by Karen Chance
“There’s one in the—”
“I know where it is!” Curly said, grabbed his card back, and hit the gas, skidding the tires and shooting us away from the gatehouse.
So much for a low-key entrance, I thought. And then forgot to worry about it when the crappy industrial park ahead of us rippled and changed. Big-time.
“So this is how the other half lives,” Ray said, sounding impressed.
I didn’t blame him. A second ago, we’d been looking at a rusted-out hulk of a factory, about to fall into the sea. It was the kind that Red Hook, Brooklyn’s lesser-known seaside hood, had a lot of, along with parking lots like the one next door, where razor wire and rusted shopping carts passed for landscaping.
But, suddenly, all that was gone. Instead, manicured lawns spread out in all directions. Flower beds materialized, planted in undulating rows of different shades of blue and edged by taller, white blooming bushes, like the ocean followed by breaking surf. Silky smooth blacktop replaced the pitted wonder outside, and a space opened up in the middle of the big circular drive, boasting a reflecting pond with sprays of water and a huge sculpture of silver metal and aqua glass.
The sculpture was abstract, with mostly curved pieces shooting upward from a central base, but it nonetheless managed to give the impression of a group of sea deities rising from the water, presumably the ones that gave this place its name: Oceanid.
In case your mythology wasn’t that good—and mine wasn’t—it was also written in crystal letters on the five-story white stone building that framed everything else. I could see right through to the other side, courtesy of an all-glass section that went the full height of the building, showing the water and city skyline beyond. Where a tiny Statue of Liberty was looking dull and kind of chintzy in comparison.
We slung into a parking spot off to one side, and Curly jumped out, rabbiting for the employee entrance. I guess he really did have to go. The rest of us piled out and followed him, while a line of beautiful people inched closer to the casino’s front entrance and valet parking.
I watched a gorgeous brunet in a few wisps of red satin get out of a Maserati, with the ease of someone used to driving about a foot off the ground. She nodded to a bleach blonde in yellow silk and her earrings caught the light. The huge things sparkled like lasers, despite the fact that we had to be a third of a football field away.
“Remind me why we didn’t take Radu’s Bugatti,” Ray muttered, adjusting his suit.
It was a little wrinkled, having been dug out of a suitcase less than an hour ago, but he looked fine. I’d thought I did, too, but suddenly, an LBD and black pumps just didn’t cut it. But at least one of our group was styling, I thought, watching the car in question sling around the drive, bypass the peasants, and careen to a stop directly in front of the building.
“That’s why,” I said, as Louis-Cesare got out and tossed a valet the keys.
He had a fleet of cars back home, but that was three hours away, so he’d borrowed Claire’s. Like he’d grabbed a tux off the rack, since he didn’t have time to go back for any of the bespoke numbers in his closet. But, goddamn, you’d never know it.
“I don’t know why he gets to be Mr. Look-at-Me,” Ray grumbled. “I coulda done that job.”
I stayed quiet, because no, Ray could not have done that job. Nobody could have done that job like Louis-Cesare, who had effortlessly captured everyone’s attention without saying a word. The blonde and the brunet stopped and stared. An older woman, swaddled in mink despite the weather, almost fell off the steps before her husband caught her. Even the valet did a double take.
Because Louis-Cesare shone, from the dark auburn mane, which had been slicked back into a discreet clip at the base of his neck, to the platinum and diamonds that glittered on his cuff links and studded the front of his shirt, to the glossy Berlutis on his feet. He hadn’t bothered with a tie, because when you look that good you don’t need a tie, or with the open-container laws despite the fact that the car was in convertible mode. He grabbed a bottle of Dom out of the passenger side, took a swig straight out of the bottle, and stared up the steps like he owned the place.
He looked gorgeous. He looked rich. He looked ready to drop a huge amount of dough.
Most importantly, he drew the freaking eye, which was his job. Specifically, to make enough of a spectacle to give security something to watch besides us. Which was why he was all blinged out, and the rest of us were sneaking in a side door looking as bland and boring as possible.
Or we were supposed to be.
But some weird movement caught my eye, and I glanced over at the shadowy side of the building to see Curly dancing around, cussing, and repeatedly jamming his card into a reader by the door.
“Shit,” Ray said.
“I thought he had access,” I said.
“He’s supposed to have access!”
“It doesn’t look like he has access.”
“I don’t have access!” Curly said, jogging back over.
“Why not?” Ray demanded. “You said they have you over here all the time—”
“They do!” Beads of sweat were forming on the bald head. “Every time something goes wrong, I’m their go-to. It’s not enough they steal my idea; they expect me to make it work, too! And for fifteen years’ experience, what do I get? A pissant consulting fee!”
“And a card somebody canceled.”
“It still worked at the gate! That probably means I’ve just been bumped down a level in clearance.”
“They’re not worried about you; they’re just battening down,” Rufus translated.
James’ dad was the fourth member of our little squad, and I was unhappy about it. He looked like an older, darker, more wizened version of Curly, except instead of curls he had a little ring of snow-white fuzz around his head, and unlike Curly’s deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression, his was shrewd and focused.
