Blood Gamble (Disrupted Magic Book 2) Read online

  When we reached the front, Jameson gave the attendant some money and then helped me climb down into one of the gondolas. The gondolier, a stout Hispanic woman in her midfifties, began to sing loudly in Italian. Actually, it could have been any number of languages, for all I knew, but it sounded pretty. Jameson scooted closer to me.

  “This is so cheesy,” I muttered, although in all honesty, I kind of liked it. The boats were beautiful, and the water was a very calming shade of blue. Plus it was nice just to be away from the constant crush of people.

  “Okay, now can you tell me what happened?” I said, keeping my voice low.

  “I lost one of the skinners, but another one cornered me in an alley,” he murmured. “I ran out of ammunition, but I knocked the gun out of his hand and we fought. I won.”

  “That’s it?” I said incredulously, when he didn’t continue. “‘I won’?”

  “What else do you want to know?”

  “The skinner who came after me said they wanted to know where you went.”

  Jameson nodded. “They want to kill me. What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing. I killed him with a knife.” Okay, technically I’d had help, but as a general rule, I’m used to playing my cards close to the vest. I didn’t want to give away too much about Cliff, even to Jameson.

  And, okay, maybe I was showing off a little.

  Jameson’s eyes practically bugged out. “Damn, Letts.”

  “How did you know that they’re after you?”

  “Because I recognized the guy I fought,” he answered, looking grim. “He works for the same company Malcolm uses, in New York.”

  My jaw dropped. “Malcolm sent the skinners?”

  “I can’t prove it—I didn’t get a chance to ask the guy any questions before I heard sirens—but that would be my guess.” Jameson made a face. “I knew he was unhappy about me leaving, but I never thought he’d really send someone to kill me.”

  “You say that like he’s sent people to not kill you,” I remarked. It was a joke, but Jameson’s expression flickered. I stared at him. “Wait, he’s sent people before? To what, beat you up?”

  Jameson nodded, then shrugged. He was absently rubbing at the scar on his collarbone again. “But that’s just Malcolm being Malcolm. I thought he’d punish me with a couple of beatings and then let it go. Maybe I shouldn’t have fought back.”

  What? “Let me see if I’m following here,” I said in a voice that squeaked. “Your former boss sent people to beat the shit out of you, but you resisted. Now he’s escalated to sending real shooters with actual guns, and your response is to wonder if you should have let the first guys kick your ass?”

  He gave me a rueful grin. “That’s pretty much it, yeah. The guys he sent before were just a couple of street assholes. Lackeys. I thought Malcolm was just trying to make a point.” The smile faded. “I didn’t think he’d actually have me killed.”

  I couldn’t blame Jameson for that. Nulls are so rare that it usually gives us a kind of protected status in the Old World. It wouldn’t have surprised me to hear Malcolm was trying to have Jameson kidnapped and dragged back to New York, but actual murder seemed . . . shortsighted? Wasteful?

  Still, it was hard to argue with the very lethal bullets that had been flying our way. Malcolm had to be really pissed.

  But that didn’t explain everything that was going on. “I don’t get it, though. I can totally see Malcolm sending skinners against you, but why would he pay them to kill vampires in Las Vegas?”

  Jameson shrugged, looking uneasy. “Maybe to make the Holmwoods’ show fail, so they’d have to fire me. Maybe out of spite. Or maybe vampires really are just leaving town because Silvio took over, and the skinners have nothing to do with it.”

  That didn’t sound right to me. I believed Wyatt when he said Ellen wouldn’t leave him without saying goodbye. There was no reason for him to lie about it, not when all he wanted to get out of it was revenge and a quick death.

  But I wasn’t going to be able to convince Jameson of that, at least not yet. “So what do we do?” I said instead.

  All this time the gondolier had been singing loudly in maybe-Italian at the far end of the boat, but in the moment of silence following my question I realized she’d switched up the music, possibly to win back our attention. The new song began, “Row, row, row your boat.” Well played, lady.

