by Jenn Stark
“No!” I said, pulling away from Brody and back to Soo. I couldn’t see anything of her body except her feet. There were medics all around her, leaning in close, talking in urgent commands, while beyond, several of Soo’s people stood in clusters, hunched together, watching her silent form.
Watching her.
Watching me too, I realized.
Brody called for another EMT again, but I shook my head, getting to my feet. “It’s my arm. Graze wound. Not bad.”
“Sit down, miss.” A woman stood in front of me, her hand on my arm, her face steady as she took me aside. “Sit down and let me have a look at this. You’ve been shot. Even though it’s a graze, you’re losing blood. I’m of your House. You need to sit down. I will take care of you.”
Her eyes were the color of sea glass, and I stared at her, my mind filling with too many words. “What?” I managed. Had she said the word house? Was I hurt worse than I thought?
“Sit, miss.”
Obediently I sat, and the woman pushed off my hoodie, baring the short-sleeved T-shirt beneath that I still wore from the night before. The gunshot had taken a chunk of skin out of my arm. “You’re going to need stitches, but this should hold you for now,” the EMT said. “Blood loss will make you woozy. You need to be careful, not a lot of sudden movements.” She glanced to Brody, who remained looming over us. “She should go to the hospital.”
“She will,” he said, and I struggled not to make a face. I needed the Magician, not the hospital. He could heal me fast enough without stitches.
At the thought of Armaeus, my mouth tightened. “Who all is here? Any of Gamon’s men left? Any outsiders?”
Brody gave me a funny look. “What do you mean, are any left?”
“They’re dead, right? That’s her MO. No soldier left behind because they suicide rather than being taken.” Brody’s expression told me all I needed to know. “What about Soo’s people? How many killed?”
“We’re getting numbers. They held their own, but they were outnumbered. Six casualties so far, including maids and waitstaff.”
“They were all soldiers.” I shook my head. “No arrests, I suppose, since no bad guys left.”
“Detective Rooks.” One of the uniforms called Brody over, and he peeled away from me as the EMT finished up the last of her bandaging.
“What did you say to me, before, about a house?” I asked her.
She glanced at me quizzically. “You’ve been through a shock, miss,” she said with a gentle smile. “You should rest.”
“Okay, so you didn’t say ‘house’? I misheard you.”
She gave my uninjured arm a squeeze. “It’ll all make sense to you soon.”
She packed up her kit and left without saying more, and the pain manifested almost immediately, every blow, punch, and scrape making itself known on my body. I shrugged on my ripped hoodie as I heard my name again. I turned to see Brody gesturing me over. And knew from his face what he would say.
“They tried, but couldn’t revive her.” His words were quiet as the men and women surrounding Soo sat back, their faces set. I glanced up to the groups of people standing at the doorway, and shook my head.
There were no cries or lamentations, no shouts of anger or denial. The men and women of Soo’s entourage merely filed silently out of the room, their faces drawn but their movements precise, almost elegant. Beside me, Brody sighed. “There’ll be an autopsy, an investigation. This is going to get public quick. It’ll be a miracle if it’s not tied to the body dumps.”
I winced at his language, and he must have seen it. He reached out tentatively. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were close, you and Soo.”
“We…” I hesitated. We weren’t close, but that hadn’t seemed to matter to Soo in the end. She’d spoken as if her words hadn’t been some last-minute decision, but the natural conclusion to a determined end. I needed to understand that. I needed to understand a lot of things. “We had an arrangement,” I said. “I didn’t expect her to be attacked here.” Had Soo expected it? I suddenly wondered. Had she known Gamon had set this trap—and walked into it intentionally?
“Wasn’t a secret that she was in town,” Brody said, cutting across my thoughts. “In fact, nothing that the woman did had been a secret in the last seventy-two hours. We certainly knew when she was coming, when she landed, and where she was booked. Wouldn’t have taken much for Gamon to find out either. He’s going to be—”
“She,” I cut him off. “Gamon’s a woman.”
“A woman.” Brody frowned. “How is it we didn’t know that?”
“Because she worked very hard to ensure you didn’t. I saw her without her hood and mask, though. Definitely female. Disguised her voice with some kind of tool fastened to her mask, I think. I don’t know if her people knew it—everything I’ve ever heard is that she was a man. No question, though. She’s female. I got a decent look at her face too, if you want to set me up with a sketch artist.”
“Absolutely. Come down to the station after you’re done at the hospital. You want me to drive you there?”
“Not necessary. See what you can find out about Gamon and keep me posted. I gotta track down some other leads.”
“Not so fast,” Brody said. “That amulet around your neck, that’s new.”
I fingered the jade amulet. “Something I picked up the last time I was in Shanghai.”
“Yeah, well, there are ligature marks on Soo’s neck, but no necklace or chain or anything. You sure you didn’t pull that off her? If so, it’s evidence, Sara. Potentially important evidence.”
“Guaranteed no.” I frowned and turned back toward the body. “But if there’s an amulet somewhere here, I should have it, not the LVMPD.”
I stepped toward Soo, and Brody stopped me. “Don’t lie to me, Sara. I know you have it.”
