Chapter 4
“ Cassie!” Casanova
flew up the loading ramp, trying to minimize his time in the sun. A
moment later, my three delinquents came into view, following
leisurely in his wake. Great. I’d actually managed to forget about
them for a while.
The gargoyles took
one look at the trio and began a high-pitched keening that made me
want to cover my ears. “Did you see what your stupid enchantments
did?” I asked Casanova furiously as he skidded to a stop in front
of me. “I could have been killed!”
“We have worse
problems.”
I jerked Enyo away
from the smallest gargoyle, which she’d been poking at with a
stick. The cowering, birdlike creature and his companion went
running inside, squawking loudly. “And where were you?” I demanded,
too angry to care that annoying an ancient goddess wasn’t smart.
“You three are always spoiling for a fight, but the first time I
need help, you’re off getting a manicure!”
It was true—Deino was
sporting a new set of bright red nails—but less than fair,
considering that they’d helped out in the bar. But I was in no mood
to care. The Circle blocking my ward had me seriously rattled, now
that I had time to think about it. It was the only defensive weapon
I had, and being without it made me feel extremely
vulnerable.
Enyo looked offended
but let me keep the stick. Pemphredo and Deino crowded around while
I resumed my rant at Casanova. “Now Pritkin’s half dead,” I
informed him, “and the mages are sure to be—”
He gripped my arm so
tightly that I yelped. “Where is he?” He began fumbling in his coat
frantically. “Why can I never find my damn cell phone when I need
it? We have to get him medical help, quickly!” For a minute I
thought he was being sarcastic, but one look at his face told me
otherwise. The guy looked absolutely terrified.
“What is wrong with
you? Since when do you care if—”
Casanova left me
standing there talking to myself, while he ran indoors. I followed,
the Graeae trailing after me. Enyo picked up a broom on the way in
and formed it into a weapon by snapping off the head to leave a
jagged point. I didn’t try to wrestle her for it. She was back to
old-lady mode, but she’d probably win anyway.
I reentered the
kitchen to find a livid Pritkin being pawed at by a frantic
Casanova. The mage knocked the vampire aside hard enough to send
him sprawling and glared at the gargoyle who’d helped him. Since he
was back on his feet, I had to assume that her remedy, whatever it
was, had worked.
“Take it off me,” he
barked. “Now!”
Casanova picked
himself up off the floor. Not only did he not respond in kind, he
actually seemed to cower slightly. “I can have a healer here in
five minutes!”
I stared at the vamp
as if he’d lost his mind, which maybe he had. Vamps and mages have
an adversarial relationship, born out of the fact that they both
claim to be the leading force in the supernatural world. The sight
of a vamp as old as Casanova fawning over the war mage who’d just
belted him was surreal.
“I don’t need a
healer. I need the damn geis removed,”
Pritkin said furiously.
That got my
attention. “She can remove it?” I ran forward, hardly daring to
believe it could be that simple, and the Graeae moved with me. I
didn’t get an answer because the gargoyles suddenly started to
shriek like Armageddon had arrived, their combined voices loud
enough to shatter several nearby glasses.
I covered my ears and
dropped to my knees in shock, only to have Deino fall on top of me.
I’m not sure whether she tripped, or whether she was trying to
shield me from the hail of food—rolls, pastries and assorted
molded-pâté body parts—being thrown at us from all sides. Either
way, the landing jarred the eye loose from her face and sent it
skittering across the floor. She screeched and scrambled after it,
knocking gargoyles out of the way left and right. Her sisters waded
into the fray as backup and I took refuge under the main prep
table, where I found Casanova and Pritkin.
“You could get hurt!
I can’t allow you to go out there!” Casanova was practically
screaming in order to be heard, and he had a two-handed grip on
Pritkin’s right arm. “The gargoyles view the kitchens as a sacred
trust, as they once did the temples that fed them. They see the
Graeae as a threat, but I’ll explain—”
“I don’t give a damn
about your personnel problems,” Pritkin snarled, grabbing the vamp
by the front of his designer shirt. “Get her to remove my
geis, or you will have more trouble
than you’ve ever dreamed.”
“Hey, I’m the one
with the geis here,” I interrupted.