  “You do nothing,” Jameson said firmly. “I don’t know if the guy I fought lived or not, but at least one of them got away. Now that they’re aware of our, um, connection, they’ll come after you, too. And if they figure out who you really are . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe they kill you, maybe they put you in a trunk and drive you back to LA. I’m not willing to risk it. You need to get the hell out of Vegas.”

  I glared at him. “It’s cute how you think you get to be in charge of what I do.”

  “I’m serious, Letts. I want you out of this.”

  “Let’s say I did leave,” I said, though I had absolutely no intention of doing it. “Let’s say I pack my shit and run back to LA. What exactly are you going to do?”

  He hesitated, but only for a second. “I’ll talk to the Holmwoods. They might be willing to intervene on my behalf.”

  “Bargain with Malcolm, you mean. For your life.”

  Jameson shrugged. If that’s what you want to call it. Why wasn’t he more upset about this? Why did he seem so resigned? “But you’ve helped them set up the show, and it’s running now,” I pointed out. “And this is the second time I’ve seen you today. So I’m guessing the Holmwoods don’t need you so much anymore.”

  “They need me.”

  “For what?”

  “Daytime stuff,” he said vaguely.

  That line of questioning wasn’t getting me anywhere. “Look, Arthur and Lucy like money, right?” I countered. “Isn’t it just as likely that they’d sell you out to Malcolm? Hell, it would probably smooth things over with him, after they poached you.”

  Jameson shook his head, looking frustrated. “They wouldn’t. There are still things they need a null for, trust me.”

  “I trust you,” I said, realizing it was true. “But do you trust them?”

  He opened his mouth, closed it again. “Then I should stay,” I insisted. “I’ll watch your back.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked up, but I missed whatever he said next. Just past his shoulder, a familiar head of red hair caught my eyes. Laurel. She was winding through the crowd, with Juliet, Tara, and Bethany behind her. All of them were smiling and chatting.

  They weren’t looking this way—yet. “Shit,” I said, ducking down below Jameson’s shoulder. They were supposed to be going out for cocktails after their dance class. Maybe they’d come back to the hotel to shower first.

  “What?” Jameson said, scanning the crowd urgently. Probably looking for a shooter.

  “No, it’s just . . . someone I know. I don’t want them to see me.” It was going to be pretty damn obvious that I wasn’t working. Unless I could convince them that Jameson was the new building manager? No, even if I could get him to play along, that wouldn’t really explain why I’d brought him back to the Venetian for a gondola ride.

  “Oh.” He relaxed. “Damn, you scared me. You owe them money or something?”

  “Shh!” I kept ducking, trying to sort of maneuver myself awkwardly behind Jameson’s body. He started to turn. “Don’t look!”

  Jameson just glanced down at me, amused. “This is adorable.”

  “I hate you.” I yanked out my ponytail holder and hunched over so my hair would fall in my face, but the movement caused the gondola to rock slightly. The gondolier paused her song, then gamely resumed.

  Jameson snickered. “You realize you’re calling more attention to yourself, right?” he asked.

  “You got a better idea, smartass?” I snapped.

  “Yes.” Jameson turned his body toward me, and I thought he was going to try to shield me. But then he slid his hand
s into my hair on either side of my face. He tilted my head up and kissed me.

  And kissed me.

  I wish I could say that I instantly forgot about being caught by Juliet, but covering shit up is what I do. There was a part of my brain that started instantly recalculating: if they did see me kissing someone, they would just assume I’d snuck off to see some guy I’d met. Not super flattering, but it was a narrative I could work with.

  Then the tip of Jameson’s tongue slid into my mouth, and I really did forget about my sister-in-law. And the skinners, and Malcolm, and the vampire disappearances. Piece by piece, it all dropped out of my awareness, until there was only Jameson’s intensity meeting the heat of my body. It had been so long . . .

  We finally broke apart when the gondolier cleared her throat dramatically. I opened my eyes and realized that we had returned to the gondola dock. And there was a line of people waiting. And some of them were catcalling us.

  I didn’t care.

