by Tricia Owens
Before I could talk to her about it, I had to bring everyone up to speed about what Uncle James and I had learned in the Gallery of Veritatis.
"So, first thing's first," I began, "our little goblin friend is not so much our friend as a guy who's working the system while he can. I mean, he's not evil at this point, but I'm not trusting him with the location of my diary."
"Aw, that's too bad," Melanie said. "He's so small and cute in a weird way. Like a talking shriveled apple."
"Yeah, well, this shriveled apple might be the literal bad one in the barrel. Moving on, Uncle James and I did learn that the Oddsmakers commissioned a portrait from Echinacious. One of a gazillion."
Orlaton, who balanced awkwardly on an ottoman like he'd never sat on anything that wasn't metal, wood, or lined with spikes, sat up straighter. "The portraits from there are made with black magick."
"No kidding." I took a deep breath. "The 'looping' that Orlaton's dad mentioned refers to a painting, just like we thought. The Oddsmakers are using portraits to repeat a specific set of actions over and over again, for about twenty seconds long before it repeats. I don't know how long they've been doing this, but we have to assume it's been going on ever since I closed the Rift."
"What actions are they repeating?" Celestina asked in a low voice.
I shared a look with Uncle James. "They seem to be practicing sorcery that will turn every major casino along Las Vegas Boulevard into some sort of magickal focus."
Melanie raised her hand. "Hi, I don't know what that means."
"Well, that's what it looks like," I added a bit lamely. It had sounded really dumb once I'd said it aloud, and in all honesty, it was only my interpretation of what I'd seen. What the hell did I know? "The painting shows giant sigils glowing above Caesar's Palace, Bellagio, City Center, Planet Hollywood, Paris, and Bally's. Basically the casinos around the Strip and Flamingo Road. They might be aiming for more, but that was all that would fit into the portrait that we saw. I'm no occult expert, but even I could tell that those were black magick sigils and not only were they glowing, but they were also leaking smoke. Maybe brimstone. The portrait wasn't Scratch 'n' Sniff, so I can't say for certain."
"And the repetition was of what?" Celestina demanded.
"The sigils light up one by one and as they do a black veil drapes over each affected casino. The blackness completely engulfs them, but you can still see the shape of the buildings beneath."
"You said magickal focus, though," Celestina pressed. "Meaning they're only conduits for producing a larger effect."
"Well, I'm only guessing—"
"I think it was clear that the casinos are being linked for some purpose," Uncle James jumped in helpfully. "At this point, we can only guess the intention behind it, but the scene that Anne and I saw was most assuredly a dark one requiring a tremendous amount of magick."
"I need you to draw me the sigils that you saw," Orlaton told me, frowning. "The dark veil could mean many things, but the sigils will have specific meaning and intention. As will the order in which they are activated. Indicate that, as well, in your drawing."
As Celestina found Uncle James a paper and pen to do as bid, I addressed my friends. "You should also know that the Oddsmakers are gathering souls to present as an offering to whatever they could be summoning with this thing. They haven't given up on their goal of Hell on Earth, but it looks like they intend to do it in a way that doesn't involve the Rift this time."
"That's just great," Melanie groaned. "These guys are dedicated evil-doers!"
"Why are they practicing this?" Celestina looked her usual skeptical self. "If they know what to do, why not simply do it?"
"Uncle James and I have a tentative theory about that," I went on. "Think about it: how would you convert an entire building into some sort of occult beacon without alerting everyone to what you were doing? Whatever they're doing is huge. It might require all of the magick and energy that they have. So they've got just one shot to get it right."
She didn't look satisfied with my answer and annoyance pricked me until I realized what her real problem was.
"Can I have a word with you in the kitchen?" I asked her.
She looked irritated, but got up and followed me out of the room.
"You're worried about Lev," I said once were alone.
Her cheeks darkened, and she opened her mouth to argue. But sense seemed to take hold of her at the last second. Her shoulders slumped, and she looked away. "Yes. I'm trying to keep it together but I'm so wound up right now…I'm amazed I didn't end up channeling Hitler during that ritual in Tomes."
"You haven't heard from him at all?"
"Nothing. I've tried the whistle, tried his phone. It's like he left Las Vegas, Anne. Or…" She trailed off, unable to say it. I was glad she hadn't, because I refused to believe it.
"I'll find him," I promised her.
She sniffed and shook her head, almost angrily. "You've got too much else on your plate, Anne. Stopping the Oddsmakers is more important than saving one wolf shifter."
"I can do both. I'm the queen of multi-tasking."
She shook her head again, but the action was one of defeat rather than protest. "I don't care if he comes home and never shifts back into his human form again. He can remain a wolf forever if that's what he wants. He can even leave me and permanently live with a pack. I just need to know that he's safe and he's okay. That's all that matters to me. Just that."
"I hear you. But let's deal with the shifting stuff later. After I've found him. And I will find him, Celestina. I give you my word."
But she only stroked my arm. "Don't make promises you might not be able to keep. We're dealing with the end of the world. When it comes down to it, I want you to have the right priorities."
