by P. R. Frost
The boat passed beyond me. He couldn’t follow.
Anonymous hands reached down to help me. I scrambled onto the bridge, having flashed only a little too much leg in my precipitous escape. Good thing Scrap color coordinates my undies.
“Thanks, folks.” I called and waved to my helpers.
Head high and shoulders straight, I marched for the nearest exit.
Scrap settled on my shoulder and wiggled his tail, lashing my back with its barb. Right where he belonged. Where I belonged.
You didn’t ask if your first husband was Damiri demon like Donovan’s foster father, he chided me.
“Next time. Want to tell me about the darkness in your soul?”
Next time, babe. I’ve got unfinished business in Imp Haven.
He disappeared again.
“Damn,” I said as I hailed a taxi.
Chapter 12
Slot machines need a complete change of circuit board to affect the percentage of wins.
I HATE LYING to Tess. I had imp business—but not in Imp Haven.
Fortitude bugs me. He’s too silent. Too big. Sure he’s bonded to a rogue Warrior, but that’s no excuse for shunning another imp. I’m bonded to a rogue, too.
Rogue means working outside the confines of a Citadel, not mean or bad or anything like that. I’ve heard rumors that more and more Warriors of the Celestial Blade are leaving the Citadels.
The portals to other dimensions aren’t stable. We need Warriors out in the world, continuing what the secret fraternities and sororities have been doing for centuries in solitude.
Fortitude acts like that’s top secret information and I’m not good enough to have access.
Well, I’ve got my sources, too.
Gayla’s imp Ginkgo likes to chat. I think I’ll skip through the chat room and over to the Citadel. It’s only a thousand miles or so, almost due north. That’s a much easier journey than through time. Done that once or twice, don’t want to have to do it again.
Since I’m not hopping dimensions, I slip into the big white room without definition. I close one layer of eyelids to concentrate and visualize my destination. Gotta keep the other three layers open to make sure the scaly faeries on duty don’t notice me. Then I slide back into the same dimension but at a different location. Easy as pie.
Except ...
“Let go of my tail!”
A huge and hairy hand with four digits and an opposable thumb hangs on tight.
This is going to cost me a wart or two.
I twist and yank and send my wings into overtime.
Big fat on steroids laughs, a deep and foreboding expulsion of air that has little to do with humor and a lot to define evil.
I ache to transform. Tess is not here to command me.
What to do? What to do?
I stretch anyway, becoming thinner and sharper. My tail slices the demon’s hand.
“Ouch, that hurts,” it pouts, sucking dark green blood from its palm.
“That’s what you get for detaining an imp on an honest mission,” I snarl back. Can’t let the beast know how scared I am. That blood was so dark it was almost black.
Faery blood is bright pink or maybe cerulean, never dark. If he’s a mutated faery, we’re all in trouble. Faeries are the bright and joyful balance of air sprites for the entire universe. They have the only dimension with three demon ghettos because their power of light is so strong. (That’s a big secret, so don’t tell anyone). Every other dimension has one race of light and one race of dark. (We keep demons in ghettos for a reason. They eat anything and everything in their path). Faeries can flit into many dimensions. Almost as good as imps.
The universe needs faeries.
An imbalance in their domain shakes up the balance across the entire universe.
Humans are weird, though. They don’t need a demon ghetto. They kill themselves frequently and with unnatural glee. They are their own victims.
I think maybe I need to take a look in Faery after I talk to Ginkgo. We need more faeries, but not the kind on guard duty in the chat room lately.
“Are we anywhere near the Dragon and St. George?” I asked the skinny taxi driver. I’d come out of The Venetian at a different door and got disoriented.
“Thought you wanted to go to The Crown Jewels,” the driver muttered. A longer drive, bigger fare, bigger tip. He looked like one of the many starving performers in town who worked at anything between gigs and tips. I thought I’d seen him before, but who remembers taxi drivers?
“I do. Later. But first I’d like to check on something.”
