Cade elbowed me, and I realized, much to my chagrin, everyone was staring at me. Like everyone.
Imelda cleared her throat and gave me a glare so withering I might as well have been seven years old again. “As I was saying, thank you, Ms. Corentine, for the impromptu opening ceremony last night. You certainly did Seth proud.”
I gave her a nod of thanks, and everyone clapped politely.
I wanted to stab myself in the neck with my new pen.
So much for getting Imelda to feel any good will towards me. Sunny patted my leg. “It wasn’t that bad, I promise.”
Which meant it was terrible, and she was lying through her teeth. This was why I should never have to be the center of attention. I was very bad at it.
“Imelda is pretty forgiving. She’ll get over it in about ten or fifteen years,” Cade whispered, leaning against me just long enough for me to feel the heat of his body, then he was sitting up straight again. I stared at the stubble on his jaw and hoped no one would look at me for the next few minutes, because I was too absorbed in the profile of his face to care if anyone caught me drooling over him.
Imelda finished the rest of her speech, and then we were all free to go. The first slate of panels was going to be presented in about thirty minutes, and like a sucker I had agreed to moderate one on how to keep expenses low while working on the road.
I bet Sido had thought it would be funny to make me do that one, because she knew how much I looooved budgeting.
Sunny gave me an apologetic look, knowing we probably wouldn’t have many sessions together today. “I have a civilian session right now. Managing expectations in a social media era. Second floor.”
“What even is that?” I made a face.
“Oh, you know, people have started trying to use hashtags for their prayers instead of proper tithes, and other people have started tweeting to us, and we really need to help direct people to the right outlets for their needs.”
“There’s a wrong way to pray?”
Sunny shrugged in a don’t ask me, I just work here gesture, totally oblivious to having said anything wrong. Cade noticed the way my face had changed, however, and gave me a sympathetic smile, just the slightest upturn at
the corner of his mouth.
No time to dwell, though.
I had to teach some idiot clerics how to balance a checkbook.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The whole first day seemed to sail by in a blur. Before I knew it, it was five o’clock, and people were returning to their rooms or dispersing back to their hotels elsewhere.
There were no official dinners on the first night, so we were free to do what we wanted at this point.
Apparently this meant Sunny, Cade, Leo, Sawyer, and I all found ourselves in the lobby of the Luxor, debating what we wanted to do for dinner. I’d found a panel for initiate clerics on the program and had suggested Leo take Sawyer, hoping they might be able to learn something. I wanted a chance to grill them on how it had gone.
Prescott appeared out of nowhere, hovering at the periphery of the group. Leo and Sunny both looked at him like he was a leper, but Cade was the one who finally grumbled and asked, “Prescott, would you like to join us? We’re just deciding dinner options.”
Sunny gave Cade an indignant glare that said How dare you, but she was too polite to withdraw the invitation. Prescott pretended this hadn’t been his goal all along and said, “Oh, I suppose.”
Sawyer, not realizing she was supposed to hate him, stuck her hand out. “Hi, I’m Sawyer.” I guess she’d been watching us shake hands to introduce ourselves all day long, so this seemed like the natural, grown-up thing for her to do.
Prescott appeared genuinely shocked to have someone offer to shake his hand without any hesitation. Sunny moved like she was going to push Sawyer’s hand away, but I took my sister’s arm and held her back. I wanted to see what would happen.
I didn’t think Prescott had any connection to the killer. After watching him all day, seeing the way he interacted with others aside from me, I was beginning to realize he was exactly the kind of person who might ask a stranger to track my steps. He was just a hair too awkward to function around the living, like he didn’t quite know how to be normal. Whatever normal was to people like us.
Probably a byproduct of spending all his time with animated corpses and the goddess of death. That would mess just about anyone up.
He shook Sawyer’s hand a few beats too long, seeming to relish the human contact. He was smiling now, and it wasn’t even remotely creepy. It was almost sweet.
“Is she yours?” he asked Sunny.
“Mine?” She didn’t understand his question. Obviously the fifteen-year-old wasn’t Sunny’s daughter. That would have been absurd on a number of levels.