I mentally cursed the Oddsmakers for creating a situation that forced my friend to say such a thing in regards to her boyfriend. What a terrible world this was becoming.
But I'd fix it if I could.
We returned to the living room where Orlaton was debating with my uncle about the sigils Uncle James had drawn on paper.
"You're absolutely sure of this one?" Orlaton kept repeating as he jabbed a long finger at the paper. "You can't be mistaken. That would make a tremendous difference in what these symbols are intended to do."
"So give us both versions," I said before the two men could get into an argument. "That way we cover both bases."
"That's optimistic at best, foolish at worse," Orlaton retorted as we all gathered around the paper with the sigils on it. "You said the painting showed only a portion of the Strip. Other casinos may be involved, and that would mean more sigils."
"We have to work with what we have," I said, impatient. "Just do the best you can, okay?"
He didn't like it and made a huffing sound to make sure we all knew it. But he relented and began explaining. "This is indeed black magick. However, I don't interpret its use here as any sort of linking mechanism for the purposes of accumulation. The sigils are from several different occult and magick systems, some ancient, some as recent as the twentieth century. All represent and instigate one thing: a bargain."
"Uh, so the Oddsmakers want to start selling things? Like a demonic Etsy shop?" Melanie asked, even while cringing at the response she expected.
"Not a bargain in regards to a sale," Orlaton said with surprising patience. I think it was the fear that did it. He couldn't hide his concern. "A bargain as in a pact. A deal between two or more parties."
I didn't like the sound of that. Who were the Oddsmakers attempting to bargain with? The Devil? Other monsters or spirits in this world or another? Whatever kind of deal they came to wouldn't bode well for any of us.
"What does this deal entail?" Uncle James asked quietly.
Frustratingly, Orlaton shook his head. "I don't know anything more than that. I can't even tell you with whom the Oddsmakers wish to bargain. I need more information than this."
"At least it's a start," I said, trying to bolster
everyone's mood, which I sensed was sinking faster than the Titanic. "Obviously this is something complicated, which is why they have to practice it through Echinacious' portrait looping. He had hundreds of paintings kept alongside this one in a secret cache. If we see the rest, we may learn more. They could show other parts of the process."
"If you could pinpoint the beginning of this sequence that would be tremendously helpful," Orlaton agreed with a hope that was sort of pitiful because it revealed the depths of his concern. "Whatever it is they're doing, it will require multiple steps and each may hold the key to stopping the entire thing."
"I'll go back," I stated. "While I'm gone, everyone brainstorm your brains out."
I didn't trust that I'd succeed with Echinacious, though I kept that bit of pessimism to myself. The goblin had a racket going and it was keeping him in the Oddsmakers' good graces. It wouldn't be easy trying to talk him into rebelling against massively powerful bad guys. But I'd give it my best, regardless.
When I jogged back to the gallery and opened the front door, however, I sensed at once that something had changed within the building. The lobby looked the same as it had, nothing as conspicuous as splattered blood or broken furniture. But there was a feeling in the air that I could only describe as tension, as though someone were hiding behind a door, waiting for me to step close enough so they could grab me. I didn't literally fear an attack since the room was empty of all but a leather bench and the busts, but that sense of something lying in wait for me grew more intense as the front door quietly clicked shut behind me.
I waited for Echinacious to appear. Long minutes passed. No matter how hard I strained, I could hear nothing. I couldn't stand there forever, so I carefully approached the busts on the wall and contemplated my choices. I'd seen Echinacious use three of the four busts to unlock rooms within the gallery. The Julius Caesar bust and its room remained a mystery, but out of a lingering sense of respect for Echinacious' privacy, I didn't touch it.
Instead, I reached down and touched the Blackbeard bust as I'd seen the goblin do. The appropriate door slid open soundlessly. Nothing burst out of it to attack me. Heart thumping, I crept up to the room and peered in.
The memory stain room seemed to be undisturbed. Just in case, I approached the cage that surrounded the capstone seal and extended my fingers slowly toward it. My hair rose. I quickly jerked my hand back before the protection could fling me off again. At least the capstone hadn't been compromised. That was one concern down.
I returned to the lobby. Still no Echinacious. I touched the Sphinx bust next and when the door slid open, I peeked inside. Shapeshifter portraits greeted me with smiles or sultry looks but no one and nothing else was in the room with them. The bust I tried next was the one I was nervous about. The Medusa bust opened the gallery with all the looping portraits. Holding my breath, I stepped over the threshold.
The sight of the portraits nearest the door didn't raise any alarms. Those that had been draped with cloth for whatever reason remained covered. But these weren't the ones I was most concerned with. I called up Lucky, so he hovered above my head like a floating sun as I walked the length of the aisle and then cautiously turned the corner. I jerked to a stop.
Echinacious' secret, endless cabinet was open. The invisible curtain had been swept aside so that I could see inside to the conveyor belt. Where once had hung hundreds of framed portraits now there were none. The emptiness seemed to extend for miles, but no way was I reaching in to find out for certain.
