“And I know how those two think. I’ve smelled their pheromones. I already made a mistake once, taking one of their buddies hostage. Turns out Vanessa doesn’t give two shits about anyone in the universe except for Marie, and that probably goes both ways. I get witch-girl on a leash, the cop will do anything I tell her to.”
“Do you know where to start looking?”
“I know Vanessa took off, out to murder her father-in-law.” Rosales shrugged. “No judgment. Everybody has a bucket list. Anyway, the good Senator Roth’s in bed with the powers of hell. Normally I don’t fuck with demons—that’s exactly the kind of complicated I don’t need in my life—but it does give me an idea or two.”
“Get on it,” Adam told her.
“Got another edge. Vanessa’s running with a coven now. My best guess is she brought ’em in from a parallel Earth. Believe it or not, that’s a point in my favor.” Rosales tipped her chair back and raised her arms high above her head, arching her back while she stretched. “They’re going to stick out like sore thumbs. Where can you hide a gang of witches from another planet without drawing attention?”
Eight
At that moment, there were countless places Daniel Faust would rather be. Brunch at the Metropolitan, enjoying a garlic-butter lobster omelet and a glass of champagne. His usual table at the Tiger’s Garden, starting the day off right with tandoori chicken and a Bloody Mary. Sleeping with his girlfriend. Most of his daily ambitions boiled down to some combination of gourmet food, expensive alcohol, and sex, possibly at the same time. In any case, on the list of what he wanted to be doing, wrestling the stiff driver’s wheel of a stolen school bus and trundling down the Vegas Strip didn’t even make the top fifty.
His passengers mostly had their faces pressed to the windows. Vegas never really slept, and while it’d be a long, breath-stealing desert day before the sky went dark and the neon blazed, the Strip was still a sight to see. A medieval castle in dirty white concrete stood shoulder to shoulder with an Egyptian pyramid, its smoky glass face catching the morning sun and turning it into a white-hot beacon. Costumed buskers walked the packed sidewalks dressed as superheroes and cartoon characters, charging five bucks for a photograph, while jets of water performed a choreographed dance in a crystalline lake.
“I know,” he said to no one in particular. “It’s a little much, even for us natives. Just wait ’til sunset, you’re really gonna lose your shit. But when you need protective camouflage, Vegas is the place to be. A metric ton of weird goes down around here and nobody bats an eyelash.”
All but one, he knew by their coven names. Butterfly, Vole, Roach, Mantis, Badger. Gazelle, the long-legged and lanky woman up front, was some kind of aide-de-camp for the woman in charge. She’d gotten everyone changed into thrift-store clothes and bundled up their masks of intricate bone, carrying them in the Nike-swoosh-branded duffel bag that rode on her lap. Her crew could almost pass as ordinary solid citizens, instead of witches from another dimension. Daniel had to give them credit: for people who had just discovered the existence of electricity and indoor plumbing, not to mention TV, airplanes, and the Internet, they were coping pretty well.
The leader of the pack sat just behind Daniel’s perch, off to his shoulder. They called her the Mouse, or the Dire Mother. Nessa called her Hedy. She had a heart-shaped face, the first traces of crow’s-feet around her eyes, and a thousand-yard stare. Watching the scenery drift by, but her mind was somewhere else. Carson City, maybe.
At least one of his passengers was a local. Carolyn Saunders sat in the back of the bus, eyes on the notepad in her hand as she scribbled away with a ballpoint pen. She’d been writing for hours now, ever since they hit the road.
She’s writing another fucking book, Daniel thought. Great. Can’t wait to read about what “Donatello Faustus” gets up to next.
He knew better than to try to discourage her. Ever since she’d turned his stint behind bars into a pulp fantasy potboiler—portraying the confines of a privately owned prison as an evil wizard’s fortress—her readers had been demanding more. He turned his attention back to Hedy. She looked like she needed something, some kind of reassurance. He wasn’t sure he had any to give her, but he had to take a shot.
“She’s probably all right,” he told her.