I’d nipped by his shop to get resupplied, because I was out of almost everything, and had let slip what was going on. I’d hoped it would get me access to the not-entirely-legal stash in his back room. Instead, it got me a partner.
And there was no getting around it. If I hadn’t agreed to take him along, he was going to scream bloody murder to the Corps, which was all this needed: a bunch of jarheads with too much magic and a serious lack of subtlety. We needed to get in, get out, and do it quietly. We did not need the Corps. So Rufus it was.
I just hoped I wasn’t going to have to tell James that I’d gotten his dad killed.
“We’ll go in the front,” Curly was saying. “It’s okay; they know me—”
“They know her, too!” Ray said, gesturing at me. “That’s the whole point!”
“So leave her out—”
“She’s the vargr! We can’t leave her out!”
We also couldn’t stand around discussing this. After Curly spilled the beans, Marlowe had given us exactly one hour to locate the weapons and rescue James before he sent in his boys. They were already getting into position, a literal army of vampires ready to swoop down on the cache as soon as we found it—assuming we did. Because the damned things read like people and this place was packed.
It was the only reason Marlowe gave a shit about James: he assumed he’d be with the weapons. And considering how vindictive Alfhild was, and that these things could level half the city, rushing in without knowing exactly where they were wasn’t smart. Of course, neither was letting her do whatever she was planning, hence the compromise.
And my latest ulcer.
Because guess who was supposed to deal with Alfhild if she spotted us?
Rufus had been watching me. He patted the big black suitcase he was carrying. Among other things, it contained a duplicate syringe to the one I had taped to my thigh.
“We get this in him, and he won’t be a problem.”
“But Alfhild mig
ht,” I pointed out. “She can jump to somebody else if she loses James.”
“Maybe not. They share a consciousness at the moment, from what I understand. If he goes out fast enough, she may, too.”
“May,” Ray said darkly. “That’s great. We may not end up in the stewpot. I feel much better now.”
“You can stay behind,” Rufus said curtly.
The man was laser focused, looking like he was ready and able to take on the whole place by himself. But he wasn’t. Which was why I stepped on Ray’s foot, to shut his mouth, even before Curly grabbed him.
“No, he can’t! He can’t stay here! You promised!”
Curly was a little squirrelly without his friend/teddy bear.
“He can stay. We can all stay,” I said. “We just have to find a way through that door without anybody noticing!”
And then someone did it for us.
I jerked my neck around when what sounded like a bomb went off. And was just in time to see the sturdy security gate come flying through the ward and skidding down the middle of the street. Where it was promptly run down by Frankentruck, burning rubber, billowing smoke, and looking like a ride straight out of hell.
“What the fuck?” Ray said, stumbling back, although we were nowhere near the drive.
But then, neither was the truck. It smashed through a flower bed, careened back the other way to crack the fountain, and finally straightened up to gouge the blacktop, all while leaking enough fiery oil to set the pretty bushes on fire. It didn’t hit the brakes until it was halfway up the great swath of steps, just missing Claire’s Batmobile, and sending a bunch of beautiful people scattering and screaming.
The engine died a second later, judging by the clouds of smoke cascading out from under the hood. It was almost enough to hide Louis-Cesare’s expression as he jumped out of the way, and to obscure the front entrance in billows of white. Great big billows.
I looked at the guys; the guys looked at me.
“I think I just wet my pants,” Curly breathed.
And then we were darting across the road, up the steps, and through the entrance, unnoticed by the security guys, who suddenly had their hands full.
We ran through the atrium, which had a ceiling covered in strips of hanging, rippling glass that resembled seaweed, and which were chiming in the wind and smoke blowing through the doors. And then we veered off to the side and around a corner, because Curly was heading for the john, damn him! Ray shrugged at me and followed; Curly was the only one who knew anything about this place and we needed him.
“What are the trolls doing here?” Rufus asked, as I pretended to check a stocking to get my hair to fall in my face.
“Don’t know. Olga’s been searching for her nephew, who we think was taken by slavers—”
“Well, she won’t find him here! And she’s likely to screw up this whole thing!”
I glanced at him through my bangs. “You wanna tell her that?”
Rufus looked like he was considering it. But the dustup behind us was already getting heated, with a few fists being flung around—along with something else. Something that zipped here and there through the fog like dark bugs. Dark bugs with eyes. Dark bugs the size of soccer balls that—
“Damn,” I said, with feeling.
“What now?”
“Reporters.”
And, sure enough, a couple dozen camera balls were whizzing about, getting in people’s faces. Along with what appeared to be every reporter in town, jumping out of a bunch of cars that must have followed the truck, and screaming questions at the security guards. We needed to get gone.
Luckily, Ray pulled an annoyed-looking Curly out of the bathroom a moment later. “Can’t a guy take a piss?”
And then we were through, into the huge main room.
