Touch the Dark Read online

  “But if he has to meet the Consul in front of the entire MAGIC council, he can’t cheat.”

  “Bingo. Besides, she don’t got a lot of choices. