“Pick a color,” I told her, but she just stayed where she was, bobbing gently up and down, staring at them. So I picked one for her, the brightest of the pinks, because it matched her shirt. “Do you like pink?” I asked, but she just stared some more.
“It’s okay,” Rhea told her, coming up and lifting a small, chubby hand. “The Pythia uses them.”
That seemed to make it all right, because the girl relaxed. And the others crowded around to watch me carefully paint the tiny nails. Like, intensely watch. You’d have thought I was teaching them some major life lesson or how to shift or something.
I finally finished. And a kid who had taken levitation in stride, who had probably seen magic in her short life that would blow my mind, stared at her hand in absolute disbelief. And then began flapping it around, trying to show all her friends at once, so excited she didn’t know what to do.
“You’ve created a monster,” Tami told me, as the other girls dove for colors and Rhea rushed for paper towels, to keep the glitter from decorating the whole suite.
“What’s with the shirts?” I asked as I was shooed into the bedroom, probably because I was about to fall over.
“That damned Augustine,” Tami said. “I told him we needed clothes for the girls, but since he wasn’t getting paid—”
“He wasn’t?”
“—he decided to give us the bargain-basement stuff. The balloons on those tees are supposed to float around, not whoever’s wearing them!”
“Tami—”
“So they didn’t sell, and we got stuck with ’em. Luckily, the girls are having a good time anyway. But Marco wasn’t happy, said it was a slight on the court, and went down to have a talk with the man himself.”
“Tami—”
“You know, he’s not so bad—Marco, I mean. I think the girls are starting to warm up to him. Of course, it might be easier if he didn’t look like a bad-tempered bear half the—”
“Tami!”
She looked around. “What?”
“Why don’t we just pay Augustine?”
She blinked at me. “’Cause you’re broke. Why you think?”
“What?”
“Broke. B-R-O-K-E,” said the woman who could stretch a dollar until it shrieked and begged for mercy.
Only apparently we didn’t have any to stretch.
“Jonas still hasn’t released the accounts?” I a
sked, surprised in spite of everything. I thought he’d had a momentary freak-out yesterday, in response to some really bad news. But if he wasn’t any better today . . .
I face-planted on the bed.
“Not a damned dime,” Tami said, sitting down beside me. “Should I ask why you aren’t wearing any shoes?”
“No. Tell me about Jonas.”
“There’s nothing to tell. Haven’t heard a peep out of him, and when Rhea called him, he handed her off to some secretary type to set up an appointment.” Tami made a disgusted sound. “You hear that? An appointment. For the Pythia.” She shook her head. “Girl, you gotta kick some butt.”
Yeah. That was what I felt like doing, I thought blearily. Butt kicking.
And I guess I looked it, because Tami grinned. “Well, maybe not right now.”
“They say anything else?” I asked, rolling over.
God, my feet were filthy.