Blood Gamble (Disrupted Magic Book 2) Read online

  Part of me was hoping he’d get all blustery and possessive, forbidding me to take the job in Vegas. Although if he’d actually reacted like that, I would probably have jumped to take Wyatt’s offer, because I am naturally contrary.

  Maybe Dashiell had come to the same conclusion, because at the end of all that he said, “My, Scarlett, you have been busy,” in his usual dry tone. “You’re right, the situation is more complicated than I had suspected. Are you calling for an extraction?”

  “An extract—no,” I said, confused. What was I, James Bond? “I want instructions.”

  “Ah,” he said, more thoughtfully. There was a pause, and then he added, “In that case, as far as I am concerned, you have fulfilled the terms of our agreement. You went to Las Vegas, saw the show, and reported your findings to me. I release you of all further obligations to me this weekend.”

  Well, that didn’t help. “But what should I do?”

  “You’re on your own time now, Scarlett,” he said, and there was something in his voice that was hard to read. Smugness, maybe. “You can come home, or continue investigating. All I ask is that you come to the mansion on Monday night to debrief me. I can make further plans at that time.”

  And then he hung up.

  He hung up?

  “Dammit!” I yelled at the silent cell phone. Dashiell was supposed to tell me what to do. Now I felt more frustrated than ever, and images from the last twelve hours were spinning through my brain. Jameson’s guarded, troubled expression. Laurel’s plea for me to help Wyatt. Wyatt himself, looking so forlorn and lost.

  Pacing the opulent suite, I called Jesse and ran him through the whole story. He was flabbergasted. And also extremely entertained.

  “You know, for someone who claims her dream job is a professional couch potato, you find yourself in the most bizarre situations,” he marveled. “Jesus, Scarlett, I don’t even know where to start.”

  “What do I say to Wyatt?” I pleaded.

  “What do you want to say?”

  I fidgeted. “It’s too much money, you know? And I don’t know the city, and it’s probably dangerous, and there are Juliet and her friends to consider. I should just come home, right? I mean, at this point I’m so far outside my job description—”

  “Oh my God,” Jesse said in a groan.

  That brought me up short. “What?”

  “Your job description? Are you frickin’ serious right now? Or are you just fishing for compliments?”

  I was genuinely perplexed. “Dude, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I definitely don’t need you to tell me I’m pretty or whatever.”

  I heard him take a deep breath, and I strongly suspected he was also counting to ten. “Scarlett. My friend,” he said, in a slow, patient voice, like I was kind of an idiot. “You seem to be under the impression that you are not important. That you are a nobody who occasionally gets cornered into doing something big. I’m not sure where you got this stupid idea, but even if it was true once, it is now the opposite of true.”

  I blanched. “The hell does that mean?”

  “Look around, dummy. You’re the good guy. You are, in fact, a hero.”

  A tiny bit of hysterical-sounding laughter escaped my lips. “That’s you. That’s Lex. I’m not like that.”

  “You’re more like Lex than you think.”

  I didn’t answer, and he filled in the silence. “Scar, you didn’t spend the last few years learning to throw knives, or check a car for explosives, or flip giant men on their asses because you were planning to sit out fights. And you didn’t save Molly because you had no other alternative.”

  “What do you mean? That’s exactly why I helped Molly.”

  “Oh my God, you stupid woman,” he said affectionately. “You don’t even see that there was a choice, do you? That’s okay. It just means I’m right.”

  “I don’t . . . I’m not . . .” I stopped pacing and sat on the edge of the couch, curling my knees to my chest. “I don’t feel like that.”

  Jesse sighed audibly. “Listen, moron, because I’m only going to say this one time,” he said in a sharper tone. “The Old World system is full of cracks. You are the champion of all the people who fall through those cracks. And that’s okay, Scar. This is who you were always supposed to become, if you hadn’t gotten sidetracked by that psycho Olivia. Even I can see that, and I’m supposedly on the outside of all this.”

