“Faith and begorrah to you too,” John grumped.
“Stop moving,” Zoe said. “I’m almost done.”
“The three of us have to go in,” Rob said. “I need you to get us to that wheel as quickly as possible. John and I’ll get it out, but again, you have to lead.”
Travers sighed. “Leaving Zoe to guard the Fates.”
“I’m not guarding anyone,” Zoe said. “They’re going to help me monitor.”
“Which I don’t entirely understand,” Travers said.
“Done.” Zoe took her hands off John’s face. It still ached, but not as badly. He looked at himself in the mirror. He looked a lot more like the Jolly Green Giant than an oversized leprechaun, but he wasn’t sure that was an improvement.
“You don’t have to understand,” he said to Travers. “Rob’s in charge. He never tells us the entire plan.”
“Great.” Travers muttered.
Zoe smiled fondly at him. “Come up here,” she said and pointed to the chair that John was just vacating.
John went and sat by Rob. “Aren’t we a pair?” Rob asked. “I’d rather wear green and smear mud on my face than do this.”
“It’s the same idea,” John said, hearing his jaw crack as he spoke. This was going to be a painful few hours.
“I suppose,” Rob said.
“It’s the team that worries me too,” John said. “Zoe doesn’t have enough firepower if we all get trapped.”
“But she has the Fates,” Rob said. “They know some magic tricks that we don’t.”
“And don’t, at the moment, have the skill to execute them.”
“It’ll work,” Rob said, but he looked worried too, and John knew why. Megan had talked him into letting her be involved. The Fates thought that was a good idea—that was why, they said, the adventure was happening now, because of Megan.
But Rob didn’t want to put her at risk.
All of them would be at some kind of risk. John wasn’t really sure what the Faeries could do to him, besides steal some of his magic and make him lose a few decades but he also knew he didn’t want to find out.
“Yeouch!” Travers said. “It didn’t hurt when Gaylord did it.”
Zoe shrugged. “He’s had more practice, I’m sure.”
“Smuggling people into Faerie? I don’t think so.”
John rubbed his hands over his weirdly shaped face. “How long do you think this’ll take us?” he asked Rob softly.
“Too long,” Rob said. “That’s my biggest worry—that it’ll take much too long.”
Thirty-five
Megan sat nervously in her car, staring at the luminous dial on her watch. Seconds sure took a long time to pass when she tracked each and every one of them.
She was three parking lots away from her target, an unnamed casino on the Boulder Highway. She had driven by the place just to make sure she was in the right area, and, judging by the description Zoe had given her, she was.
Apparently the ancient casino with the neon sign that said Craps, Slots and Beer was the Faeries’ main casino in Vegas. Megan found that hard to believe, particularly with all the fancy casinos around, but Zoe insisted.
In fact, she said there was an entrance to Faerie inside.
She also said Megan would have to work hard to ignore it.
Megan was working hard to ignore a lot of things, mostly the feeling that she probably should have listened to Rob. He had been afraid for her because of abilities she hadn’t completely understood. He had also been afraid for her because she was getting in over her head.
And it wasn’t until she saw that run-down casino with the ratty cars in its parking lot, that she sensed he wasn’t overreacting.
Still, she had Kyle on her side. Kyle, and Zoe, and the Fates. Apparently they had set up some kind of command system. Zoe had enhanced Kyle’s mind-reading ability to pick up any signal from Megan, although she had to be really specific about it. They had given her instructions—all five of them had (well, the Fates probably counted as one person in this case, since their instructions were broken down into parts)—and had made her repeat those instructions back to them.
She had even practiced a little. Enough that Kyle frowned at her and said, “I heard you, Aunt Meg.”
A little bit of petty revenge for that moment in Rob’s office, where Kyle had broadcast to her.
Still, she was very much on her own, and she had been instructed not to panic when the Faeries noticed her. The only time she really needed to call for help was if they tried to take her to Faerie or if she felt physically threatened.
Otherwise, she was to wait until someone came to get her or until dawn, whichever was sooner. No one had quite figured out how she would know when dawn was from the inside of the Faerie casino, so they tried one small trick.
They magicked her watch, protecting it from the Faerie time manipulation. The Fates believed the magic was too small for the Faeries to notice, and Zoe believed Megan could explain it all by simply saying she had purchased the watch at an odds ’n ends store in North Vegas. Apparently, a place there did sell magical items to the non-magical. The Faeries often stashed things there so that they could trace particular marks.
Finally the hands on her magicked watch showed 9 p.m. She started the car and drove out of the parking lot, heading down the street to the Faerie casino.
Her stomach clenched.
Zoe had tried to explain this to her: that the Faeries had had casinos here since Vegas was founded. Time was irrelevant to them (although the Fates argued that it simply moved differently for them) so they didn’t notice that their place was out of date.
Zoe actually believed that the Faeries kept the casino out of date on purpose, to capture the gambling addicts and the long-timers, not to attract tourists. The Faeries were pure businessmen through and through, according to the Fates, and maybe part of a mob, according to Zoe.
All Megan learned was that she had to watch her own back.
With people who had more magic than she could imagine, and had (according to Rob) no emotions at all.
