by Karen Chance
Empty, as it turns out, is a relative term. The buffet sludge leaking over the sides of a half dozen black plastic drums was joined by several weeks’ worth of dried flotsam rattling around the truck bed. It was also about one hundred degrees with no shade, causing Rafe to hunker down with the sheets pulled up over his head.
“Are you all right?” I asked him, worried. Rafe was a master, but only fourth level. The sun didn’t merely drain someone like him of power; it could hurt or even kill him in sufficient quantities.
“Well enough,” he told me, but he didn’t sound good. Thankfully, it was only about twenty-five miles into town.
“I don’t get it,” I told Pritkin, who shook his head before I could even frame a question.
“Not here.”
“I don’t think he’s listening,” I said, nodding at the driver. The radio was blaring Johnny Cash at ear-ringing decibels, and that was from where we were sitting. The sound in the cab had to be deafening.
Pritkin just looked at me, so I turned to the nice war mage. “I don’t understand what stopped that thing. Once there was a tear in the fabric between worlds, why didn’t it continue all the way to the end of the line? Like ripping a seam when the thread’s cut?”
Tremaine looked nervously at Pritkin, who muttered something but answered the question. “My best guess would be that the ley line sink at MAGIC had enough energy to seal the breach. In your analogy, it would be like encountering a knot in the thread.”
“But what if that hadn’t been enough? What would have happened?”
“The tear would have continued until reaching a vortex big enough to counter it.”
“And that would be where?” I asked, getting a very bad feeling.
“The line where the eruption occurred runs from MAGIC straight to Chaco Canyon, where there is a great vortex—a crossing of more than two dozen lines. It is one of the most powerful in this hemisphere.”
“Chaco Canyon?”
Pritkin grimaced. “New Mexico.”
I stared at him for a moment, sure I’d heard wrong. “New Mexico? You’re saying that thing could have continued for hundreds of miles?”
“Leveling every magical edifice across three states,” he agreed tightly.
“And a lot of nonmagical ones,” Tremaine added, looking horrified. “Even some norms can pick up on the kind of energy a powerful ley line throws off. Traditionally, a lot of human structures have been built around the lines, even when the builders didn’t know why.”
Pritkin nodded. “If someone has found a way to disrupt the lines, it could be disastrous. Both for us and for the human population.”
I thought about the seared plain, the death and the destruction we’d left behind. “I think it already has been,” I said quietly.
At least I didn’t have to worry about any war mages who might still be prowling around the casino. By the time we made it back, our closest friends wouldn’t have recognized us. Or wanted to get within ten feet of us.
I picked a desiccated wonton wrapper out of my hair, thanked the driver and skirted a long line of cabs to the front entrance. Despite the fact that we were covered in garbage and leaving a trail of dust that would have done Pig-Pen proud, no one gave us a second glance. The place was a madhouse.
Hundreds of tourists had crowded around the reception desk, yelling and waving papers at the usually suave Dante’s employees, who were looking a little stressed. Luggage was piled in heaps on the floor and on overflowing carts as harried bellhops ran back and forth, trying to keep up with the demand. Children were crying and threatening to fall in the Styx. An overtaxed air-conditioning system was straining to lower the temperature to maybe ninety degrees. And a bevy of new, life-challenged guests were clogging the lobby bar.
For a minute, I saw a double scene, the ruined bar from my vision transposed over the real thing. Then I shook my head and it cleared, leaving me looking at a muscle-bound type who had one of the fetish-clad waitresses by the waist. She was kicking and screaming and not with pleasure, but the senator didn’t seem to care. He’d been born in ancient Rome, where the manners relating to bar wenches had been a little different. Fortunately, the southern belle by his side wasn’t in a good mood. She cut her eyes up at him, frowned and nailed his hand to the table with a swizzle stick. He eyed her unfavorably as he pried it loose, but he did let go of the waitress.
