Blood Gamble (Disrupted Magic Book 2) Page 12

  “Ordinarily,” he said at last, “I would have Domingo and Telly force the vampire’s name out of you, just on general principle.”

  A wave of fear crested inside my stomach, but he couldn’t smell it on me while he was human, and I made sure my expression didn’t change. “However,” Silvio went on, “you are in a unique position of being valuable to a man I’d like to stay on good terms with, so instead I will just explain to you, Miss Bernard, that we do not have skinners in my city. If it is true that vampires are disappearing, I’m sure that is simply because they have chosen to do so.” He spread his hands. “As you may have gathered, I came into this position fairly recently. There are always people who decide to leave when a new power rises.” A self-satisfied smile broke over his face, which did not make it any friendlier.

  “Do you even know how many vampires live here?” I asked. “Aren’t you keeping track of their numbers to make sure there’s no overfeeding? All of that is pretty standard in Los Angeles.”

  “This is not Los Angeles,” he said through his teeth. “Now, as a courtesy to you and your boss, I will overlook the fact that you stormed in here demanding answers, and simply wish you a good evening.” He stood, buttoning the damn jacket again. “The next time you are interested in coming to town, I am sure you’ll have your cardinal vampire call for permission first.”

  I didn’t move. “Seriously? You’re just going to pretend like you don’t have a problem?”

  “Because I do not. Domingo! Telly!” he called toward the door.

  The bodyguards reentered. I wondered if Silvio told them when to sit and stay, too. “Please escort Miss Bernard out of my building,” he said to them, gesturing at me.

  The two beefy guys advanced on me, popping back into my radius. I had learned all I was going to. I finally stood up. “I can find my own way out, thanks.”

  “I’d feel more comfortable,” Silvio said evenly, “if you were to make sure Miss Bernard leaves the building, gentlemen.”

  The two big guys hadn’t even broken their stride, and now they were both reaching for me, obviously intending to each take one of my arms.

  Eh, fuck it. I wasn’t making friends here anyway.

  I had palmed my knives the moment Silvio diverted his attention to the guards, and now I flashed out my hands to throw both, burying one blade in each bodyguard’s shoulder. I was weaker with my left hand, so whichever one of the thugs was on that side got his knife a little higher, but he still staggered back with a howl, as though I had ripped off one of his limbs.

  Silvio’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head with rage. “How dare you—” he began, but I overrode him.

  “What? Poke your bodyguards after you told them to put their hands on me? Don’t be a baby. We both know they’ll heal in ten minutes.” And if you didn’t want me to stab them, you should have respected me enough to check for weapons. I didn’t say that part, but I’d like to think it was implied in my tone. I stepped over the coffee table and right between the two guards, who had both sat heavily on the floor, clutching at their wounds. They were going to have to take the blades out in order to heal anyway, so I bent down and plucked out both knives at the same time, prompting a new chorus of moans. The one on the right looked like he might cry, but they let me saunter past without further interference. I thought about saying something like “don’t forget to tip your waitress” on the way out, just in the spirit of Vegas, but there’s only so far even I can push my luck.

  Chapter 17

  “Miss? Miss!”

  “Grkgne,” I mumbled, or something very close to it. I made an effort to open my eyes as wide as possible. “What?” I managed to say. “Sorry, I think I drifted off there.”

  Of course I had. I was operating on five hours of sleep, I’d been putting a lot of effort into my radius, and someone had put me in a heated bed and rubbed my back.

  It was my first time getting a massage, and I’d been a little shy about getting mostly naked and letting a complete stranger rub oil on me. But the process had been a lot less sexual and a lot more soothing than I’d thought. Of course, it didn’t hurt that my masseuse was a benevolent woman in her early sixties.

  “Our time is up, miss,” she repeated patiently. “Shall I get you some water?”

  I propped myself up on my elbows with the sheet pulled up to my shoulder blades. “Uh, sure. Water. Yes.”

  My masseuse nodded and slipped silently through the door. I blinked, trying to reorient myself.