But if that were true, how had one of them become friends with Zoe? Was she that inattentive to the niceties of emotion? Was that why she’d been attracted to Travers?
(Which wasn’t really fair on Megan’s part. Travers had emotions—a lot of them—but he usually tamped them down. Although he wasn’t doing that much this week.)
She made herself take several deep breaths. She drove past several darkened buildings—most of them closed- down casinos, getting ready for demolition. Zoe had mentioned that this area was the next one up for renovation, and Megan could see why.
This far out on the old highway to Boulder City, ghosts of the past remained. Old eateries, warehouses, and empty lots where important places once stood brought back a time when this was one of the main drags of the Vegas area.
Now it felt creepy and deserted, the kind of place she wouldn’t go alone in her own town of L.A., let alone here.
But she couldn’t abandon the mission; she was the distraction. Although she wasn’t sure how just walking into a casino, even one run by Faeries, would make a big enough distraction so that the men could steal the spinning wheel.
They all assured her it would work.
So she was going to try it, even though she was more nervous than she had ever been in her life.
She pulled into the parking lot of the casino. The Es on the Craps, Slots and Beer sign were starting to go out. The neon crackled and faded in and out, sending weird red light across this part of the parking lot.
For the life of her, she couldn’t see any other sign—not even one that used to say the name of the casino. She had hoped to prove Zoe wrong about that, but there was nothing.
Beer cans and old cigarette wrappers littered the parking lot. The front page of the Las Vegas Sun blew across the concrete, even though she didn’t feel much of a wind.
The air smelled faintly of smoke and stale beer. If it was this bad out here,
how bad would it be inside?
She hurried across the cracked sidewalk and pulled open the double glass doors—no name on those either. The place was just as dark inside as it was out. In fact, the level of light seemed about the same—red and blue and yellow neon, coming from slot machines so old they looked like they belonged in a 1950s movie.
The air smelled so strongly of cigarette smoke, she had a hunch it would take fifteen showers over five days to get the stench off her skin just from this momentary contact. Everyone inside the casino—all of whom looked “mortal” to her—was smoking, from the elderly man who sat at the corner slot machine to the woman beside him who had an oxygen tank on wheels and breathing tubes in her nose.
Megan resisted the urge to cough. So far, no one had noticed her. She had thought she’d be rushed by Faeries. But she hadn’t seen a one.
Was that a bad sign?
She wished she had someone to ask.
The low ceilings held the smoke down and made the ka-ching! ka-ching! of the coins falling into the metal trays seem even louder. The slot machines here were truly one armed bandits, with the lever that the gambler had to pull. A few of the gamblers looked like they’d been attached to the machines in 1966 and were being kept alive by the same electricity that kept the machines going.
Megan kept walking. Her breath was coming in short gasps, but she couldn’t tell if that was from the smoke or from her nervousness. She was glad that Faeries didn’t have empaths—someone like her would be able to sense her fear from miles away.
She passed craps tables that were mostly empty except for a croupier and two other employees all watching one or two players. In a room to the side, ten people played poker, and judging by the stack of chips that each had in front of them, the game had been going on forever, with no end in sight.
Megan swallowed, feeling nerves churn her stomach. She followed her wounded nose to the buffet, where a beef roast looked like it had been glued to the tray five weeks before. Next to it, a congealed white gravy mound pretended to be some kind of chicken, and beside that, pork so dried that it could have served as shoe leather rounded out the “meat” portion of the serving area.
Nonetheless, she took a table as instructed. A greasy menu stuck into one of those metal holders informed her that the buffet was $3.95, and All-U-Can-Eat (which, judging by the food, would be exactly none). But she was supposed to buy something and pick at it while she waited to attract someone’s attention.
Two little old ladies with hair as blue as the air sat two tables down, waving cigarettes as they spoke to each other. A few more tables away, an elderly man ate scrambled eggs covered in ketchup. The only person near Megan’s age was an obese young man who hunched over a cup of coffee as if he didn’t have a dime to his name.
She got up, grabbed a chipped white plate off the stack, and proceeded to fill it up with beet salad, tuna casserole, and old-fashioned macaroni and cheese, the only things on the buffet that looked halfway agreeable.
The dessert section had JELL-O filled with lime slices, which she believed was indestructible, and chocolate pudding which she would have thought was indestructible, until she saw the thick skins on the surface.
Still, she took one JELL-O and one pudding, poured a cup of coffee from the pot, and headed back to her table. A keno runner (invisible, apparently) had left a keno card next to her napkin, but other than that, Megan had seen no sign of any other employees, who Zoe had assured her were all Faeries.
Was Zoe wrong? Someone had mentioned that things changed hourly in Faerie. Maybe they didn’t own this place any more.
Megan slipped into her chair, looked at the unappetizing food, and hoped Rob was all right.
She hadn’t been told exactly what his part of the plan was—in case she was “compromised” (whatever that meant [and she certainly didn’t want to speculate])—so she had no idea what he was doing.
Except going for the wheel.
With the help of her accountant brother and the big, sensitive man known as Little John.
