or
less under my arm. The silence that resulted made me very aware that I had once
again put my foot in my mouth. I offered a smile to a tight-lipped Marvabelle.
"Sorry. I didn't mean that to sound as obnoxious as it did. To be honest, I
don't quite have a grip on this whole Diviner/oracle thing. Can you explain the
difference to me?"

"An oracle is one who provides counsel upon petition of the
person seeking advice," she answered in a stiff voice, carefully spooning up her
fruit without spilling a drop. "Oracles guide our lives with their sage wisdom.
Diviners are nothin' more than charlatans. Mind readers and their ilk."

Jim, finished with licking out its dish of fruit, leaned its
head on my shoulder and stared at my uneaten portion.

"Much as I would hate to disagree with the gracious lady,"
Monish said in his soft Indian accent, "Diviners are not mere charlatans or mind
readers. They are known best for their ability to see into the immediate future.
Many, such as Paolo, feel obligated to tell those around them of any mishaps
they foresee."

A soft voice spoke in my ear. "You gonna eat that fruit,
nipple girl?"

I looked down. My blouse had untwisted itself, my breast all
but bared beneath the wet material. "Son of a—" I jerked the scarf off my hair
and wrapped it around my neck so that the ends hung down over my exposed breast,
shoving my dish over to Jim's plate so the demon could eat the fruit. "I
appreciate the fact that this Paolo guy feels it's his duty to tell me when I'm
about to trip or spill food, but I can't help but feel that it is his warnings
that are causing the events."

"Schrodinger's cat," Nora said, nodding her head. We all
stared at her. "Quantum physics, you know. A man named Erwin Schrtidinger
proposed a mental experiment involving a sealed box containing a cat, a bottle
of poisonous gas, and a radioactive mineral. The mineral is such that it has a
fifty-fifty chance of decaying during the time the cat is sealed in the box and
if it does so, it will release the gas and that will kill the cat."

"Poor kitty," Tiffany said, her brow wrinkled in a scowl. "I
don't believe in testing being conducted on animals, even mental testing. It is
wrong. It does not make for happy thoughts."

"Schrodinger... I think I've heard of him," I said slowly,
digging through my memories to the summer I was madly infatuated with a physics
professor and took classes that made absolutely no sense to me. "Didn't the
experiment have something to do with observation of the cat determining whether
it was alive or dead? Oh, I see what you're getting at—by Paolo telling me what
he sees in my future, he influences it?"