Karen Chance - [Cassandra Palmer 04]

by Curse the Dawn (v5. 0) (html)

  So was she a senator herself who’d rejected him? That seemed even less plausible. Most vampires viewed sexuality as merely another marketable commodity. I couldn’t imagine any senator turning down Mircea’s advances when they would likely bring her an important political alliance. Vampires almost always thought in terms of profit and loss, even about intimate relations. And there would be no profit in refusal.

  That left me with one idea, and not one I liked. The Senate had recently suffered some losses in the war. Was it possible that the woman in the photos was one of the senators who had died? Could that album have been some kind of memorial Mircea had compiled of his lost love?

  The thought that he might have been pretending interest in me even while mourning someone he’d loved for decades, maybe centuries, made me almost physically ill. And what hurt the most was that he hadn’t needed seduction to get me on his side. I’d already been there. He just hadn’t noticed.

  “What ees it?” Francoise asked, sounding concerned.

  I realized that I’d totally missed whatever she’d been saying, too busy pondering my train wreck of a love life. I sat up and blanked my face, but she just raised an eyebrow. Damn it. It had been too long since I’d had to regularly control my features. I was out of practice.

  “Nothing. It’s just . . . I sort of know how you feel.”

  She looked surprised. “Lord Mircea, ’e ’as a woman?”

  “I don’t know.” I got up and started to pace, but the damn high heels hurt my feet. I sat back down again. “I don’t know anything. We never talk.”

  “Pourqoui pas?”

  “He’s been gone most of the time lately, on Senate business. And when I do see him, he has so much else on his mind that it’s hard to bring up relationship stuff.” Next to war, politics and the supernatural world threatening to implode, it seemed a little trivial. But the result was that I’d somehow ended up married—at least from the vamps’ perspective—to someone I knew next to nothing about.

  “You should talk to ’im,” Francoise said, eyeing the overhead light fixture. Luckily for Dante’s, it was bolted into the ceiling.

  “Yeah.” Only every time I tried, talking wasn’t what we ended up doing. Not to mention that I had absolutely no idea how to broach the subject of a possibly recently deceased ex-lover. Or whatever she was.

  Francoise arched an eyebrow and started to say something, but a rap on the door saved me. She threw up her hands, turned around and snatched it open. Randy stood there looking sheepish, as much as is possible for a guy wearing skintight black jeans and a matching muscle shirt. At least I think it was a shirt. It might have been paint.

  “What are you doing ’ere?”

  He shrugged, setting a lot of muscles rippling. “I thought I could help you move. To wherever you’re going,” he added quickly as Francoise’s expression darkened.

  “We ’aven’t decided zat yet,” she said with a good attempt at nonchalance.

  “I think I might know a place,” I told her, prying my weary body off the bed.

  A few minutes later, me, Randy, Francoise and her bags of loot arrived at what had once been a tiki bar on the hotel’s fourth floor. It had recently suffered an unfortunate fire and renovations were still ongoing. The rebuilt stage smelled of varnish and the bare drywall on the walls still awaited paint. It was probably the only quiet place in the whole hotel.

  Unfortunately, quiet was about the only thing the bar’s back room had to recommend it. The place was tiny and had no bathroom, and we had to move boxes of plastic leis and condiment packets out to make room for a second bed. But it was livable. I should know; not so long ago, it had been my room.

  “Okay. This is . . . cozy,” Randy said, looking around.

  “It used to be a storage closet.”

  “I’d have never guessed.” I shot him a look and he shrugged. “At least you won’t get evicted.” No, I didn’t suppose so. No self-respecting vampire would be caught dead in it.

  “I like eet,” Francoise said, trying to navigate the maybe one-inch-wide aisle between her bed and the wall.

  “It’s just temporary,” I promised.

  “Yes. Lord Mircea will arrange something for you.” I could already see her mentally removing my bed.

  I’d been thinking more of the room next door. It was smaller but a lot more colorful than this one, with a floor-to-ceiling stained glass window depicting a battle scene. The window had met an unfortunate accident—they seemed to be pretty common around here since I showed up—and hadn’t yet been replaced. A plastic sheet printed to look like it had been stapled over the gap but it let in the heat. I needed to ask Casanova when he thought a replacement might be expected.