“Tickets to ‘Fairy Moon’ are scarce as hen’s teeth, lady. I know a guy . . .”
“I saw the show earlier this evening.”
The muted roar of traffic on the Strip at the other side of the hotel filled the cab as he thought of ways to milk more money out of me.
I took a chance. “Lady Lucia sent me the tickets.”
His eyes sparked with interest. And fear. He took a long, assessing look at me through the rearview mirror. I thought his gaze lingered on my scar. Maybe I’m paranoid.
“You a friend of Lady Lucia, you tell her Mickey Mallone take you anywhere in Vegas you want to go.” A strange name for a guy with distinct Mediterranean coloring and broken English. “No charge. I wait for you to finish business at the Dragon, then take you to Crown. Anything for a friend of Lady Lucia.” He put the car into gear and screeched the tires as he merged into traffic, as if he owned the street.
“I’ve never met her. She sent me the tickets as a professional courtesy.” So I wouldn’t go vampire hunting?
My imagination sped into overdrive. I hadn’t done enough writing on this trip to control it.
Vampires were myths. No one comes back from the dead. No one.
Not even my husband Dill.
“No one meets Lady Lucia. I gotta go around a couple of blocks to approach the Dragon from the right.” The barest flick of the turn signal and we were careening around a corner.
I decided to buckle up.
He pulled into the porte cochere of the Dragon less than ten minutes later, despite bumper-to-bumper traffic on and off the Strip. This hotel had grown up three blocks (each the size of a small city) away from the main action in a slightly less desirable neighborhood. It didn’t have the cachet of a Strip hotel until “Fairy Moon” brought it to the attention of the masses. Now neon and glitter had engulfed it.
“I may be a while, Mickey. Get another fare.” I climbed out of the taxi, pressing a ten into his hands.
“No charge, lady. I said no charge for a friend of . . . you know.”
“A tip. Mickey.”
He shrugged. The bill disappeared into his jeans pocket. “You got cell phone? Call me. I come back for you. You wait for me.” He scrawled something on a fast food bag that smelled of fried fish, tore off the scrap, and gave it back to me. “You call. Mickey take you anywhere in Vegas.”
“What about the Valley of Fire?”
He gulped and looked away. “Okay,” he said reluctantly.
“What if I rent a car and you drive me?”
A huge smile creased his face. His blindingly white teeth shone in the dim interior. “That I can do. Forty, fifty miles each way. Good museum in Overton. When you want to go?”
I had a morning full of classes for the conference. “Pack a picnic basket and meet me at The Crown at noon sharp. I’ll have you back in time for the evening shift.” I slammed the door.
“Call Mickey when you ready,” he returned as an overweight, mid-thirties couple wearing matching turquoise shorts and flowered shirts pushed into the taxi from the other side. They yelled something at each other and then to Mickey. He took off at a more sedate pace.
These people obviously were not friends of Lady Lucia.
No clocks anywhere inside. I checked the one on my cell phone, forty-five minutes to the next performance of “Fairy Moon.” I hadn’t spent as much time with Donovan as I thought. The fiasco felt like a l
ifetime.
Damn. I’d screwed up as much as he had. I wished I’d taken a better look at the ring. Sure, my inborn avarice wanted to own it, wear it, flaunt it. The ring offered me a sense of power and well-being. It needed to grace my hand.
I shook off that notion in a hurry.
The ring looked like it cost as much as my last advance on a two-book contract. If it was real. My first glance gave me the impression of an antique. The cut and setting might give me some clues to where and when Donovan acquired it.
His finances had undergone many ups and downs over the last year. I didn’t think he’d recovered enough to buy that ring on the open market.
I edged around the casino, scanning the ranks of slot machines. The metallic music and constant clanking noises set my teeth on edge more than Donovan’s proposal. My stomach growled for sustenance. My nerves rejected the idea of food.
Halfway around the small casino I spotted drifting pastel chiffon behind a knot of cocktail waitresses and suited people with discreet gold hotel name badges.