  The spa at the Venetian was as beautiful and opulent as the rest of the resort. There was everything you could imagine having in a spa, and a lot of things I had never thought of, like a giant climbing wall and a bunch of different “environments” that were supposed to detox your body of various . . . things. I was still a bit fuzzy on what I was detoxing from, but everyone made it sound very important.

  As impressive as it was, the spa also shared the casino’s commitment to spatial confusion, which meant someone had to guide you everywhere. After I dressed in the spa robe and opened the door, my masseuse was waiting for me with a cup of water. “Your friends are gathering in the igloo room,” she said, smiling and gesturing for me to follow her.

  “The igloo room?” Please be a clever name, I thought.

  Nope. A few moments later I was opening the door to a freezing cold and very round chamber, where Juliet, Bethany, and Laurel were standing in a little circle in their robes, rubbing their hands together. “What the what?” I sputtered as the door swung closed behind me. “Why are we standing in the Arctic? People pay real human money for this?”

  Juliet laughed. “It’s part of their whole schtick. They alternate hot and cold, which is supposedly good for you . . . somehow.”

  “It’s European,” Bethany said airily. “They do this every winter in Scandinavia, with their saunas.”

  “Tara’s back in the conservatory, because of the baby,” Laurel added. She sounded a little wistful.

  Bethany, meanwhile, was studying my face. “God, you look terrible. Was the massage that bad, or did you just stay out partying all night?”

  “That’s me, big party animal,” I muttered. “But please don’t call me God. I hate to reveal my lack of European sophistication, but can we get the hell out of here?”

  Bethany opened her mouth to say something, but Juliet and Laurel were already moving toward the door. “Yes, please!” Juliet said, laughing a little.

  We began to file out of the pointless torture that was the igloo, starting with Juliet and Bethany. Before I could follow, though, Laurel reached out and got a loose grip on my arm, giving me a meaningful look. Reluctantly, I let the igloo door swing closed and turned back to face her, shivering.

  “Wyatt said he came to see you last night,” Laurel began. She was watching my face with an intensity that made me nervous. The cold didn’t seem to bother her anymore.

  “Yeah.”

  “And that you agreed to help him find Ellen’s killer.”

  “Try,” I corrected. “I said I would try to find Ellen’s killer, while I’m here.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “He also said you were going to help him die.”

  Ah. That was what this was about. I held up a hand. “Not sure about that last part. Assisted vampire suicide isn’t exactly on my résumé.”

  “So don’t do it.”

  I thought of the pain in Wyatt’s face, his longing to be reunited with Ellen. “What do you care?” I asked.

  Laurel’s eyes hardened. “My daughter refers to him as ‘Uncle Wyatt.’ She’s already lost Ellen. I don’t want her to lose him, too.”

  “That might not be up to you,” I said, edging toward the door. “Regardless of whether or not I get involved.”

  She put a hand on the glass door. “All I’m saying is, don’t help him destroy himself. It’s going to be hard enough to talk Wyatt out of it without you making it easy on him.”

  I set my jaw. Historically speaking, Scarlett did not like b
eing told what to do, but I was trying to see things from Laurel’s perspective. Go, me. “I’m not going to do anything until we find the skinners, but I’ll tell you what: if I decide to help Wyatt die, I promise to give you a call beforehand so you can try to talk him out of it.”

  She pursed her lips, thinking that over. Juliet chose that moment to poke her head back into the freezing room. “Everything okay, guys?” she said, looking back and forth between us.

  “Great,” I said. “I was just asking Laurel for a restaurant recommendation.” I herded her out of the room as I talked, and Laurel lagged behind us. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you, I have to work again today.”

  “Oh no!” Juliet said, crestfallen. “Did drinks last night go badly?” She pointed down one of the short, labyrinthine halls, directing me. We entered a room with several large stone lounge chairs, sort of like the adjustable kind you see at the pool. There was a small hot tub in the center of the room, which smelled pleasantly of eucalyptus. Bethany and a beaming Tara were already sitting in the stone chairs.

  “Hi, Scarlett!” Tara chirped.

