A Touch of Magic

by Isabelle Adler

  The tone of his voice gave everyone pause. Even Bas halted, his hand on the doorknob. Sensing a change in his boss’s mood, Rossi half rose from his chair, ready for action.

  “Which one of you took it?” Tony said in the same deceptively calm voice, as Leticia stood abruptly and paced around the room. The plush cream carpet muted the fall of her stiletto heels, and Cary could have sworn she was sniffing the air.

  “Took what?” Gladden asked, frowning in confusion. The dealer reached slowly under the table, no doubt to press the emergency security call button, but a warning look from Rossi stopped him in his tracks.

  Giordano didn’t answer. Instead, he let his gaze wander from face to face, until finally it came to rest on Cary, who was trying his damndest to blend into the background.

  “It was you,” Tony said slowly, his eyes locking with Cary’s.

  Cary’s mind reeled, scrambling frantically to come up with some kind of a response that would take him off the hook, but he already knew it was futile. Giordano wasn’t stupid—Cary had been the only one, save Leticia, to come anywhere near enough to fish the amulet out of his pocket.

  He took a step back, shaking his head mutely and hoping fervently he’d pass for an innocent bystander. He didn’t have to fake being terrified, because he really was scared shitless.

  At the same moment, Leticia paused and turned to face Sebastian, like a bloodhound catching the scent of its prey.

  “A sorcerer,” she hissed, making some sort of weird gesture with her perfectly manicured fingers. Sebastian flinched, as though she had struck him. “I should have known.”

  “What are you talking about?” Biagi huffed. Like Gladden, he looked from one person to the next with a flabbergasted expression that would almost be comical if Cary was in any mood to laugh. “What the fuck is going on here?”

  His question hung in the air, unanswered. Without waiting for Giordano’s instructions, Rossi moved to counter the perceived threat, placing himself between Leticia and Monroe and reaching inside his jacket for a weapon that was no doubt hidden there. At the same time, Tony took a step in Cary’s direction, extending his hand.

  “Hand it over. Now,” he said in a deceptively quiet voice. The gleam in his eyes was like light reflected off a steel blade.

  Cary slowly took the amulet out of his pocket. Its embossed surface was still warm, but no longer searing hot. The chain he’d used to wear it on around his neck was gone. He glanced toward the door, where Sebastian was still poised mid-flight, but he was too far away to make it. Tony was crowding him, and there were too many people, too much heavy furniture, and too many guns in his way.

  There was nothing for it. No matter what he did, he was screwed. He raised the amulet above his head, desperately hoping he was making the right move.

  “You want it? Come and get it. Catch!” Cary swung his arm in a wide arc and threw the amulet across the room.

  Tony’s head jerked to follow the amulet, just in time to see Sebastian catching it. “Get him!” he shouted, but Bas was already pushing through the door, even as Rossi lunged after him. Cary ducked, taking advantage of the momentary disruption, and ran around the poker table, ignoring the dealer’s shocked face and Biagi’s swearing. He was sure he was about to hear gunshots from the hallway, but there was no time to worry about that. At least Sebastian would lead Rossi and the bodyguards stationed in the hallway away. He doubted Tony would actually shoot him with so many witnesses around. If he could only reach the door…

  He almost made it. He was so close, only a few steps away. But then Leticia raised her hand again, and he went flying halfway across the room, as if thrown by a powerful blast. He hit the wall so hard the lamp on the side table next to him rattled with the impact.

  Ty, get out, Cary thought, but never had the chance to say it out loud. Pain blossomed in the back on his head and darkness closed in.

  Chapter Fourteen

  TY RACED DOWN the hallway, internally cursing the maze-like architecture. He had the floor map memorized, but every split second counted when he had to round so many corners on the way and look for the right set of escalators to take him down to the casino level.

  The extraction definitely hadn’t gone according to plan. When he heard Tony’s sister, Leticia, make her entrance, he had a feeling it wasn’t going to turn out well, and he’d been right. It was time to split, but not before he got Bas and Cary out.