“Remember? If anyone is getting anything removed, it’s
me.”
“This isn’t about
you!” Pritkin said as something heavy hit the tabletop and rolled
off onto the floor. It was the little gargoyle with the hairnet and
the donkey ears, and he wasn’t moving.
I dragged him under
the table with us but wasn’t sure how to check for a pulse, or even
if he was supposed to have one. What I was sure about was that the
greenish colored blood he was leaking onto the tile wasn’t good.
“Okay, that’s it.”
I crawled out from
under the table and stood up. The noise level was unbelievable and,
in the few seconds I’d been preoccupied, the kitchen had been
completely trashed. Deino had retrieved the eye but was staggering
about on the far side of the room, four gargoyles hanging off each
arm while another perched on her back, hitting her over the head
repeatedly with a rolling pin. Enyo, in all her blood-soaked glory,
had the gargoyle with the earrings raised over her head and was
about to throw her across the room. The throw alone might kill her,
but if not, landing on the knives a grinning Pemphredo was holding
out certainly would.
I took a deep breath
and screamed, louder than I’d believed possible. The gargoyles
ignored me, but the three Graeae stopped and looked at me
inquiringly. None of them appeared overly upset. The only
expression anyone wore was a lopsided grin on Pemphredo’s face.
“Stop it,” I told them in a slightly more normal tone. “When I said
I needed you to fight, I didn’t mean them.”
Pemphredo cackled and
pumped her fist in the air. Enyo looked at me sourly but sat the
gargoyle down anyway, who hissed at her and staggered off, looking
dizzy. Deino managed to lurch over to Enyo to hand her the eye, but
her sister waved her off less than graciously. Pemphredo came
skipping over and plucked it out of Deino’s hands, looking
triumphant. I suddenly got it. “You were betting on
me?”
Enyo slumped onto the
prep table, knocking some radish eyeballs out of the way and
looking dejected. I wasn’t sure why—obviously she could see without
the eye, or come to some approximation of it—but she seemed very
depressed about missing her turn.
The gargoyles had
stopped the attack once their leader was safe, but were eyeing the
Graeae with understandable concern. Several of those nearby were
starting to check on their fallen comrades, with one pulling Donkey
Ears away. His hairnet had come loose, but at least he was starting
to come around. I hoped he’d recover, but the only thing I could do
for him was to be sure we didn’t cause any more harm. I reached
under the table and pulled Casanova out by his fancy tie. “Explain
to them that we’ll be leaving now.”
“We bloody well
won’t!” Pritkin crawled out, looking like a madman with his
bloodstained clothes and matted hair. He scowled about until he
located the female gargoyle Enyo had released. “We aren’t going
anywhere until she removes the geis!”
“Miranda!” Casanova
called in a strangled voice, and I realized I might be holding the
tie a bit too tight.
The gargoyle came
over, but although it was hard to read her fur-covered face, her
body language didn’t look cooperative. If someone can walk
sullenly, she managed it. She poked Pritkin in the stomach, maybe
because she couldn’t reach his chest. “You well. We sssafe. Good
trade.” He tried to grab her but she dodged his hands with a fluid
movement that seemed impossible unless she’d dislocated
something.
Maybe she had, because
her ears went back and she hissed at him, showing off a very
nonfeline forked tongue. She crossed her arms and took a
wide-legged stance behind Casanova, her long tail whipping about
behind her.
“I do not deal with
Fey affairs,” Pritkin said haughtily, as if such a thing was
beneath him. “It is of no concern to me whether you are here
legally or not. You have nothing to fear. Now, take it
off!”
“What’s going on?” I
asked Casanova, who was straightening his tie. He gave me a
less-than-friendly look, which I guess was fair under the
circumstances.
“In exchange for
healing him, Miranda put a geis on him
not to reveal their existence to anyone. If the Circle finds out
they’re here, they’ll be deported.”
“Is that all?” I
turned narrowed eyes on Pritkin, who didn’t notice because all his
attention was on Miranda. Considering the whopping geis I was carrying, I didn’t have a lot of
sympathy for his tiny one. “If you’re not planning to tell on them
anyway, what difference does it make? Let’s go. Those mages could
be back any minute.”
