4
ROCKS AND HARD PLACES
4:00 p.m. The Japanese Circus Casino, Las Vegas
The great thing about working for an obscenely rich dragon? Private jets. Rynn and I pretty well had the plane to ourselves—including a shower—with minimal interference from Lady Siyu. Guess she figured that since we were already on the plane, she could wait to yell at me in person.
The downside? Rynn and I had been locked together inside a plane by ourselves. For twenty hours . . .
Don’t get me wrong; we were nowhere near an off-again state, and it’s not like we hadn’t exactly enjoyed having the plane to ourselves for the first few hours. I just wish he hadn’t started in on the cave again and hadn’t been so damn smug about being right. It wasn’t like opening the doorway had been entirely my fault. . . .
Rynn turned and frowned at me as we got out of the car. “Alix, you’re still angry at me.”
And why the hell couldn’t he turn off the whole empathy thing? For once, was it really too much to ask for? Or at least he could pretend he didn’t know what I was feeling. I mean, my God.
I stopped myself from saying any of that though as we walked through the sliding glass doors that led into the lobby of the Japanese Circus. “I’m not angry. I’m disappointed. In you,” I said. There, that wasn’t so bad? No name calling, no yelling, nothing inflammatory . . .
Rynn made a derisive noise.
Okay, well nothing too inflammatory . . . but he’d crossed a couple lines on the way back. I turned on him. “Seriously! Why do you have to think that every job, everything I do, is about treasure?”
Some people in the casino glanced over at us—well, me. All right, so maybe I’d raised my voice a little. Rynn pulled me into an alcove.
“I’m not a treasure whore!” I said.
Rynn’s brow furrowed. “I did not call you that, Alix, though God knows you’ve called me worse. We agreed no more name calling.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I believe you want to stop the IAA—and I agree with you, I don’t want to see them with human magic any more than you do, which is the entire reason I’m helping you. I wouldn’t be if I thought it was just over Shangri-La.”
“But?” I could hear it in his voice, and he knew it.
I watched him hedging his answer. “Treasure colors your judgment, and what’s worse, some of the time you don’t seem to realize that’s what you’re after.”
I breathed and tried to calm my nerves before I said something stupid. “I won’t be finding anything at this rate, not after destroying our only lead. It’s like something in that cave wanted me to self-destruct.” I still couldn’t believe I’d tried to activate the gate; I knew better, and it wasn’t like something had been controlling me. I’d gone over it in my head a hundred times: I’d just been convinced it was the right choice.
It hadn’t been like me.
“Or something was desperate for you to open the gate,” Rynn offered. “I have no doubt you or the elf will find another lead.” Every time Rynn said “elf,” he made it sound like a dirty word.
We started back through the foyer toward the elevator, the casino patrons no longer paying us any mind. We had a meeting with an angry Naga to attend. I jostled Rynn. “And Corona is not a bottom-tier beer,” I said. The other thing we’d managed to fight about on the plane.
He didn’t bother hiding the eye roll.
“It is a safe bet in foreign harbors. Do you know how many times I’ve had to drink really bad beer?”
“That’s because you’ve spent your adult life hanging out in the dives universities call accommodation and backpacker hostels.”
“And considering my career choices, that’s not likely to change, so . . .” I held out my hands.
Rynn leaned against the elevator. He’d bothered to dress in casino-appropriate attire of jeans, T-shirt, and leather jacket. I was wearing jeans, but I hadn’t given up my cargo jacket. We didn’t exactly make a matching pair.
“It wouldn’t kill you to consider branching out your horizons,” he said as we waited for the elevator to arrive.
“Why do I get the sinking suspicion we’re not talking about beer anymore?”
“Because we aren’t.” Rynn’s phone buzzed, and a pained expression passed over his face as he checked it. “Wait here. I need a few minutes to check in with security before we face Lady Siyu.”
I nodded. Facing Lady Siyu was not something I ever tried to do alone. The fact that she hadn’t figured out a way to kill me without royally pissing off her boss was a huge point of contention for her.
I watched as Rynn headed down the hall toward the security room. The casino employed mostly supernatural creatures, and Rynn had been recruited into running security for the casino since Oricho had betrayed Mr. Kurosawa almost four months back now. Half the time I was amazed I was dating a supernatural—I did not have the best track record—and half the time I was amazed I’d started letting him come on jobs with me instead of Nadya. Not that I didn’t like having him with me; it was just hard to get used to having people in my life on a regular basis.
My own phone rang, interrupting my train of thought.
Nadya. On the plane I had managed to scan the World Quest duo’s lab book and fill her in on what had happened in Nepal, but we hadn’t had a chance to talk. She should have arrived back in Tokyo by now.
I found a spot by one of the casino’s pillars—a quiet one, away from the casino proper traffic and the bells and whistles of the slot machines but still in sight of the elevators.
“Everything okay?” I answered.
“Fine. I heard through the grapevine that you just got in.” Meaning one of the many employees at the bar had told her. Where my natural state was to infuriate people, Nadya made friends easily. Not just because of her looks—those didn’t hurt; she was a Russian bombshell with a thing for extreme red wigs—but because of her personality. She had a way of getting people to listen to her. A skill I was often deficient in.
