by Jenn Stark
Not a good time for hesitating. Fortunately, I didn’t have to reach too deeply to channel my inner mad. Brody was a good man, a decent man, and I was absolutely about to screw him over. Again.
Because if he didn’t key open the damned door like now, my little diversion was completely not going to work. Twenty-seven, twenty-six…
I forced myself to sigh impatiently. “Something else we should probably get straight.” My own hurt twisted my words into an ugly snap. “I’m sure you’ve pulled my file, okay? The misdemeanors, the drunk tanks. The fights. And probably a whole lot more since the last time I checked. But unless and until I commit a crime you can actually pin on me, Detective, we’ve got nothing to say to each other. So back. The hell. Off.”
That finally did it. Thank God. Brody’s face shut down, and he straightened. Swiping his key card angrily in front of the monitor to our right, he planted a hand on the door and pushed.
“Fair enough. We’ll just need a statement from you at the station, then, Miss—”
The explosion behind us drowned out the rest of his words.
Chapter Ten
Brody turned back, cop-reflexively, and I surged forward. I beat it into the maze of shelving as a half-dozen officers pounded toward us, then I climbed up a set of shelves. Scrambling along the top of it, I hauled ass until I got to the main doors, dropping down to exit the cargo building at a full run.
“Bomb! Get the fire trucks! Bomb!”
I didn’t have time to decide if that was too much shouting or too little, because two other explosions went off in different areas of the building, resounding with percussive booms that lifted everyone half off their feet. Nice touch, Simon.
Pandemonium ensued.
As sirens wailed, I followed the least capable, most frantic delivery lugs as they bolted for their electric carts. The second-to-last one looked like he was one Ho-Ho short of a heart attack, so I cracked him on the head, catching him as he collapsed onto my body. Barely able to shove him into the cart without cracking a rib, I swung into the driver’s seat and fired up the cart, joining the surge of refugees from the cargo building. I didn’t bother keeping an eye out for Brody. He’d have his hands full for a while.
Dumping the cart and the passed-out delivery guy at the base of Terminal One, I was in the building and up the stairs sixty seconds later, stopping behind a potted fern to pull off my airport-sanctioned top. The gray tank underneath wasn’t inspired, but it wasn’t supposed to be. I stuffed the uniform shirt into the first food-court trash bin I could find, then ratcheted my stride down to a stroll as I triangulated myself toward the airport’s main entrance. That done, I pulled out my phone, to all appearances texting my brains out while I negotiated one moving sidewalk after the next.
Like Nikki’s limo in downtown Vegas, walk-texting in an airport was pretty much the equivalent of donning the cloak of invisibility.
I emerged from the front doors of McCarran International with my heart clawing its way up my throat, but at least I was moving in a more or less straight line. I wasn’t sure whether or not Brody was going to have me followed once he’d sorted out the mess I’d caused, but I suspected he’d be up in my business again soon enough.
If he thought I was part of the Rarity event, that could go badly for all of us.
I didn’t have time to ponder it further. No sooner had the doors closed behind me than I saw Nikki standing at the edge of the taxi stand with a placard titled “Angelina Jolie.” She’d changed clothes into a gingham-plaid microdress, white tights, and Wizard of Oz ruby-red stilettos.
“Kreios said you’d need a lift.” She opened the door to the limo when she saw me, tossing the sign inside. “Doll, you’re my new favorite friend. And I wouldn’t say that to just anyone. I mean it.”
I slid onto the pink leather seat, trying to process her statement. Then it hit me. When I’d seen her last, she was about to get between the Devil and the deep blue sea. “The tour of Grimm’s back rooms went well?”
“If I could only Yelp it, I’d break the Internet. So how’d the gig go?” She met my startled gaze. “Kreios filled me in. He’s pretty much a fan of information sharing, I gotta say.”
“The mission—didn’t go,” I said, hunkering down in my seat. “I got close enough to touch the damned things, then Brody showed up with a whole SWAT team and rousted me out of there before we could get the goods.”
“He saw you?”
“Oh yeah.”
She went from blissed-out to serious with whiplash speed. “Was he looking for you specifically? Is that why he was there?”
“I don’t think so. He’s tangled up in the Rarity job, but I don’t know how. Or why. Last I checked, no crime’s been committed there. There’s nothing for him to detect.”
“Could be something simple.” Nikki drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “He’s got the pretty face, so he’s been pulled into political glad-handing duties before that the police don’t want to deal with on their own. He could simply have been asked to pregame the Rarity, and running into you along the way is a happy coincidence, but I don’t like that idea so much.”
I didn’t either, but I suspected our reasons were different. “Why not?”
She shrugged. “Technically, Detective Delish is part of the Homeland Security Division. The gold show is bringing a lot of folks with questionable friends into Las Vegas. That could be all it is. But this particular gold show has Connected stink all over it, and now you’re back in town too. If he’s done his homework and knows what you do for a living, he could be excused for thinking you might be targeting the Rarity.” She blew out a breath. “Then again, he was over at the chapel today asking for Dixie, not you. And once he found her, he chatted her up for a good long while.” I winced, but Nikki kept going. As Nikki did. “He definitely wants something from her. Question is what.”
“He’s Homeland Security, though. What kind of terrorist threat lies in the Connected community in Vegas?”
Nikki snorted. “Not much, fair point. He may just want to get in touch with his Connected roots. You know, throw back a beer, talk about the good old days in Memphis.”
I slid her a glance. “You’re not going to let this drop, are you?”
She chortled. “I sure as shit Googled Sariah Pelter, if that’s what you mean. And girl! You were about the cutest little thing that ever lived. What happened to you?”
“Back on track, Nikki. Like you said, Brody didn’t seem to be sniffing around for me this morning. I couldn’t have been the reason why he went to see Dixie.”
“Which is my point. If he was playing her soft side, and believe me, she is more than willing to be played, he might know something she doesn’t. And that would mean…”
“Don’t say it.”
“Yep. He’s not just whistling Dixie.”
Nikki’s laugh turned into a full-on cackle as we bounced down Las Vegas Boulevard, and she was in such a good mood that she didn’t make me hand out any more of her flyers. When we took the turn into Dixie’s chapel, though, she sat up a little straighter.
“Yokely-dokely. This is strange.”
“What.” I scanned the parking lot, but other than a distinctive lack of parking, nothing seemed out of place. Dixie’s looked quiet, or as quiet as a stark-white wedding chapel festooned with hot-pink flowers could, and the shops across the lot were open, but no one was lingering outside.
“This place is never this busy, not at this hour of the day. And Dixie, for all her many talents, doesn’t play things close to the vest. If she was throwing a party, she would have told me.”
Despite her light tone, something in Nikki’s voice caught my attention. She sounded like she had her feelings hurt. I didn’t know the six-foot-four force of nature that well, but the idea that she might cry was more upsetting than I would have expected.
We parked beneath the overhang of the drive-thru portal, and piled out of the car. “You want me to stay out here?” I said. “She might be more for
thcoming if I’m not there.”
Nikki slanted her gaze at me. “What are you going to do? Catch some rays?”
I shrugged, glancing around the parking lot at the tattoo parlor and liquor store. “I can go shopping or something.”
“Nah, you guys need to kiss and make up. I can’t have my besties giving each other the stink eye. It’s too damned exhausting. And besides, if she did diss me for some reason, I could use some human armor.”
She sauntered into the chapel with me in her wake, a scrubby buoy bouncing after a glitter yacht. Most of the action appeared to be centered on the main wedding chapel, but we’d no sooner reached those doors than Dixie came striding down the corridor from another direction, tugging a girl with her. Her tagalong couldn’t have been more than sixteen, her eyes luminous in her small face.
“Shields up,” Nikki muttered, and I sensed it too, the same kind of insistent poke that I experienced when Armaeus was nattering about in my mind, though at a far lower level. “Aura reader.”
