by D. N. Hoxa
This time I was the one laughing. “That sounds exactly like something Chris Conti would say.” I could almost picture his face—identical to Carter’s, yet so different, too. “And what did you tell him?”
“I told him you said that you don’t work with self-absorbed, power-hungry assholes.”
“That sounds exactly like something I’d think.” But probably not say out loud.
“Oh, I know. Part of you isn’t very hard to figure out, Sin. The other part, though, is proving to be very problematic.” he squinted his eyes at me.
“Hasn’t anyone told you that you can’t figure women out?”
“They have, but I like to make up my own mind most of the time. The process is much more exciting.”
I could feel his eyes on my face, and though it made me uncomfortable, it was easy to ignore when almost all my focus was on the crowd around us.
“Hey, did you hear that joke about a ghoul’s favorite beans?”
I shook my head. “No?”
“It’s human beans,” he said, grinning, and it was so lame, I had no choice but to laugh.
“That was so bad!”
“You’ve heard nothing yet,” Carter said, laughing. “What do you get when you cross a vampire and a snowman?” Oh, this was gonna be worse, I just knew it. “Frostbite.”
Yep, it was worse, but it was impossible not to laugh in his face.
And for the next half an hour, he told me what were probably the worst jokes ever invented. About half of them were funny, and the rest made me laugh more because they were so pathetic, but Carter was trying so hard.
My eyes remained on the entrance to the room, and I scanned the face of every person who entered the casino. So far, I’d had no luck. I was beginning to think I had it all wrong. There were probably other places that fit the description for Helen and her friend.
When Kyle came to find us at the bar to tell us that he’d made twenty grand, he was ecstatic.
“You see these babies?” he said, showing us his chips. “I’m gonna magically double them in just another hour. You just watch.”
“Take the money and go home, Kyle,” Carter said. “You’re gonna lose all of it.”
“Nonsense. Tonight is my night,” he said, then pointed his finger at him and me. “You two are my lucky charms.” Then he leaned in between us, almost knocking me off my barstool, and slammed his hand on the bar. “Hey, barmaid! Your best whiskey for my friends here!”
He paid her in chips and then ran back to his game like a kid going for the ice cream truck.
“He’s gonna lose all that money,” Carter said, shaking his head as he drank the whiskey. “But this stuff is really good.” It was, indeed. “We should do this more often.”
“Come to a casino?” I did like it, but it definitely wouldn’t be one of my top choices for a night out.
“I mean go out and laugh and not talk about Damian Reed.”
He analyzed my face as if he were waiting for a reaction. Then, he smiled, like I’d reacted exactly the way he’d expected me to.
“A very good plan,” I said and continued to drink my whiskey.
“I don’t get it,” Carter said. “He’s a murderer.”
“So are we.” He’d killed people before—at his brother’s house and in Estird.
“No, I kill only when my life is threatened. The things he’s done—”
“Knock it off, Carter. Just because you heard the rumors doesn’t mean you know him.”
“Where there’s fire, there’s smoke,” he said. “I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing, that’s all.”
I was gonna tell him to take his concern and shove it, but then a group of people entered the casino. They were far away, and I could have been mistaken, but one of them was the ghoul I’d fought in Corbin City. Very hard to forget the bear of a man, with the square face and those eyes. I held my breath and waited a good few seconds until they were close enough for me to see clearly.
My heart skipped a beat. It was them. Not all of Helen’s friends, but the ghoul and the wizard—I recognized them both. Holy shit, I was right.
I put the glass on the bar behind me and untied my hair. It was a mess of weird waves from the hair tie, but it was my best option for hiding my face. “I’m going to the ladies’ room,” I told Carter and jumped off the barstool.
The ghoul and the wizard, together with four other men I didn’t recognize, were going for the separate rooms. I hurried my steps, putting my hair in front of my face in case they looked my way, and got as close to them as I could before they slipped behind the black curtains of the room in the middle. The black curtain took them out of my sight instantly.
Shit. I needed to get close enough to see what they were doing, and the closest games to the rooms were the slot machines on the wall. They were farther away than I liked, but I doubted the bouncers were going to let me get close without suspecting anything. I sat at the first slot and pretended to look at my phone, trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on behind the curtains.
It was impossible. I was too far away.
I stood up, cursing under my breath, and tapped my thigh.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Kit was nowhere in sight.
Putting my fingers in my mouth, I whistled. Not ideal—everybody suddenly turned to me—but I needed Kit, and he was too far away from me to hear me otherwise.
I turned and sat back in front of the slot, mortified. It wasn’t a big deal—people whistled and screamed their guts out every few seconds—but now I felt like everyone knew what I was doing.
“Did you win, dear?”
A woman was by my side, looking at me with smiling eyes, hand on my shoulder. I stood up instinctively, jerking my shoulder. Shit, I was making a fool out of myself.
“No, no, I didn’t win,” I said and stepped back, as if the woman was going to eat me. She looked about sixty, with blue eyes, and short red hair that looked like a wig. She took my seat in front of the slot machine, nodding, and when I turned around, I heard her muttering, bitch.