  I just sat there, taken aback. I could not think of a single thing to make with my mouth words.

  “Anyway,” Jesse went on, “you can stop trying to find a reason not to do what we both know you want: to help this cowboy stop the skinners. Because it’s the right thing to do, and because no one else will.”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “What?”

  I swallowed the lump in the back of my throat. “I didn’t know there was so much name-calling in motivational speeches.”

  “Not everyone does them as well as me,” he said airily. “Do you want me to come out there and help?”

  “No. I need you in LA. But Jesse . . .” I paused for a second, trying to figure out what it was that I was so afraid of. “If I come at this thing head-on, blow my cover, the skinners are going to come after me. They’ll pretty much have to.”

  “You have allies there, right? The cowboy, the bodyguard, that witch—”

  “You make them sound like a bad Village People cover band, but yeah. Probably.” I thought of Jameson, but he had his own plans. I couldn’t count on him to leave the Holmwoods and play for Team Scarlett.

  “Then let the skinners come. Maybe that’s how you find them. Just wear your bulletproof vest, okay?” he added hurriedly. “And call me every day, please.”

  There was a moment when I could have said . . . what? That I appreciated him? That he was important to me? That his pep talk had meant more to me than I could ever say? Instead, I just said a simple, “Thanks, Jesse.”

  “Anytime.”

  When I hung up the phone, I sat there for a long time, thinking about Jesse’s words. No matter how I tried to shove the square peg in the round hole, I couldn’t see myself as some kind of champion. Just the word “champion” kind of made me want to barf, like when you see a white dude who’s made a man bun with his dreadlocks. The only heroes I’d ever met were scary badasses, like Lex. And I felt about as scary as the average Yorkshire terrier. The teacup kind.

  But then, maybe I didn’t need to see myself as a champion to the overlooked. Maybe it was enough that Jesse did. And Wyatt.

  I thought that over for a long time, and then I swallowed my pride and called Dashiell back.

  “Hello again, Scarlett,” he said. He’d restricted himself to just a hint of smugness.

  “I need a favor,” I said without preamble. “Can you find out if vampires have disappeared in other cities the Holmwoods have visited?”

  A beat, and then he said, “You’re thinking the skinners are following them from town to town?”

  “It’s just a hunch at this point, but yeah.”

  “Hmm. I can make some calls to Europe, but I probably won’t have answers until tomorrow evening, due to the time change.”

  “That’s fine. Please just get me whatever information you can.”

  Wyatt didn’t return for almost two hours, but when he knocked on my door again, he had a fistful of hotel stationery. “Is that the list?” I asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. It was more than I’d thought.” He handed over the papers, looking a little triumphant. I looked through them quickly. There were thirty-eight names on the list, and next to each one was the date and location from which the vampire had disappeared. A few of them didn’t have the information filled in yet. “There may be some names missing, too. I’ve put in calls to learn more,” he added.

  “Okay, good. I can start with this.”

  “Does this mean you’re going to take the job?”

  “I have obligations during the day,” I warned. “And I need to go back to LA on
Monday. That’s nonnegotiable.”

  “I understand.” His eyes were practically dancing, damn him.

  “If we can’t find the skinners by then, I’ll give you everything I’ve got and collect half of that.” I nodded at the pile of money.

  Carelessly, Wyatt collected all the cash, which was really four small stacks held together with rubber bands. He pocketed three of them and tossed one stack toward my midsection. I managed to catch it, although I found myself not really wanting to touch it. “You should have some walking-around money, in case you need to grease some wheels,” he explained.

  “Fine.” The money felt weird in my hand, heavy and surreal. But I could lock most of it in the room’s safe.

  “What about the other thing?” he asked. “Helping me move on?”

  I pushed out a breath. “Honestly? I’m not saying no, but . . . I need to think about it.”

  We negotiated for a little bit, and determined that I would keep fifty grand if I found Ellen’s killer but didn’t help Wyatt with his suicide. If I couldn’t find the killer by the end of the weekend, I would keep the twenty-five grand I had now.

