At that moment the doors opened.
The hall carpet was a deep rich purple, bordered in a subdued knotwork pattern in gold that was picked up in the wallpaper. Reproductions of some of the more whimsical Pre-Raphaelite paintings hung on the walls—not that Beth was sure they were reproductions. Some of the hames entertained themselves by collecting art and literature about the Fair Folk that was created by humans, and that would certainly be right in line with Glitterhame Neversleep’s corporate culture.
“This way, dear ones.”
They passed a few tastefully gold-leafed doors with various Celtic motifs done on them in low relief—serpents, claddaughs, Celtic crosses, triskelions—but not many. These were the kind of suites that every Vegas casino kept for its high rollers, and Beth had heard that they were enormous.
At last they arrived at their destination. Gerry opened the door with a flourish before handing the key card back to Beth.
“Welcome!” he said, stepping back so they could enter.
“Oh, my,” Beth said.
They stood in the main room of the suite. The curtains were drawn back from one curving glass wall to show her the eastward-looking view of the late-afternoon Strip. The Superstition Mountains were a faint blue smear in the distance, and even with the dust and fuss of the city’s building boom, the air seemed clear and impossibly crystalline. She could see the various casinos all the way down to the MGM Grand and Excalibur, looking tawdry and faintly apologetic without their nighttime neon.
“There’s a balcony on the other side—and, of course, the Roof Terrace. And now, I’ll leave the two of you to settle in. If you have any questions, or need anything at all, no matter how infinitesimal, don’t hesitate to give me a jingle. My card is in your information packet, and as you already know, we never sleep here in the City of Sin.” Gerry waved gaily and sauntered out, closing the door behind him.
“And I thought Underhill was weird,” Beth said. Tearing her attention away from the view—it was mesmerizing, and would be more so come nightfall—she turned to inspect their lodgings.
It was obvious no marketing department or consumer focus group had been consulted in decorating the suite, because their suggestions would have run to the bland, the inoffensive, the middle of the road. And this wasn’t that. It had a cheerful vulgarity, a no-holds-barred excess, a lurid exuberance that made Beth smile. See? the room almost seemed to say. It’s okay to play around with bright colors. No Fashion Police here! And remember: Glitter is Good.
If she’d had to characterize the style, she’d have said Celtic-Egyptian, providing, of course, it’d come by way of the Sun King’s court in France. There were several sectional seating groups in bright colors—red, blue, purple—stone-topped gilded tables in the shapes of fantastic beasts, paintings and a few statues and some knick-knacks and several vases filled with gaudy lilies scattered across the top of the bar and the entertainment armoire. The whole room fairly radiated self-confidence, the cheerful happiness of someone secure in their own style, no matter how far from the mainstream that might be.
On the coffee table was a large fruit basket, a jeroboam of champagne, and an equally enormous candy box with an unfamiliar logo, all gifts of the management. Beth went over and lifted the lid, puzzled. This couldn’t be chocolate . . . ?
It wasn’t. The box was filled with marzipan and divinity, candied apricots, caramels, sugar-glazed nutmeats: in short, everything but chocolate. Oooh, Purina Elf Yummies. Cool.
“I must say, we’re certainly getting the VIP treatment. As advertised,” she said to no one in particular. Kory was wandering around the room like a cat in a strange place, picking things up and setting them down. He went off into the bedroom. Beth followed, nibbling on an apricot.
The bedroom was decorated mostly in soothing blues and greens: there was a second bar, a second television, and enough closet space to get lost in. It had a bed bigger than anything Beth had seen outside of Underhill dominating the room, with a green velvet tufted headboard that went halfway up the wall, and a matching half-canopy jutting out above it, satin-lined drapes held back with tasseled gold ropes.