“I just landed in Tokyo, about to head to my apartment, then the club,” Nadya continued. “I’ve been looking at the notes, and I have a couple ideas I want to check into, some old accounts from Siberia and China, but it will have to wait until I get things in order here.”
She sounded distracted. “Everything okay?” I asked again.
“Let us just say things took a complicated turn for the worse. Look, there’s no sense me going into details yet, not until I have a better idea what they are, but you’re on your own from the archaeology side until I get this cleaned up.”
“Nadya, seriously, what’s going on?” She’d never passed up a job like this. Sure the club was important and paid the bills, but both Nadya and I had been grad students together. Her passion was archaeology, just not the BS that went with it.
She let out a breath. “Someone’s trying to squeeze more money out of me for licensing, which is a fancy term for protection money. And not just me—” There was a muffled sound, as if Nadya had covered the mic of her phone. “Look, give me an hour to clear customs and check my emails.”
“Nadya, who is doing the squeezing?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know yet. Everyone is being very tight-lipped as to who is orchestrating the push. That on its own wouldn’t bother me. I could negotiate if it was just more money they wanted.”
“What, then?”
“They’re trying to wrangle a piece of ownership of the club. And without knowing who . . .” She let the sentence trail off.
Golden rule of business. Always know who it is you’re working with or for.
“No sense worrying about it right now, Alix, not until I get a better grasp of things.” Too late for not worrying. “Look, the customs guard is trying to get me to hang up my phone. I’ll call you back.”
“All right. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to h
elp.”
“You have enough on your plate. Let me handle this. I’m hoping it’s just a new gang trying a newer business policy—a very intricate cash grab and way to force us to launder money.”
“But?” I asked.
“But if it’s not, I want to make certain I’m there when everything hits the fan.”
“Be careful.” I saw Rynn turn the corner. I gave a half wave so he’d know where I was, then turned my attention back to the phone.
“That’s not my weakness, that’s yours. Say hello to Rynn for me.” And with that she hung up.
I rejoined Rynn by the elevator and related what Nadya had told me about the squeeze in Tokyo. “The thing is, she said it wasn’t just her. You haven’t heard anything, have you?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I’ve got someone looking into it, but, like Nadya said, they’ve kept their identity quite secret. Eventually they’ll have to expose themselves, but there’s not much anyone can do until then.” The elevator door slid open and he nodded at it. “Come on, time to see Lady Siyu before she decides we’re late.” He corralled me through the ornate elevators with a squeeze to my shoulder. After the doors closed and the elevator began to ascend, Rynn shot me a sideways glance. “You still have it, don’t you?”
I couldn’t help but smirk. Rynn might prefer following me on my jobs, but he was not interested in keeping track of the details of what I was actually taking—or where I kept it.
I reached into my backpack and pulled out the carefully wrapped bowl I’d picked up in a New Delhi sewer—yet another supernaturally derived artifact on Mr. Kurosawa’s ever-growing list. Granted, I was getting paid a percentage for each one I managed to find, with expenses.
“You know, it’s not really stealing when you’re taking the artifact from a long-forgotten tomb.” Or in this case, a tomb that had been hijacked by a Kali cult in the mid-1800s. It took me a couple days to realize that the offering bowl for Ganesh I was searching for and the cult’s sacrificial bowl had been one and the same. Funny how the context changes our perception so much. In our heads, harmless bowl used to burn incense and offer fruits does not look the same as the bowl you hold under someone’s slit throat.
I held it out for Rynn’s inspection, but he passed. I couldn’t help but smile. Supernatural he might be, but never would he be comfortable with the thieving aspect of my job . . . or his, now that Mr. Kurosawa had his black claws into him as well.
Silence stretched between us until the doors finally slid open to the hall on a hidden top floor that led to Mr. Kurosawa’s private casino. “You warned your friend,” Rynn said in an offhand manner.
It took me a second to realize he was talking about Dev Rai. “I wouldn’t call him a friend, he’s just one of the very few people from my archaeology days who isn’t a complete asshole.”
We reached the massive black doors embossed with gold characters. Rynn stopped in front of them. He was waiting for something. He never started on these seeming tangents without a reason or a point he was trying to get to.
“I wanted to help him out,” I persevered. “He doesn’t deserve to be thrown under the bus.” After a pause I added, “He never got screwed by the IAA, but his father was. Big time, from what I understand. Was kicked off a local dig site when some bigwig European decided he was interested in Tibet. Some trendy spiritual quest back in the nineties when it was trendy to find yourself in the mountains. Someone higher up wanted a vacation, so Dev’s dad got the boot.”
“Interesting,” he said, but he didn’t step away from the embossed doors or make any move to open them. “I’ve heard you talk of lots of people’s families except your own.”
That was what he wanted.
My family was definitely not something I liked to talk about. “Not much to tell. My mother died a long time ago. Car accident—tragic, quick, and dealt with by a litany of counselors at my high school during my teen years. My father is still alive. A retired academic. We talk. At holidays.” Not for the past two years, since my career imploded, but I like to think we both enjoy a comfortable distance. Also I was not great at hiding things from my father. He knew enough about the world of archaeology that I was pretty certain the first thing out of his mouth, without me telling him anything, would be I told you so.