  Ty ran across the carpeted expanse of the casino, dodging tourists and waiters carrying trays of cocktails and beers. He knew he’d draw the attention of the hotel security within moments, but he had no time for stealth. He made it to the private poker room hallway just as Bas burst from it into the open, the dregs of a paralyzing spell he’d probably used on the guards still clinging to his fingers. The sorcerer shook his hands comically, as if trying to air-dry them.

  “I got the amulet,” Bas breathed. He took the heavy metal medallion out of his pocket and pressed it into Ty’s hand, making it nearly go numb with residual magic. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

  “Where’s Cary?”

  “He can damn well look after himself! We’ve got a sorceress and a couple of angry mobsters to worry about!” Bas grabbed Ty by the arm, giving him no choice but to follow as they ran toward the parking garage escalator.

  Glancing back, Ty saw Tony and Angelo Rossi emerge out of the same hallway. They both looked beyond pissed, and Ty silently prayed to whatever gods he could think of that Cary had managed to get away in the confusion. He hadn’t heard gunshots through his earpiece (which he’d had to discard with the rest of the audio equipment in their suite), but a lot could have happened over the course of the last few minutes. And with magic involved, firearms weren’t always necessary to permanently incapacitate someone. Medallion or not, Ty didn’t want Cary to get hurt, and he would make sure of that—after he and Bas got out of the hotel alive.

  They weaved their way through the throng of people in the main casino space. It looked exactly the same at any time of day, but the influx of visitors indicated it was late evening, and it hindered their progress. They rounded the Bellini Bar and made straight for the escalators, with pursuit hot on their heels. Neither Giordano nor Rossi had shouted, but the sight of them chasing after Ty and Bas through the packed floor was enough to alert security. Ty saw two guys in dark gray suits going after them, maneuvering the crowd with the ease of experience and familiarity. Two more appeared ahead to block their escape route, effectively cutting them off from the escalators.

  “Shit.” Ty glanced around without breaking stride, trying to figure out a different way to get to the underground parking lot without having to tackle the security folks. A called-in SWAT team was the last thing they needed. The casino entrance leading to the Strip would probably be closed off as well.

  His plan B was taking a sharp left turn into the hallway known as Restaurant Row and hauling ass to the Palazzo to use the escalators there, or creating some sort of distraction that would allow them to double back unnoticed. But just as Ty was about to pull Bas with him in the direction of the restaurants, he caught sight of Cary, still wearing the borrowed bartender uniform, skulking behind a row of slot machines. Their eyes locked, and Cary waved frantically to him, inviting him to follow.

  How the hell had Cary gotten all the way from the private room ahead of them?

  For that precious split second, Ty paused in indecision, torn between the instinct that told him to stick to his tried-and-true way of doing things, and the urge to succumb to the new and unknown force that drew him to Cary. There was no doubt in his mind about which was the better course of action. He couldn’t trust Cary to know what he was doing.

  And yet, there he was, in the open, after somehow managing to extract himself from the poker debacle, make his way across the entire floor without anyone noticing, and come for them. Perhaps he really was as good and as basically decent as that. Maybe just this once, after so many years of deeply ingrained mistrust, Ty could
finally place his faith in someone else’s willingness to watch his back.

  The thoughts blazed through his mind with the speed of a stray comet, and then it was time to make a decision.

  “Come on!” He tugged forcefully at Bas’s sleeve and veered sharply in the direction of the slots. Registering the maneuver, Cary nodded once and sprinted toward the escalators. But instead of running straight into the guards blocking the access, he headed to the elevators that were tucked in the far corner, right next to the sparkling gift shop.

  “What are you doing?” Bas hissed, but there was no time to explain. The guards moved to intercept them when they neared the escalators. Ty plowed on, just as Bas made a sharp gesture with his hand, sending the security guys sprawling on the floor amid the startled gasps and cries of nearby guests. There were more guards on their heels, and somewhere behind them were Giordano and Rossi, who were even more disinclined to give up the chase. Ty glanced at the escalator going down, but Cary had ignored it, despite their original plan. So he did too. He just had to hope against hope that Cary knew what he was about.

