Blood Gamble (Disrupted Magic Book 2) Read online

  After Shadow left to go exploring, one of the ubiquitous vampire lackeys ushered me straight into Dashiell’s office. Beatrice had decorated the rest of the house in a Spanish Revival style—or that was what they told me; I knew as much about interior design as I did about life in zero gravity—but this one room was a weird combination of Victorian-era furnishings and expensive technology. It was all very Dashiell.

  He was sitting behind an enormous carved-oak desk, and when I came into the room he simultaneously stood up and winced. Like most vampires, Dashiell doesn’t like being in my radius, which makes him human again. Humanity comes with weakness and vulnerability, not to mention petty human problems like hunger and bladder control. Sometimes it really throws vampires to have that thrust on them again, but Dashiell had spent enough time around me to adjust fairly quickly. Before I could say more than “hello,” he was pointing me to the leather visitor’s chair across the desk.

  “How much do you know about the Las Vegas entertainment world?” he asked abruptly. I’ll say this for Dashiell: the man doesn’t dick around with small talk. “Specifically the big casino shows?”

  I blinked hard for a moment, not even trying to keep the surprise off my face. I had not anticipated a Cirque du Soleil quiz. “Um, as little as possible?” I said honestly. “I saw a Cirque show like six years back, but I’m not a fan of Vegas.” Understatement.

  “Hmm.” He spun in his chair, picked up a sheet of paper from the state-of-the-art printer behind the desk, and turned back to hand it to me. It was an article from the Las Vegas Sun about a new production opening at the Bellagio. I scanned the headline and first few paragraphs, and noticed that it was a vampire-themed show. The entertainment company producing it wasn’t actually Cirque du Soleil, but the show itself sounded pretty similar to other stuff I’d heard about in Vegas: acrobats, mentalists, magic tricks . . . that kind of crap. It would bring vampires back into the spotlight again—literally—but I didn’t see anything we could do about it that wouldn’t make the problem worse.

  I lifted my eyes back to Dashiell, who was watching me expectantly. “I mean . . . as I understand it, Vegas has shows based on topless zombies and giant bugs,” I said with a shrug, setting the paper on the desk in front of me. “This is like when we were dealing with the Twilight movies. It’ll blow over.”

  “Finish the article,” he instructed, his face unreadable.

  Okay, that made me nervous. I picked up the printout again and kept reading, more carefully this time. The vampire-themed show was called Demeter, and it was being put on by a new entertainment company run by a husband-and-wife team, the Holmwoods. That name sounded just the tiniest bit familiar, but nothing in the article seemed particularly worrying. Then I got to this paragraph:

  Arthur and Lucy Holmwood came onto the Vegas scene rather abruptly, and have been given an unheard-of opportunity to leapfrog the entertainment stepladder to the very top: a headlining show at the Bellagio. Little is known about the couple other than their stage names, which are a reference to characters in Bram Stoker’s infamous vampire novel, Dracula.

  Okay, that explained the familiar name. I’d reread the book a few years earlier, after I’d first learned about Dashiell’s own weird connection to Dracula. Back in the early 1800s, he had turned his nutty ex-girlfriend, Claire, into a vampire. Decades later, when the Old World was still in chaos after the fall of the vampire council that had previously led it, Claire had persuaded a stage manager/personal assistant named Abraham Stoker to write a book about vampires, which, of course, became as famous in human culture as anything could in a pre-Twitter world. Come to think of it, wasn’t Demeter the name of the ship that Dracula had taken to England?

  At any rate, Dracula was still the most famous vampire novel in history, and had been adapted hundreds of times. Why would this bother Dashiell? Unless—

  I looked back up at Dashiell. “You don’t actually think these two are real vampires, just because they took the names of characters from Dracula?”

  Dashiell leaned forward and rubbed at his face. He was still close enough to me to be human, and he looked tired. “It’s the other way around, I’m afraid. The characters in that infernal book were based on the real couple.”

  Chapter 2

  It took me a moment to process that, because it was just so ridiculous. “No way,” I said to arguably the most powerful man in Los Angeles. Besides Spielberg, of course.