“I’m not going
anywhere until she removes it,” he repeated stubbornly. The tone
made me want to kick him. Instead, I prodded Casanova, who rolled
his eyes.
“Miranda—” he began
in a long-suffering voice, but she set her jaw. She didn’t say
anything, but she didn’t have to.
“Damn it, Pritkin!” I
said angrily. “I’m not standing here until the Circle sends someone
else after us. You want to talk, fine. Let’s go talk. Otherwise,
I’m out of here.”
“There’s an idea,”
Casanova said brightly. “I’ll call you a car.”
Billy Joe came
streaming through the door and got swatted at by half a dozen
gargoyles on his way over. Normally,
I’d have been
surprised that they could see him, but after the day I’d had I
didn’t even blink. “He’s with me,” I told Miranda, who nonetheless
began hissing at Casanova in the strange language the gargoyles
used. She had obviously had enough unwanted visitors for one
day.
“Ixnay on the car,”
Billy said, looking worried. “Is there an exit that bypasses the
front, back and side doors? ’Cause they’re all being
watched.”
“By who?” Now what
was wrong?
“Oh, I don’t know,”
Billy replied sarcastically. “Whose mages did you just beat the
crap out of? The Circle knows you’re here, and they’re out there in
force. There’s gotta be two, three dozen—I stopped counting. The
trio we met in the bar was their advance crew, their way of asking
you to come along nicely. But considering the way you returned ’em,
I don’t think they’re interested in negotiating anymore.
”
“They attacked
first,” I said defensively, then paused to wonder whether that was
strictly true. I hadn’t seen what happened in the bar between the
time I left and when Casanova and I tuned in to find Enyo throwing
down with the mages. If Pritkin hadn’t been with them, then they’d
walked into a mess not of their own making. No wonder they hadn’t
been in a good mood when they met us again.
“It doesn’t matter,”
Pritkin said, almost like he’d been reading my mind. “They want you
dead. Making it easy for them won’t change that.”
I swallowed. I’d
suspected that the Circle wouldn’t cry much if I had an accident,
but hearing it stated so baldly was hard. You’d think I’d be used
to people trying to kill me by now, but for some reason it doesn’t
seem to get any easier. “You sound certain.”
“I am. That’s part of
what we need to talk about.” He looked at Casanova, who
sighed.
“There are several
emergency exits, but none are good options.” He flapped a hand at
me. “Can’t you do whatever you did earlier, and shift away? With
the internal defenses targeting you as well as them, I can claim
you came here to bully me for information about Antonio and then
left after trashing the place.” He glanced around. “Oh, wait, that
would even be true.”
“Speaking of which,
you were going to tell me where Tony is.”
“No, as I recall, I
was doing quite a good job of not
telling you.” He tried to hand me a handkerchief, I guess to wipe
off the cupcake that had gotten smeared in my hair at some point,
but I ignored it. “I’ll help you get out of here, chica, and I will gladly tell lies to the Circle to
throw them off the trail, but as for Antonio—”
“That vampire,”
Miranda spat on the ground. “He in Faerie. He bring usss here, then
betray. We work like ssslavesss.”
Casanova looked sick.
I smiled at the gargoyle, who was actually rather attractive if you
concentrated on her slanted red eyes. “Thank you, Miranda! Tell me
more.”
She gave a feline
sort of shrug. “Not much to tell. He in Faerie.” She looked at
Casanova. “This sssircle, they come here?”
He ran a hand through
his slightly tousled hair. Somehow, he had managed to avoid all the
flying food. The only visible damage was a few wrinkles I’d put in
his tie. “Possibly. It seems to be our day for unwanted
guests.”
“No!” she told him,
poking his leg with extended claws. “We have work! No more
messss!”
I noticed that a
couple of valiant little gargoyles were trying to get a laden cart,
which had somehow avoided the carnage, through the disorder to the
door, and that another was grunting into a phone and scribbling an
order on a pad. I was about to agree with Miranda that we needed to
get out of their hair—or horns or whatever—when yet another visitor
arrived. Pritkin’s golem came through the doors and the keening
noise started up again from every side.