  I walked Wyatt to the hotel room door, where he put his hat back on. “Where will you start?” he asked mildly.

  I sighed. I needed a better idea of the power structure in Las Vegas before I started dicking around with it. “It’s probably time to go introduce myself to Silvio.”

  Chapter 16

  I was already tired as I pulled my jeans and boots back on. I was used to staying up until at least three or four—the by-product of working regularly with vampires—but between the long hours of shopping and spending most of the night trying to suppress my radius, it seemed like a week since I’d left Los Angeles, instead of only that morning.

  Still, I couldn’t get myself any deeper into the Vegas Old World without talking to the guy who was allegedly in charge. And, giant dickhead or not, Silvio needed to know that skinners were killing vampires in his town. I couldn’t seek justice for Wyatt without giving the actual authority a chance to do his job.

  Assuming he didn’t know already. I found it hard to believe that he wouldn’t have noticed thirty-odd missing vampires, but then again, there were thousands of vampires in Las Vegas, and Silvio had been in charge of them for only a few weeks. I could give him the benefit of the doubt, at least a little.

  Wyatt had wanted to go see Silvio with me, but I’d refused to let him tag along. I didn’t trust the cowboy to keep his cool if Silvio was as big of a tool as he sounded, and besides, the new cardinal vampire might not take kindly to being challenged by such a weak subject. He was also likely to be annoyed that one of his vampires had gone outside the fold for help. Silvio probably wouldn’t kill me just for going to see him—there would be too many political ramifications, plus nulls are valuable. But I didn’t want Wyatt anywhere near him right now.

  Of course, going to see the cardinal vampire alone was not without its risks. Jameson had suggested the Holmwoods would kill me on sight, and there was a chance that they might be there. I decided to pull on my bulletproof vest, just to pacify Jesse’s imaginary voice in my head.

  But I wasn’t too worried. If Silvio was the dim-witted figurehead he seemed to be, there was no reason for Arthur and Lucy to be randomly hanging out with him.

  Besides, I was not without my own defenses.

  I didn’t bother to suppress my radius when I left my room. If anything, I let it blaze around me like a calling card. Introducing myself to Silvio would mean I was “coming out” as a null in Vegas, so there was no point in exhausting myself trying to hide it any longer.

  Of course, as soon as I got off the elevator on the ground floor, vampires started trickling through my radius like flies bumping into a bug zapper. It was disorienting at first, but after a few minutes—and a lot of stares—I adjusted and kept moving, ignoring the men and women who had stopped dead in the middle of the casino floor, craning their heads to find the null. Let them look. I was moving too quickly for them to pinpoint me anyway.

  According to Wyatt, Silvio had recently moved into a suite at the Mandarin Oriental, one of the newer big resorts on the Vegas Strip. It was easy enough to get a cab, but we had to fight through some of the Friday-night traffic. While I waited I looked up the Oriental on my phone. Apparently it was unique among the behemoth hotels in that it didn’t actually have a casino floor, which meant it catered more to the deeply rich than to the usual gambling riffraff.

  On the inside the Mandarin Oriental was decorated like a P.F. Chang’s that had come into some money, covered with a sheen of Vegas gloss. Cardinal vampires always have security around, so as soon as I reached the center of the main lobby, I let my radius expand. Three vampire thugs appeared out of the crowd almost instantly, looking around like they might be able to actually sniff out the big bad null. I approached the nearest one and waved a hand. “Hi, I’m Scarlett,” I said cheerfully. “I would like to see Silvio, please.”

  The thug—a beefy white guy with a hooked nose that must have been broken a lot when he was alive—did a double take, his eyes going so big that I had to fight not to smirk at him. “Who . . . I can’t . . . but . . .” he sputtered, and I almost had to feel sorry for the guy.

  Aw. He was so stupid it was cute. “It’s okay,” I assured him. “Just call Silvio on the phone and tell him that Scarlett Bernard, the null, is here to see him. I can wait.”