I lifted my brows. What I knew about Nikki’s abilities was minimal, since it wasn’t something she talked about much. She’d said she was a seer, and I knew she could communicate with a bit of telepathy. But how far did her Sight really go?
This wasn’t the time to ask, so I plastered on a smile and pumped up my aura with happy thoughts as Dixie breezed up to us. “Lord, I thought I’d never see you again, Nikki. You disappeared without a trace! And Sara.” She turned to me, all smiles that for the life of me seemed genuine. “You won’t believe your eyes when you see Jos and Prayim again. They’re recovering so fast! And they talk about you day and night.”
“Oh?” I hadn’t thought about that. Having oracle girls in your fan club might not be the coolest thing.
“Nothing but accolades, don’t worry.” Dixie dimpled. She turned to her sidekick. “This is Naeve. She reads auras and is new to Vegas. She’s not here long, though, isn’t that right?”
“I’m not.” Naeve ducked her head, apparently embarrassed by the direct question. “This week alone. For the solstice celebration. But you’ve been…very kind.” She regarded Dixie with a sense of wonder. I couldn’t blame her. Dixie had traded in her white cowgirl ensemble for a Jackie-O supreme, complete with a pink, exquisitely cut wide-collared sleeveless dress, tied in a bow at the waist, pearls, and a glorified pink hat that resembled a barely restrained meringue. Dixie squeezed Naeve’s arm and turned her toward the chapel.
Nikki peered inside. “You hosting a revival in there?”
“They heard from local Connecteds that this was where to go for information, but they’re not looking to stay in the city beyond solstice, like Naeve here,” Dixie said. For someone who appeared placidly perfect, her voice carried an unmistakable edge. “Thank you, sweetheart. Tell the others I’ll be right in.”
The white-blonde waif wandered off, her movements almost ethereal. Dixie watched her until she disappeared inside the chapel doors, then glanced back to us. “First Detective Rooks shows up this morning asking me about the influx of newcomers, about which I knew nothing, I’m telling you, and boom, they’re on my doorstep asking for hotel recommendations. They’re coming out of the woodwork!”
“What’s changed?” Nikki frowned. “Are they here for the Rarity?”
“Not that they’ve said, and why would they be? It’s a gold show, not a Connected circus of the stars.” She turned her gaze to me. “Do you have any idea? You find artifacts, right? That’s your gift? Is there any reason why Connecteds are gravitating here? And don’t tell me it’s because of solstice, the detective already asked. I’ve lived through far too many Vegas solstices to count, and this is not normal.”
I chewed on my lower lip, still rocked from my own close encounter with the artifacts at McCarran Airport. Was that what was drawing the Connecteds to Vegas? Couldn’t be. They’d only just shown up. I hadn’t felt any pull to the city in recent days, other than the call of money, so that didn’t make sense either. Did Brody know something he wasn’t sharing?
Don’t think about him. I had an aura to keep chilled.
I focused on Dixie’s question. “The artifacts for the Rarity could be doing it, especially since the show hasn’t been hosted here in recent memory. But it seems kind of a stretch. Most of these people won’t even go to the public viewing, right? And besides that, from what I understand, the majority of the artifacts on display won’t have magical properties.
The tenor of the crowd inside the chapel leapt a notch, and Dixie pursed her lips. “What am I going to tell them?”
“You’re not,” Nikki said, her voice surprisingly calm and resolute. Whether she was relieved that Dixie hadn’t planned a party without her or simply relieved to be in charge, I wasn’t sure, but she wore her confidence like a blinged feather boa. “You’re going to ask, and you’re going to listen. This part I’m good at. Let’s go.”
She moved into the main chapel, Dixie right on her heels. I let them get ahead of me, then slipped into the farthest-back row I could find, surveying the room.
It was a…surprisingly tame bunch. Men and women dressed both in street clothes and business attire, some looking like Midwestern tourists, others like rejects from a Marilyn Manson concert, and still others like slightly harried research librarians. As I’d suspected, they didn’t look like they had the kind of money to be shopping the Rarity. They definitely were jumpy, though. A few of them maybe scared. I settled back in a pew for the second time that day, and tried to open my third eye…
Nothing. Not even a twitch.