I took a stool at a slot machine between the fairy dancer and the madly whispering staff. I still couldn’t understand why the hotel allowed the dancers out in public in costume. This young man’s wings drooped and a layer of grime ringed his ragged knee pants and the cuffs of his elbow-length sleeves.
The flowing green, lavender, and blue of his costume looked pale, verging on the gray of the final act. As I watched him slide a gold chip into the machine, the colors of his garb shifted to brighter hues. Then when the rollers came up with another loss, the colors faded again.
This was no trick of the lights.
I looked closer. Narrow exquisite face, pointed ears, delicate grace. A fragile beauty on the verge of shattering.
“I don’t understand how anyone could be skimming,” one of the staff whispered to his colleagues. Anger made his voice grow louder than he’d intended. “The owners can’t sell the hotel out from under us for a little discrepancy in the books.”
The faery didn’t look or appear to overhear the intense conversation right next to him.
I carefully avoided glancing in either direction. If I wanted to engage the faery or listen in on a private conversation I had to have a reason to linger. The only reason for staying in this section more than half a minute was the slots.
Reluctantly, I dragged my wallet out of my bra—I have to give myself cleavage some way. Cell phone on the left, wallet on the right and I actually look like I have boobs.
When the wasting fever of the imp flu peeled forty-seven pounds off my body and sped up my metabolism to burn every calorie I ingested, I think it took thirty-seven of those pounds off my chest. That’s about the only regret I have from that awful experience. After all, the flu gave me Scrap and a whole new purpose in life.
I placed three quarters in the slot and pulled the arm. No mechanical resistance or click, just the smooth engagement of a computer.
The boxes rolled around and around, settling one by one. One double cherry. Two, and then three stalled in front of me. Clangs and whistles. A flashing light. A long shower of quarters dropped into my lap.
“Let me get you a bucket for those,” one of the waitresses said, smiling hugely. “And can I get you a drink while I’m at it?”
“Single malt. Straight up. And can I get a turkey sandwich with that?” She moved off.
The knot of staff backed away to the end of the row, almost into the emergency fire exit.
“Lucky you,” muttered the faery in a strangely stilted accent. Like he worked to pronounce each word individually and precisely. “My luck has deserted me.”
“I’m sorry. Here. Share some of mine.” I handed him a fist full of quarters.
He examined the coins as if looking for counterfeit.
“Are these real money?” he asked. “They are not gold. How can they be money?”
Uh-oh. What had I stumbled on to?
Did I say I don’t believe in coincidence?
Chapter 13
Slot machines are negative expectation machines: the longer you play, the more likely you are to lose.
“THISTLE, YOU HAVE TO come now,”a girl faery hissed at my puzzled companion. She had the same stilted accent and the same delicate features.
I’d heard that accent before. Where?
“You know what Lord Gregbaum will do to us if you’re late again.” Her flowing draperies had a dominant pale green beneath a film of grimy gray. At the mention of Lord Gregbaum, the gray became dominant and the green the barest hint.
Gregbaum? I’d heard that name before.
Thistle handed the quarters back to me. “Thank you, gracious lady.” He bowed formally. “Faery is in your debt. Mint, wait for me.”
Neither one of them touched ground as they hastened through the maze of slot machines.
I gulped.
Anyone but me would dismiss it all as delusion born of stress, drink, the extra oxygen pumped in so gamblers got an artificial high, the never ending noise and smoke in the casino, anything but challenge reality with the notion that faeries could be real.
The waitress appeared with my bucket and sandwich. I dumped my quarters, handed her the bucket, and grabbed the tray.
“Hey, I’m not supposed to serve you if you aren’t gambling.”
“Keep the quarters. They’ll cover the cost.” I lifted the scotch in toast and took a quick sip. One does not ever, under any circumstance, waste good single malt scotch, or even mediocre blends, by gulping.