I held out my arms wide. “Fine. Search me.”
Something flashed in his eyes, as quickly gone as there. “We find evidence that there’s a lost necklace and it proves important, you’re answering to me. This is going to get a lot bigger before it gets done. I can feel it.”
“Aren’t you glad you had your psychic intuition boosted, then?” I patted his arm, but all I wanted was to get out of there. I had too many questions that needed answering, and Brody couldn’t help me there.
“This isn’t over, Sara.”
“Never is,” I spoke my last words over my shoulder as I strode out into the main room.
And then I stopped again.
None of Soo’s people had left. They stood in a quiet clump, flanked by uneasy police officers who appeared to be trying to keep them out of the crime scene—except the whole suite was a crime scene.
The moment I entered the room, however, they all turned to me, their faces impassive. And resolute.
Then they all knelt on one knee.
Oh, boy.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“What the hell?” Brody was right behind me, and my face must have given something away to the men and women gathered in front of us, because they got to their feet again and left with surprising speed. Among their numbers were the geishas from the downstairs lobby. At their head, Yori stared at me a long moment, then smiled a little half smile and left as well.
“What was that all about?”
“I tried to save Soo. I think that counts with them for something.”
“But the geishas? They were in Soo’s employ as well?”
I couldn’t stop my own half smile then, despite the tears that threatened. “I have no idea. Apparently they’re fans. Or appreciate a good fight anyway.” He seemed ready to ask other questions, so I lifted my hand to my temple. “I think I will head to the hospital, Brody. You good here?”
“I’ll call Nikki. She’ll meet you out front.”
I nodded and waved him off, exiting through the doors of the suite, past the police tape and the clumps of policemen. Soo had commandeered the entire floor, so that cut down on the lookie loos, but there’d been
no way to hide a fleet of cop cars roaring up to the palatial hotel with their sirens blaring. Someone would be asking questions eventually, and Brody would be the one to have to come up with answers. I’d be curious to hear what he came up with, frankly. Because I certainly didn’t have any suggestions.
I exited the Bellagio and wasn’t surprised to see the town car at the curb, but the person standing beside it wasn’t Nikki.
Who he was, however, made me slow down and change directions toward him.
Michael the Archangel wore an impeccable black suit and snow-white shirt, and he appeared completely untroubled by the swarm of tourists, police, and paparazzi around him, all of them abuzz about whatever had happened in the Bellagio’s private suites.
“Armaeus finally let you outside?” I asked.
“It is time that I watched not merely those who have passed, but those who are yet among the living,” Michael said. His unnaturally pale skin and hair was hidden by his chauffeur’s hat and sunglasses, but I could already see the bloom of color as the sun touched skin cells that hadn’t seen radiation since the dawn of recorded history. “It’s…unexpected.”
“You gonna burn if you stay out here?”
He glanced back to me. “What? Oh no. The affectation of my skin is the closest I could get from my original incarnation, which is all the colors of light. Too much for human eyes to withstand, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah, I can see how that’d be a problem.”
He looked at my arm and frowned. “You’re hurt. Armaeus said you would be. He’s requested your presence.”
Yeah, well. Armaeus could sit and spin for all I cared. “Take a walk with me first? There’s a kettle corn stand about three blocks from here you’ve gotta try.”
He furrowed his brow. “A what?” But he stepped with me into the sunlight, pausing a moment as the rays hit him full in the face. I stood and watched him glory in the full heat of the sun.
“Feel good?”
“You have no idea. The touch of creation is everywhere around me. All real, all present. Nothing as illusion.”
“Well, stick around. We pride ourselves on fake in this town.” I gestured to the street and winced as my arm protested the movement.
“No pain,” Michael murmured, pulling off his glove. He touched my arm, following me when I flinched back from contact. The moment his soft fingers touched my arm through the hoodie, my bones turned to water.
I fell in a great whoosh, causing the couple behind us to squawk in dismay, even as Michael swooped down, practically lifting me back to my feet with his gloved hand. I stared at him as I resettled myself.
“There’s no pain,” I managed, watching him as he regloved his hand. “None. It’s gone.”
And unlike the Magician, his touch hadn’t been remotely sensual.
“It’s too much, though,” he said, his mouth tightening into a frown. “I thought I’d managed the effect of my touch to calibrate for mortals, but—I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I flexed my arm, marveling not only at the spontaneous healing but the ebullience that rolled through my system. “Armaeus can do that too, but—it’s different. With you I feel…kind of giddy. It’s nice.”
Michael laughed, his teeth flashing in the sun. “I am aware of the Magician’s source of power. It is not completely dissimilar to mine, but we take…different paths to reach our potential.”
We continued to the sidewalk and down the Strip, and I explained what I could about the people we passed—ethnicities, clothing trends, and most of all, what they ate. Apparently, there was no such thing as food in Hell. No wonder people feared it.
But since the Hierophant was here, I needed his help. “You saw everything when you were there, right? All those windows on the world—history lessons everywhere you looked?”