  But that could wait. There were more pressing issues at the moment. I left Francoise to arrange things to her liking and borrowed the key to her old room. If I was lucky, I’d have time for a shower before I was evicted again.

  I woke hours later to a thump and a scream. The latter started in a falsetto and ended up in a baritone, which was enough to tell me that it wasn’t Francoise even before the profanity started. I tensed, my lids flew open and I saw a hulking eight-foot shadow looming over me. I screamed.

  “Honey, I know it’s last year’s wig,” someone snapped. “But it’s Liza. It’s timeless.”

  I reached up and flicked on the overhead light, and the shadow resolved itself into an eight-foot-tall woman rubbing her shin. Part of the height was due to the aforementioned towering black wig and part to seven-inch platforms. The rest of the package was swathed in a skintight sheath short enough to be considered a shirt and constructed entirely of black sequined bow ties. It strained over shoulders wider than most men’s and showed off heavily muscled legs. The total effect was linebacker in drag.

  It took me a minute to realize that was because she was, in fact, a linebacker in drag.

  “Who are you?” I demanded shrilly.

  She looked insulted. “Darling, have you been living under a rock? I’m Dee Sire.”

  I just looked at her.

  “Of the Three D’s?”

  I shook my head.

  “We used to be the Double D’s, but then we picked up a third . . .”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but a quick survey showed that whoever she was, she didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon. Unless she had one stuffed in that enormous wig. She could have stuck an AK-47 in there and no one would know.

  “What are you doing in my room?” I asked a little more calmly.

  “I know how it is: you have one too many drinks, you’re looking for the ladies’ and you stumble in here. Fair enough, but, sweetie, this ain’t your room.”

  “It is at the moment,” I said testily, looking around.

  Francoise was nowhere to be seen, probably still out with Randy. He’d talked her into dinner and she’d invited me along, but Randy had been giving me pleading eyes behind her back and anyway, I’d been too exhausted to eat. Not to mention that the only clean clothes I had were the Dante’s T-shirt and sweatpants I’d bought at the gift shop to sleep in. No one had seemed to know where my luggage was and everything Francoise owned was six inches too long on me.

  “What do you want?” I asked, finger combing my hair.

  “No need to get snippy. And if you don’t want to wake up in the stockroom with no idea how you got there, I’d lay off the sauce.”

  “I don’t drink! And I know exactly how I got here. I was—Wait a minute!” I stopped, staring from her to the still-locked door. “How did you get in?”

  Dee wasn’t listening. She’d pulled a silver bejeweled phone out of her enormous bosom and was stabbing at it with a crimson talon. “Get me Dee Vine,” she told it, and paused for a beat. “Don’t give me that! Tell her to stop primping and answer the damn phone!” There was another pause and she rolled her eyes. “Dee Vine, my ass!” she told me. “She ought to call herself Dee Crepit; the bitch has to be going on sixty. No amount of makeup is going to hel—lo Dee,
you gorgeous thing . . .”

  My stomach grumbled plaintively, a counterpoint to the throbbing in my skull. My last meal had been breakfast with Mircea and that had to be . . . I wasn’t even sure. A long time ago. I started looking for my shoes.

  “Well, I don’t know, do I?” Dee asked. “The only other person here is some wino in wrinkled sweats . . .”

  I looked down at myself and then glared up at her. She made a kissy face at me but didn’t apologize. I found one shoe under Francoise’s bed, but the other was nowhere to be seen. It had vanished like a sock in a dryer.

  Dee grumbled into the phone some more and then clicked it shut. “They moved the rehearsal and didn’t bother to tell me.” She watched me crawling around the floor. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to find my other shoe.” I held up the one I’d located and she snatched it with a little cry.

  “Oh, my God. That’s a Jimmy Choo Atlas gladiator sandal!”

  “Uh-huh.” Sal had picked them out. They were a little flashy, but at least all the straps had kept them on my feet. Otherwise, my bruises would have been joined by some seriously lacerated soles.