But it didn’t matter. Kit was coming my way through the sea of people around me. Before long, he climbed on my leg and up to my shoulder. His breath smelled like lemonade.
“See that guy over there?” I told him when he squeaked his complaint, and I nodded my head to the bouncer in front of the middle room. “Steal his wallet and make sure he sees. He has to chase you, okay?” He squeaked again, and it sounded like, I don’t want to do this. “This is serious, Kit. I need to see what’s behind that curtain. Go!”
He lazily climbed all the way down my body, and I turned the other way, hiding behind the people who were playing some kind of a board game, not too far away from the bouncer. My hair was in my face, but I still saw Kit going behind the bouncer, then climbing up his body from the back of his legs. He didn’t even notice—Kit could be very sneaky when he wanted to.
But he did notice when Kit hung on his jacket, half his body inside the man’s pocket.
“Hey!” the man shouted, stunned to see Kit’s tail wiggling out of his pocket. He tried to grab him by it, but by then Kit was free again. He jumped to the floor, something shiny in his mouth—something that looked like a watch.
He began to run toward the entrance door, and the bouncer shot after him, shouting, he’s got my watch!
The other two bouncers didn’t run, but they stepped closer to the slot machines to see where their friend was going. Everybody else was looking at them, too. Keeping my head down, I made my way to the middle room as fast as I could and slipped inside the curtain, pulling it aside just a bit to see when the bouncers came back.
It was too dark to see in the short corridor that led to the game rooms. There were two of them in there. The only light was coming from the doorway to my right. My heart hammered in my chest, loud enough for vampires to hear. I probably smelled, too—enough for the ghoul to pick it up.
Get it together, I whispered to myself, and takin
g in deep breaths, I moved closer to the doorway, back pressed against the wall. I closed my eyes and focused all my being in my ears.
I began to hear the voices immediately, even over the low music and the beeping of machines.
“Think about it,” a man was saying. “A chance like this doesn’t come to your door twice.”
“What about the Guild?” another man asked, his voice shaking. I didn’t need to hear his heartbeat or smell his sweat to know that he was afraid. Letting out my magic, I searched for the essence of the people in the room—all six of them. Ghoul, three wizards, and two sorcerers.
“Let me handle the Guild,” the first man said.
“But my family—”
“Your family will be fine,” the first man said, his voice rising. I was willing to bet that this guy was the ghoul. “But you have to be prepared. It has to be willingly or not at all.”
Voices from the other side. I looked behind the opening of the curtain to see black suits—the bouncers. The ghoul was saying something else, but I couldn’t hear him over my panic. Goddamn it. I hadn’t even caught a name!
Moving back to the curtain, I slipped outside, hoping nobody would notice me.
“Hey, what are you doing in there?!”
They definitely noticed me. The bouncer was coming my way, eyes red with anger, his watch that Kit had stolen shining in his hand. I backed away.
“Sorry! I got lost. I thought—”
“There you are!” An arm wrapped around my shoulder. “Did you get lost again?” Carter said, smiling at me.
“I was just looking for—”
“This is a private area,” the bouncer growled, and his two friends were already approaching us.
“Don’t mind her, she’s new,” Carter said, pulling me to the side. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t wander off again.”
All three of them looked at me like they wanted to tear me apart when Carter practically dragged me through the crowd and toward the entrance.
I took his arm off my shoulder and looked back. All three of the bouncers were gathered, and they were looking right at us.
“We need to hurry,” I told Carter and pulled him by the arm.
“Kyle!” Carter called, waving his hand to the wizard sitting at the card board. “We need to leave! Come on!”
But Kyle only watched us pass him by, cards in hand, and he shook his head. I risked another look behind us, and though I couldn’t see the bouncers anymore, I was pretty sure they were still looking for me.
We made it to the entrance door faster than I’d hoped. I almost forgot to get my sheaths and my dagger back from Mike the host, still standing by his desk. I gave him my key and pretended not to be panicked while he went and got my things.
“Hold on a minute!” one of the bouncers said—the tall one.
No way in hell. I grabbed my dagger and sheaths from Mike’s hand and didn’t even look back before I started running down the corridor.
“Hey!” I still didn’t turn. Kit was waiting for me on the stairway and Carter was right behind me. I knew that they couldn’t accuse me of anything—I hadn’t stolen and the guy had already gotten his watch back, but I didn’t want the wizard or the ghoul to see me. They knew me—we’d met at the tomb wall—and if they were really going to plant the Treasure of Saraph here, I didn’t want them changing their plans. That’s why I kept going with my head down, my hair in front of my face, barely breathing.
When we finally walked out the doors of the casino, I breathed a little easier.
“That was fun,” Carter said, looking behind us as we made our way to the car in the parking lot. I kept looking back, too, but so far, nobody had come out to chase us.
“It was just Kit,” I said in a rush. “He stole from the bouncer.” As if that was going to make any sense to him.
We climbed in the car, and Kit finally stopped complaining when he lay down in the backseat. He hated it when I had my hair down, and I hated it, too. He had no regard for how many chunks of hair he pulled out of my skull trying to hold onto me.
