“Dammit, Scarlett! Drop it!” the man hissed, still looming over me.
Oh.
I didn’t drop the knife, but my arm relaxed as, for the first time, I focused on my radius . . . and felt the familiar, bizarre sensation of another null. If you thought of my ability as a light that emitted from my body, being near a null was like shoving the light into a prism.
But I knew this particular prism.
“Jameson?” I tossed my head to get my hair out of my face. Jameson Thomas was looking down at me, his face in shadow. Both of us were breathing hard. We were in some kind of maintenance courtyard with dim emergency lighting. Behind Jameson I saw two rows of those massive heating/air conditioning things, each row nearly as tall as I was. I could hear street sounds to my left, where a little driveway led to the street, and there was a dark wall to my right. The wall behind me was still warm with the heat from earlier in the day.
Jameson had eased up the pressure on me, but he didn’t let go. “Are you gonna drop the blade?” he said in a low voice.
“No.” But I reversed the knife in my hand, so the sharp end pointed toward me. Jameson released my wrist, allowing me to take a slow, careful step sideways so the street lighting would land on his face. He looked at me with hooded, worried eyes. Familiar eyes.
Not much else about him was familiar, though. When I’d last seen the null from New York, he’d been thin and still a little gawky, a nineteen-year-old black kid in expensive sneakers who was half-convinced that everything he had was going to be ripped away from him, either by Malcolm’s enemies or by Malcolm himself. More than three years later, the gawkiness and uncertainty were gone, replaced by lean muscle and a snazzy suit. He was still tall, though—around six four. I had to crane my neck to look in his eyes. “You look . . . different,” I said stupidly.
He let out a low chuckle, which brought me instantly back to my month in New York, when we’d stayed up into the morning hours watching action movies and eating gourmet popcorn, the kind covered in white fudge and sprinkles. Jameson had always complained that it was a ridiculous food, but he’d always eaten more of it than I had. Now he flashed me a grin. “I’m different? Look at you. You’re Lara Croft with a blade.”
I felt a blush creep up my cheeks and hurried to change the subject. “What are you doing here? Why are you helping them?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” There was a sharp rattle to my left, and I realized that Jameson had shoved something small into the emergency exit door, blocking it. Someone was trying to follow us out. “That’s probably my backup,” I said, pushing off the wall and reaching for the door.
“Don’t!” He caught my wrist again, surprising me with his intensity. I reacted on muscle memory. Dropping the knife, I reached up, pulled his head under my arm, and pushed into his lower back with my other hand, forcing him to fall backward onto the ground. He let out a surprised grunt as he fell, and I took a step away, scooping up my knife and holding it ready. I hadn’t hurt him, but if I’d made him mad enough he might come up swinging. I eyed the exit door, but I would have to step over Jameson to get to it. And of course, the way out to the street was behind him, too. Stupid Scarlett.
Jameson just lay there for a moment, and then he started to laugh, which made some of my tension fade. “Okay, that’s fair. I shouldn’t have grabbed you. Was that aikido?”
“Yes.” I wasn’t an expert or anything, but I’d drilled hard on a few key moves to get me out of trouble. He didn’t need to know that, though.
Jameson got to his feet, brushing off his suit and rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m not going to hurt you, Letts.”
I blinked for a second. I’d forgotten all about that nickname, the remnant of some in-joke we’d come up with during my trip. Jameson was the only person who’d ever called me Letts. “How can I know that?”
He shook his head. “I never did before, did I? Why would I start now?”
Okay, he did have a point there. Jameson had always been kind to me, even when his loyalty lay with Malcolm. He had never hurt me, and I didn’t honestly think he would start now.
I looked around for the clutch, picked it up off the asphalt, and tucked the knife back into it. The exit door had stopped rattling. I took out my phone.
“What are you doing?” he asked, looking anxious.
“Texting my guy to tell him I’m fine,” I said. It was the truth, but I eyed Jameson to see if he was going to try to stop me.