I'd seen more than enough to confirm what I'd suspected when I'd first seen all the frames hanging in there: the Oddsmakers practiced everything they did. Every move, every attack, every punishment—all of it had been run through a simulation in a painting first. It was sort of funny that they were so insecure, and yet it was worrisome that they were so committed to not making mistakes. They were obsessive about it.
Still, I reminded myself, they'd made plenty of mistakes. Practice might make perfect, but it didn't account for anomalies. For unpredictable actors like me. That made me feel better, but I still wondered why the Oddsmakers had chosen to remove or destroy all their portraits today of all days.
I entered the lobby again. There was one more bust on the wall that Echinacious had not used while in my presence: the Julius Caesar head. Double checking that Lucky was still with me, I touched the bust on the forehead. A door opened at the far end of the room. From it wafted the unmistakable tang of blood.
Knowing what you'll find doesn't really spare you from the impact of it. I still gasped and my body went weak for a second. I still struggled with the instinctive urge to turn and run and try to forget what I'd seen.
But I'd long since passed the point when I could stick my head in the sand. I gathered the shreds of my courage and slowly stepped forward.
Echinacious had been short, the top of his white-haired head only coming to my hip. He was much shorter now on account of him not having any legs. They were gone, only blackness at his hips so that I had no idea if they'd been cut from his body or torn off. I was glad not to know either way.
The stump of his body had left a bloody trail as he'd clawed his way across the room, attempting to get away from his tormentors. I guessed that he'd stopped bleeding when the albino vampire got a hold of him and tore out his throat.
He lay face down and, selfishly, I was relieved that his expression was hidden from me. I didn't want to see the evidence that he'd suffered, even though it was obvious that he must have. It was also obvious to me that he had been killed because of the information that he had shared with me.
Perhaps it's time for a new alliance, and a new existence.
Thinking about his statement, I wondered if he'd known this would happen and had chosen to face it anyway. Maybe Echinacious hadn't been the coward I'd accused him of being, after all.
There was nothing I could do for him, but I squatted to rest my hand on the back of his head in acknowledgment of his sacrifice. In nearing him, I was able to see the message he'd written on the floor in his own blood.
The words had been drawn near his head, beneath one of his arms, which he'd raised to shield the writing. Wincing, I carefully moved aside that arm so I could see what he'd written with a bloody fingertip.
We pray in Vegas. But who answers?
I gritted my teeth, discouraged. I'd been hoping for a game-changing clue that would defeat the Oddsmakers, not the philosophical ruminations of a dying goblin.
"Dammit," I whispered, cursing not only for myself but for the waste of Echinacious' opportunity.
But that was selfish and cold-hearted of me. Echinacious' duty wasn't to answer my questions in the final seconds of his life. Besides, if he had written anything truly helpful, the Oddsmakers would have erased it.
I took a look around the place. There was a hole the size of a large pizza in the floor. I tried to peer into it but it had collapsed in on itself. Had something exploded here? Was it the site of Echinacious' last stand? I was clueless.
What I did know was that I couldn't leave the goblin's body here for the authorities to find. And what of the portraits that contained clients who intended to return to real life? Echinacious had indicated that there were at least a few of them.
Of greater concern was the Infernus Rift capstone seal. The magickal protections surrounding it hadn't waned with Echinacious' death, but I didn't like the idea of the thing just sitting there in a building that would likely be razed for new construction.
Though I trusted Kusahara only marginally, I felt I had no choice. I pulled up the number that I'd inputted to my phone from the card he'd given me and dialed it.
"Kusahara," he said without preamble, like some sort of FBI badass who was too busy to waste time with a hello.
"It's Anne Moody."
While I didn't expect him to whoop for joy upon hearing me, I expected a little more warmth than the, "What do you want?" that he tossed at me.
"If you care about keeping the Rift closed, you nee
d to personally oversee something." I gave him the highlights about my interaction with Echinacious and the role of the paintings and the capstone seal. "All of this stuff is important. It can't fall into the wrong hands."
"I'll handle it," he told me, still sounding less than impressed with me. "What's your progress on the Oddsmakers? You're nearly out of time."
"Tell me something I don't know," I said, but then hung up on him before he actually could.
I straightened, depressed and disgusted, but also energized in a way. As unfortunate and sad as this was, it was proof that the Oddsmakers were still in Vegas and still capable of terrible deeds. Actually, it was proof that they were in my neighborhood—
I sprinted out of the room and banged open the front of the gallery to let myself outside. I raced for Celestina's shop and burst through the front door.
It was empty.
The terror that rose in my throat nearly choked me. I frantically searched every room of Celestina's house and found no sign of my friends or Uncle James. I ran outside and straight for Moonlight. But once I reached the iron gate I skidded to a halt. I had raised the wards after we'd left it. None of them would have been able to enter the yard, much less the shop.
That left one final place.
"Please," I panted as I ran across the street to Tomes. I didn't bother knocking or ringing the doorbell. I grabbed the handle and wrenched.
It didn't open.
"Orlaton!" I screamed as I banged on the door with my fist. "Orlaton!"
I couldn't wait a second longer. I made Lucky small and sent him into the lock. Before he could open it, the peephole window in the door slid open.
"What are you yelling about?" Orlaton glared out at me.