  Neither did Jameson, apparently. We climbed onto the dock—I saw Jameson give the gondolier a fat tip—and he took my hand and led me out of the throng of people, to the side of the building. When we had gotten some distance from the crowds he turned to face me, still breathing hard. “Your room?” he asked huskily. Then he winced, drawing back a little. “I mean, if that’s not too . . . I don’t know if you have a boyfriend or whatever. I kind of just sprang that on you. I know you probably don’t want to rush . . .” He looked embarrassed. “Oh, hell. Stop me anytime here, Letts.”

  “But this is adorable,” I said with a smile. It was probably the first time I’d ever seen Jameson flustered. I could feel that weird null sensation in my radius, and this time it almost felt like it was shimmering around us. For a second I even wondered if other people could see it. But we had sort of sidled over to the wall of the hotel building to get out of the path of the crowd, and no one was watching us.

  “The truth is,” he said, his tone suddenly very serious, “I want you. I’ve wanted you since that first night in New York. The time was just never right. Maybe now I could take you to dinner, or—”

  I went up on my tiptoes so I could kiss him again, a chaste brush against his lips that ended up being sexier than I’d intended. Urgently, he wrapped his hands around my waist and picked me up, pressing my back against the sun-soaked wall so that our eyes met. It was maybe two thirty in the afternoon.

  “Come to bed,” I whispered.

  Chapter 24

  “Scarlett. Wake up, babe.”

  “Mmmf. Don’t wanna.”

  “I need to go soon.”

  I cracked open an eye, instantly aware of Jameson in my radius. I was starting to really enjoy that feeling. He was sitting at the edge of the big king-size bed in my palatial hotel room. He’d already put his pants back on, which was just tragic. “I fell asleep?” I mumbled, stupidly. Of course I’d fallen asleep. “Time’s it?”

  He grinned, a flash of white teeth in the darkening hotel room. “Almost five. The sun’s going down soon. I need to get to work.”

  I yawned and rolled over so I could reach for his arm. “Come back to bed. Be my friend.”

  He let me pull him until he was propped on one hand, right next to me. “I seem to recall already being your friend,” he teased. “A couple of times.”

  “Shh. It’s better for me when you don’t talk.”

  Still smiling, he bent his head and kissed me. I yanked at his arms, forcing him to fall on top of me. He chuckled and let me roll us both over so I was on top. “I win!” I crowed.

  “You wish.” Jameson rolled me hard the other way, holding himself on his elbows so he could look down at me. “I accept your surrender,” I said graciously.

  “Oh, well, thank you.” He kissed me again, then held up his head, looking at me intently.

  After a moment, I got embarrassed. “What?” I said. “Is it my hair? It’s my hair, isn’t it?”

  “Oh no,” he said solemnly. “It’s your best hair ever.” He brushed his thumb against my eyebrow, tracing the lines. I had a hard time reading his expression in the fading light, but he looked almost . . . sad.

  “Do you think this has ever happened before?” I asked without thinking.

  His lips quirked. “Yes, Scarlett. My understanding is that interracial sex is a fairly everyday thing now.”

  I made a face at him. “I meant between two nulls, dummy.”

  “Oh.” He tipped himself onto his side, holding his head up with one elbow. Damn. I didn’t know the names for all the muscles in his upper arms and shoulders, but I could certainly see them just fine. “Probably not, now that you mention it. Before the Internet, or at least long-distance phone service, I’m not sure how two nulls could have ever met. Then getting two nulls who can travel to meet up, are within acceptable age ranges, and are attracted to each other—”

  “Whoa, slow down, buddy,” I objected. “I never said I was attracted to you.”

  Jameson wrapped one hand around my bare hip, drawing me close. He kissed me until I was breathless. When he finally pulled back, I was very much awake.

  “I accept your surrender,” he whispered.

  I swatted him, and he started to roll off the bed. I touched his arm. “Wait,” I said. “Don’t go.”

  “I have to work, Letts.”

  “No, I mean, don’t go back. At all.”