Hedy shifted her gaze. Somewhere up ahead, a light flickered red, and the conga line of molasses-slow traffic ground to a stop. Daniel shoved his foot down on the brake.
“Everybody was talking about the ‘flying woman’ this morning,” he said. “But we know where she landed and we know what she was out to do. Nothing on the radio about a dustup in Carson, much less a senator going dead or missing.”
“You think she changed her mind?”
“I think she missed her shot,” he said. “I guarantee Calypso hustled his boy out of there before she hit the city limits. Which I could have warned her would happen. Just like I explicitly told her not to do the thing she went and did. Flying on a fucking broomstick in public. Nice job.”
“My mother does as she pleases,” Hedy said, her voice dry. “I’ve known her in two incarnations now, and it’s a reliable trait.”
“This is a real problem for me. You get that, right? The number-one rule of the occult underground is that you don’t pull the kind of thing Nessa just pulled. Ever. She’s damn lucky people are already writing it off as a marketing stunt. All the same, there’s going to be some pissed-off magicians looking to make sure she doesn’t do it again. Possibly friends of mine. Former friends, if they find out I’ve been helping her.”
“Bring the carriage to the side of the road, then,” she said. “I’ll take my coven and go. We won’t inconvenience you any further.”
Daniel stared at the distant traffic light, red glow shimmering in a heat mirage. He slapped a frustrated palm against the steering wheel.
“Regardless of what anyone might tell you, I’m not that big of an asshole. I’m not stranding you people on an alien planet. It’s fine. I’ve got a plan. Sort of. First priority is to get you and your pals stashed someplace safe. Then I’ll put out some feelers—very discreet feelers—and track Nessa down.”
“Safe” was a subjective concept. He considered and discarded a baker’s dozen of destinations before settling on the Flamenco. The resort was pure Vegas vintage, a slim tower of white and hot pink with a star-studded marquee that hadn’t changed since the days of Sinatra and the Rat Pack. They abandoned the stolen bus in the dusty parking lot of a hot-wings restaurant next door, outside the sweep of a security camera. Daniel didn’t plan on playing chauffeur again, and if he did, he’d find a cleaner ride.
The witches followed him like wide-eyed ducklings. Glass doors whisked open at their approach, and the lobby welcomed them with a gust of perfectly cooled air and the chime of slot machines. He left them to whisper on the tropical-patterned carpet, banana leaves in scarlet and green, while he laid down his credit card at the front desk.
He came back ten minutes later with a handful of pink plastic key cards in white paper sheaths. He spread them in his fingers like a poker hand.
“Ground rules,” he said. “Two witches to a room, no premium movies, no freaky blood-sacrifice shit that’s going to get you kicked out, and do not touch the minibar.”
“Great,” Hedy replied. “What’s a minibar?”
“Where’s mine?” Carolyn asked as he passed out the cards. Daniel arched an eyebrow at her.
“I figured you were going home on the next flight back to Illinois.”
“My home. From which I was kidnapped by Ezra Talon’s psycho bodyguard. The place where they know to look for me, and would no doubt try to abduct me again. Are you seeing a flaw in this plan, or do you just have a fetish for rescuing people?”
Daniel sighed. He dug his wallet out and looked back to the check-in desk.
“I’ll be right back. And you, especially, stay out of the goddamn minibar.”
“I just spent a week peeing in a prison cell with see-through
walls, eating nothing but bologna sandwiches and cartons of lukewarm milk,” she called after him. “If you think I’m not going to be shit-faced drunk within the next twenty minutes, you are sadly mistaken, young man.”
The elevators were on the far side of the casino floor. Daniel and his entourage cut a path down the middle between aisles of flashing, whirring slot machines. It was too early for table action—cards and dice would have to wait for the afternoon rush—but early birds were already camping out at the penny slots with drinks in one hand and plastic tumblers for their tokens in the other.
“So this is a thing you people do for fun,” Hedy said.
“Mostly people who are bad at probabilities. So, ah, in all the chaos last night it never really came up. Did Nessa have a plan for getting you and your people back home?”
“This is our home now.”
Daniel rubbed the back of his neck. His muscles felt like knotted ropes under his skin.
