by Karen Chance
Maybe she had, because her ears went back and she hissed at him, showing off a very nonfeline forked tongue. She crossed her arms and took a wide-legged stance behind Casanova, her long tail whipping about behind her.
“I do not deal with Fey affairs,” Pritkin said haughtily, as if such a thing was beneath him. “It is of no concern to me whether you are here legally or not. You have nothing to fear. Now, take it off!”
“What’s going on?” I asked Casanova, who was straightening his tie. He gave me a less-than-friendly look, which I guess was fair under the circumstances.
“In exchange for healing him, Miranda put a geis on him not to reveal their existence to anyone. If the Circle finds out they’re here, they’ll be deported.”
“Is that all?” I turned narrowed eyes on Pritkin, who didn’t notice because all his attention was on Miranda. Considering the whopping geis I was carrying, I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for his tiny one. “If you’re not planning to tell on them anyway, what difference does it make? Let’s go. Those mages could be back any minute.”
“I’m not going anywhere until she removes it,” he repeated stubbornly. The tone made me want to kick him. Instead, I prodded Casanova, who rolled his eyes.
“Miranda—” he began in a long-suffering voice, but she set her jaw. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to.
“Damn it, Pritkin!” I said angrily. “I’m not standing here until the Circle sends someone else after us. You want to talk, fine. Let’s go talk. Otherwise, I’m out of here.”
“There’s an idea,” Casanova said brightly. “I’ll call you a car.”
Billy Joe came streaming through the door and got swatted at by half a dozen gargoyles on his way over. Normally,
I’d have been surprised that they could see him, but after the day I’d had I didn’t even blink. “He’s with me,” I told Miranda, who nonetheless began hissing at Casanova in the strange language the gargoyles used. She had obviously had enough unwanted visitors for one day.
“Ixnay on the car,” Billy said, looking worried. “Is there an exit that bypasses the front, back and side doors? ’Cause they’re all being watched.”
“By who?” Now what was wrong?
“Oh, I don’t know,” Billy replied sarcastically. “Whose mages did you just beat the crap out of? The Circle knows you’re here, and they’re out there in force. There’s gotta be two, three dozen—I stopped counting. The trio we met in the bar was their advance crew, their way of asking you to come along nicely. But considering the way you returned ’em, I don’t think they’re interested in negotiating anymore. ”
“They attacked first,” I said defensively, then paused to wonder whether that was strictly true. I hadn’t seen what happened in the bar between the time I left and when Casanova and I tuned in to find Enyo throwing down with the mages. If Pritkin hadn’t been with them, then they’d walked into a mess not of their own making. No wonder they hadn’t been in a good mood when they met us again.
“It doesn’t matter,” Pritkin said, almost like he’d been reading my mind. “They want you dead. Making it easy for them won’t change that.”
I swallowed. I’d suspected that the Circle wouldn’t cry much if I had an accident, but hearing it stated so baldly was hard. You’d think I’d be used to people trying to kill me by now, but for some reason it doesn’t seem to get any easier. “You sound certain.”
“I am. That’s part of what we need to talk about.” He looked at Casanova, who sighed.
“There are several emergency exits, but none are good options.” He flapped a hand at me. “Can’t you do whatever you did earlier, and shift away? With the internal defenses targeting you as well as them, I can claim you came here to bully me for information about Antonio and then left after trashing the place.” He glanced around. “Oh, wait, that would even be true.”
“Speaking of which, you were going to tell me where Tony is.”
“No, as I recall, I was doing quite a good job of not telling you.” He tried to hand me a handkerchief, I guess to wipe off the cupcake that had gotten smeared in my hair at some point, but I ignored it. “I’ll help you get out of here, chica, and I will gladly tell lies to the Circle to throw them off the trail, but as for Antonio—”
“That vampire,” Miranda spat on the ground. “He in Faerie. He bring usss here, then betray. We work like ssslavesss.”
Casanova looked sick. I smiled at the gargoyle, who was actually rather attractive if you concentrated on her slanted red eyes. “Thank you, Miranda! Tell me more.”
