The Phoenix Illusion

by Lisa Shearin

  Beside that hotel was another hotel.

  The Phoenix.

  It was smaller than the glass-towered properties on either side of it, but in my opinion, it had more panache. It wasn’t an old hotel, but it had been designed to look like an updated version of a classic Vegas hotel from the 1960s.

  My attention went to the hotel’s marquee. It was a masterpiece of neon art. A red Phoenix spread its wings and arose from flames that climbed and licked the night sky like real fire. After launching itself into flight, the Phoenix folded its wings, succumbing to the flames, and was consumed. It was born and died again and again.

  “That’s almost as cool as the fountains,” Ben said.

  I couldn’t have agreed more.

  Below the fire was a marquee with the hotel’s name in stylized script that alternated with advertisements of the hotel’s show, complete with a larger-than-life, up-close video snippet of the headliner.

  A classically tall, dark, and handsome man all in black. Dark, smoldering eyes gave every passerby on the Strip an irresistible come-hither.

  With fangs. Visible for all to see.

  A vampire hiding in plain sight as a human pretending to be a vampire.

  I did a double take, and not because he was hot.

  He wasn’t a vampire. He was a goblin.

  Marek Reigory.

  In addition to tight black leather, he was wearing one of the most incredibly thorough glamours I’d ever seen. Even though it was video, I could just make out the goblin beneath.

  Marek Reigory was working in a Las Vegas hotel as a magician named Keram Rei.

  A hotel that, according to the next screen on the marquee, he was going to make disappear tomorrow night in a sold-out show.

  21

  The marquee quickly went on to advertise the hotel’s all-you-can-eat buffet.

  I think I was the only one who’d seen the digital portent of doom. In the guys’ defense, there was an awful lot to look at. Aside from the neon lightshow, the bachelorettes were still woooo’ing from the limo next door, and the bride had just whipped off her top and was swinging it around her head.

  “Uh…guys,” I managed. “We need to call the boss. Now.”

  Ian leaned forward to get a better look when the video rotated back to the show after a promo of half-price drinks at the pool bar from noon to two. “Is that who I think—”

  “You better believe it,” I told him.

  “Oh, my God,” Ben breathed in the brief, but total, silence that followed. “He’s going to make the hotel…and it’s sold out. All those people…”

  Rake’s words that followed did not call on any god, goblin or human. They were all directed at Marek Reigory. Ian made a one-word contribution to Rake’s profoundly profane linguistic litany, and then he had his phone out, calling Alain Moreau.

  “His alias is ‘Marek’ spelled backward, with the first three letters of his last name,” Tam noted. “He’s playing with us.”

  Rake snarled as he reached for his own phone. “Playtime’s over.”

  *

  Only in Las Vegas could you advertise that you were going to make a building disappear and people would stand in line to buy tickets to be inside when it happened.

  Marek had named his show “The Phoenix Illusion,” except the hotel vanishing with thousands of innocent people inside wouldn’t be an illusion, and the disappearance of those thousands would be all too real.

  I wasn’t the only one thinking along those lines.

  “Who would want to be inside a building that’s going to disappear?” Ben was asking. We were back in the suite, which Ian and Rake were rapidly turning into a war room. “Just what do they think is going to happen to them? The building vanishes, and they’re left sitting in an empty lot?”

  I had my tablet out, searching online for everything I could find on Keram Rei and his show. Kenji would dig up much more. While we were on our way back from the Phoenix, I’d called him and told him what we needed. It’d been a little after two o’clock in the morning, which would’ve made it a little after five in New York. Kenji had been groggy when he’d answered the phone, but once I filled him in on the evil who, what, when, where, and why of our dire situation, our elf guru was instantly Mountain Dew-level awake.

  It was now closing in on four o’clock, but before our room service breakfast arrived in two hours, I was sure Kenji would have sent us only the first wave of every down and dirty detail there was to know about Marek Reigory’s magician alias. If it could be had, Kenji would dig it out and serve it up.