But the bathroom, so far as Beth was concerned, was the star attraction, filled with enough Eurogadgets that by rights it should have launched you into orbit, not just gotten you clean. There were heated vibrating massage beds, towel warmers, infrared lamps, a heated floor, an omnidirectional step-in shower, and a whirlpool Jacuzzi big enough to baptize an entire parish at one go. The counter was filled with bottles of complementary toiletries, everything from bath gel to toothpaste, and there were more fresh flowers in a silver bowl, filling the room with the scent of roses and oranges.
“Can we take this whole place with us when we go back to Underhill?” Beth asked, only half joking.
Kory smiled. “I think Maeve would like it. I think I would, too. I have never . . . seen any place quite like this in your human world.”
“Just goes to show you what happens when you turn elves with money loose in Las Vegas,” Beth quipped. “Now, we’d better go start making those phone calls and find out where those vendors Ray promised to hook us up with are going to be tomorrow.”
Travis Booker already knew he was in over his head. His ID (should he need to produce it) said he was working for Greenwood Security Limited, one of the Paranormal Defense Initiative’s screen organizations—and if that were really the case, he’d have no problems. Greenwood Security had a booth at Comdex; it was actually a legitimate business, providing on-site security services for vendors concerned about industrial espionage. The fact that its findings trickled upstairs to its governmental masters was something that very few people—its clients not among them—needed to know.
Until ten months ago, Travis had been a researcher. There wasn’t much else you could do with a Ph.D. in folklore and anthropology—when he’d written his paper on urban myths, he’d had hopes of a bright publishing career, or at least a plum teaching job. Neither materialized—but the United States Government in its infinite wisdom had plenty of jobs for someone whose only real talent was hitting the books. He knew he was working for one of the alphabet agencies, but even Travis wasn’t sure which one: his paycheck said General Services Administration, just like everyone else’s; he’d been hired by the State Department (just like everyone else), and his time was occupied either in preparing briefing memos on whatever esoteric subject appeared in his in-box, or in boiling other such documents down into two-page memos.
It seemed to him sometimes that life would be simpler if they all just stuck to writing two-page memos in the first place, but the same governmental department that swore it was too busy to read the information it asked for also insisted on in-depth coverage of its subject.
Then one day a man had come to him and asked him if he’d like a new job. Travis had warmed up to Parker Wheatley immediately—the man was obviously a Washington insider, clearly going places. Wheatley had said that he was forming a special new department, and Travis’s qualifications and clearances fit him admirably for work there.
For a while his new job was the same as the old—his paychecks still came from the GSA, and he even had the same office—but instead of putting together reports on the political history of Afghanistan, the subjects he was called upon to research were universally wacky. UFO sightings over major cities. Appearances of elves and fairies since 1900. A list of cryptozoological sightings organized by geographical area, with special reference to those grouped around sites of current nuclear power plants. He found it a nice change to be able to put his degree to some use, but wondered vaguely what his tax dollars were up to, if his new employers were investigating Bigfoot.
After a while, he began receiving what were obviously field agents’ reports, with a request to match the descriptions in them to the closest known folklore motif. Curiosity was something discouraged in Travis’s line of work, but he couldn’t help beginning to piece things together. There actually was something out there. Something with hug
e implications for national and global defense. Something that had been here before, leaving legends in its wake, and was back again now. John Keel had called them “ultraterrestrials”; Keel’s being a sort of Unified Weirdness Theory that whatever the source of this weird phenomena, it was Earthly and continuous, not extraplanetary and recent, in origin. Travis duly wrote a lengthy paper cross-referencing The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials with Arne-Thompsen and passed it up the chain of command.
Shortly after that, Parker Wheatley had called to invite him to lunch at the exclusive Cincinnatus Club, and Travis had leaped at the chance. Something was definitely up, and he suspected he was about to be given a chance to find out what.
What he didn’t expect was to be offered the chance to be a field agent for the newly formed Paranormal Defense Initiative, successor in interest to Project Broad Church, for which he had been recruited. Mr. Wheatley had assured him that he could pick up the field skills he needed as he went along—with intensive coaching, of course—but that it was very important to the PDI to have field agents who had some idea of what they were dealing with.