But he just nodded. “What I was going to say is that the person at the door might not be your guy. One of the Holmwoods’ security guys was following you out of the ballroom, and he had vampires with him. I’ll try to convince them it was just me, expanding my aura, but if the Holmwoods figure out what you are, or who you work for, they’re gonna kill you.”
Well, that seemed melodramatic. “What? Why?” I asked, putting the phone away. “Usually people at least get to know me first.”
“You’re a null. In Vegas,” he said. His eyes slid away from me to check behind him for threats. “They’d probably assume that you came to stop Demeter. Isn’t that what your boss wants you to do?”
I batted my eyes with great innocence. “What? No. I’m just here for . . . um . . . gambling and dressing slutty and stuff. Getting my drink on.”
“Sure you are.” He shook his head a little. “Seriously, what were you thinking, showing up at that party?”
I straightened up, raising my chin. “I was thinking that something fucked up is happening in Vegas and I wanted to know what it was. Also, I saw a picture of you working for the Holmwoods, and I wanted to make sure you weren’t being held here against your will.”
“Oh.” Jameson sighed. “It’s more complicated than that, but working for the Holmwoods was my choice.”
“And Malcolm?” The New York cardinal vampire wasn’t the type who would just let a resource like Jameson walk away unchallenged.
To my left, I heard laughing. I turned to see a group of young men walking past the delivery entrance to the maintenance courtyard, several of them stumbling. They didn’t notice us, but we weren’t exactly well hidden.
I turned back to Jameson, who was watching the young men with one hand resting on his hip in a gesture I’d seen many times from Jesse. I started. Why would Jameson need to carry a gun? He was a null, like me. Did the vampires in Las Vegas go around armed? I hadn’t seen any suspicious gun-shaped bulges in the ballroom.
There was a “suspicious bulge” joke in there somewhere, but before I could follow that line of thought any further, Jameson held up a hand. “Look, we can’t talk now. I gotta get back before Arthur realizes I wandered off without my bodyguard.”
“Without your what?” I sputtered. In New York, Jameson served as Malcolm’s bodyguard during daylight hours. He was good with a gun or in a brawl. Why would he need his own personal security?
Impulsively, I took a step toward him and put one hand flat on his chest. Jameson reflexively curled his fingers around my wrist, but he didn’t push me away. I tilted my head back again to meet his eyes. “Why are you wearing a bulletproof vest?” I demanded. “What’s really going on here?”
He shook his head, brushing off the questions. The lighting wasn’t great, but in that moment he looked so . . . lonely. Nulls are rare, and by definition, we don’t really fit in anywhere. We’re human, but all our value lies in the Old World. We’re submerged in the Old World, but we can only live there as humans. And there are so few of us that until the last decade or so, we never interacted with one another at all.
We are alone just by existing.
“You can talk to me,” I said quietly.
Jameson’s dark eyes were fixed on mine, but he remained silent, looking troubled and intense. Which were probably the two words I’d pick to describe him overall.
Impulsively, I reached up and laid my free hand flat against his cheek. He covered it with his own hand, closing his eyes for just a moment. Then he moved it so he was holding both o
f my hands at his chest. He squeezed them gently, and let go, easing away from me.
“Go home, Letts,” he said in a low voice. “Please. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
I stepped back, remembering myself. “Oh yeah, you seem real fine,” I said sarcastically. A new thought hit me, and I took a leap. “Hang on. Do skinners hunt nulls, too?”
Jameson flinched, and I knew I was getting warmer. “What do you know about the skinners?” I demanded.
“Dammit, Scarlett!” he barked, smacking the wall beside me. But it felt half-hearted, like he was following a script. “I told you, stay out of this!”
I just folded my arms across my chest, not backing down. If he wanted to unnerve me with a temper tantrum, he was going to have to try a lot harder than that. “I’m not afraid of you.”