“Archaeology?”
“God no—anthropology. He was not happy about my choice to chase after artifacts over the pursuits of culture . . . but by that point the university tuition was already free, sooo . . . headstrong daughter one, overbearing, opinionated father, zero.” There hadn’t been anything he could hold over my head at that point as far as telling me not to do something. “What’s with this line of questioning?”
Rynn only offered me a casual shrug. “Curiosity. You usually blame your old colleagues or pick a fight with them. Often provoked,” he added as I started to argue, “but still. It was interesting. You didn’t turn it into a fight. I was curious why.”
Rynn placed both hands on the massive doors that reached up to the nine-foot-high ceilings and pushed. They swung open, a plume of white smoke billowing out and exposing the cold, black marble floor and rows upon rows of slot machines.
I took one last deep breath in the semi-clean air before stepping inside Mr. Kurosawa’s lair. Enter the dragon—or more like let the circus begin. “You could have just asked,” I said.
“Where would be the fun in that?”
As I followed Rynn through the haunted rows of slot machines, I fidgeted with the bowl. He knew where he was going. Me, on the other hand? Being human, if I lost track of him, I’d end up lost in the slot machine version of an evil enchanted forest.
“You know, your anxiety over the Naga wouldn’t be such an issue if you didn’t spend all your time baiting her.”
“Yes. I agree. Which is why I’m not going to bait her. Seriously,” I added when I caught Rynn giving me a sideways glance. “No yelling, no baiting, no name calling. Cross my heart,” I said, and followed through with the motion.
As opposed to assuaging his fears, that only made Rynn glare harder at me. “Who are you and what did you do with Alix?”
“I want my goddamned cat back, okay?”
Rynn snorted. “And as you keep pointing out, yelling at the giant snake lady isn’t getting me anywhere, so I’m going to try playing nice.”
Either by the stirred air or the sound of our footsteps, a few of the machines came to life, their lights flickering. I startled as one of the slot machines chimed behind me, followed by the clinking of coins hitting the smoky marble floors. It was one of the antiques from the 1930s. I never knew the reason behind the displays, whether they were to get my attention, warn me, or lure me off the path. Regardless of their intent, I backed up against Rynn so none of Mr. Kurosawa’s gold could touch my feet.
The thing you noticed quickly about Mr. Kurosawa’s private casino was that the slot machines were an eclectic mix, from 1905 Reys all the way up to modern electrics. There was a reason for that. At first I’d thought it was just one of Mr. Kurosawa’s many antiques collections, but no. They were souvenirs, or trophies of a sort—the kind you trap someone’s soul in. And every time I came in here to deal with Kurosawa or Siyu, there always seemed to be a few more.
A reminder of what happened to thieves at the Japanese Circus Casino—like an eleborate dragon mousetrap . . .
“It’s best to ignore them and keep moving,” Rynn offered.
Easy for him to say. I stared at Rynn’s back as another machine spat gold coins at me. Sensing my discomfort Rynn picked up the conversation.
“You haven’t called me any names recently,” Rynn noted.
“We agreed not to call each other names.” There was a pause, filled by another gust of smoky, cold air. “Besides, I never meant it in the first place.”
There was that noncommittal shrug again. “I’m just saying when you change your behavior too
much, I start to worry. Besides, bottling things in doesn’t help either.”
“How the hell can I bottle anything in when you can feel everything I feel?”
“It’s not for me, it’s for you.”
“Okay, can we stop with the pop psychology? At least while I’m trying to figure out how to deal with Lady Siyu?” I let out a breath and reminded myself that Rynn wasn’t the one I was really angry with. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to snap. Just that every time I’m in this damn place I can’t help but wonder if I would have been better off running from the vampires.”
Rynn fell silent for a moment. “Perhaps,” he said after a moment. “But you’d still be running.”
Which was the crux of everything: was it better to run from, or face, your problems? I still wasn’t sure I knew the answer.
Rynn looked like he was going to add something, but the click of expensive heels on the marble stopped him.
Lady Siyu rounded a row of slot machines a moment later, appearing out of the smoke like a fairy-tale monster.
The first time I met Lady Siyu she was dressed like a modern kabuki girl, in a slightly shorter, more tailored, patterned minidress with less emphasized makeup. Today she was wearing her usual tailored black suit with a matching pencil skirt and the kind of white shirt I’d have wrinkled and stained in a matter of minutes. The shirt set off her black hair and bloodred matching nails and lipstick. Even the clipboard she carried was colored the bloodred shade she preferred.
Lady Siyu looked every inch the powerful businesswoman—and trust me, Mr. Kurosawa’s right-hand monster was snake enough to topple any boardroom.
And she hated me. The feeling was mutual.
I was also terrified of her, so much so that I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until her red lips curled up, exposing a single thin fang.
She wasn’t wearing her sunglasses either—the ones she used to conceal her yellow snake eyes when she was angry, both of which flicked between the two of us.
Owl and the Electric Samurai Page 8