  “Hey, Tara,” I replied, happy for a way out of the conversation with Juliet. “How’s the baby this morning?”

  She put both hands flat on her stomach. “Oh, wonderful. No nausea at all.”

  But Juliet wouldn’t be deterred. “You met with the building manager, right?” she continued, sitting down at the side of the hot tub and dangling her legs in.

  “Yes, and it was fine.” I followed her lead, sitting on the other side. The water felt deliciously warm as it hit my feet, which were still a little sore from all the walking yesterday. Between that and my recently unkinked back muscles, I was going to have a hard time staying upright through this conversation. They didn’t hand out caffeinated beverages at the spa, unless you counted unsweetened green tea, which I most certainly did not. “But he wants me to help him interview cleaning companies after we’re done here,” I said in my most regretful tone. I’d come up with this particular lie on the cab ride back to the Venetian the previous night.

  I checked my watch, which I’d insisted on keeping even during my massage. I needed to get going if I was going to meet Jameson. “I’m afraid I’m going to miss dance class, and possibly more than that.” I hung my head, trying to look contrite.

  The others all voiced their sympathy, even Bethany, who was obviously faking it. “Are you sure you need to?” Juliet said anxiously. “I feel terrible that we’re having so much fun, and you’re stuck at work.”

  Oops. Maybe I’d overdone it a little. I gave her a smile. “Don’t worry, Jules. I’m sure he’ll take me out to a nice brunch, and although I’d much rather be with you guys”—not exactly the truth—“it won’t be so bad.”

  “Well, it’s great that Dashiell trusts you so much,” Juliet replied, looking more or less pacified. “Will you call me when you’re done, so we know when to expect you?”

  I agreed to do so, and fled the relaxing utopia for something more familiar.

  Chapter 18

  Vegas Vic, as it turned out, was a massive neon sign in the shape of a waving cowboy, which currently presided over a souvenir shop on Fremont Street in downtown Vegas.

  When I’d come with my family, years earlier, we hadn’t actually gone to the downtown area, but I’d gotten the impression that it was pretty seedy—not the kind of place tourists would want to visit. Either I had been wrong or something had changed, because when my cab dropped me off at the corner nearest Vic, I saw that part of Fremont Street had been blocked off into a perfectly nice outdoor mall area, but instead of stores there were casinos, bars, and restaurants. Some enterprising committee had also decided to hang an enormous, circus-tent-like tarp over the whole plaza, providing much-needed shade from the Nevada sun.

  It must have still been fairly early for Vegas, because as I walked down the sidewalk there were very few people out there with me, and most of them looked like they’d been out all night. I hadn’t been totally wrong about the seedy factor: there was nothing overtly trashy, but an element of glitzy sleaze lingered in the air, as though the whole place had just been power-washed after an all-night orgy.

  Jameson was already at Vegas Vic, leaning against the side of the building, just below the sign. He had on jeans and a black tee shirt, and despite the shade overhead, his eyes were hidden behind wraparound sunglasses. The part of his face that I could see seemed frozen in an inscrutable expression, and overall he looked like the world’s scariest bouncer, inexplicably hired to guard a garish souvenir shop.

  When he saw me coming, he pushed off the wall and gestured toward the pedestrian mall. “Come on, let’s walk. There’s a good coffee shop a couple of blocks down.”

  Good morning to you too, I thought, but I followed his lead. The two of us began strolling on the pedestrian mall, where we had to circle around a couple of different families taking photos with the dreaded selfie sticks.

  “A few years back there was a major push to revitalize the downtown district,” Jameson told me. “They installed that”—he pointed to the blocks-wide shade above our heads—“and tried to pull the area together with the Neon Museum, the Mob Museum, and so on.”

  “You sound like a tour guide,” I remarked.

  He shrugged. “This is my town now. It’s important to know the place where you live.”

  It was hard to read his expression, but he seemed . . . troubled. I tried to figure out a place to start, and settled on, “So I met Silvio. He seems like kind of a joke.”

  Jameson didn’t deny it, just said, “He serves a purpose.”

  “Leaving the Holmwoods alone? That purpose?”