His shoulders sagged. “I don’t want you to be.” He stepped back, away from me, rubbing a hand absentmindedly over his collarbone. I’d seen Jameson without his shirt once, after a run, and I knew there was a four-inch scar there. He’d said it was part of his misspent youth, but he used it like a worry stone. “Please, Letts,” he said softly. “Please, just stay out of this. Go home.”
Was he trying to protect me from the skinners, or was there more to it? “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s happening,” I told him. And I had an idea. “Or would you prefer that I go ask Arthur and Lucy?”
He grunted. “God, you’re still just as stubborn, aren’t you?”
“That’s what everyone tells me, yeah.”
He checked his watch. “I’ve been gone too long already. Can you meet me tomorrow morning?”
“I guess . . .” I wanted answers now, dammit. But I would take what I could get.
“Come on. We gotta get out of here.” He took a step, paused. “Hang on.” Jameson reached for the emergency exit lock, pulling out a small metal object that he’d slipped into what looked like old padlock holes. “In case there’s a fire or something,” he said with a little smile. Then he took my hand, very slowly, like he was afraid I would flip him again. I allowed him to lead me to the little driveway on the left, which led to the street.
“Where are you staying?” he asked.
“Uh, the Venetian.”
A quick nod. “We can’t be seen together, so when we hit the sidewalk, turn left and go to the corner. You should be able to get a cab back. I’ll meet you underneath Vegas Vic tomorrow at eleven, okay?”
I had no idea what that meant, but we were almost at the sidewalk, and it sounded like something I could google. “Fine.”
We reached the street. I turned to go left, more or less on autopilot, when I heard Jameson call, “Hey, Letts?”
I turned. He was walking backward away from me. “That guy you were with, your backup . . . are you guys together?”
Cliff? Hardly. “That’s none of your business,” I said sweetly.
Jameson just shot me a wide grin. “You really do look good,” he said, and then he turned and jogged off.
I just stood there for a moment, my head spinning. I’d seen the show, and I’d found Jameson, all according to plan. So how was it possible that I was even more confused than before?
Chapter 14
It was only eleven o’clock when I dragged myself back into the hotel room, but it felt more like four a.m. I dropped the clutch on the table just inside the door and kicked off my boots so they landed on the closet floor. I walked down the hall—my hotel “room” was so huge it actually required a small hallway—and fell backward onto the bed, staring up at the gilded ceiling. It was probably a direct homage to some fancy-pants Italian painter or ceiling designer or whatever, but like everything else about this ostentatious hotel, the significance was lost on me.
I needed to call Dashiell and fill him in on the night’s events, but I wanted to collect my thoughts first. Arthur and Lucy Holmwood were definitely putting on a show that exposed them as vampires. But I still wasn’t sure they were violating Old World laws enough to be stopped, given that (a) this wasn’t Dashiell’s territory, and (b) no one believed anything they saw in Las Vegas. If David Copperfield could make the Eiffel Tower disappear every night, what was falling from a six-story ceiling unharmed?
Happily, gauging whether or not the Holmwoods were committing a crime against the Old World wasn’t actually my problem. I was a glorified messenger. But I did care about Jameson, and something was happening with him. Something that required him to wear a bulletproof vest and have a bodyguard. What was that about?
I shook my head and rolled off the side of the bed toward my suitcase, where I dug around until I found Bethany’s itinerary. Tomorrow morning we were supposed to be at the spa at eight thirty for massages, followed by a . . . burlesque dance lesson? Ugh. I wouldn’t mind skipping that, if I could come up with a decent lie. Maybe I could blame my pretend seizure disorder. Or my very authentic clumsiness.
I didn’t have the heart to even look at the rest of the bachelorette party events, so I dropped the itinerary on a table. I peeled off the dress and climbed into pajama pants and a soft tank top to sleep in. When I couldn’t put it off any longer, I picked up the phone to call Dashiell.
And someone knocked on my door.