The fragrance opened my senses. A first taste rolled around my mouth with just a hint of a bite. I swallowed and the fire exploded on the back of my tongue and through every nerve ending in my body. “Ah, Lagavulin. The fire of the gods wrapped in velvet.” Nothing but the best for a winning gambler. Got to keep them happy and gambling so they eventually lose everything they won and then some.
Another sip, then two more just so I didn’t waste the water of life.
Fortified, I turned to dash after the dancers, sandwich and glass in hand. I have my priorities and never miss a chance to eat and drink. With my schedule, the next meal might disappear as fast as faery dust.
“That’s the real trouble with this casino. Everyone is obsessed with that stupid show instead of gambling,” the waitress muttered. “Except those blasted dancers. They gamble all the time.”
“Is that why the casino is being sold?” I came to a screeching halt. “I mean this place is full to overflowing with people. Why sell a profitable resort?”
“Yeah, maybe.” She looked embarrassed as she counted the quarters, stuffing every other dollar’s worth into her tip bag at her hip.
“What happens to the show if the Dragon and St. George sells? Will the producer move it to another casino?” Judging by the difficulty getting tickets, another hotel should jump at the chance to host a winning show.
“Look, lady, I don’t know anything. I’m just a waitress trying to hang on to my job. But if it means so much to you, most times a hotel sells, they implode it—selling tickets to that show—and rebuild, bigger and glitzier. And everyone who works there is out of a job until it reopens, two maybe three years down the road. As for the show? That’s up to the producer.” She finished counting the money and hurried away.
I tried to find the dancers. They, of course, had disappeared, probably into the maze of back corridors that serviced the entire hotel/casino/resort.
My spine tingled. Someone watched me. Again.
“Scrap, where are you?”
Silence.
I imagined hidden monsters behind potted plants and rows of gambling machines following my progress across the floor. I’d fought my fair share of monsters. But I needed help to do it.
“Scrap?”
A hazy stirring in the back of my mind.
“What are you doing sleeping on the job?”
Scrap never slept, except right after a fight. He needed rest then to recover from the difficult and draining process of transforming
into the Celestial Blade.
I whipped out my cell phone and called Mickey. As I waited in the busy porte cochere, full of lights and people, I read the twice life-sized digital poster screen advertising “Fairy Moon.”
Produced by Gary Gregbaum.
So who made him a lord?
“Who is Gary Gregbaum?” I asked Mickey as he pulled into traffic.
“Bad news.”
“Anyone in Vegas who isn’t bad news?”
Mickey flashed me his brilliant grin. “Me.”
“How’d Gregbaum get a rep like that if he’s now the hottest producer of the hottest show in town?”
“He used to be Lady Lucia’s lover. Bad blood between those two.” He gulped. “I mean . . .”
“Lady Lucia’s supposed to be a vampire. There is no bad blood to a vampire.” I grinned back at him. This town was getting spooky. Wereweasels, vampires. Faery lords. Someone stalking me.
“Yeah. She threw Gregbaum out on his ear. He’s got a grudge. She’s got her fangs in a twist ’cause he made a success of the show even after she pulled her financing. Rumor has it that someone else is working with Gregbaum behind the scenes. No one knows who. Maybe another vampire cutting into Lady Lucia’s territory. Maybe someone or something else.”
“How come you know so much?” I asked suspiciously.
“People talk in cabs. They do not expect the driver to listen. They do not expect driver with broken English to be smart enough to put together stray pieces of information. No one remembers cab drivers.” He flashed me a wide grin through the rearview mirror.
Except me. I know I’d seen him before tonight. “So why tell it all to me?”
“Professional courtesy,” he mimicked my words in describing Lady Lucia’s gift of tickets. He nodded his head in an imitation bow or salute.
I mulled that over for a moment. Any information was better than none. I’d sort out the veracity later.
“What do you hear about the Dragon and St. George being up for sale? Lady Lucia leveraging a buyout so she can close him down?”
“You said it, lady. I didn’t.”