I caught it in glimpses, because there was so much to take in all at once: a white marble floor with a mosaic of the sculpture outside, and “Oceanid” carved around it in gold. A huge wall of glass on the opposite end, outside of which a passing ship was lit up like a Christmas tree. Slot machines, table games, a large bar with an abstract wave pattern in the big open space directly ahead. And on the walls—
I had no freaking idea.
The nonglass sides of the building had four balconies going up, all overlooking the main room. They were connected to the ground floor by open staircases fore and aft, the ultramodern kind that seemed to hang in space all by themselves, although that wasn’t the weird part. The weird part was what was on them.
Large, round doorways studded the walls in lines, like portholes on a ship. There were no actual doors, leaving the openings dark and kind of ominous. Except for one, on the lowest balcony to the left, which had just lit up with a circle of little lights curving around it, inset into the stone.
The lights were shaped like a bunch of orange squid, colorful and oddly cartoonish, glowing against all that white. But they seemed to make a bunch of people really happy. Because a sizeable chunk of the crowd peeled off and headed that way, some with glasses still in hand, chatting and laughing and booking it, as much as high heels would allow.
“What’s going on?” I asked—nobody, because I was the only dummy still standing out in the open like this.
“Come on!” Ray beckoned from halfway up the nearest staircase, and I hurried to join him.
The balcony, when we reached it, gave a better view of what was happening across the room at the squid door. The big, round opening let out into a circular waiting room, still kind of dim, with a few benches hugging the sides, covered in the same dark blue as the walls and floor. It made them almost melt into the darkness and disappear.
Like the people.
Because I’d just watched maybe a couple hundred tuxes and evening gowns be swallowed up by the entrance, and now—where were they now? Because there was almost nobody in there. Just a few stragglers headed for the door, and a woman adjusting a shoe strap while hanging on to her date, who had stopped to consult a small notebook.
“Where did they go?” I asked, before I noticed: the dark wall behind them had another big round door in it, like the one leading in. It was dark enough that I hadn’t immediately noticed it next to the midnight blue wall, but now that I did, I couldn’t unsee it. Because it was filled with a rippling, inky blackness that was swallowing people up like a giant maw.
“What is this place?” I asked, and Curly snorted.
“Geminus’ darling. I designed it; he built it. It was my payment for protection.”
“But what is it?”
“A modern-day Colosseum. He used to be a gladiator, you know? In old Rome?”
I nodded.
“He was there when they flooded the real Colosseum, for a great naval battle. It’s what gave him the idea.”
“The idea for what?”
“A new type of fights. Through each of those doors is a portal to a different water environment, here and in Faerie. Only, instead of ships and crews fighting each other, like the Romans did, Geminus used—”
“Fey.”
Curly nodded. “All different kinds. That’s what people are really gambling on here. The table games are just to keep ’em occupied in between bouts.”
“Like in Vegas,” Ray said. “They got fights in some of the casinos out there.”
Curly’s lip curled. “No, not like in Vegas. Geminus thought a fight wasn’t worth a damn if somebody didn’t die.”
“He set up portals to different areas, for the different types of competitors,” I said, finally getting it. And looking around with a sinking feeling, because there were a lot of doors. Instead of a single building, we were now faced with searching . . . what, exactly? Half the seafloor?
“No one building could have held all the environments he wanted,” Curly confirmed, “so the bouts are held out there.” He gestured at the dark sea beyond the
windows. “Everywhere from the Arctic Ocean to the Caribbean. The audience passes through portals here, into warded viewing areas, and the fighters enter the open sea through separate portals in their holding tanks. And then they go at it.”
“But, if they’re out in the open sea, why don’t they just swim away?” Ray asked.
“Geminus kept family members back here, in holding tanks down below, as hostages. Escape from the scene of a fight or refuse to fight—”
“And they kill your family,” I said, remembering the little girl at the theatre.
Ray gave Curly a shove. “And you helped him?”
The blue eyes grew big with alarm. “I didn’t know all this at first! My idea was for an interactive theatre, a spectacle! Like at my place, only bigger. Geminus turned it into something else. And by the time I realized what he was doing, I was in too deep.”
“So you just kept doing it, you little—”
“I didn’t have a choice!”
“You said some of the portals go to Faerie,” I interrupted, before we got off track. “Then why did Geminus need the one at your theatre?”
“He didn’t. The family did. After his death, the Senate was watching them like a hawk, but nobody was watching me.”
“But now his guys are back in business.”
“Yeah.” He looked around resentfully. “They trashed my place, so they just came back here. I don’t know how they think they’re going to get away with it. The Circle does checks on places like this—”
“They recently acquired an in with the Circle.”
Rufus and I exchanged glances.
“Well, that’s just great,” Ray said. “All these people mean we can’t use magic to pinpoint the weapons, and now you tell me we gotta search”—he broke off to count—“twenty portals!”
“Forty. Twenty on this side, too,” Curly pointed out.
Ray cursed. “How the hell are we supposed to search forty portals?”
“I don’t know. You said, get you in. I got you in. Now I got to go to the john.”
“You just went to the john!”
“I have a tiny bladder! It’s a condition!”