“What is the Senate doing here?” I asked Rafe, only to discover that he’d disappeared. I glanced around but didn’t see him in the uproar. “Where did Rafe go?” I asked Pritkin.
“He left as soon as we arrived,” he told me, eyeing the dozen vamps, luggage in hand, who were waiting by an elevator.
None were Rafe. “Did he say where he was going?”
“No. But he probably went to check in. It appears that the Senate and its servants were instructed to rendezvous here.”
“It looks more like they’re moving in.”
“They are,” Casanova said, hurrying over. “And ruining me in the process. I have three conventions booked for this week and two more for next, and I’ve been ordered to cancel them all! Oh, and you’re being moved out of the penthouse. The Consul outranks you.”
“Since when?” I demanded.
“Since this is a vampire-run property and she’s head of the Senate.”
“There are other hotels! Why does she have to stay here?”
“Other hotels aren’t a well-warded property with a portal to Faerie. Welcome to MAGIC Two,” he said in disgust.
“Sorry,” I told him, because he seemed to expect me to say something.
“I need a little more than that, like the key card to the penthouse. Our machine’s busted.” He caught my expression. “You aren’t going to make a scene about this, right?”
“I’m kind of in the mood for a scene,” I admitted. Casanova said something in Italian that I won’t repeat. “And that’s not going to help you any.”
He gave me a speculative look. “Then how about this? I was planning to evict those deadbeat kids you foisted off on me—”
“They’re orphans!” I said, outraged.
“Not all of them.”
“They don’t have anywhere else to go!”
“I’m weeping on the inside.”
I sighed. “What do you want?”
“I told you. Move out of the penthouse nice and quiet, and I’ll find somewhere to put the kids.”
“I’ll move out of the penthouse nice and quiet, and you’ll leave them where they are,” I countered. I was too tired for this, but if I didn’t didn’t spell things out, Casanova would have them sleeping in the Dumpsters out back. And it wasn’t like I could get them rooms somewhere else.
The kids in question called themselves the Misfits because their magic had chosen to manifest abnormally, ensuring that they would never fit into the mainstream supernatural community. The ones with more dangerous powers had been confined to a series of “schools” the Circle had set up, where they were supposed to be taught to control their often dangerous powers. But most would never evidence enough control to suit the Circle’s standards, meaning that they would never graduate. Or leave.
Tamika Hodges, a friend of mine and one of the Misfits’ mothers, had tried to get her son released by legal means. When that failed, she’d taken a more direct approach and broken him out. She’d released some of his friends at the same time, thereby landing her at the top of the Circle’s most wanted list right alongside me. With the help of the Senate, I’d recently cut a deal that got her out of trouble for her various crimes. But the deal hadn’t included the kids, which was why they’d been hiding at Dante’s until I made nice with the Circle. At the rate things were going, they were going to be here awhile. Assuming Casanova didn’t throw them into the street.
“They’re occupying two very nice suites!” he protested.
“There are eight of them—nine if you count the baby! What were you planning to do, stuff them in a broom closet?” He looked shifty.
“They stay where they are or no deal,” I said flatly.
“All right! But you owe me.”
Before I could give the reply that comment deserved, my eyes locked with those of a tall, exquisite creature across the lobby. And the poor, shredded, dirt-and-garbage-covered remains of my dress suddenly began screeching like an air horn. It was loud enough to draw every eye in the place.
“Shut it off!” Pritkin yelled.
“How?!”
He tried some kind of spell, but it had no noticeable effect. “The Corps is probably still here!” he informed me, as if I could do anything about that.
And then it got worse. “Murderer!” Augustine shrieked, raising an arm to point at me.And thereby drawing whatever eyes hadn’t already been turned my way. “Murderer!”
“Take it off!” Pritkin told me, grabbing the hem.
“Corps or no, I’m not streaking through the damn lobby!”