I groaned and stuck
my fingers in my abused ears. Pritkin stared intently at the golem
for a minute, as if some sort of nonverbal communication was going
on, then glanced at me. He made a gesture, and blissful silence
descended. I knew it had to be some kind of spell, because the
pandemonium didn’t diminish, but the cacophony quieted to a faint
background noise. “They’re coming. We have to go.”
I nodded. “Fine. Then
get lover boy there to tell us where Tony’s portal into Faerie is.
And don’t lie,” I told Casanova. “I know he has one.”
“Yes, he does, but I
don’t know where it is,” Casanova said distractedly. “Miranda! Can
you calm your people down, please? It isn’t going to destroy
anything!” He looked at Pritkin. “Is it?”
“It will if you don’t
tell us the truth,” I said grimly.
He looked askance at
the golem, which looked back as far as the vague indentations it
called eyes would allow. It had no fangs, horns or other oddities.
It was just a badly made statue, like something a potter had
started and then forgotten. But I didn’t like it any better than
Casanova did when it turned those empty eyes on me.
“I don’t know where
the damn portal is!” Casanova insisted. “Tony was selling witches
to the Fey, but he had a special group who dealt with that side of
the business and I wasn’t one of them. He took most of them with
him when he disappeared, and the rest left with the last shipment a
week ago. They aren’t here.”
I glanced at Miranda.
“You must have come through the portal. You have to know where to
find it!”
She shook her head.
“On other ssside, we sssee. But here, no.” She draped a dishcloth
over the head of a nearby gargoyle. “Like ssso.” The blind gargoyle
ran into Pritkin, or more accurately into his legs, which was as
far as the tiny thing could reach. The mage removed the towel and
sent him back to Miranda with a little push.
“They must have been
blindfolded before they were sent through,” Casanova translated. “I
suppose Tony didn’t want them to know how the setup worked, in case
the mages got hold of them.”
“What about you?” I
asked Pritkin. “The Circle must have access to a
portal.”
“We use the one at
MAGIC.”
I sighed. Of course.
It made sense that MAGIC—short for the Metaphysical Alliance for
Greater Interspecies Cooperation—would have one. It’s a sort of
supernatural United Nations with representatives from the mages,
vamps, weres and Fey, and the delegates from Faerie had to get
there somehow. On the plus side, it was nearby, in the desert
outside Vegas. On the negative, MAGIC was crawling with the very
people who were looking for me, and not to wish me a happy
birthday. It remained to be seen whether I’d live long enough to
celebrate my twenty-fourth, but sticking my neck in the noose
didn’t seem like the best way to ensure that. Unfortunately,
portals into Faerie aren’t exactly thick on the ground, and any
others would doubtless be guarded, too. On the theory that it’s
better to go with the devil you know, I decided to opt for MAGIC.
At least I’d been there before and knew a little about its
layout.
“Do you know exactly
where it is?” I asked. MAGIC had a big compound; it would be nice
if he could narrow things down.
Pritkin looked at me
incredulously, but whatever he might have said was drowned out by
the sound of sirens going off. They were just a faint, tinny klaxon
through the silence bubble, but Casanova swore loudly. “The mages
have entered in force—that’s a general alarm.”
“Get the humans out,”
Pritkin ordered.
Casanova nodded, not
protesting the grip the mage had on his arm. “It’s already being
done—standard protocol is to claim a gas leak whenever there’s an
emergency and to evacuate everyone. And the mages are supposed to
avoid hocus pocus in front of norms, aren’t they?”
“Normally, yes. But
they want her badly.” Pritkin jerked his head at me.
Casanova shrugged.
“Any fireworks will be thought to be part of the show, as long as
no norms are injured. This place was designed to look this way for
a reason—we’ve had slipups before.” From Pritkin’s scowl, I was
guessing they had gone unreported. “Let’s get all of you safely
away from here, then I can concentrate on damage
control.”
“Where’s the nearest
emergency exit?” I asked.
“Thanks to you, most
of them are overrun. Your best bet is the one leading to the
basement of a liquor store on Spring Mountain, just off the Strip.”
Casanova moved towards the room service phone and plucked it out of
the claws of the gargoyle taking orders. He glanced over his
shoulder. “I’ll have a car waiting out back of the store for you,
but that’s as much as I can do.”