“My doctorate is in folklore,” Travis reminded him, trying not to be overawed by the vibrations of money and power that filled the Cincinnatus Club’s dining room. It very much resembled an exclusive English men’s club of the 19th century—it was meant to—and was the sort of place that people like Travis rarely saw. Parker Wheatley, on the other hand, was obviously a frequent guest.
“So it is,” Mr. Wheatley had said. “And surely you’ve gained some idea of our mandate from all the work you’ve been doing for us?”
This was dangerous ground, for thinking was next door to prying into matters that didn’t concern you, and a good way to lose your job, your clearances, and your government pension.
“Well, really, sir, I’m just doing my job. And I know I’m not seeing the full picture. After all, it isn’t my job to speculate. Only to provide factual information.”
“Let’s just suppose for a moment that I were to ask you to speculate. Based solely on the material that crosses your desk in the line of duty, of course, and with the full understanding that you don’t have all the pieces. I’d be interested to see what you’d come up with.”
“Well . . .” Wheatley obviously wasn’t going to let him off the hook. “I guess I’d have to say that you’re interested in a class of phenomena whose manifestations explicitly predate 1947, and in fact have occurred in essentially the same form as far back as we have written records, though the interpretation of them has naturally changed over time.”
“Neatly put,” Wheatley said. “And what would you say those phenomenal manifestations are?”
“I can’t say,” Travis pointed out. “No one knows. I can say that at various times in history, these same phenomena have been classed as gods, demons, various forms of non-deific supernatural beings, and, most recently, as space aliens, of which the Alien Grey is the most commonly recognized, but certainly not the only type. Whether there’s really anything there—and if there isn’t, why people keep seeing them with such peculiar consistency—isn’t something I can tell you.”
“Well, then, Travis, let me put the question I asked you earlier in a different way: would you like to go and see for yourself?”
Put that way, it had been an offer he couldn’t refuse, one which had led him, over the course of nearly a year, to standing around a Las Vegas airport in the ugliest green suit imaginable, looking for . . . what the rest of the PDI was looking for: Spookies.
Travis hated the green suit, but the stealth technology woven into the fabric didn’t take dye very well, so Headquarters said, so the field teams were stuck with looking like a bunch of forest-green fashion plates. Fortunately, in a town like this, they didn’t stand out, and Travis had to admit that the cut itself was stylish.
Las Vegas was far from PDI’s usual beat, but Headquarters had gotten a tip that some Spookies might be showing up at Comdex, so he’d been tasked to keep an eye out at McCarran International to see if he spotted one coming in through the airport. Spookies could look like anything, but the black box on his wrist impersonating a watch didn’t lie. It was designed to respond to the presence of parasympathetic energy, and PS waves always meant Spookies.
Nevertheless, he’d been as surprised as anyone to see his watch light up when the tall woman passed him. He would have stared at her regardless—she was well over six feet tall, even without the high-heeled black boots, and had long red-streaked black hair that hung straight to her waist. He slipped on his sunglasses to take a better look. Their special filtering technology was supposed to cut through Spookie illusions as if they weren’t there, and for the first time, Travis’d had a demonstration of what that meant. His quarry’s business suit and porn queen boots vanished. Now she was wearing what looked like a black velvet riding habit, and she had the ears.
Gotcha, babe. You may run, but you can’t hide. His heart raced with excitement—he knew the Spookies were dangerous, often savage, and totally unpredictable, but he was actually seeing one up close! He hurried to follow her as she headed out the front of the airport toward the waiting line of cabs.
The cab ride to the Strip was short, and he had no trouble keeping hers in view. She pulled up at one of the casinos; he stopped his cab at the next one and walked back, following her inside. His black box promptly lit up again, and this time the entire face went red, unable to give him a directional indicator. The whole place was loaded with PS energy!