  Jameson reached over to turn on the bedside lamp. The sudden light made me flinch, but I resisted the urge to cover myself up. Jameson had already seen the show, what did it matter now? “If the skinners know you’re working for the Holmwoods,” I said, not bothering to keep the worry out of my voice, “they know right where to find you tonight.”

  “Maybe so, but I still have a job to do. You know what that’s like.”

  I did, didn’t I? It was strange, because Jameson and I sort of had the same skill set without having the same job. Oh, and our skill set wasn’t really a skill at all, just something we could do. It was like we’d made completely different careers out of being able to juggle. Our lives were so weird.

  “I know you gave your word . . . but I also know that Arthur and Lucy Holmwood are not worth your life.” I reached up to touch his face. “Come back to LA with me,” I pleaded. “I’ll talk to Dashiell, maybe he can negotiate with Malcolm.”

  “Bargain for my life, you mean,” Jameson said, echoing my words from earlier. “How is that any better?”

  “I trust Dashiell. He would do this for me.” At least, I was pretty sure. “And I can work off whatever he needs to pay Malcolm to get him off your back.”

  “So you want to get your rich white boss to buy a black man’s life for you?” he said in a teasing voice. “That’s pretty twisted, Letts.”

  “I’m serious.”

  He sighed. “I know you are. But Dashiell’s still a vampire. He cares about blood and power, and that’s it. He’s just another monster. Like the rest of them.”

  “Well, that’s not fair,” I said, sitting up in bed. I pulled the sheets up over my chest, feeling self-conscious. “He loves Beatrice, and he cares about his community. Hell, if I were to be brutally murdered, I think he might even feel a twinge of displeasure. He can be a dick, but he’s not a monster.” At least, not any more so than the rest of the Old World. All of them—werewolves, witches, the undead—had the power to mess around with forces that humans probably shouldn’t be allowed to touch. But that alone didn’t make them evil.

  “They’re all monsters, Letts,” Jameson said with surprising vehemence. He sat up, too. “Lucy and Arthur are at least up-front about it.” His face had hardened, and my eyes dropped down to the thick line of light scar tissue on his collarbone. I didn’t know much about his years with Malcolm, but I did know this was not an argument I would win.

  “Look,” I said, trying again, “those guys downtown, they didn’t come here to give you a love tap. They’re the real thing, and if they work for a whole company, there will be more of them. Come to LA with me.”
I leaned forward to kiss him again. Kissing Jameson was beginning to feel really . . . right.

  He leaned his head forward so his forehead rested on mine. “I love that you want to save me,” he said softly. “But I can handle things here. And I can handle Malcolm. I know how he operates, remember? I’ll talk to Arthur and Lucy tonight; we’ll figure something out.”

  “But you said yourself that you don’t trust them!” I protested. I didn’t really have another argument, or a better one. But going to Lucy and Arthur just felt wrong to me.

  “I trust how much they want what they’re doing here, and that they need me to do it,” he reasoned. “I’ll be fine.”

  “And . . . you and me?” I suddenly felt completely pathetic. Was I really sitting here begging him to . . . what? Go steady?

  He smiled. There was a little sadness in it. “When things settle down with Malcolm, I’ll come to LA for a weekend, okay? You can show me around. We can figure out what this is.”

  Why didn’t that make me feel better? Was I being paranoid and weird, or was there something in his face like he didn’t really believe it would ever happen?

  He reached out to play with a strand of my hair. It tickled my shoulder, making me shiver. “Listen,” he said, “I still want you to go home tonight. Back to LA.”

  “Oh, so I can’t protect you, but you can protect me?” I said indignantly. “I’m gonna have to call bullshit on that one.”

  He tucked the wayward strand of hair behind my ear. “The difference is, this isn’t your fight.” His voice was firm. “It never was.”

  “But I can still help. I’ve got this idea—well, I had some help—about the phone records of the vampires who went missing. I think maybe the last or second-to-last person who called them might have been the skinners, or someone working for the skinners. And—”

  “Stop.” Jameson raised a hand, cutting off my protests. He said, “Scarlett, we’ve got this under control. You saw the show, you know that I’m fine. Your part in this is over.”