  “It says here a local network affiliate will have cameras set up outside the Phoenix tonight to record what happens,” I told Ben. “At least the TV people have enough sense to stay outside.”

  After Ian had called HQ to report our findings, I had no doubt Vivienne Sagadraco would be coming into the office.

  She kept a more or less human schedule and worked during the day. Mr. Moreau ruled the night shift at SPI. Only when a situation merited an all-hands emergency designation did Ms. Sagadraco work round the clock.

  I’d be stunned if Mr. Moreau wasn’t giving the boss lady a wakeup call right now.

  Marek Reigory was going to take a hotel from the middle of the Vegas Strip, with thousands of people inside, and send it to an unknown location either here or in another dimension, or maybe even another world. If that didn’t qualify as an all-hands event back home, I didn’t know what would.

  I Googled for any mention of the hotel or Marek’s show.

  I found that the hotel had been built five years ago, so it’d only been designed to look like something from the ’60s. It was a boutique hotel, its smaller size an effort to get back to the glamorous Las Vegas of the Rat Pack, before dancing musical fountains, gondolas, erupting volcanos, shark aqua-riums, replicas of cities and the like took over the Strip. While it was dwarfed by the resorts around it, what it lacked in square footage, it more than made up for in attracting A-listers from Hollywood, and two of the hottest celebrity chefs for its two restaurants. Its casino wasn’t the dark, smoke-filled maze with gaudy carpet to hide the stains from spilled drinks. It was named the Golden Egg, in reference to the goose that laid the Golden Egg, and maybe in keeping with the whole bird motif. The casino looked like how middle America expected casinos to look from the movies. Elegant and Monte Carlo-ish with a strict dress code. Men in tuxedos or suits, women in evening gowns or cocktail dresses, like something out of a James Bond or Humphrey Bogart movie. No tourists in Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian shirts, and sandals with black socks. It wasn’t allowed there, and it shouldn’t be allowed anywhere. There were standards, tasteful standards. Quite frankly, if I were to have a hotel and casino here, I’d want it to be like the Phoenix.

  “Who owns the Phoenix?” I asked.

  Gethen jerked his head toward where Rake paced in the hall, phone attached to his ear. “He’s on it.”

  Next, I found an article about last night’s show. “This is interesting,” I said to Ben and anyone else who might be listening. “In the last two shows, I guess as a warmup for tonight, Marek made himself disappear from the stage and then reappear at a nightclub at the hotel next door. Naturally, there were TV cameras waiting. After that, there was essentially a stampede at the Phoenix box office to buy the few remaining tickets.”

  Attached was a video of Marek popping into view in the middle of the club’s dance floor, scaring the bejesus out of some older tourists badly gettin’ their groove on. I noticed he was wearing the same cuff with a glowing green crystal that he’d used to escape when he attacked me.

  Tam looked over my shoulder. “It’s Sythsaurian technology. We took a few of those cuffs from some dead Khrynsani in Nidaar. They’re still being studied to determine how they work. It appears that’s how Marek plans to escape once he activates that crystal. Those last two shows were tests for his escape.”

  I watched the video again, looking for anything that could help
us.

  When he’d attacked me, Marek had only been wearing one cuff. Now he was wearing one on each wrist.

  “He’s wearing two now. Does he need both?” I asked Tam.

  “I don’t see why he would. Though if I was depending on one of those cuffs to escape a hotel about to be ripped from reality, I’d want a backup. I’ll be willing to bet Marek won’t do his illusion if he’s not wearing them.”

  “It’d be like robbing a bank without a getaway car,” I said.

  Ian came into the room and dropped his phone in his shirt pocket. “More like setting a bomb to go off with no way out.”

  Ben had scooted over next to me on the couch and was reading the article that went along with the video. “He has a lot of people believing he’s a vampire, which I think would really piss off the real thing.”

  I snorted. “Talk about cultural appropriation.”