“They aren’t following us. That’s good news,” Carter said, driving the car out of the parking lot.
“Sorry about that.” I offered him a smile and tied my hair again. My cheek was bloody—Kit had scratched the hell out of me, the little fucker.
“No problem. Did you get what you were here for?” he said but didn’t let me answer. “Was it the ghoul you were after or the others with him?”
Ah, shit. “Both,” I said and cleared my throat. “And yeah. I think I did.”
I wanted to call Damian right away, but I wouldn’t be able to speak to him without telling Carter. It would have to wait until we got back to the City.
“You know, I could help you if you told me what you were doing,” he said after a little while. We were definitely in the clear. It had been several minutes since we left the parking lot, and no cars seemed to be chasing us.
“Thanks, Carter, but I’m good.”
“I see,” he said. “You brought me all the way here for some secret agenda, and you won’t even tell me about it. What do you think I am, Sin?”
Holy shit. I turned to him. “I didn’t bring you anywhere. You said you wanted to go, too.”
He grinned. “But you wouldn’t have laughed so hard if I hadn’t been there, would you?” I rolled my eyes. He was messing with me. “In my book, that equals a debt. So you owe me.”
“No way in hell.”
“Yes, way. Lucky for you, I know exactly how you can make it up to me.”
I laughed. “I have nothing to make up for.”
“Yeah, you do,” he said, turning to me, though there were a lot of cars on the road. “Go out with me.”
My smile fell instantly. Not this again. “Carter, I’m not going out with you.”
“Why not? You go out with me all the time.”
“That’s different. Lucas and Kyle are there.” Why was it so hot in there suddenly?
“But we’re friends, aren’t we? We can go out as friends.”
“We will go out as friends, any time we’re out on a hunt.” Just like we had that night.
“I promise I’m not going to bite you,” he said. “That’s not my style.”
Oh, God. “Please, just drop it. We’re coworkers.” And I don’t like you that way, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t.
“Exactly. Coworkers can have dinner together alone, can’t they?”
“No, they can’t.” I turned to him. “Carter, we’re friends. And coworkers. And that’s all we’re ever going to be.” I didn’t think I could make myself any clearer.
“So that’s a no?” Playing dumb didn’t suit him, but I indulged him.
“It’s a no.”
He nodded. “Okay, then,” he said, smiling. “I’m a patient man. Maybe you’ll change your mind someday.”
I wasn’t going to, but if I said that, he was going to drag this on until we got back to the City. So I kept my mouth shut and just looked out the window. Thankfully, he didn’t say anything else until he dropped me at my apartment.
“I mean it. If you need help, call me,” he said.
“Thanks, Carter.” I closed the door and watched him drive away with Kit on my shoulder.
I sighed. “I shouldn’t have gone there with him,” I said to Kit, but he ignored me, like always. With a squeak, he jumped from my shoulder and took off in the night. “Thanks a lot, sucker.”
It was almost one in the morning when I got my phone out and called Damian. He picked up after the first ring. The sound of his voice sent butterflies to my stomach, but I was already getting used to it.
“I think I know where they’re going to do it.”
Chapter Eighteen
When Damian picked me up the next night, the full moon shone brightly in the sky. Malin called as soon as I got in the car, before I could even say hi to him.
“Any news?” she asked. “Damian must have something by now.”
“No, we s
till have no idea where they’re going to do it, but he’s searching. I don’t know…he hasn’t called yet.” Damian smiled from the driver’s seat.
“Are you sure? It’s been three days,” Malin said, as Kit climbed over my shoulder and jumped into the back to make himself comfortable. “Something doesn’t seem right.”
“Everything’s okay, Mal. I’ll let you know when I hear something, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Have you picked a dress yet? Because you’re not going to d—”
“Mal, something came up. Gotta go, bye.” I hung up the phone and tried really hard not to blush. I really tried. I should have known she wouldn’t keep her mouth shut about the stupid dress she insisted I wear at dinner with Damian. But if I hadn’t picked up, she would have been worried sick.
“I’m guessing she’s not coming with tonight,” Damian said, a smile still playing on his handsome face. I kept my eyes on the windshield.
“I don’t want her anywhere near that place tonight.” There was going to be a fight—probably—and though Malin was very good at magic, she didn’t know how to fight.
My phone vibrated with a text message from Malin. If you’re hiding something from me, I’m going to make all your hair fall out.
Great. I put the phone back in my pocket and cleared my throat.
“Where’s Nikola?”
“With Emanuel. They’re already there.”
“Is anybody else joining us?” I asked, just to make sure there would be no more surprises.
“No, it’s just us,” Damian said. “We checked out the place last night after you called, and I think we know where it’s going to happen. There’s a horse-racing track right behind the casino that was shut down a few months ago. The space in the middle of the track would be perfect for planting the Treasure, and it’s shielded from all sides. It has the casino at its back, the stables and the stands in front. The highway is east, and the parking lot in the west. A ward would easily shield it from prying eyes, as well as keep people out.”
I’d already broken a ward those wizards had made in Corbin City. I believed I could do it again without trouble.