She gave a feline sort of shrug. “Not much to tell. He in Faerie.” She looked at Casanova. “This sssircle, they come here?”
He ran a hand through his slightly tousled hair. Somehow, he had managed to avoid all the flying food. The only visible damage was a few wrinkles I’d put in his tie. “Possibly. It seems to be our day for unwanted guests.”
“No!” she told him, poking his leg with extended claws. “We have work! No more messss!”
I noticed that a couple of valiant little gargoyles were trying to get a laden cart, which had somehow avoided the carnage, through the disorder to the door, and that another was grunting into a phone and scribbling an order on a pad. I was about to agree with Miranda that we needed to get out of their hair—or horns or whatever—when yet another visitor arrived. Pritkin’s golem came through the doors and the keening noise started up again from every side.
I groaned and stuck my fingers in my abused ears. Pritkin stared intently at the golem for a minute, as if some sort of nonverbal communication was going on, then glanced at me. He made a gesture, and blissful silence descended. I knew it had to be some kind of spell, because the pandemonium didn’t diminish, but the cacophony quieted to a faint background noise. “They’re coming. We have to go.”
I nodded. “Fine. Then get lover boy there to tell us where Tony’s portal into Faerie is. And don’t lie,” I told Casanova. “I know he has one.”
“Yes, he does, but I don’t know where it is,” Casanova said distractedly. “Miranda! Can you calm your people down, please? It isn’t going to destroy anything!” He looked at Pritkin. “Is it?”
“It will if you don’t tell us the truth,” I said grimly.
He looked askance at the golem, which looked back as far as the vague indentations it called eyes would allow. It had no fangs, horns or other oddities. It was just a badly made statue, like something a potter had started and then forgotten. But I didn’t like it any better than Casanova did when it turned those empty eyes on me.
“I don’t know where the damn portal is!” Casanova insisted. “Tony was selling witches to the Fey, but he had a special group who dealt with that side of the business and I wasn’t one of them. He took most of them with him when he disappeared, and the rest left with the last shipment a week ago. They aren’t here.”
I glanced at Miranda. “You must have come through the portal. You have to know where to find it!”
She shook her head. “On other ssside, we sssee. But here, no.” She draped a dishcloth over the head of a nearby gargoyle. “Like ssso.” The blind gargoyle ran into Pritkin, or more accurately into his legs, which was as far as the tiny thing could reach. The mage removed the towel and sent him back to Miranda with a little push.
“They must have been blindfolded before they were sent through,” Casanova translated. “I suppose Tony didn’t want them to know how the setup worked, in case the mages got hold of them.”
“What about you?” I asked Pritkin. “The Circle must have access to a portal.”
“We use the one at MAGIC.”
I sighed. Of course. It made sense that MAGIC—short for the Metaphysical Alliance for Greater Interspecies Cooperation—would have one. It’s a sort of supernatural United Nations with representatives from the mages, vamps, weres and Fey, and the delegates from Faerie had to get there somehow. On the plus side, it was nearby, in the desert outside Vegas. On the negative, MAGIC was craw
ling with the very people who were looking for me, and not to wish me a happy birthday. It remained to be seen whether I’d live long enough to celebrate my twenty-fourth, but sticking my neck in the noose didn’t seem like the best way to ensure that. Unfortunately, portals into Faerie aren’t exactly thick on the ground, and any others would doubtless be guarded, too. On the theory that it’s better to go with the devil you know, I decided to opt for MAGIC. At least I’d been there before and knew a little about its layout.
“Do you know exactly where it is?” I asked. MAGIC had a big compound; it would be nice if he could narrow things down.
Pritkin looked at me incredulously, but whatever he might have said was drowned out by the sound of sirens going off. They were just a faint, tinny klaxon through the silence bubble, but Casanova swore loudly. “The mages have entered in force—that’s a general alarm.”
“Get the humans out,” Pritkin ordered.