  Instead of taking the elevator, Cary pushed through the heavy metal door that led into the stairwell and ran up the stairs, his footsteps thudding in the confined space. Ty and Bas followed a few seconds later, the pursuit so close on their heels Ty could practically feel their breath on the back of his neck. He slammed the door shut with a loud bang and strained to hold it in place.

  “Lock it!” he yelled to Bas, who splayed his palms against the metal surface and muttered a repetitive chant. The edges of the door glowed faintly silver, and the outside noise fell completely away, as if cut off with a knife.

  “Hey, Cary!” Where the hell did he think he was going?! The stairway led to the guest suits on the upper floors. That was hardly a viable escape route, given that the car was waiting for them in the underground parking lot, right next to the escalator exit. And they could hardly get there without running into another security team along the way. He was beginning to regret his inexplicable urge to blindly follow Cary instead of trusting his own tactics. “Wait up!”

  Cary didn’t answer. Ty pounded after him, with Bas close on his heels, swearing under his breath in a lulling language that Ty assumed to be some dialect of Fae. It was all going spectacularly badly, and Ty had no one else to blame but himself for trusting a newbie with such a crazy job. There were no sounds of pursuit coming from downstairs just yet, but that meant nothing. Every inch of the hotel was canvassed with cameras, so it would take no time at all for the security guards to figure out where they were headed.

  They didn’t stop till they reached the roof exit. Cary finally halted in front of the locked door, waiting for them to catch up as he struggled to regain his breath.

  “The fuck you think you’re doing?” Bas barked as they gained the landing, echoing Ty’s thoughts in more straightforward terms. “Unless you have a helicopter waiting for us on that roof, we’re screwed!” He looked at Ty accusingly. “It’s your fault for not being able to keep your head out of his ass!”

  Ty couldn’t very well argue with that. Cary looked from Ty to Bas and back, but said nothing. Something in the calculating quality of his expression felt off, but Ty didn’t have time to dwell on it.

  “Just open the door,” he told Bas, gesturing toward the code lock and glancing down the stairwell to make sure it was still clear.

  “Close the door, open the door,” Bas grumbled as he ran his fingers over the keypad until they heard a loud click. “I’m a sorcerer, not your fucking picklock.”

  He pushed the red metal bar in the middle of the door, and it opened onto the windswept roof. It was long past midnight, but the world around them sparkled and glittered with a myriad of colorful lights—the blue-green glow of the pools and the artificial canal from below, the illumination of the gargantuan hotel complexes, the specks of traffic winding along the Strip.

  Cary brushed past Bas, stepping into the open space and heading straight toward the edge. Ty slammed the door behind them and scanned the surroundings, looking for another exit or some sort of fire escape. They were right in the middle of the Y-shaped rooftop, which was empty save for some ventilation vents and half a dozen satellite dishes. Their best bet was climbing down onto the rooftop levels of either of the “arms,” which were slightly lower than the one they were standing on, and figuring a way to disrupt or trick the cameras with some kind of an illusion spell while taking another set of stairs down. They couldn’t stay where they were much longer, and there was no place to hide, but at least they could take two minutes to hammer out a more solid plan of action than simply running in random directions and tackling security guards as if they were bowling pins.

  “Ty,” Bas said quietly behind him.

  The sudden change of inflection in his voice made Ty turn sharply and meet his eyes. Bas’s face looked blank in the ambient lighting, which cast sickly shadows in the hollows. He nodded toward Cary, who stood a few feet away, watching them, silhouetted against the glowing darkness of the sky. The wind tousled his hair, and there was an odd gleam in his eyes.

  The strange vibe Ty got off Cary earlier intensified. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. He took a few steps toward Cary, but stopped halfway when he felt Bas gathering magical energy behind him. Ty was near to useless at using it, but he sure as hell could feel it pouring in from the ether in quantities sufficient to blow up a building.

  Something was terribly wrong—well, more wrong than it already was—and he was struggling to understand it. At least, until Cary calmly pulled a gun out of his jacket and pointed it at them.