  Rake came back into the room. “I can’t see Marek doing this without high-powered mage security,” he told Ian. “Probably Khrynsani. He’d want his own people. This has been planned for a long time, with at least six months of testing.”

  “There’ll be wards out the wazoo,” I muttered. “Nasty ones.”

  “By the way,” Rake continued, “the Phoenix is owned by Laerin Asset Management.”

  Tam barked a laugh.

  I looked back and forth between the two goblins. “What?”

  “Laerin is a city in Pengor, which is the elven kingdom,” Tam told me. “The Silvanus family controls Laerin. It’s the center of their financial and political empire—though a more accurate description would be their criminal empire.”

  Rake and Gethen exchanged a glance.

  Ian gave them a flat look. “You boys care to share with the rest of the class?”

  “Lady Makenna, can you find if any of his major shows have been broadcast?” Gethen asked.

  “Check YouTube,” Ben suggested. “Somebody had to have snuck a phone recording.”

  Rake nodded. “We’re looking for any VIPs. Pay close attention to anyone seated near the stage. They’ll probably look bored, as if they’ve been there, seen that. More than likely they’ll be glamoured.”

  I sighed, as much for myself as for Ian. “For once, can you just tell us what’s going on in your head first, then make with the cryptic requests?”

  “Marek likes what he considers to be a fun scheme as much as the next Bond villain wannabe,” Rake said, “but this is too big for him—at least too big for him to plan and execute by himself. I’m not saying he’s not qualified to do it. He is. This is simply beyond what Marek would want to take on by himself. As far as he’s concerned, too many boring details equals not enough fun.”

  I blinked. “He’s a lazy Bond villain?”

  “He merely prefers to work alone. He has trust issues, especially with non-goblins. There’s entirely too much planning, timing, and coordination involved here for Marek to enjoy himself. And unless he has to, Marek doesn’t do anything he doesn’t enjoy. He seems to be the centerpiece of this operation, at least the one in the spotlight. That is the part he would enjoy. In New York, you said he was angry and anxious.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the part he hates—having to depend on others not to screw up. I’ve been thinking about it, and with my house, somebody definitely screwed up. I don’t think it was supposed to have been taken at all, or if it was, it wasn’t supposed to have been dropped in the middle of New York. Though if that hadn’t happened, we probably wouldn’t have been on to this at all, or not until it was too late. All that means Marek has accomplices—and people who he’s reporting to. Furthermore, mages at his level of power and above have ego issues—”

  I was all innocence. “You don’t say?”

  “This is an important operation to whoever is ultimately in charge,” Rake continued, ignoring my jab without missing a beat. “Marek screwed up in New York. Even though it wasn’t him personally, it was someone he was responsible for. He’s being watched by his higher-ups in this cabal, or whatever it is they call themselves. If they were at either of the past two nights’ shows, which is probable since his disappearance was a test for his escape tonight, the most likely place for them would be in any VIP seating—front row, front table, or a box if the Phoenix’s theater has them.”

  “There might also have been someone waiting in the nightclub at the hotel next door,” I suggested as I reached for my phone. “I’ll have Kenji see if he can hack into both hotels’ security videos. He’s been working on a facial recognition program that lets him review tape at any speed and the program will stop it when it IDs anyone on our most-watched or wanted lists. That is, if they’re not glamoured. He hasn’t figured out a way to do that yet.”

  Ian gave me a nod of approval. “Good thinking, partner.”

  “Yes, very good,” Rake added. “We’ll need you to review the VIP sections to determine if any of them are using glamours. Marek’s own ego won’t let him answer to anyone he considers to be less powerful than himself. That makes it even more likely that those in charge occupy places of dishonor on both of Vivienne’s lists. It’s critical that we know who we’re going up against. More lives are at stake than just tonight’s audience.”

  No pressure.

  22

  After all that, I still managed a yawn. Nearly hourly bursts of adrenaline would wear anybody out.