I blinked hard. Who the hell could that be? Jameson? Or maybe Juliet? Cautiously, I got up and went to the door to look. Before I made it all the way there, I registered a vampire in my radius. Oh, great. I peered through the peephole.
A man I didn’t know stood in the hall with his hat in hand. I mean that literally—he had taken a step back, and I could see the cowboy-style hat he held by his waist, as well as his long, duster-style jacket and handlebar mustache. There was an actual red handkerchief tied around his neck, underneath a chin covered in five o’clock shadow. A vampire cowboy? Huh. We got some weird stuff in LA, but this was a first for me. He looked a little disoriented, the way most vampires look when they’re suddenly forced to breathe or die. What can I say, I have that effect on people.
The door had a sort of elongated bolt instead of a chain, so I cracked it open with the bolt still flipped. “Who are you?” I blurted.
The man held up his hat with one hand so it covered his chest. “Ma’am, my name is Wyatt.”
Oh. “Laurel’s Wyatt?”
A genuine smile lit the man’s face under the big mustache. “Yes, ma’am. I’ve come to beg for your assistance. May I come in?”
Well, that was a new one. I looked him up and down, thinking of Jameson. “Are you carrying a gun?”
Surprised, he held his coat away from his body, displaying jeans and an untucked button-down that was cut slim to his body. “No, ma’am.”
I shut the door, thought about it for a moment, then shrugged to myself. As long as he wasn’t armed, I wasn’t terribly concerned for my safety. Might as well hear him out. I put my hoodie back on and tucked a knife in a little holster in one of the pockets. Then I unbolted the door and opened it wide, gesturing toward the sitting area down the hall. “Come in.”
Wyatt stepped forward. His eyes twitched slightly at the sight of my pajama pants, but he wisely chose not to comment. “Thank you, ma’am.”
For some reason being called ma’am by this guy didn’t grate on my nerves. Probably because he looked like he was on his way to the saloon for a card game with Doc Holliday.
Which was a scary thought, now that I considered it. “Wyatt as in Earp?” I asked him.
The vampire gave me a slight smile, showing tobacco-stained teeth that had never seen braces. I somehow got the impression that if he’d been wearing the hat, he would have tipped it. “No relation, I assure you.”
“Fair enough.” I pointed to the couch. “What can I do for you, Wyatt?”
The smile faded. He sat down. “Miss Laurel tells me you’re here to investigate the vampire dealings in Las Vegas.”
“That’s probably stretching it. I was just supposed to go see the show tonight.”
He lifted one heavy eyebrow. “And now that you h
ave?”
“Now I go back to enjoying my trip,” I said, not sure if I believed it. “I’m just sort of the spotter.”
Wyatt studied me for a moment. He was leaning over, his elbows resting on his knees, fingers still kneading the hat brim. “But you’re not the first spotter, are you?”
That got my attention. I sat up a little straighter. “No, I’m not. Do you know something about the woman who came here before me?”
“I know that she disappeared, just like my Ellen. And just like all the others.”
“How?” I asked. “How did they disappear?”
He tossed the hat on the couch next to him and held out his empty hands. “I’m not sure. That’s what’s so goddamned frustrating. Ma’am.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Okay, fine. First, call me Scarlett. Second, back up a little. When was the last time you saw Ellen?”
He nodded. “Just over a week ago. But for the last few months, Ellen had been doing a little work for the Holmwoods, like half the other vampires in town. She was helping organize publicity for the show by speaking to different groups of vampires in Vegas and the surrounding areas.”
“Hang on.” I held up a hand. Every once in a while I had an actual, detective-like thought. “Were all the vampires here okay with this show?”
“You’re thinking someone may have been targeting the people involved with the show, like to get it shut down?” He shook his head. “It’s a showbiz town, Miss Scarlett. The Las Vegas vampires were happy to roll out the red carpet for Arthur and Lucy Holmwood. It was about the first thing they’d all agreed on in ages,” he added wryly.
Blood Gamble (Disrupted Magic Book 2) Page 9