  “Stand down, Mr. Monroe,” Cary said in a voice that was not his own. “Or your friend gets it before you have the chance to utter a spell, I promise you.”

  Ty’s throat went dry. His hand itched to go to his own gun, but who was he kidding? It was Cary. He wasn’t going to shoot him. Whatever was going on here, it suddenly became painfully clear he couldn’t see Cary get hurt. Right from the moment he’d met him, when he’d made the choice to help rather than abandon him to whoever had come after him that night, he’d wanted to keep him safe.

  And could he really blame Cary for turning against him when all the while he was planning to do the same? It had always been about getting back the damn amulet—for both of them. The fragile feeling that was beginning to unfurl somewhere deep inside Ty’s chest, like a vine climbing over walls that had up until now been impregnable, had nothing to do with it. He should have known better than to let it grow.

  “Cary—” Ty began, over the tight bitterness lodged at the back of his throat.

  “That’s not Cary,” Bas said curtly.

  “What?”

  The loud bang of the metal door made them both duck instinctively.

  “I should have guessed it was you,” Tony Giordano said, stepping out onto the rooftop from a twin access door on the other side of the central roof area. He was holding a Beretta M9 semiautomatic trained on Bas. The narrow band of Ty’s ring gleamed mockingly on his finger.

  Angelo Rossi followed right on his heels, his weapon in hand. The hotel security were nowhere to be seen, no doubt by design, though how Giordano had managed to lose them was anyone’s guess. Of course, Ty and Bas dashing to the roof had played right into their pursuers’ hands, making it that much easier to isolate them.

  “You just had to meddle in other people’s business, didn’t you?” Tony said to Ty. “Looks like I made a mistake by letting you off the hook that time. Thought you’d prove useful someday. Well, live and learn, I guess. Now, hand over the medallion.”

  Ty inched back, his hand hovering over his breast pocket.

  “If you’re thinking about trying to use it, I suggest you reconsider,” Tony said. “It won’t work on me or my sister, and your little friend here will pay for it.”

  At the snap of his fingers, one of his bodyguards dragged a man trough the doorway to stand beside them. His hands were bound in front of him with a zip
tie, and he was wearing the casino uniform, but Ty recognized him even before he raised his head and glared at Tony in defiance. It was Cary.

  Ty whirled around to the other Cary, the one who had led them to the roof and who was standing near the edge of it.

  Bas had been right. That wasn’t Cary, not any longer. Leticia stood there, wearing her true form and an elegant pantsuit, calmly pointing the gun at Ty’s head.

  Relief was the absolutely last thing Ty should have felt at that moment, but the sheer intensity of it left him dizzy. It looked like they were all about to die anyway, so it shouldn’t have mattered that Cary hadn’t betrayed him. But for some reason, it did. Somehow, it became the point of focus, a thought Ty held on to like a lifeline.

  Tony grabbed Cary by the arm unceremoniously and shoved him down. Cary’s knees hit the concrete hard, and he winced.

  “Let me go, you fucktard,” he demanded, but Ty could practically smell his fear. He was sure Tony could too. Cary had played a losing hand, and he knew it. And there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  It was all Ty’s fault, really. Had he found the time and the opportunity to tell Cary about his powers, he wouldn’t be as defenseless as he was now. Naturally, a fledgling practitioner was no match against an experienced sorceress like Leticia, but at least he could have done something, anything, to perhaps avoid being captured.

  “Cary,” Ty said urgently.

  The other man looked up. Their eyes met, but there was nothing in Cary’s gaze but fear and despair. Cary didn’t believe Ty would save him—perhaps with a good reason.

  “I lied,” Ty said, his voice sounding strangely distant in his ears. “The coin wasn’t special. It was you.”

  It was all he dared to say in front of Tony and his sister, in hopes of Cary somehow getting the message. It was you. Your magic. Your powers.

  Confusion flickered in Cary’s eyes. He opened his mouth, but Tony kicked his leg, eliciting a low grunt from him.

  “Enough bullshit. The medallion. Now.” Giordano pressed the barrel of his gun to Cary’s nape.