“Suppose I can’t blame you for wanting to stick around—”
“We will find my mother before the Shadow sickness takes her, we will find Marie, and we will reunite them.” Hedy’s lips pursed in a bitter line. “And if that fails, I’ll return to my studies. So we can find their next incarnations and intercede sooner next time. We will get it right. Next time we’ll get it right.”
Gazelle put a hand on Hedy’s shoulder. Carolyn just shook her head, trailing in their wake.
“I’ve been around this block more than a few times,” she told them. “I’d love to tell you there’s a way to get Nessa and Marie out of this mess, but the story is the story. It never changes.”
Gazelle shot her a razor-edged glare. “If you don’t have anything useful to say, no one will mind your silence.”
The slots on Daniel’s left went dead. In the heart of a casino, the sudden gulf of silence was more jarring than a bombshell. His head turned and he stared into a void: the slots weren’t just quiet, they were gone, carved out of reality. Nothing but a pie-shaped wedge of tropical carpet remained, under lights that flickered and went dark.
“Hold up.” He raised one open hand and the procession jolted to a halt, dead center in the cavernous room.
He glanced right, then left. The machines were back, trilling out their carnival-barker calls, as if nothing had happened.
“Mistress,” Gazelle snapped. She pointed in the opposite direction, three o’clock on the dial. Another pie wedge of the room—machines, empty card tables, a few gamblers—flickered into nothingness. No one else seemed to notice. The farthest edge of the room, lights dead, was swallowed by shadows too thick to be real.
“Seems our enemies never rest,” Hedy said. “Very well. Let them come. No mercy for fools.”
She made three quick, sharp gestures with her left hand, a silent language the others understood. The witches scurried, forming a circle, shoulder to shoulder on the casino floor. Daniel shook his head, turning slow and taking it all in as another two wedges of the room vanished and a third flickered back again. Reality fractured all around them, struggling to hold itself together under an onslaught of silent magic.
“No, no, no,” Daniel muttered, “we have rules. People do not do this shit in the middle of Las Vegas—”
The perfectly regulated air-conditioning buckled and broke like a shield under a barbarian’s sword. Clammy heat washed over them, carrying the scent of fresh-tilled earth and distant spices. One of Daniel’s shoes stood upon soft carpet. The other, rough stone.
Then the overheads all died at once and plunged them into pitch darkness. The last chime of the last slot machine stretched out, warbling like a note held for too long until it finally shattered into static.
Candles flickered to life. Dozens, then dozens more—votives, tea lights, stout pillars of melted white wax, winding around stalagmites and set out upon outcroppings of rusty red stone to cast a shifting yellow glow across a cavern floor.
At the heart of the light stood a small wrought-iron table bearing a china tea set. And there sat a woman in white, her face concealed behind a mourner’s heavy veils, her fingers—too slender, too long, bending and twining like serpents—under opera gloves.
“Sister of the Noose!” Gazelle shouted. “Kill it!”
The clammy air erupted in a storm of curse-craft. Death magic took on shape and form, spat from a half dozen twisting tongues, and blazed across the cavern. The woman raised a languid hand, her boneless fingers bending into an arcane knot. A pearl of raw will, like a bubble of perfect glass, encased her. Bursts of violent purple light and living, raging glyphs shattered upon the glass and blasted into showers of sparks.
“Whoa, whoa!” Daniel shouted, waving his arms. “Cool it! She is not your enemy. I think. Shit. I hope. Just…let’s all just calm the fuck down, okay? Just for a second?”
“A fine notion,” the Mourner hissed. The opalescent shield rippled around her, then slowly faded away. “Your confusion is understandable. I did once belong to that less-than-august company. Unlike my dear sisters, the prospect of an eternity enslaved to the King of Rust did not appeal to me. I’d already given my eyes, my womb, and my heart in exchange for power. Those weren’t too high a price to pay, but my freedom? That was a different matter. We share a common foe, you and I.”
Hedy held her hand open out to her side, fingers spread. Easing her coven back as she squared her footing on the rough, sandy stone.