  But he was already nodding. “The last name was fictionalized, but Lucy and Arthur are very real. I haven’t met them myself, but they’re well known in the Old World.”

  “Well known?” I echoed. Like . . . vampire celebrities? There was a time when I would have laughed out loud at the idea, but instead I pushed out a slow breath, thinking it over. Unfortunately, the first question that popped into my head wasn’t terribly mature. “Wait! Is Dracula real, too?”

  “No,” he said firmly. Then he inclined his head a little. “Well . . . Stoker’s character is an amalgamation of a number of real vampires, particularly Claire. But there is no single person who was fictionalized into Count Dracula.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling surprisingly relieved. It was kind of silly, since I dealt with vampires on a daily basis, but Count Dracula had scared me back in middle school, and old fears are the hardest to shrug off. “Good.”

  He gestured to the article. “The Holmwoods, however . . . that part of the story really happened.”

  “But in the book, doesn’t Arthur behead Lucy and die as a human?”

  “Yes, because Victorian audiences wouldn’t have accepted the truth,” Dashiell replied. “At the moment when Arthur meant to behead her, he faltered. Instead, he lied to his friends, and went back to Lucy’s grave that evening. He begged her to turn him so he could be with her forever.” He gave me a thin smile. “In the vampire world it was considered very romantic.”

  “Uh, okay,” I said, trying to take that in. This was like finding out that Batman was based on a real dude. “So you’re saying the real vampires Lucy and Arthur adopted a last name to match the book, moved to Vegas, and are now putting on a stage show.”

  He jerked his head in one crisp nod. “I believe so, yes.”

  “That seems . . .” I tried to think of an even remotely appropriate term, and finally settled on “incongruous.”

  Now Dashiell gave me a tiny, approving smile, though I didn’t know if it was because of the insight or my awesome word choice. Vampires—at least, every one I’d ever known or heard of—are invisible predators who prefer to pop out of shadows, take what they need, and vanish again. They occasionally take a vampire spouse, but mostly they hunt alone, and they avoid attention.

  “Which is one of the reasons I want you to go to Las Vegas and view the show,” Dashiell replied.

  I jerked in my seat. “What? No.” I hated Las Vegas—the crowds and the attitudes and the sweat-tinged smell of desperation in the air. But that wouldn’t be a good enough reason for Dashiell. “I mean, uh . . .” I gestured at the printout. “This is really interesting, but I don’t see what it has to do with us.”

  “Do you remember Carlos?”

  I opened my mouth to say no, but then an image flashed in my head: a short, squat vampire in a bad suit. He had come to Dashiell’s house three years ago, intent on helping another vampire stage a coup. Unfortunately for him, they made their move the same night a very bad man brought a teenage null to the house as a hostage. Jesse and I came to save her, and both Carlos and the kidnapper were killed in the melee that followed.

  “You said he was a cardinal vampire,” I remembered.

  “Of Las Vegas,” Dashiell supplied.

  “Oh,” I said in a small voice. We had killed the cardinal vampire of Vegas? Why hadn’t anyone told me about that?

  Um, because you were unconscious after accidentally curing Ariadne of vampirism? I reminded myself. I hadn’t meant to do it. At the time, I hadn’t even known that I could concentrate my null-ness to the point of per
manently removing someone else’s connection to magic. It was only after I woke up in the hospital that I understood what I had done—which was also when Dashiell explained that Ariadne was actually his own vampire descendent, Claire. He wasn’t upset with me, though, since Claire had been trying to usurp him. And since turning her into a human had made her very easy for him to kill.

  “Since then,” Dashiell was saying, and I reminded myself that we were supposed to be talking about Carlos, “Las Vegas has been experiencing a power vacuum. It is a mecca for vampire activity, for obvious reasons, but in the last four years no vampire has been able to secure control and keep it. Several have died trying.”

  “And now you think this Lucy and Arthur are trying to take control?” I asked, tapping the printout.

  “That, or they’re simply taking advantage of an opening,” he replied.

