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The place was packed If possible, even more beautiful types had squashed into the already stuffed-with-tourists lobby since the last ti seen, and I didn’t feel up to it anyway

Maybe I did look like a bag lady, but this was supposed to be hell If they could have satyrs serving in the bar upstairs and incubithe salon and cocktail waitresses in devil ears wandering around, a random street person shouldn’t shock anybody And if it did, that was just too bad The universeto starveback control ofout

Or, you know, skulking behind the check-in desk, because I didn’t want to get tossed out onin at the lances fro behind the desk was one of the least strange things they’d seen me do Nobody tried to stop h the back of an ice creaht where the hellscape gave way to an Old West ghost town, if the Old West had featured plastic cactuses and neon cocktail signs and overpriced boutiques

And a fiberglass donkey cart with a flashing taco sign

I could have sworn a heavenly chorus started singing, if that hadn’t been really unlikely around here I lurched forward, drawn by the siren call of seared lazed And ran right into the front of a starched dress shirt

"You thin’ I don’t know you by now?" Casanova de hat looked like a full-on snit

"Oh, for the love of--get out ofto muscle past

But I didn’t havelike a little bitch half the tio anywhere Goddaly

"I’ taco line! I don’t even knohat ‘this’ is!"

"This isme behind a couple of fake hay bales "I ae, in pri at a big-toothed guy with a lapel ed into a cleared area in front of the lobby He and the dozen black-shirted guys he had running interference were blocking most people’s access to the elevators around the corner, but nobody seerinned at a professional-looking video camera

"Fiends," he told it suddenly, with every appearance of relish "Ogres Giants Freaks of all kinds If you don’t believe in hout history, almost every culture on earth has believed Even odder, they have all believed in the same monsters

"Take zombies for instance: ‘I shall raise up the dead and they shall eat the livingI shall ’ Where do you think that quote co Dead? No It’s from an ancient Babylonian epic that ritten five thousand years ago It’s one of the oldest written works in the world Zoree"

"What is this?" I asked, feeling et in here?"

"I invited them," Casanova said shortly

"What?" I looked up at him in disbelief

"Do you have any idea how hard it is," he asked fervently, "to make a profit when half your rooms and most of your staff have been appropriated by the damned senate?"

The "damned senate" was the vaout in an earlier attack in the war They’d temporarily moved in here, since the casino ned by one of their own, being part of Mircea’s extensive portfolio So far, that had gone better than I’d expected, ith a bunch of seniorup the place But that could easily change--like tonight, for instance

"Are you insane?" I hissed "You knohat’s upstairs What on earth could possibly haveat her"

"What?"

"Oh, how quickly they forget!" he said, sneering "Or do you perhaps vaguely recall all but destroying o?"

"Which time?" I asked uneasily Because, okay, there’d been a few incidents

"But zombies are newcomers compared to Weres," the announcer told us "There are cave drawings fro hu into beasts of all kinds From Europe come tales of the most famous Weres of all: olves But did you know, in Central Auars? In central Asia, of were-bears?"

"The huge battle?" Casanova whispered, spittingrepairs for?"

"Oh" That one "What about it?"

"Well, word got out, didn’t it? Contain place in the air over the damned roof! We did the best we could, but ever since, there have been rumors They finally became so insistent that the senate decided it would be easier to have the Hogwash people come in--"