  Dee lifted the sandal delicately, holding it up to her face. The patent surface was looking a little battered after its recent adventures and mud caked the heel, which had lost its end cap. She stroked its side softly. “Oh, my poor, poor baby.”

  Once upon a time, I’d also taken an interest in fashion, as much as my limited budget allowed. But lately, I was more interested in whether I could run in a pair of shoes than in whose name was on the box. And I’d never cooed to my footwear.

  “It’s just a shoe,” I said impatiently.

  She hugged it to her huge chest, glaring at me. “People like you shouldn’t be allowed to own fashion.” She stuck a massive calf up on the bed, a long nail pointing at her shiny red platform. “See these? Four years old and not a scratch. And they’re off the rack!”

  “It’s been a rough day.”

  She shook her head hard enough to almost dislodge the wig. “That’s no excuse. We’ve all been there, but you take the designer shoes off and then you puke.”

  “I’m not drunk!”

  She was too busy petting the shoe to listen. “I could so work a pair of these.”

  I eyed her maybe size fourteen foot. “I don’t think they come in your size.”

  “Oh, please. What’s a little blood? I’d bind my feet up like a geisha if I could afford—”

  “Well, I’d trade them for a pair of Keds and a good meal,” I muttered, and looked up to find huge fake eyelashes fluttering in my face like a pair of angry moths.

  “You would?” Dee asked, a little breathless.

  “Yeah. If I don’t get something to eat soon, I’m going to—”

  She gave me a shove and I stumbled back into the wall—and kept going. I fell down what felt like a water slide except with no water. In its place was a blur of color and a roar of sound—and then I was tumbling head over heels into an alcove. It had rough wood floors, stucco walls and a pay phone with an out of order sign.

  Something taupe and muddy lay right in front of my nose. I grabbed it. “My shoe!”

  “My shoe,” Dee said, stumbling out of the wall behind me. She plucked it out of my hands. “Keds and a meal—that was the deal, right?”

  “Yes, but . . .” I stared at the wall we’d just fallen out of.

  “There was a portal in my room!”

  “No kidding.” Dee peered out of a set of red velvet drapes in front of the alcove.

  “Why?!”

  “Because it used to be a nightclub with undead performers,” she threw over her massive shoulder. “How do you think they got them in and out? Walked them through the main casino floor, so they could munch on a few tourists in passing?”

  I scowled. “You can’t go around telling people this kind of stuff. You just met me. I might be a norm for all you—”

  “Scrim.”

  “What?”

  “The whole group, Dee Vine, Dee Licious and me. We’re all Scrims.”

  “What difference does that make?” Scrims were just mages who didn’t produce much magical energy. They varied in ability, from those who weren’t very good at magic to those who couldn’t even cast a simple spell. Like the Misfits, they weren’t popular in the magical community, but they weren’t locked up because nobody viewed them as a threat.

  “Scrims can detect magic,” she said impatiently. “We’re like bloodhounds on a scent, drawn to it like queens to fashion. Speaking of which, those bitches I work with would kill for these shoes. Literally—I’m talking a stiletto to the neck. We have to be careful.”

  “Look, I just want a sandwich—”

  “It’s all about you, isn’t it?” she hissed. “This is an act of mercy. I have a friend who can restore these babies to their proper glory but I have to smuggle them past the hags. Oh, shit! There’s one now!”

  Dee snapped the curtains shut and started stuffing the shoes down her already overpadded front. She’d just finished when the curtain was snatched back to reveal a tall, gaunt person in a black see-through body stocking, sequined pasties and black satin hot pants. “She” had purple lipstick, purple feathers on her long, fake eyelashes and the pale, expressionless face of the overly Botoxed.

  “That look went out with the eighties,” she drawled, staring suspiciously at Dee’s now ultrapointy breasts.

  Dee draped an arm around my shoulders. “Darling, meet Dee Ceased—”

  “Dee Vine!” the woman snapped.

  “Careful with the emotion, love. Your forehead might fall off.”