Nikki reached the stage, then turned around and surveyed the crowd. She seemed suddenly in her element. Like she was giving a press conference.
“A lot of you have come into the city on short notice and are getting your bearings. That’s what we’re here for,” she said, her voice clipped and sure. “What brings you to Vegas?”
Silence. The room shifted and squirmed under her gaze, but she held her ground. Finally, one of them said, “Well, starting last week, the visions said to come here, and here we are. Everything said, ‘Go to Vegas.’ This chapel wasn’t part of it—but it sure is nice.”
“Visions,” Nikki confirmed. I shot a startled glance toward Dixie, but she merely smiled with a desperate I have no idea what they’re talking about grin plastered on her face.
“I don’t know about visions. I got a notice from my New Age shop—an e-mail alerting us to the solstice celebration.” This from a man sitting two rows away from the first woman. “Then we got here, and there’s no information anywhere.”
“Well, of course we’re having a celebration, sugar,” Dixie interjected. “We simply weren’t expecting out-of-town guests is all.”
“Well, who sent the flyers, then?” asked a girl in the back. “Or made the website? They said if we were believers, to come. And I talked to my friends, and they got the same thing. The store has a policy that they post anything that’s related to the metaphysical, and they checked the website, same as us. We didn’t think to call first. Vegas isn’t that far.”
I pulled out my cell phone to the sound of agreeing voices all around. “What’s the website?” Nikki asked.
“Don’t bother, it’s not there anymore.” A twenty-something goth from the third row held up his phone. “It crashed this morning, no explanation. You ask me, it makes being here even cooler. I mean, no one’s asked us for money or anything, right? So it can’t be some kind of scam. It’s like a rave, but one filled with the power of solstice.”
“And we’re happy to help you make the most of your solstice experience,” Dixie said warmly, immediately easing the tension in the room. I focused again, and my third eye finally blinked open, casting everyone in shades of pinks and yellows and greens and blues. But none of them were anywhere close to the Magician’s level of brightness. Nikki and Dixie shone more vividly, but as to the rest… These were normal people. The kind of people who read their horoscopes online for fun or visited psychics to work out their lov
e lives.
Nikki seemed to be thinking the same thing. “How many of you work in the psychic trade? Even if you merely dabble in it?” About a third of the room responded with a show of hands. “And the rest of you?”
“My sister lives in Dallas—she asked me to come. Said she couldn’t come up but wanted me to bring back any info that sounded cool.”
“I bought some books at the store, but I haven’t started yet. Still, I live close and figured…what the heck.”
Something about their naïveté sparked warning bells, but Nikki and Dixie had what they needed.
“Well, since you’re here, let’s get things organized,” Nikki said. “What’ll help us is if we know how to reach you once we get some of our last-minute plans in place. I’m going to send around a sheet for you to give us your contact information if you want—or at least your e-mail. Meanwhile, Dixie, why don’t you let them know about the special astrological configuration this week?”
Dixie blinked at her. “The what?” Then she recalled herself, sliding smoothly into a patter about the unique significance of solstice this year, of all years, a significance that was undoubtedly being felt the world over, given their presence here.
Nikki gestured to a girl with a notebook in the front of the room. The book went around the room for signatures, and I rocked back into my seat, my sense of dread building. These people weren’t high-level psychics. They weren’t even working practitioners. They were cannon fodder. They were rats flooding in before an oncoming storm. A storm that was scheduled to hit…on solstice.
Exactly when SANCTUS was scheduled to come to town.
Just that fast, the pain hit me right between the eyeballs, fast and hard, closing around my brain like a vise.
I knew that pain, and I knew where it led.
The High Priestess demanded her due.
Chapter Eleven
I stumbled out of the chapel amid the general bustle of information gathering, and barely made it to the sidewalk. A limo was there, of course. Not Armaeus’s personal town car, but a long, sleek model that screamed Arcana Council all the way.