He nodded. “I could have left the confines of Hell to explore them but never did. There was always the risk that I could not return, and if caught in the wrong time and place, I might have caused damage to the thread of history. It is difficult to do, but possible.”
I stared at him. “Time travel. You’re talking about time travel,” I said. “All you have to do to go back in time is go to Hell?”
“Through it, yes.” Michael nodded. “A dangerous path, to be sure, but it has been attempted more often than you might expect.”
I shook my head to clear it, driving toward my point. “So you saw when Llyr was banished from Earth. You saw him trapped behind the veil. You saw the Council meeting in that big castle in the rainstorm.”
Michael glanced at me, surprise clear on his face. “I did. But how—”
“They talked about a House system in that meeting. They were going to set something up with mortals and with houses. That ring a bell?”
“Of course.” He nodded. “It was the birth of the House system, in fact, once the waters cleared and the Council members began to rebuild their homelands. Four organizations of Connected mortals and their hirelings, each dedicated to the war at a human level. Cups, Swords, Staves, Pentacles.”
“Uh-huh. And how long did it last?”
I knew the answer before he gave it, of course, but hearing it from the Hierophant’s mouth was chilling. “Through today, Sara. Of course. It’s all around us.”
“It’s not all around us,” I snapped. “I didn’t know of it, not really. Only in bits and pieces, and even that not until recently. And let me tell you, I know from magical communities. I’m ass-deep in magical communities, and I’ve never heard of these people.”
“They must hide, perforce in plain sight. They have since…” Michael glanced toward the sun, as if trying to gauge the cycle of years in its rays. “The earliest wars between pagans and the state. The persecution of and by the Church, the Inquisition. The witch trials for heresy. More recently the unrest of your world wars. More recently still, the mob mentality caused by the interconnected isolation of electronics. Their safety has been in their anonymity, and the war has never demanded much of them except that they simply survive.” He shrugged. “Survive and thrive, in truth. They are among the most accomplished and rich of the Connected community, and they are not all good people. They do not have to be. They simply need to be able to fight when war arrives on their doorstep.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
He blinked at me. “I haven’t traced the Houses’ leadership for the past hundred years. Not closely. But I could, from the point where I remembered them last. I could. They do not exclusively follow familial lines, but most often have. It would be a simple thing, with a cleric.”
“I’ll do you one better,” I said, thinking of the Fool and all his electronics. “We’ve got the search part covered, if you know where to begin.”
Michael nodded, then frowned and gazed farther up the street. “What…what is that smell?”
I grinned as we approached the food stands at Circus Circus. “This is where we change your life, my friend.”
The kettle corn stand was as close as I’d ever gotten to watching someone have a religious revelation, and the Hierophant’s spontaneous surges of joy almost leveled me as I stood next to him. Not just me either. Bystanders brightened in our wake, laughter swelling around us without anyone realizing why. As Michael inhaled the scent of the popcorn, savoring every detail, I leaned close.
“You need to tone it down a bit more. People are going to freak out eventually at you being this happy.”
He blinked at me. “You think so?”
“You’ll find Miss Wilde to be a credible source on the vagaries of the human condition.” The rich, indulgent voice of Armaeus Bertrand rolled over us, and I stiffened, beating down my body’s immediate, visceral reaction. The Magician didn’t usually walk among the riffraff of the street, but here he was in butter-soft khakis and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, looking so exactly like he had on that lonely beach in a made-up pocket of Hell that my heart broke all over again for no good reason.
“I can see my research is sorely
lacking,” Michael said, apparently oblivious to the fact that my blood had slowed to sludge in my veins. “Have you tried this? This ‘kettle corn’?”
“I have.” Armaeus smiled, and a few angels broke into song to see these two walking together, one burnished bronze by the sun and the other so fair as to be translucent. Neither of them drew the attention they should have, walking on the sidewalk, but such was Vegas. There was always too much to compete for the eye than seemed humanly possible.
As we walked, I also watched the crowd carefully. It didn’t take me long to see what I was searching for. A face in the throng, a flash of silk, a careful glance or knowing nod. The House of Swords was all around me, for all that I knew nothing about them. I wanted—needed to know more. Everything that Michael had ever learned, in fact, anything that he could tell me. Everything that Armaeus hadn’t told me.
A point which was making me more irritated by the second.
“You didn’t ask the right questions, Miss Wilde.”
Armaeus’s words were so unexpected that I stumbled, unsure of whether he spoke in my mind or aloud. I blinked back to awareness as he put his hand on my elbow, steadying me. The flash of sensual heat nearly sent me reeling again, and I pulled back from him, the panic subsiding immediately, but not the need to have him touch me again. That was new, that was urgent, and that wasn’t going away.
“I didn’t know this was a question I should have been asking,” I snapped, looking around. “Where’s Michael?”
Armaeus gestured, and I blinked as I watched the archangel staring, wonderstruck, at the play of synchronized fountains in front of the Bellagio. He had his chauffeur’s cap under his arm, and his bright white hair riffled in the sunshine, his mouth agape as the music swelled and dropped, the water shooting skyward, then falling again in a precise, coordinated symphony.