  Someone laughed and edged in around the ample space left by Dee Vine’s scrawny form. The newcomer was a seven-foot-tall African-American in a blond wig, her ample curves spilling over the top of a full-length red-sequined dress. “That’s what I was telling her. Then we can call her Dee Composed.”

  That won her a glare from her costar. “Like you’ve never had work. You’re over forty without a line!”

  The newcomer ran hands in opera-length, red satin gloves down her curves. “And it’s all natural, baby. Ain’t you heard? Black don’t crack.”

  “Are we gonna get this rehearsal on or not?” Dee Vine demanded. “This dump opens in two days!”

  “I’m going to grab a bite first,” Dee Sire told her, pushing me through the miniscule opening between the two queens.

  “Another few pounds and what’ll be cracking around here is your ass out of that dress!” floated after us as we emerged into a dark club.

  The theme seemed to be Wild West saloon, with a long bar, clusters of round wood tables, sawdust on the floor and a couple of old-fashioned swinging doors. We stepped through them into the middle of a ghost town. Or at least Dante’s idea of one.

  Most of the casinos in town were trending away from Vegas’ overly kitschy roots, but not here. Dante’s had a vested interest in maintaining its reputation as the home of the wild, the wacky and the tacky. The more the scarier; that was Dante’s motto.

  The overall theme of the casino had begun as various versions of hell, as evidenced by the lobby. But over time, that had pretty much devolved into a hodgepodge of all things supernatural. The more there was to distract the eye, the less likely that anyone would notice that not all of the “acts” were fake.

  Nowhere was that better realized than on the casino’s main drag. Wooden sidewalks creaked and groaned mysteriously, even when no one was on them. There were hitching posts every so often for ghostly horses that only showed up in the darkened windows of the stores they faced. There was a water tower at one end with a hanged man dangling from it, turning gently in a nonexistent breeze. And the sky overhead was constantly dark, except for a few fake bolts of lightning flashing occasionally.

  Of course, this was Vegas, which meant the old wooden shops had been slutted up with neon signs featuring glowing cacti, dancing martini glasses and tap dancing skeletons. There was one advertising “Drag on the d
rag” outside the saloon we’d just exited. And there were tourists everywhere.

  “Look at this!” Dee was indignant. “I wouldn’t wait in those lines for seventy-five percent off at Saks, much less a Tombstone Taco.”

  “I don’t care. Right now, anything I can put in my mouth is fine.”

  “Oh, honey, if only you were a boy,” she sighed, and pulled me into the madhouse of Main Street.

  It was not only busier than usual, it was creepier, too. Along with the tourists in bright colored tees and the Dante’s employees in costumes and face paint were a large number of pale, elegant observers watching the melee through jaded eyes. The senators’ servants had arrived in force and midnight was lunchtime. And the street was a walking buffet.

  “This is ridiculous,” Dee said as people kept trying to pose with her. I guess they thought she was one of the costumed performers who appeared here and there for photo ops. Only they were dressed in a gothic version of Old West attire, not Dee’s glittery bow ties.

  “You know, I could just call room service—”

  “No way. A deal’s a deal.” She spied an opening in the throng and towed me through.

  We ended up at the Last Stop train station. It was a steakhouse filled with conductors wearing white face paint, with deep black circles under their eyes and wild Beetle-juice hair. Among others, the menu featured Punched Ticket Porterhouses, Terminated T-bones and No Return Rib Eyes. The smell was enough to make my stomach complain loudly, but the place was hip deep in people and the line snaked around the corner.

  Dee parked me by the menu sign. “I know a guy in the kitchen. Stay here. I’ll be right back.” She waded through the throng like a bulldozer in heels, scattering tourists left and right.

  I leaned against the sign, trying not to get stepped on, and watched the people go by. A costumed brunette in black lace and burgundy satin sashayed down the street a few minutes later, flirting and laughing and posing for photos. And getting steadily closer to a group of three too-pale loiterers.

  The performer stopped near the trio to straighten a garter, smiling at them flirtatiously. She obviously liked admiration, and they were giving it to her in spades. Her smile grew as they surrounded her and didn’t falter even when their hands brushed down her arms. She was still smiling when they started to feed.