“Wait a minute. You
have a house safe, right?”
“Why?” Pritkin asked
suspiciously.
“Oh, crap,” Billy
said.
“You want to risk
taking them into Faerie with us?” I demanded.
Billy groaned and
looked at the Graeae, who were chowing down on finger sandwiches.
“Considering what popped out last time? Hell no.”
I looked at Casanova,
who was in the middle of a phone conversation. “They’re bypassing
the security system almost like it isn’t there,” he informed us,
relaying a report. “A group of mages have been stalled in
Headliners, but there are two other teams and—mierda! They shot Elvis. Tell me it doesn’t show,”
he demanded of someone on the other end of the line.
“They shot an
impersonator?” I was surprised, if not precisely shocked. The mages
were supposed to protect humans, not use them as target practice,
although they seemed to forget that where I was
concerned.
Casanova shook his
head. “No, the real thing.” He turned his attention back to the
phone. “No, no! Let the necromancers worry about the patch-up job;
what do we pay them for? And have them raise Hendrix again, we’re
going to need a sub.”
I lost track of the
conversation because the swinging kitchen doors came flying off
their hinges, straight at me. Pemphredo, whom I hadn’t even seen
move, caught them and sent them spinning back across the room at
the group of war mages who were pouring through the entrance. Enyo
tried to stuff me under the table, but I caught her wrist. “How
would you like to have some fun?”
She gave me a
withering look. Obviously, she felt that our ideas of fun differed.
“I’m serious.” I nodded at the mages, who were being attacked by a
wave of hissing gargoyles that had apparently not appreciated the
destruction of the doors. The mages were practically buried under a
sea of thrashing wings and slashing claws, but I knew it wouldn’t
last. “Enjoy yourself. Just don’t kill anybody.”
A big smile broke
over Enyo’s face, making her look like a kid on Christmas morning,
and the next thing I knew she’d picked up the massive prep table
and thrown it into the breach left by the missing doors. She and
her sisters ran across the room and hopped over it, cackling like
the fiends they were as they took the offensive to the second wave
of mages trying to get in.
“Bought us some
time,” I told Pritkin, who was looking conflicted. He might be
having problems with the Circle, but he obviously didn’t like the
idea of them being play toys for the Graeae. Since the mages’ idea
of justice was to drag me off to a kangaroo court and a quick
death, I had no such problem. “Come on!”
Pritkin ignored me
and pulled a mage out from under three gargoyles, who’d been
introducing the man’s face to a cheese grater. Apparently, shields
didn’t work so well against the Fey—judging by his agonized
expression, it was a lesson the guy would probably
remember.
Pritkin knocked him
unconscious, then grabbed Miranda. She tried to bite him, but he
had her around the throat and held her back from his face. That
didn’t help the rest of him from getting badly clawed, but he
grimly hung on. His concentration must have wobbled, however,
because the silence bubble suddenly collapsed. He said something,
but I couldn’t hear it over the klaxons, which drowned out even the
gargoyles.
I couldn’t believe
Pritkin was still fixated on that stupid geis. It seemed harmless to me, especially now that
the Circle was finding out about the gargoyles all on their own.
But I knew him well enough not to bother arguing.
“Miranda!” I
screamed, literally at the top of my lungs. “Remove the
geis! Casanova will hide you from the
mages!” That got her attention, and she turned those slanted cat
eyes on me. She didn’t take her claws out of Pritkin, but I didn’t
really care.
“You promissse? We
not go back?” she asked, her voice somehow cutting through the
din.
“I promise,” I
yelled, nudging Casanova, who had waded through the battle to us.
He looked alarmed, but I didn’t give him a chance to protest. “You
know you can do it. Tony has all kinds of bolt holes around
here.”
He rolled his eyes.
“¡Claro que sí! Just go!”
Miranda smiled, a
really odd expression on her furry face, since it flashed a lot of
fang. “I remember thisss,” she told me, and suddenly Pritkin was
holding a spitting, hissing and squirming ball of fur. A set of
four deep scratch marks appeared on his face, and I punched him in
the shoulder. “Let her go and she’ll help!”