  “Why don’t you try to get some sleep, darling?” Rake suggested. “We’ve got a big day ahead of us, and you haven’t slept in…”

  I did some groggy calculations, but couldn’t come up with a number. “I can’t remember.”

  “You need to be alert,” Ian said. “Go get some sleep.”

  “Kenji will be calling me back.”

  “Leave me your phone. I’ll take care of it.”

  “What about you? You’ve been awake just as long as I have. When are you gonna sleep?”

  “I’ll grab a power nap.”

  With his background, Ian could probably go to infinity and beyond without sleep. I couldn’t go to infinity, let alone beyond. Heck, right now, I didn’t even think I could spell it.

  Nighty-night time it was.

  *

  I kept regular daylight office hours at SPI. Usually. Unless something big was going down, then I went until I couldn’t go any more. The forces of evil didn’t clock in and out, so neither could I.

  My problem was that when I was borderline exhausted, more often than not, exhaustion brought along her good friend insomnia.

  Insomnia was a jerk.

  In addition, my subconscious had brought paranoia, fear, and inadequacy to the sleepover.

  I did meditative breathing. No go. I tried counting sheep, but just as I was starting to doze off, the fluffy little sheep turned into zombie sheep and attacked me.

  Rake came in and quietly closed the door behind him. “Can’t sleep?”

  “Let’s see… Unless we stop him, a crazy goblin mage—no insult intended—”

  Rake crossed the room to the bed. “None taken. I’m not crazy.”

  “Is going to snuff an entire hotel out of existence, possibly killing thousands of people—”

  Rake slid into the bed next to me.

  “On TV, in the most public outing of supernatural power since the boss’s sister tried to turn a herd of grendels loose in Times Square on New Year’s—”

  “Shhh.” Rake’s lips descended onto mine.

  “Relaxing isn’t happening.” At least that’s what I tried to say, but it got muffled.

  “That’s what I thought.” Rake’s arms went around me and gently pulled me close. The rest of him got even closer. His voice was a husky whisper. “I’m here to help.”

  “I got that feeling.” And Rake’s knee sliding between my legs was giving me even more feelings.

  “I put too much pressure on you.” His lips hovered just above mine. “That was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

/>   “No, you were right. It’s what I was hired to do.” I went silent for a few moments. “It’s just that…I feel like a third-string Little Leaguer told they have to pitch in the final game of the World Series.”

  Rake pulled back, his brow creased in confusion. “I don’t know what some of that means.”

  “You’re kidding? You live in New York and—”

  “Shhh.” Another lingering kiss.

  “It’s a sports analogy,” I managed when I came up for air.

  “I don’t care about sports,” he whispered against my lips, followed by another kiss, this time deeper.

  As Rake’s lips started to wander south, I found I didn’t care, either. And when his hands joined the journey, I forgot what baseball was, except for the overwhelming need to round third base for a home run.

  *

  I woke up in a little pool of drool.

  The clock beside the bed said 7:55.

  I’d slept nearly four hours, but Vegas probably hadn’t even blinked.

  The side of the bed next to me had been slept in, but not for long. I wasn’t surprised. Marek was a couple of hotels down the Strip plotting evil of apocalyptic proportions. His show started at nine o’clock tonight. We had thirteen hours. Hopefully that would be lucky thirteen. Rake and Ian were plotting how to stop him in his tracks. I knew full well Rake was anticipating going beyond that and had probably kept himself awake with entertaining scenes of murder and mayhem that would make his previous blood-soaked encounter with Marek look like a pillow fight.

  I grabbed another shower, got dressed, and left the master suite in search of breakfast.

  There was still plenty of food left on the sideboard in the dining room. Rake had ordered enough to feed a small army, but the guys had already put a respectable dint in the provisions. I got myself a plate and vowed to do my part to put a serious hurtin’ on what was left.

  I sat down to eat, but within a few minutes I heard voices raised in debate from the terrace. I took my plate, refilled my humongous cup of coffee, and joined them.