Thirty-five
Megan sat nervously in her car, staring at the luminous dial on her watch. Seconds sure took a long time to pass when she tracked each and every one of them.
She was three parking lots away from her target, an unnamed casino on the Boulder Highway. She had driven by the place just to make sure she was in the right area, and, judging by the description Zoe had given her, she was.
Apparently the ancient casino with the neon sign that said Craps, Slots and Beer was the Faeries’ main casino in Vegas. Megan found that hard to believe, particularly with all the fancy casinos around, but Zoe insisted.
In fact, she said there was an entrance to Faerie inside.
She also said Megan would have to work hard to ignore it.
Megan was working hard to ignore a lot of things, mostly the feeling that she probably should have listened to Rob. He had been afraid for her because of abilities she hadn’t completely understood. He had also been afraid for her because she was getting in over her head.
And it wasn’t until she saw that run-down casino with the ratty cars in its parking lot, that she sensed he wasn’t overreacting.
Still, she had Kyle on her side. Kyle, and Zoe, and the Fates. Apparently they had set up some kind of command system. Zoe had enhanced Kyle’s mind-reading ability to pick up any signal from Megan, although she had to be really specific about it. They had given her instructions—all five of them had (well, the Fates probably counted as one person in this case, since their instructions were broken down into parts)—and had made her repeat those instructions back to them.
She had even practiced a little. Enough that Kyle frowned at her and said, “I heard you, Aunt Meg.”
A little bit of petty revenge for that moment in Rob’s office, where Kyle had broadcast to her.
Still, she was very much on her own, and she had been instructed not to panic when the Faeries noticed her. The only time she really needed to call for help was if they tried to take her to Faerie or if she felt physically threatened.
Otherwise, she was to wait until someone came to get her or until dawn, whichever was sooner. No one had quite figured out how she would know when dawn was from the inside of the Faerie casino, so they tried one small trick.
They magicked her watch, protecting it from the Faerie time manipulation. The Fates believed the magic was too small for the Faeries to notice, and Zoe believed Megan could explain it all by simply saying she had purchased the watch at an odds ’n ends store in North Vegas. Apparently, a place there did sell magical items to the non-magical. The Faeries often stashed things there so that they could trace particular marks.
Finally the hands on her magicked watch showed 9 p.m. She started the car and drove out of the parking lot, heading down the street to the Faerie casino.
Her stomach clenched.
Zoe had tried to explain this to her: that the Faeries had had casinos here since Vegas was founded. Time was irrelevant to them (although the Fates argued that it simply moved differently for them) so they didn’t notice that their place was out of date.
Zoe actually believed that the Faeries kept the casino out of date on purpose, to capture the gambling addicts and the long-timers, not to attract tourists. The Faeries were pure businessmen through and through, according to the Fates, and maybe part of a mob, according to Zoe.
All Megan learned was that she had to watch her own back.
With people who had more magic than she could imagine, and had (according to Rob) no emotions at all.
But if that were true, how had one of them become friends with Zoe? Was she that inattentive to the niceties of emotion? Was that why she’d been attracted to Travers?
(Which wasn’t really fair on Megan’s part. Travers had emotions—a lot of them—but he usually tamped them down. Although he wasn’t doing that much this week.)
She made herself take several deep breaths. She drove past several darkened buildings—most of them closed-
down casinos, getting ready for demolition. Zoe had mentioned that this area was the next one up for renovation, and Megan could see why.
This far out on the old highway to Boulder City, ghosts of the past remained. Old eateries, warehouses, and empty lots where important places once stood brought back a time when this was one of the main drags of the Vegas area.
Now it felt creepy and deserted, the kind of place she wouldn’t go alone in her own town of L.A., let alone here.
But she couldn’t abandon the mission; she was the distraction. Although she wasn’t sure how just walking into a casino, even one run by Faeries, would make a big enough distraction so that the men could steal the spinning wheel.
They all assured her it would work.
So she was going to try it, even though she was more nervous than she had ever been in her life.
She pulled into the parking lot of the casino. The Es on the Craps, Slots and Beer sign were starting to go out. The neon crackled and faded in and out, sending weird red light across this part of the parking lot.
For the life of her, she couldn’t see any other sign—not even one that used to say the name of the casino. She had hoped to prove Zoe wrong about that, but there was nothing.
Beer cans and old cigarette wrappers littered the parking lot. The front page of the Las Vegas Sun blew across the concrete, even though she didn’t feel much of a wind.
The air smelled faintly of smoke and stale beer. If it was this bad out here, how bad would it be inside?
She hurried across the cracked sidewalk and pulled open the double glass doors—no name on those either. The place was just as dark inside as it was out. In fact, the level of light seemed about the same—red and blue and yellow neon, coming from slot machines so old they looked like they belonged in a 1950s movie.
The air smelled so strongly of cigarette smoke, she had a hunch it would take fifteen showers over five days to get the stench off her skin just from this momentary contact. Everyone inside the casino—all of whom looked “mortal” to her—was smoking, from the elderly man who sat at the corner slot machine to the woman beside him who had an oxygen tank on wheels and breathing tubes in her nose.
Fates 06 - Totally Spellbound Page 46