He shook his head, suddenly dizzy. He had an urge to go back out onto the street, back to the airport, but a sense of duty stopped him. He’d tagged a Spookie, and he wasn’t going to stop until he chased her down. PDI was always hoping for the pot of gold: a live Spookie capture, not just a bunch of glimpses and second-hand reports. If he was involved in a capture, it could mean promotion, maybe even a bonus.
Maybe I’d better report in, he thought, worried. The GPS locator all field agents wore would let the local office know where he was, but no more than that. Just then he spotted her again, over at the Reservations Desk.
And she was surrounded by Spookies. Half the people behind the desk looked just like the ID sketches he’d seen—the long pointed ears and brilliant overlarge hypnotic eyes. He swept a glance around the rest of the casino. More of them. The place was crawling with Spookies—a whole nest of them!
He started to panic, then controlled himself. They didn’t know he was here, and they didn’t know about the PDI. He was safe for the moment. And he needed to find out as much as he could about what they were up to before he made his report.
* * *
Roderick Gallowglass—his name was Rhydderich, but Roderick was close enough—was a happy elf. He’d been security chief for the casino for the last three years, and he never tired of watching humans. They were so endlessly inventive, so passionate. A joy to work with, really—and with the whole place loaded to the gills with Trouble Begone spells, he rarely had to do anything more taxing than point out the bathrooms to bewildered tourists.
Today, however, might be different.
He’d spotted the Unseleighe the moment she walked in the door, of course—that “you are all peasants” arrogance would have been a dead giveaway, even if she weren’t swaddled in glamouries that rendered her true seeming invisible to humans (though not to Roderick)—but the Tir-na-Og was a neutral zone, protected by truce. So long as they didn’t make trouble, members of the Dark Court were as welcome here as were the Bright.
The man who’d followed her, however, was a different proposition. There was something odd about him—not quite magic, but odd nonetheless. Roderick could see the casino’s wards swirl around him, unable to get a good grip, and felt an urge to rest his own eyes somewhere—anywhere—else. As he watched, Roderick saw the man hesitate, staggering a little as the magics did their best to push him out the door. But Tir-na-Og’s gentle wardings were not designed to combat a determined will, only to turn aside those who could
be encouraged to go elsewhere. Obviously the young man in the green business suit thought he had business here—and with the Unseleighe lady, at that.
The lady picked up her registration and headed for the elevators, and the nervous young man moved to follow.
Ah, laddie, the likes of her isn’t for the likes of you. Time for me to save you from yourself.
Roderick moved forward to intercept the young man as he attempted to follow the lady into the elevator. He nearly didn’t make it—for some reason, the green suit was particularly hard to see in the casino’s misleading illumination.
“Excuse me, sir. Those elevators are for guests only. May I help you?”
The young man turned toward him, anonymous in his sunglasses, and Roderick saw his mouth gape with shock. “You’re one of them too!” he gasped, reaching into his jacket.
He sees me as I truly am, Roderick realized, equally stunned. Not so stunned that he didn’t take the young man’s arm gently but firmly, keeping him from whatever he was reaching for—and hustled him through a door marked “Staff Only.”
The nervous young man did his best to put up a fight, but Roderick’s greater strength put paid to that airy notion, and by the time the lad thought of shouting, they were well away from public eyes. A small spell opened the door of one of the Quiet Rooms, and Roderick dragged his charge inside, plucking the object the lad had been reaching for from his pocket as he did. On the streets of Victorian London, Roderick had been an accomplished pickpocket, and he liked to keep up the old skills.
His fingers tingled and burned with the presence of Cold Iron—none of this new-fangled steel or alloy, but the pure deathmetal itself. The device resembled an old-fashioned zip gun, but instead of bullets or darts, it held a clip of inch-long iron spikes. It might annoy a human, but it would kill or cripple one of the Sidhe. He tossed it quickly into a containment bin for later examination, and rubbed his blistering fingers together. A nasty piece of work that, put together by someone who knew more about Roderick’s kind than was strictly comforting.
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