  I did not say, “That’s what she said.” Not out loud, anyway. “But what are they planning to do with it?” Dashiell continued. “Why take an American city, and why now?”

  I chewed on my lip for a second. It was interesting, and problematic, but . . . “Again, and with respect, how is this our problem?”

  “It’s not,” he said, to my surprise. “But it may well be my problem. If, during the show, the Holmwoods announce that they are vampires, they may be risking exposure for all of us, and therefore all of the Old World. That is why I want to hire you to go see the show. And, of course, to make sure it’s safe for humans,” he added, trying not to sound like it was an afterthought. “I don’t expect you to actually move against them by yourself, Scarlett. I just need you there as a scout.”

  I automatically shook my head. “I can’t. I have Shadow.” The bargest was not allowed to leave LA County, a deal we’d made with the people who’d created her.

  “Corry’s spring break begins this weekend,” Dashiell reminded me. “She can take care of the bargest. I’ll pay her for her time. And you, too, of course.” He named a figure, and I couldn’t help but widen my eyes. That would take a chunk out of Logan’s hospital debt. And all I had to do was spend a couple of days on what amounted to a vacation.

  But something about the situation felt wrong. For one thing, diving into an enormous, completely unknown vampire population all by myself was more reckless than I was willing to be. I was a little bored, sure, but I wasn’t looking for actual physical danger. I’d found plenty of that right here in LA, and I was in no hurry to repeat the experience.

  Besides, I hated Las Vegas. You know that expression “You couldn’t pay me to go there”? Yeah.

  Happily, Dashiell couldn’t make me go. I didn’t work for him individually; I worked with him, Kirsten, and Will as a team. So I shook my head.

  “I’m sorry, Dashiell, but no. If I randomly show up at one of their performances, those two are going to know exactly what you’re doing, and they’ll see it as a declaration of war, or—at the very least—a challenge. If they are doing something sinister, they’ll come after me. And you can’t send people to protect me without making it look like even more of a threat.” I stood up. “This is above my pay grade, and risky as hell. Send one of your vampires.”

  He tilted his head, considering this for a long, silent moment, while I tried not to fidget. “You may have a point,” he allowed at last.

  It took an effort, but I managed to keep my mouth from dropping open. Dashiell agreed with my assessment of danger? That was a first.

  “I will give the matter more consideration,” he added. To my further surprise, Dashiell rose from behind the desk. “Let me walk you out.”

  “Um, okay.” Did he think I’d forgotten the way?

  But his motive became clear almost immediately. “So, how is Jack adjusting to married life?” he asked, in a perfectly civil, conversational tone.

  My fists clenched. My brother Jack was human, which meant he didn’t know anything about the Old World or what I could do. As a way of keeping leverage on me, Dashiell had given him a job at one of his business endeavors, a company that made medical equipment. He’d even paid most of Jack’s way through med school. I’d hoped Jack would finally be out from under Dashiell’s thumb after he finished his residency, but that had been naive: Dashiell had offered him a part-time job, and now my brother worked thirty-five hours a week at the ER and twenty hours at Dashiell’s company, testing the equipment in his lab.

  I knew Jack was probably a great employee—Dashiell didn’t suffer fools—but I was always aware that he was being used as leverage against me. Whenever Dashiell brought him up, I got half a panic attack—something the cardinal vampire had undoubtedly realized.

  “He’s fine,” I said stiffly. “Juliet and the kids, too.”

  “Good, good.”

  I expected Dashiell to push his request again, now that he’d shown me the stick. At the very least, I figured he’d tell me we were going to revisit the topic soon. But the cardinal vampire of the city just bade me good night at the door, watching as Shadow rejoined me, her eyes bright and happy from chasing squirrels. There was probably a pile of them somewhere, a grisly present for Dashiell’s groundskeeper. Together we walked down the front steps and around the path to the van.

  It was, of course, impossible, but I could swear I felt his eyes on me all the way home.

  Chapter 3

  “OMG, the Lucy and Arthur?” Molly squealed, a half hour later.