  The big eyes narrowed, but he could see the logic in the suggestion—or maybe he just couldn’t think of a better one. At any rate, he made the call, and within ninety seconds he was escorting me through the hotel and toward a private elevator.

  If you called Central Casting and asked them to send you a stereotypical Italian American gangster type, I’m fairly certain you’d get someone who looked exactly like Silvio. He was a short, stocky guy with olive skin, a suit with no tie—possibly because his neck was too thick—and an honest-to-goodness pinkie ring. He sat on a leather couch in the little seating area, with two vampire goons standing near the wall on either side.

  I wasn’t surprised to see the goons—although vampires are mostly loners, cardinal vampires need extra security in case another vampire decides to attack. If anything, I was a little surprised that Silvio didn’t have more people. If the city had just settled a long-standing leadership dispute, he should have been more wary.

  Unless he knew for a fact that no other vampires were going to challenge him.

  All three vampires gasped a little when they hit my radius, but they recovered quickly. Too quickly for vampires who hadn’t been human in centuries. I’d bet Wyatt’s stack of cash that they’d been near Jameson recently. Interesting.

  Silvio stood up as I approached, taking a deep breath and buttoning his suit jacket.

  “Hello, Silvio,” I said first, holding out a hand. This was on purpose. Older vampires don’t often bother with handshakes, probably because they see themselves as above that kind of base human flesh-pressing. Nobody pets the cow before they eat the steak. But I had made Silvio human at the moment, and I wanted to remind him of it. Kind of a petty little power move, but I never said I was above that. “I’m Scarlett Bernard. I’m a null from Los Angeles.”

  Silvio allowed me to grasp his hand, though he put no effort into reciprocating. “I know who you are, Miss Bernard,” he said, taking his hand back. He didn’t actually wipe it on his nice pants, but I could practically see how much he wanted to. “I assume that Dashiell sent you here to check up on my city. Please inform him that—”

  “Oh, on the contrary,” I said cheerfully. Silvio’s eyes widened. I had interrupted him? “I’m not here representing Dashiell at all. I just have a few questions for you about your missing vampires.”

  He made a show of looking elegantly baffled. “My missing . . . I don’t understand.”

  “At least thirty-eight of your people have disappeared in the last few months. There is a rumor going around that there are skinners in town.” Without waitin
g to be asked, I went to the grouping of plush furniture and plopped down on a couch.

  Silvio’s frown deepened, but he went to the adjoining armchair and lowered himself onto the edge. “Skinners? In Las Vegas?” he scoffed. “You’ve received bad information, Miss Bernard.”

  “Then how do you explain the missing vampires?”

  Slowly, Silvio leaned back in his chair, squirming a little. He wasn’t used to having to make a human body comfortable. “I’m not sure I understand. You’re not here on behalf of your city’s cardinal vampire?”

  “Nope.”

  “And you don’t work for any official Old World organization, because there isn’t one anymore. So why are you asking about this?”

  I had decided to tell part of the truth. “I happened to be in Las Vegas this weekend, purely for pleasure,” I told him. “But I was approached by a local vampire, who is concerned about these disappearances. I do take a number of freelance ventures when I’m in Los Angeles, so I agreed to poke around a little.” I gave him a sunny smile. “I wasn’t aware you were Las Vegas’s cardinal vampire when I took the job, but I assume you’re all right with it. I’m sure you’re just as anxious as I am to find out why your vampires keep disappearing.”

  He ignored the commentary and went right to, “Which vampire hired you?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  Silvio glanced at the men on either side of him. Why don’t cardinal vampires ever have female bodyguards? Man, sexism really is eternal. “Leave us, please,” he told them.

  The thugs exchanged glances, but they did as they were told, disappearing through the same door we’d entered. Probably going to stand in the hallway with one hand crossed over the other.

  Silvio shifted in his chair again, looking me up and down. I forced myself not to fidget.