“Here.” Tremaine shucked the standard-issue war mage topcoat he was wearing and passed it over. It was midcalf length on him, which meant it dragged the floor on me, but I didn’t feel like complaining. I pulled it on, trying not to think about the audience I’d suddenly acquired.
“Two teams just came in the front door,” Tremaine warned.
“Give it to me,” Pritkin ordered. I unbuttoned the shrieking dress with shaking fingers and dropped it around my feet, feeling like a flasher. Pritkin grabbed it, and he and Tremaine took off, waving it above the heads of the crowd and drawing the war mages’ attention—for the moment.
I clutched the coat around me and ran in the other direction, toward the employee dressing room. Luckily, I’d worked at the casino for almost a month now, so I had a locker all of my own. Unluckily, its sole contents were a sequined bustier and a pair of three-inch heels.
I slammed it shut, one eye on the doorway, and chewed a nail. Several employees stopped to stare at me, taking in my sunburned face, tangled hair, and filthy, topcoat-clad body. I really needed a shower, but taking one here was out of the question. The only thing worse than getting caught by the Circle was getting caught by the Circle naked. I needed somewhere to recharge, somewhere I could get a change of clothes and a bath, somewhere safe. And only one place came to mind.
Sometimes, it really helps to have a witch for a friend.
Chapter Eleven
A string of furious French was the response to my knock. “I ’ave until four!” I was informed through the door. “Go away!”
I tapped on the door again—carefully—because a powerful witch in a mood is not someone to take lightly. Especially when she knows as many archaic spells as this one. “Francoise—it’s me.”
The door flung open to reveal a really unhappy brunette. Her long hair was everywhere, her chic green and white sundress was streaked with dust and she had a bulging garbage bag in one hand. From the look of things, it contained most of her clothes.
“Cassie!” Her eyes widened and a second later I found myself enveloped in a bone-crushing hug. “I was so worried! I was afraid the Circle ’ad taken you to MAGIC!”
“They did.”
“But . . . ’ow did you escape? Zey say it was destroyed!”
“It’s a long story.” I glanced at the garbage bag. “I take it you’ve been evicted?”
The scowl returned.“Casanova, ’e say zat ze Senate needs my room for one of zere servants. So I must go! Today!”
“There’s a lot of that going around.”
“I ’ad thought to ask if I might stay with you,” she admitted.
“What a coincidence.”
“Mais c’est impossible! You are ze Pythia!”
“And the Consul likes a view.”
Francoise said some uncharitable things about the Consul. Since they were in French—which I’m not supposed to speak—I didn’t contradict her. It was also a fact that they were all true.
I flopped onto the bed. I’d only meant to sit down, but I swear the mattress was spelled. It just pulled me in. I tried to kick my shoes off, but mud had welded them to my feet. I decided I didn’t care.
I lay there for a few minutes, listening to Francoise tear the room apart. “Any ideas?” I finally asked.
Francoise grimaced. “Randolph ’as an apartment.”
“Randy?” I opened an eye to watch her flush slightly. “Tall, corn-fed, crew-cut blond with biceps like boulders? That Randy?”
“When ’e ’eard that ze employees ’ave to move, ’e called me.”
I rolled over onto my stomach and propped my chin in my hand. “Did he?”
The flush became a blush. “’E ’as an extra room.”
“Uh-huh.” And I’m sure he meant for her to stay in it, too.
She sighed. “’E ees very ’andsome, non?”
“Yeah.” If you liked the laid-back surfer boy type, Randy was the man. He was also a genuinely nice guy, for someone possessed by an incubus. “So what’s the problem?”
Francoise shot me a look. “You know what ees ze problem!”
“He wouldn’t feed off you,” I assured her. For one thing, she’d curse him into next week.
“I know zat!” She filled another Hefty bag with the extra pillow and blanket from the closet, the bedside lamp and the hotel’s iron. When she picked up the last, the cord fell out the back.
“Then what is it? And you need that long skinny black thing.” She looked blank. “It makes it go,” I added, and she nodded and went hunting under the bed.
