I knew she couldn’t cancel the convention. I don’t think I even wanted her to cancel it. I just needed her to promise me she would take the necessary steps in order to keep everyone here as safe as possible.
She seemed to read this on my face because she said, “I’ll get more security on site immediately, and we’ll do our best to keep people close to their hotels for the remainder of the week. Although you know how well that will go over for the younger ones.”
I didn’t want to take that away from them, but I also desperately wanted to keep them alive.
“I know you’ll do your best.” I pushed my chair back from the table. “Thanks for making the time for me.”
Imelda looked up once more. “I can always make time where it’s needed, Tallulah.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
The day passed in a fog.
Every time I saw a dumpy white guy, I was sure it was the killer. I was twice as jumpy as I’d been after the phone call. His appearance the previous night at the club was making things worse. A part of me hoped he would call me again, leave me more clues, give me something to work with.
Instead I got nothing but uncertainty and frayed nerves.
I tried my best to pretend everything was normal. I went to every single panel on my schedule. I agreed to a grievance meeting with the cleric for the wind goddess Oreithyia. It was basically a useless waste of forty minutes because Lettie, the cleric in question, wouldn’t yield an inch. She believed the winds shouldn’t be a part of my domain, and I believed she was a whiny dumbass. So, you know, it went great.
We ultimately determined that tornados and hurricanes fell under both of our skill sets, but that unlike breezes or gusts, they were far more a part of Seth’s domain because of their connection to the storm. She didn’t like that last part, but since she came away still in power of something, she felt like she’d won.
I had these arguments every year, and they were utterly pointless. The gods and goddesses would do whatever they wanted, and they’d make us do whatever they wanted, and if someone else didn’t like it, that was too damn bad. That was the long and short of every argument I’d ever had at every convention I’d ever been to.
It was like fighting with a brick wall.
Just because the brick wall was bloody at the end of the fight didn’t mean it had lost.
By the end of the day I wanted to go back to the Lucky Star, get into my tub, and stay there for the rest of the night. I’d eat my stupidly expensive room-service burger. I’d watch some shitty reality TV. I’d pretend the world didn’t exist for however long I could manage it, and then I’d start this whole routine all over again tomorrow.
I needed a few minutes to myself. Time enough to reset and start fresh. If I didn’t have that, I worried I was going to come apart at the seams from all the anxiety.
Sunny found me in the lobby of the Luxor. After the first day of the convention, Sawyer had realized how boring it was to sit around and not get to attend as many panels as she wanted, so she and Leo had gone somewhere else for the afternoon. They would return tomorrow to watch one of the more important public addresses.
I’d told him about a hundred times to not let her out of his sight, and even still I felt sick to my stomach.
My sister linked her arm through mine. “Did you have a good day?”
“I made it to the end. I guess that’s something.”
“Are we going out for dinner?” She glanced hopefully around me, and I wasn’t sure which of the men she was so interested in seeing. In spite of what I’d said to Cade the night before, a small part of me would have loved for her to be looking for Leo. It would be nice to see her show a real romantic interest in someone. There was no way things would work out between a sun cleric and a demigod, but it might do her some good to experience a basic human desire like lust. Even a little more flirting like they’d done on the dance floor could be beneficial for her. She spent way too much time with the other Sun Worshippers.
After seeing the two of them together the previous night, I suspected her feelings for him weren’t entirely friendly.
It was nice to know she was human, and not just the perfect poster child for clerics everywhere.
I rested my head on her shoulder, breathing in her scent. It was like fresh cotton dried in the sun. How could a person smell that clean?
“I think it might be a quiet night in,” I told her. “Would you mind terribly?”
She gave me an assessing once-over, then wrapped her arm around my shoulders as we moved towards the front door. “You look terrible. You could probably use an early night.”
“You’re so sweet.” I rolled my eyes.
“I don’t get to show my sisterly love often.”
“So you show it by telling me how awful I look?” I made a funny face at her. The sliding glass doors hissed open.
“Isn’t that my j—?”