  My vampire roommate was lounging on the couch in our little Marina Del Rey cottage, trying to pull open a bag of tortilla chips. Vampires can’t eat people food, so she’d been saving them until I arrived to turn her human again. Molly was used to vampire strength, and not at all used to the storage of modern food, so her attempts to open the bag were actually pretty funny. I could have helped her, but I hated to give up the comedy value.

  “What do you mean, the Lucy and Arthur?” I asked, watching her try to pull at the top of the bag with her dull human teeth. “They’re really that famous?”

  “Hell yeah, they are. They’re, like, vampire royalty.”

  I finally took pity on her, grabbing the bag from her hands and pulling the top open. “Yessss,” Molly said greedily, practically snatching the bag back. Around a mouthful of chips, she added, “Do we have any of that green dippy stuff?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Guacamole.” Expanding my radius so she would stay within it, I went into the little kitchen and retrieved the container from the fridge for her. After scooping some onto her chip, Molly continued, “You gotta understand, other than the cardinal vampires who run big cities, we don’t really have celebrities in the vampire community. Hell, we don’t really have a community, just a power hierarchy.” She popped the chip in her mouth, chewed appreciatively, and added, “Lucy and Arthur are the big anomaly. They’re like the JFK and Jackie of the undead.” She paused, considering that for a moment. “Or maybe the Obamas? Pre-divorce Brad and Angelina?”

  “I get it. So why am I just hearing about them now?”

  “Because they’ve always been in Europe and Asia,” Molly replied. “Look, you know we don’t travel around, not the way humans do—every ten or twenty years we just move to a new town, and when that happens there’s all this negotiating between cardinal vampires, and it’s a whole big thing. Lucy and Arthur are different. They’ve got, like, a free pass to wander around Europe meeting with cardinal vampires, telling stories, passing news. I heard they’ve got a tricked-out tour bus and a bunch of human roadies, whatever that means.” She shook her head. “But I don’t think they’ve ever toured the US.”

  “Have you met them?”

  “Not me, no. But I’ve met vampires who have, and they say Lucy and Arthur are charming as hell. They’re not like most of us. They socialize.”

  “Huh.” I watched her eat another chip, thinking that Molly socialized too, but then, she was also kind of an anomaly. Decades ago, Molly had been an unwilling sex worker at a vampire brothel. All these years later, she still seemed most comfortable with other women around her. A
few months ago, some human friends of Molly’s had been forced to become vampires, and she now visited them regularly.

  “This Vegas thing, though . . . that is pretty weird,” Molly went on. “I’ve never heard of vampires putting on a show. I get why Dashiell’s freaked out.”

  I scoffed at her word choice. “Dashiell doesn’t get freaked out.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “He waited an hour for you, and he said please several times?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  I thought about that for all of two seconds. “He’s freaked out,” we said at the same time.

  Molly laughed, and a chunk of avocado slipped off the precarious pile on her chip and dripped onto her pricey black sweater, which made her curse cheerfully. Expensive things meant nothing to Molly, or most of the vampires I’d met. If you could walk up to any rich guy leaving a bank and press him to give you a wad of cash whenever you wanted, what did money matter?

  “What do you think he’ll do now that you said no?” she asked me. There was no judgment in her voice, but I still squirmed a little. Not my circus, not my monkeys, I reminded myself. For once, I really didn’t have to get sucked into Dashiell’s current supernatural crisis.

  “I think he might send one of his vampire toadies,” I replied. “They can scope it out from the cheap seats and report back. Then Dashiell will decide if he needs to take action.”

  She grunted, still inhaling chips. When she finished the bite, she added, “You know, if the show does get the okay from Dashiell, I’d really like to go, maybe in a few weeks or something. I’ve always wanted to see Lucy and Arthur.” She gave me a speculative look.

  “I’m not going to Vegas with you,” I said immediately.

  Molly wrinkled her nose. “You are zero fun.”

  After that, she changed the subject, and then we put in a movie, and while I won’t say that I forgot about the vampires-take-Vegas problem, I did sort of let it fall off my mental list of things to worry about. Los Angeles was my territory. Southern California, at a stretch. I could understand how this Vegas thing was a vampire problem, but it still wasn’t my problem.