Francoise had issues with modern equipment. “Modern” meaning anything invented after the seventeenth century. That’s when she’d been born, and when she’d met a bunch of dark mages with an entrepreneurial streak.
The Fey would pay top dollar for attractive, fertile young witches who could help them with their population problem, but most of the likely candidates were either too well-guarded or too powerful to be taken easily. But the mages had caught Francoise at a vulnerable moment and quickly bundled her off to a slave auction in Faerie. She’d lived with the Fey for what had seemed like a few years, until seizing the chance to escape—only to discover on her return that four hundred years had passed in our world. The whole thing just left Rip van Winkle standing.
“Zees?” She held up the cord.
“That would be the one.”
It went into the bag, along with a painting that she climbed up onto the bed to rip off the wall. “It ees zese ozzair women,” she told me, tugging on the painting. “I tell him, I weel not be—what ees ze word? Many women with one man?”
“Harem.”
“Oui. I weel not be a harem!” she said, and tugged really hard. The painting came off the wall, flew across the room and put a dent in the door. Francoise hopped down and checked out the damage. The frame looked a little wonky, but apparently it passed muster because it went into the bag.
“I can see where that could pose a problem. He has an incubus to feed.”
“I tell heem, geet rid of it,” she said, making one of those wild French gestures that mean anything and nothing. “But non. ‘It changed my life,’” she mimicked.
“Maybe it did,” I said carefully. “Casanova recruits a lot of his boys from small towns who don’t think they have much of a future.”
“’E ees ’ere now,” she said fiercely. “’E does not need it anymore. I theenk it ees the ozzair women ’e does not wish to give up!”
I tried to find something to say, but everything was too jumbled, too out of control in my head. Thoughts and feelings I didn’t want to examine kept pushing their way to the front. I wondered if Mircea felt the same way now that a spell no longer bound us together. Would he want other women? Or did he already have one?
He came from an era when it was common to have a wife to play hostess and a mistress or two with whom to play at other things. I’d never heard anyone speak of a long-term lover in connection with Mircea, but then, I hadn’t asked, either. And I’d never been to his main court in Washington State. That was despite the fact that he
’d discovered my existence when I was eleven, after a call from Raphael, his resident stooge at Tony’s court.
Mircea was Tony’s master, which by vampire law allowed him to put a claim on me. At best, he’d hoped that I might inherit the Pythia’s position and give the vampires their first shot at controlling that kind of power. At worst, I was a genuine clairvoyant, and those aren’t a dime a dozen. But he’d nonetheless chosen to let me grow up at Tony’s rather than take me back to court with him.
I’d always assumed that had been to ensure that the Circle didn’t find out about me. They had a proprietary interest in magic users in general and clairvoyants in particular, and they might have given him trouble. Tony’s court was a lot lower profile than Mircea’s, and therefore safer. But now I wondered if maybe there had been another reason as well.
A beautiful dark-eyed reason.
I groaned and threw an arm over my eyes. Damn it! There were only ever questions when it came to Mircea, never answers. It was starting to get really old.
My head hurt, my body ached and I wanted to just stop thinking for a while. But something about those photos was nagging at me. I suddenly realized that Mircea hadn’t appeared in a single one, which seemed a little strange considering how many there had been. I’d have assumed that he was the one taking the pictures, but the woman hadn’t been looking at the camera in any of them, at least not that I could remember. It was like she hadn’t even been aware of it.
So what the hell was he doing? Paying someone to take photos for him, to keep track of her? And if so, why? Why not just take her if he was that smitten? Who could a master vampire possibly need to stalk?
I could only think of a few options, none of which seemed all that likely. Did she belong to another master, maybe even another Senate member? In that case, yes, he could refuse to give her up. But masters traded their servants all the time, and Mircea was perfectly capable of talking the moon down from the heavens when he wanted. If he was that motivated, he would have found something or someone the woman’s master would have taken in trade.
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.