  He gave me the side-eye. “Something like that. How did you meet him?”

  Wondering if he already knew the answer, I said, “I went to see him last night. I wasn’t impressed. I don’t think he’s up to stopping the skinners.”

  “I’m not even convinced there are skinners in town,” Jameson contended. “There’s not much evidence. Sure, vampires are missing, but it’s not like we’re finding any bodies. If ancient bones had been discovered in the city limits, I’m sure we would have seen something about it on the news.”

  When a vampire dies, the magic leaves their body, and their remains revert back to whatever age they would have been if they’d never become a vampire. So very old vampires do, in fact, turn into dust, but younger vampires might leave behind a skeleton or even a desiccated corpse. Unless they died in the presence of a null, in which case they would look like any other recently deceased. Jameson didn’t do the same kind of cleanup work I did, but he knew this as well as I did.

  “Yeah, because no one has ever made a body disappear in the desert outside Vegas before,” I said sarcastically. “What about your bosses? Don’t Lucy and Arthur care that someone is killing vampires in their town?” Jameson didn’t respond. “Don’t you?”

  “Scarlett . . .” His voice was weary. “Please go home. There’s nothing you can do here.”

  This again. “I’m pretty frickin’ sick of you saying that,” I said, letting the frustration leak into my voice. “I can at least find the skinners.” And get justice for Wyatt was the unspoken part of that thought, but I wasn’t going to mention him. Or the fact that I wasn’t really sure I was up for this kind of work.

  When he didn’t relent, I added, “Look, how about we speak hypothetically for a second?”

  “Okay . . .” He looked wary.

  “Hypothetically, if skinners really are in town killing vampires, what’s their endgame? What’s the point?”

  He shrugged, uncomfortable. “Hypothetically, they would probably be here on a species bounty. Someone pays them to kill a certain number of vampires, and when they hit the goal they go back to where they came from. This would be the easiest hunting ground in the US.”

  “Is that seriously a thing that happens?”

  “Sure. If you’re rich and you’ve got a grudge against vampires, you can pay to thin the
herd. Which means that even if you stop these hunters, more will just take their place.”

  I threw up my hands in frustration. “I still don’t get it. Who are these people? Humans who kill vampires and werewolves, fine, but are they, like, a union? A club? One family with a serious grudge and excellent fertility rates?”

  He smiled. Finally. “Nothing that dramatic. Killing the supernatural isn’t a full-time gig, like in the movies. Generally, skinners are private security guys who have found out about the Old World somehow and are put to use. They’re run through a firm that takes the occasional ‘specialty’ job.”

  “So they’re mercenaries,” I said, not really as a question.

  “You could say that,” he agreed. “Malcolm uses a company in New York, for when he needs to kill someone outside the five boroughs.”

  Of course he did. God, Malcolm was a tool. “Why don’t we have them in LA?”

  “Because until recently, LA was a podunk town in the Old World,” Jameson replied. “You probably do have the occasional contractor here and there, but they don’t do enough damage for anyone to notice.”

  Touché.

  Then I stopped dead. “Wait. If the skinners are just killers for hire . . . who’s paying them?”

  He stopped, too, turning to point at me. “Now that is a great question, but I don’t know how you’d find the answer, short of capturing one of the skinners alive and torturing him for information.”

  “So we should just, what? Let it happen?”

  “This city just avoided one war, Scarlett. Nobody wants to start another one.”

  Jameson started walking again, and I reluctantly trotted after him. “Wait. You didn’t answer me. Don’t Lucy and Arthur care that they probably drew the skinners here?”

  He glanced at me, eyebrows raised.

  “All that fucking publicity?” I said. Jameson paused for a moment, just gazing at me. “You hadn’t thought of that,” I concluded.

  “No, I didn’t get that far. But you’re probably right.” He rubbed his eyes with the heel of one hand, looking tired. Jameson had really great hands, I couldn’t help but notice. “Look, do you have any idea how much work goes into a show like Demeter? I don’t mean the funding and the rehearsals and all the PR, but just the actual, day-to-day work of putting on that kind of production?”