Pritkin finally
dropped her, and Miranda stood, smoothing her fur and preening for
a moment. Then she waved a paw at him in a curiously graceful
gesture. I didn’t notice any change, but I guess he must have
because he grabbed my hand and yanked me after Casanova, looking as
irritated as if I’d been the one holding things up.
“I’ll show you the
tunnel, but we have to hurry. I can’t be seen with you,” the vamp
was saying. I looked around for Billy Joe, but he’d disappeared. I
hoped he was on my errand and not off somewhere interfering with a
game of craps. He could move small things if he really
concentrated, and thought it was funny as hell to rig the casino
games.
The golem appeared in
front of us, a meat cleaver sticking out of its clay chest, but it
didn’t seem to notice. We ran for the cool room and Casanova moved
a large plastic bin of lettuce. He pointed at what looked like a
solid concrete block wall. “Through there. The car is already in
place and the driver’s going to wait to hand off the keys. Give me
whatever you want put in the safe and go!”
“I’ll give it to the
driver. Look, I really appreciate—”
Casanova cut me off
with a gesture. “Just make sure I don’t end up putting this place
back together for that bidonista ,” he
said grimly.
“You have a deal,” I
told him. I just hoped I could keep up my end of the
bargain.
The man waiting for
us at the end of the long, stifling tunnel was leaning casually
against a luxurious new BMW, arms crossed, obviously bored. I
gaped, my mind immediately flooded with images of hot nights,
rumpled sheets and excellent sex. It wasn’t just the rich black
curls, as shiny as the car behind him, which begged any female
under eighty to run her hands through them. It wasn’t just the
lean, muscled body, dressed in skintight jeans and T-shirt, and
tanned that beautiful burnished color only olive skin gets. There
was an instant attraction, a pull from those liquid dark eyes, that
I knew couldn’t be real. I might admire a guy’s looks, but I don’t
get that interested until I’ve known him a little longer than ten
seconds.
Incubus, I thought,
my mouth going dry. And judging by the level of interest my body
was taking, a powerful one. I swallowed and summoned up a
smile.
He immediately smiled
back, taking in my abbreviated uniform with an appreciative eye.
“Have you heard about our employee discount, querida? Twenty percent off all
services.”
“Casanova sent us,” I
clarified.
“Ah, of course. I am
Chavez. It means Dream Maker—”
I cut him off before
he could offer to make all my dreams come true. “We, uh, really
need to go.”
I noticed that he’d
brought along a friend, I guess to drive him back after he turned
over the keys. The handsome blond was wearing a Dante’s baseball
cap and a mesh tank top that gave tantalizing glimpses of a
muscular upper body. He sent me a cheerful, beach boy smile from
the driver’s seat of a flashy convertible. The expression managed
to call up sandy blankets, salt-laced wind and sultry,
passion-filled nights.
“I’m Randolph,” he
said in a broad midwestern accent, gripping my hand firmly in his
big, suntanned one. “But you can call me Randy. Everyone
does.”
“I bet.”
In the end, I had to
take Chavez’s card, three brochures and a flyer advertising an
upcoming two-for-one night before they would listen to me. I
persuaded Randy to take Pritkin to a tattoo parlor where he said a
friend would patch him up. I found that story fairly fishy, since
most of his wounds had already closed, but maybe his friend would
have a change of clothes or a shower. All that blood made him more
than a little conspicuous, and we desperately needed to blend
in.
“And where are you
going?” Pritkin demanded, looking suspicious.
“I said we’d talk and
we will,” I assured him, sliding into the BMW next to Chavez. “I’ll
meet you later. But I can’t run around dressed like
this.”
Billy had shown up
while we were talking and started to flow in through the rear
window, but I stopped him with a look. I didn’t trust the mage. It
sounded like Pritkin and the Circle were on the outs, but it could
be a trap. I needed a pair of eyes on him while I was busy
elsewhere, and ghostly eyes would do. Billy grimaced but floated
back to Pritkin after dropping something small and metal in my
hand.
“You can’t go back to
your hotel,” Pritkin said. His tone made it a command rather than a
recommendation.
“You think?” I pushed
him back so I could close the door. “Chavez can run me by the mall.
I need something to wear—even in Vegas, this outfit sticks out.”