“We’ve heard of this ‘king’ the Sisters serve, but I thought it was just a myth.”
“No myth,” the Mourner said. “And if he is not the source of your woes, he is unquestionably a factor in them. But hold. I feel my coven sister approaching.”
Shadows boiled on the far side of the cavern, then broke like a curtain of billowing steam. Two silhouettes emerged from the darkness. They took on form, then color, as they crossed the border of flickering candlelight.
“I brought the Owl,” Dora said. She slapped her soapstone cask on the table next to the tea service. “Let’s do this shit.”
Hedy broke into a sprint, running across the cavern floor and leaping over a curling line of votive candles, pulling Nessa into a desperate hug. Nessa let out an awkward laugh that turned into a rasping cough, and cupped a hand over her mouth until it passed.
When she pulled it away, flecks of blood dotted her palm.
“She’s alive,” Hedy said. “Mother, she’s—”
“I know.” Nessa squeezed her hand. “I know. And if we can find her, I may have just enough time to say goodbye.”
She kept Hedy’s hand trapped in hers as she turned her gaze to the Mourner.
“As I told your friend, whatever it is you want from me, you’re too late. I’m a dead woman walking.”
“We are merely willing instruments,” the Mourner hissed. “It was not we who called to you.”
Nessa squinted at her. “Who, then?”
A gust of hot wind rippled through the cavern, making the candlelight dance. Somewhere in the muffled distance, down a twisting tunnel in the dark, came the braying of dogs.
“Our queen,” the Mourner said. “She arrives anon.”
Nine
Another breeze, hotter, faster, made the candles flicker. The open flames took on a sheen of dark color, like an oil-slick rainbow. Even as the flames grew, wicks trembling as the candle fires stretched tall, the circles of light around them began to shrink. The fiercer they burned, the less light they shed, until the candles were droplets of pale light floating in inky darkness.
A hush fell over the cavern, an abyss of silence, broken only by the faint tapping of high heels upon the ancient stone. A new figure sauntered forth from the shadows, a vision of the Jazz Age draped in a scarlet torch singer’s gown. A wave of raven-black curls spilled across one tailored shoulder, and an antique key dangled from a chain at the hollow of her pale throat. Her head slowly turned and she locked eyes, just for a heartbeat, with everyone in the room one by one.
The Lady in Red’s gaze came to rest u
pon Nessa’s face.
The Mourner and Dora both inclined their heads, hands folded before them, in a gesture of quiet respect. Nessa lifted her chin a notch higher and crossed her arms, eyes sharp behind her glasses.
The Lady made her way between the spheres of light. Where she walked, some candles burned brighter, others flickered and died. She stood before Nessa and appraised her like a piece of fine art.
“You’ve got some color in those cheeks,” she said. “Do you know what causes that?”
“Hot blood,” Nessa replied.
“We’ve met several times before. You don’t remember, but I could hardly forget. I’ve found your previous incarnations to be charmingly cunning, if stubborn. Ruthless. Inventively sadistic at times.”
“Just wait until you see the brand-new me,” Nessa told her. “I’ve got two days to live and only two items left on my to-do list: I’m going to find my lover, so I can say a proper goodbye, and then I’m going to kill an awful lot of people. Who are you?”
The Lady was silent for a moment, holding Nessa’s gaze. Her voice went soft, just for the two of them.
“You know who I am,” she said.
“You just said I don’t remember meeting you.”
“All witches know my name. Give it time. It’ll come to you.” The Lady waved a pale hand. “But that isn’t important right now. Time is not a resource you have in great abundance, and while you’ve weathered every trial in your path so far—”
“You’ve been watching me,” Nessa said.
“And, through my coven daughters, offering a bit of aid where it was needed. We engineered the means for you to receive Hedy’s message, warning you of your true nature. And your curse.”
“The black mirror,” Nessa said. “You sent it to me. What about the rest? Someone posed as me and hid a tarot card at the Bast Club a year before Marie and I ever set foot in the place. We were able to use it to reach Hedy’s world.”
Bring the Fire (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 3) Page 7