Casanova nodded, not protesting the grip the mage had on his arm. “It’s already being done—standard protocol is to claim a gas leak whenever there’s an emergency and to evacuate everyone. And the mages are supposed to avoid hocus pocus in front of norms, aren’t they?”
“Normally, yes. But they want her badly.” Pritkin jerked his head at me.
Casanova shrugged. “Any fireworks will be thought to be part of the show, as long as no norms are injured. This place was designed to look this way for a reason—we’ve had slipups before.” From Pritkin’s scowl, I was guessing they had gone unreported. “Let’s get all of you safely away from here, then I can concentrate on damage control.”
“Where’s the nearest emergency exit?” I asked.
“Thanks to you, most of them are overrun. Your best bet is the one leading to the basement of a liquor store on Spring Mountain, just off the Strip.” Casanova moved towards the room service phone and plucked it out of the claws of the gargoyle taking orders. He glanced over his shoulder. “I’ll have a car waiting out back of the store for you, but that’s as much as I can do.”
“Wait a minute. You have a house safe, right?”
“Why?” Pritkin asked suspiciously.
“Oh, crap,” Billy said.
“You want to risk taking them into Faerie with us?” I demanded.
Billy groaned and looked at the Graeae, who were chowing down on finger sandwiches. “Considering what popped out last time? Hell no.”
I looked at Casanova, who was in the middle of a phone conversation. “They’re bypassing the security system almost like it isn’t there,” he informed us, relaying a report. “A group of mages have been stalled in Headliners, but there are two other teams and—mierda! They shot Elvis. Tell me it doesn’t show,” he demanded of someone on the other end of the line.
“They shot an impersonator?” I was surprised, if not precisely shocked. The mages were supposed to protect humans, not use them as target practice, although they seemed to forget that where I was concerned.
Casanova shook his head. “No, the real thing.” He turned his attention back to the phone. “No, no! Let the necromancers worry about the patch-up job; what do we pay them for? And have them raise Hendrix again, we’re going to need a sub.”
I lost track of the conversation because the swinging kitchen doors came flying off their hinges, straight at me. Pemphredo, whom I hadn’t even seen move, caught them and sent them spinning back across the room at the group of war mages who were pouring through the entrance. Enyo tried to stuff me under the table, but I caught her wrist. “How would you like to have some fun?”
She gave me a withering look. Obviously, she felt that our ideas of fun differed. “I’m serious.” I nodded at the mages, who were being attacked by a wave of hissing gargoyles that had apparently not appreciated the destruction of the doors. The mages were practically buried under a sea of thrashing wings and slashing claws, but I knew it wouldn’t last. “Enjoy yourself. Just don’t kill anybody.”
A big smile broke over Enyo’s face, making her look like a kid on Christmas morning, and the next thing I knew she’d picked up the massive prep table and thrown it into the breach left by the missing doors. She and her sisters ran across the room and hopped over it, cackling like the fiends they were as they took the offensive to the second wave of mages trying to get in.
“Bought us some time,” I told Pritkin, who was looking conflicted. He might be having problems with the Circle, but he obviously didn’t like the idea of them being play toys for the Graeae. Since the mages’ idea of justice was to drag me off to a kangaroo court and a quick death, I had no such problem. “Come on!”
Pritkin ignored me and pulled a mage out from under three gargoyles, who’d been introducing the man’s face to a cheese grater. Apparently, shields didn’t work so well against the Fey—judging by his agonized expression, it was a lesson the guy would probably remember.
Pritkin knocked him unconscious, then grabbed Miranda. She tried to bite him, but he had her around the throat and held her back from his face. That didn’t help the rest of him from getting badly clawed, but he grimly hung on. His concentration must have wobbled, however, because the silence bubble suddenly collapsed. He said something, but I couldn’t hear it over the klaxons, which drowned out even the gargoyles.
I couldn’t believe Pritkin was still fixated on that stupid geis. It seemed harmless to me, especially now that the Circle was finding out about the gargoyles all on their own. But I knew him well enough not to bother arguing.