Not to mention being really uncomfortable. “I’ll even pick up lunch
if you ask nicely.” Pritkin frowned, but there was no way he could
force me to go with him, as he seemed to realize. After a momentary
pause, he moved back so Chavez didn’t run over his toes. I decided
that for him that counted as civil, so I’d grab some food after my
errand.
“I need to go ice
skating,” I told Chavez as we blasted out of the lot behind the
liquor store, salsa music blaring from the car’s excellent sound
system. He shot me an inquiring glance but didn’t press. I guess
working for Casanova, you learned to take things in
stride.
Vegas has a good bus
system, but there are no public lockers at the downtown station so
I’d had to get creative for a place to stash certain items. Leaving
them at the hotel hadn’t sounded like a good idea, considering that
the mages and vamps could locate my room any minute. We’d been
switching hotels every day and I was using a fake name, but with
MAGIC’s resources, that didn’t mean much. I’d been jumping at every
sound and looking over my shoulder all week, although part of that
had been caused by guilt over my newfound profession as a casino
cheat.
Billy had been
helping me pick up living-expense money by making sure dice and
roulette balls fell where I wanted. I didn’t feel good about it,
but I hadn’t dared to access my checking account or credit cards
for fear that someone would trace me. I could stop by an ATM now
that everyone and their brother knew I was in Vegas, but I’d lied
about needing to shop. I’d stuffed a change of clothes in a duffle
along with my purse and the loot from the Senate before heading off
to Dante’s. The bag had gone into a locker at the ice rink, and the
key had been stowed in a dark corner of Dante’s lobby. The fact
that Billy hadn’t bitched about having to retrieve it showed that
he shared my enthusiasm for getting certain items off our
hands.
The ice rink is a
popular spot on hot desert days, and the free-skate period had just
started when we arrived. A crowd of tourists looking for a
family-friendly activity and a smattering of locals streamed in the
doors along with us, letting out a collective sigh of relief at the
climate change. The rink had a sub shop, so Chavez offered to load
up on fast food while I retrieved my bag. I offered to pay for the
food, but he laughed and declined. “Although I will be happy to
quote you a price for other things, querida.”
I ran off before I
was tempted to take him up on the offer. I ducked into a ladies’
room and changed into sneakers, a wadded-up pair of khaki shorts
and a bright red tank top. It wasn’t the picture of elegance, but
it beat my barefoot-and-sequins look. Even in Vegas that had
garnered a few glances, despite Pritkin’s blood being almost
invisible on the crimson satin.
When I returned,
Chavez was flirting with a dazed checkout girl, who had apparently
forgotten that she was supposed to receive more than a smile in
return for the two big bags she passed over. I was willing to bet
that his living expenses were pretty low. “Do I look okay?” I
asked, wondering whether I’d gotten most of the evidence of the
food fight off.
“Of course not.” He
gave me a slow smile as his eyes took in my new ensemble.
“¡Estás bonita! You will always stand
out.”
Since my hair was
sticky with cupcake residue and my clothes were wrinkled enough
that a homeless person wouldn’t have had them, I took that comment
for what it was—a knee-jerk reaction. Chavez was probably literally
incapable of insulting a woman, no matter how she looked. It would
be bad for business.
“Thanks, can we—” I
stopped, my heart in my throat, and stared across the rink at a man
who had just skated onto the ice. For a split second I thought it
was Tomas. He had the same slender, athletic build, the same
waist-length black hair and the same honey-over-cream skin. It
wasn’t until a little girl stumbled onto the ice after him and he
turned to catch her in his arms that I saw his face. Of course, it
wasn’t him. The last time I’d seen the real thing, he’d been trying
to hold his head up on a broken neck.
“What is it,
querida? You look like you’ve seen a
ghost.”
I could have told him
that seeing Tomas would be a lot more traumatic for me than seeing
any ghost, but I didn’t. My old roommate wasn’t my favorite topic
of conversation. He’d given Rasputin the keys to the wards
protecting MAGIC in return for two things: help killing his master
and control over me. The two went together, since his reason for
wanting to get rid of his current master was so he’d be free to
take out his old one. Considering that the vamp in question,
Alejandro, was head of the Latin American Senate, Tomas had decided
he’d need help. Maybe one day I’ll meet a guy who doesn’t think of
me primarily as a weapon. Or, knowing my luck, maybe
not.
