“Tami,” I said ominously.
“And finding somewhere with enough room wasn’t exactly easy,” she added, like nothing had happened. Tami had a lot of practice with chaos. “Not one safe enough, that wouldn’t absolutely embarrass you to live in—”
“I don’t embarrass easy.”
“—and that wouldn’t embarrass the office of Pythia, when you had people in—”
“Nobody comes here!”
“Nobody comes here ’cause a certain group wouldn’t let them in,” Tami said, eyeing the nearby vamps. “But they can’t hide you away forever. I know, I know,” she said, holding up a hand. “People were trying to kill you. But you still have to function.”
“She has a point,” the girl with the pink hair said, from a nearby sofa, with a baby on her lap.
“So, let’s review, shall we?” Tami persisted, holding up a finger. “One, you needed a safe place to come back to. And if a whole army of dark mages couldn’t get in here the other day, I think this is about as safe as it gets. Unless you wanna live in a bunker—”
“There’s an idea,” Marco said, crossing massive arms and scowling at us. Probably because he was going to have to sell this idea to the boss. “About the only thing we haven’t tried—”
“Didn’t work out in the desert, did it?” Tami asked, referring to the old supernatural UN, which had, in fact, been a lot like a bunker. One that was now a glass slick in the sand.
Marco’s mouth closed, and he scowled some more.
“Two, accessibility,” Tami steamrollered on. “People have to be able to see you. To petition, ask advice, etc. This place is in the middle of Vegas. Doesn’t get much more accessible than that.”
“Nobody is asking me for advice, either,” I pointed out.
“Well, they might be, if they could get to you!” Tami looked exasperated. “Look. I’m not saying let the whole world in. But there are people who need to see you and who you need to see. You’re Pythia. That has responsibilities attached.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’m trying,” she said seriously. “You aren’t a vamp possession, to be locked away in a safe until they call. You’re an independent agent and you have a job to do. And everybody is just going to have to learn to accept that,” she said, looking at Marco.
Who, to my surprise, didn’t say anything.
“Three,” Tami said. “Her Highness decided when she moved in here that it was too small and shabby, and that she couldn’t possibly be expected to live in such squalor—”
“I doubt she put it quite like that,” I murmured, still looking at Marco.
“She put it exactly like that—tell her.” Tami grabbed Fred in passing, who had a phone stuck to his ear.
“Okay, yeah,” he agreed. “But you know English isn’t her first language—”
“She’s lived here for a couple hundred years!”
“But she don’t get out much.”
Tami rolled her eyes. “My point,” she said stubbornly, “is that her people spent most of the last two months gutting the whole floor and rebuilding it to make room for her most-needed servants. Who apparently number in the double digits and don’t like sharing. It’s perfect!”
“But it isn’t ours,” I pointed out. “We can’t just move in—”
“Why not? The consul’s in New York—”
“Where her house was just destroyed! She’ll probably be back any day now—”
“—and isn’t that what she did to you? Just came in, kicked you out, and took it?”
I opened my mouth, and then closed it again.
Because sort of.