Magical Mysteries (Vegas Paranormal/Club 66 Book 2)

by C. C. Mahon

  The rest of Erica’s adventures with her strange friends will be in Magical Storm, the fourth installment of the Club 66 series, out soon.

  In the meantime, you can find me on the Internet:

  www.facebook.com/ccmahonautrice/

  and www.instagram.com/c.c.mahon

  I mainly post in French, but if you write to me in English, I’ll answer you!

  Magical Threats

  Chapter 1

  With seven-foot-long wings on my back, showering became a particularly delicate endeavor. In bed, it was almost impossible to find a comfortable sleeping position. Walking through doors, I bumped into the frame. The worst was in my own club: I couldn’t fit behind my bar anymore. My promotion to the rank of Valkyrie had unexpected consequences. And some work was needed in the club.

  I hadn’t thought about all this when I had open Club 66. The double doors were wide but no higher than usual. I was human at the time. I didn’t understand how much my waitresses—a harpy and a troll—had to twist themselves to move behind the bar and between the tables…

  The architect considered the staircase leading down to the club. “I’m not sure I understand. Do you want the stairs to be wider?”

  “No. Give it more height. I have several employees and a lot of really tall customers…”

  “You have eight feet under the ceiling on these stairs.”

  “Exactly. Isn’t ten possible? Same for the door at the bottom of the stairs.”

  This time, the architect considered me as if I had two heads—which was not the case. And he couldn’t see the large raven wings sticking out above my shoulders. Maintaining an illusion in front of humans had become second nature since Odin had stuck these wings in my back.

  The architect slowly descended the stairs. I followed him. Five steps before I reached the bottom, the top of my wings hit the ceiling. As usual.

  The architect was now inspecting the double door that opened onto the bar-room. “I guess we can extend the opening up to the ceiling,” he says. That should bring you to ten feet. But you’ll need custom-made doors, and at the moment, it might be a bit complicated…

  The biggest disaster in Vegas’ history had occurred a few days earlier. A block in the busiest part of the city had exploded. Reduced to ashes by a magical detonation. Of course, the authorities had not uttered the word “magic.” Nor “ley lines.” Officially, it was a gas leak. An army of workers toiled day and night clearing the site, and all the local contractors had their order books full. Vegas lived fast and refused to waste time—and, therefore, money. The city had to rebuild, to get the tourists back, and to reassure the public.

  But the rumors were anything but reassuring.

  Just after the explosion, the first people on-site—first responders, emergency workers, and firefighters—noticed the strange atmosphere of the place. Some, more sensitive to the supernatural than others, had declared it haunted. Then there were the mysterious “diseases” that affected the rescuers. At least two firemen had woken up one morning in animal form. An ambulance driver was on the run after assaulting an injured man, tearing off a piece of the guy’s jugular with his teeth. The authorities—mainly my friend Detective Lola King, and her supervisor, Oliver Dale—were doing their best to cover up these cases, maintain a semblance of normalcy over the city, and avoid panic in the human population. Among the supernatural, panic was not far off. The community knew that the ley lines converging under the city had been destabilized. These natural lines carried “high voltage” magic, a raw and dangerous energy. Customs, whose mission was to prevent Vegas from going up in smoke in a huge explosion of magic, was on edge. It had enlisted the help of the Sorcerer’s Guild to establish a safety cordon around the disaster. It took the shape of a giant invisible dome, a magic-proof barrier. To avoid contagion, nothing supernatural could now leave or enter Las Vegas.

  And it wasn’t a paranoid reaction. Contagion was already there, as two new metamorph firefighters and a panicked paramedic who perhaps understood that he was now a vampire (or a ghoul, no one could be sure until he was found) could testify.

  The cordon prevented the “magical leak” from contaminating the rest of the country. But inside the perimeter, the situation was…unstable.

  In these uncertain times, the supernatural community tended to gather in places where it knew to be among peers. Club 66 was one of those places. Every night since the disaster, we had a packed house. It wasn’t the best time to have some work done on the place, but I was tired of bumping into everything in my own club.

  “I can give you a cost estimate within a week,” said the architect. “After that, we will have to file the administrative paperwork, obtain the authorizations, contact the contractors… I think we can start work in three or four months.”

  “That long?”

  The architect shrugged. “You have not chosen the best time to remodel. My assistant will send you a provisional schedule.”

  I walked the architect back to the threshold of the hangar that housed my club, closed the metal door on the sun-drenched street, and turned around to contemplate my domain.

  The ground floor of the hangar was bare dirt. My motorcycle was parked near the door. One set of steps went down to the club, and another went up to my loft. I could have transferred the bar to the ground floor. We had almost twenty feet from floor to ceiling and all the space we could have dreamed of. But it meant that the street entrance would lead directly into the club, as would the stairs from my loft. I liked the idea of separation between the different spaces—between my different worlds: a divider between the street and the club, a divider between the club and the loft… A lot of empty space all around me.

  Speaking of empty space…

  I concentrated on spreading my wings, waking up my aches and pains.

  With these new limbs came new muscles, which I now had to learn to use.

  I folded and unfolded my wings several times in a row as a warm-up before moving on to vertical movements. You couldn’t call it “flapping my wings.” It was too slow, too clumsy. I exercised until my muscles cried for mercy. I was sweating, and I hadn’t even taken off from the ground. I checked my watch; I had an hour left before opening the club. Enough time to take a shower.

  The rest is here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YYD768P/ ☺