Things hadn’t gone
quite the way Tomas had planned. I assumed he’d survived the
battle, since a first-level master isn’t easy to kill, but whether
he’d eluded MAGIC’s wrath I didn’t know. But if he’d fought his way
free, he was running for his life, not skating an afternoon away in
full public view. “It’s nothing,” I said.
Chavez leaned on the
railing beside me. “A handsome man. Muy
predido, a turn-on, as you Americans say.”
I shot him a glance.
His expression was appreciative, even slightly predatory, as it
followed the skating figure. “Aren’t you an incubus?” I’d been
under the impression that they preferred female partners. I
certainly hadn’t seen any male patrons hanging about
Casanova’s.
Chavez gave a Latin
shrug. “Incubus, succubus, it’s all the same.”
I blinked. “Come
again?”
“Our kind has no
innate sex, querida. At the moment, I
inhabit a male body, but I have possessed women at times. It is
much the same to me.” His eyes gleamed as he leaned closer,
trailing a warm finger down my cheek. It was a light touch, but it
caused me to shiver. “Pleasure is pleasure, after
all.”
With his words came a
swift tug of pure lust. It wasn’t as overwhelming as Casanova’s
touch, nor did it get the attention of the geis as his briefly had. It was a simple
invitation, no more, no less—the knowledge that any advance I chose
to make would be received with delight and would end in pleasure.
It made me furious, but not with him. It drove home the point that,
as things stood, I had less control over my love life than a nun.
Even if I lost my head and decided to exchange a lifetime of
slavery as Pythia for a brief fling, I couldn’t. Literally
couldn’t, unless I wanted to risk going crazy. Mircea had seen to
that.
“Did I shock you?” He
looked more amused than contrite. I could have told him that, after
growing up at Tony’s, not much shocked me anymore, but I settled
for a shrug. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he assured me. “My
lover is both male and a vampire, so I have developed . . . what is
the term? A thick skin?”
“I didn’t think vamps
and incubi had much to do with each other.”
“We don’t. I am
considered quite perverse,” he said cheerfully.
I smiled in spite of
myself. “Can we go?”
Chavez tried to take
the duffle, but I held on to it with the excuse that he was
carrying the bags of food. If this offended his macho
sensibilities, he didn’t let it show. Once we were safely back in
the car, I removed the stolen costume from the duffle after
wrapping it around the remaining black boxes. I left the Graeae’s
empty one in place. I had plans for it.
“Casanova said he’d
stick these in the house safe for me, and not charge the girl who,
uh, loaned me the clothes.” I passed the bundle to Chavez as he
turned over the engine.
“I’ll see to it,
although he may be busy for some time.” He slid a flirtatious
glance my way. “You left quite an impression, querida. I think Dante’s will never be the same.”
He casually tossed the bundle in the back seat, and I suppressed a
wince as it bounced on the padded leather. I wondered, not for the
first time, whether I shouldn’t put the boxes back in the locker
and call MAGIC with their location. But with the Senate facing war,
I didn’t trust them not to decide that they needed some extra help
and turn whatever was inside them loose. Casanova wouldn’t want any
more guests like the Graeae running around, so the boxes were
probably safe with him. At least until I could figure out what to
do with them.
Chavez pulled up to a
seedy tattoo parlor where, presumably, Pritkin was getting cleaned
up. He took my hand when I started to get out of the car. “I do not
know what you are planning, querida,
but be careful. Mages, they are never to be fully trusted, you
understand? And this one especially. When dealing with him,
remember: ‘Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under
it.’ ” I stared in surprise at the quote, and he laughed. “What did
you think, that I was merely good looks?”
I stammered out a
negative, although he’d gotten it right and we both knew it. “You
have my card, yes? Call if you need assistance.” He grinned, teeth
startlingly white against his smooth olive skin. “Or anything else.
For you, Cassie, my rates are negotiable.”
I laughed, and he
drove off, burning rubber. It only occurred to me after he’d gone
to wonder how he’d known my name. I’d never actually gotten around
to introducing myself. I shrugged it off; Casanova must have told
him.