“Miranda!” I screamed, literally at the top of my lungs. “Remove the geis! Casanova will hide you from the mages!” That got her attention, and she turned those slanted cat eyes on me. She didn’t take her claws out of Pritkin, but I didn’t really care.
“You promissse? We not go back?” she asked, her voice somehow cutting through the din.
“I promise,” I yelled, nudging Casanova, who had waded through the battle to us. He looked alarmed, but I didn’t give him a chance to protest. “You know you can do it. Tony has all kinds of bolt holes around here.”
He rolled his eyes. “¡Claro que sí! Just go!”
Miranda smiled, a really odd expression on her furry face, since it flashed a lot of fang. “I remember thisss,” she told me, and suddenly Pritkin was holding a spitting, hissing and squirming ball of fur. A set of four deep scratch marks appeared on his face, and I punched him in the shoulder. “Let her go and she’ll help!”
Pritkin finally dropped her, and Miranda stood, smoothing her fur and preening for a moment. Then she waved a paw at him in a curiously graceful gesture. I didn’t notice any change, but I guess he must have because he grabbed my hand and yanked me after Casanova, looking as irritated as if I’d been the one holding things up.
“I’ll show you the tunnel, but we have to hurry. I can’t be seen with you,” the vamp was saying. I looked around for Billy Joe, but he’d disappeared. I hoped he was on my errand and not off somewhere interfering with a game of craps. He could move small things if he really concentrated, and thought it was funny as hell to rig the casino games.
The golem appeared in front of us, a meat cleaver sticking out of its clay chest, but it didn’t seem to notice. We ran for the cool room and Casanova moved a large plastic bin of lettuce. He pointed at what looked like a solid concrete block wall. “Through there. The car is already in place and the driver’s going to wait to hand off the keys. Give me whatever you want put in the safe and go!”
“I’ll give it to the driver. Look, I really appreciate—”
Casanova cut me off with a gesture. “Just make sure I don’t end up putting this place back together for that bidonista ,” he said grimly.
“You have a deal,” I told him. I just hoped I could keep up my end of the bargain.
The man waiting for us at the end of the long, stifling tunnel was leaning casually against a luxurious new BMW, arms crossed, obviously bored. I gaped, my mind immediately flooded with images of hot nights, rumpled sheets and excellent sex. It wasn’t ju
st the rich black curls, as shiny as the car behind him, which begged any female under eighty to run her hands through them. It wasn’t just the lean, muscled body, dressed in skintight jeans and T-shirt, and tanned that beautiful burnished color only olive skin gets. There was an instant attraction, a pull from those liquid dark eyes, that I knew couldn’t be real. I might admire a guy’s looks, but I don’t get that interested until I’ve known him a little longer than ten seconds.
Incubus, I thought, my mouth going dry. And judging by the level of interest my body was taking, a powerful one. I swallowed and summoned up a smile.
He immediately smiled back, taking in my abbreviated uniform with an appreciative eye. “Have you heard about our employee discount, querida? Twenty percent off all services.”
“Casanova sent us,” I clarified.
“Ah, of course. I am Chavez. It means Dream Maker—”
I cut him off before he could offer to make all my dreams come true. “We, uh, really need to go.”
I noticed that he’d brought along a friend, I guess to drive him back after he turned over the keys. The handsome blond was wearing a Dante’s baseball cap and a mesh tank top that gave tantalizing glimpses of a muscular upper body. He sent me a cheerful, beach boy smile from the driver’s seat of a flashy convertible. The expression managed to call up sandy blankets, salt-laced wind and sultry, passion-filled nights.
“I’m Randolph,” he said in a broad midwestern accent, gripping my hand firmly in his big, suntanned one. “But you can call me Randy. Everyone does.”
“I bet.”
In the end, I had to take Chavez’s card, three brochures and a flyer advertising an upcoming two-for-one night before they would listen to me. I persuaded Randy to take Pritkin to a tattoo parlor where he said a friend would patch him up. I found that story fairly fishy, since most of his wounds had already closed, but maybe his friend would have a change of clothes or a shower. All that blood made him more than a little conspicuous, and we desperately needed to blend in.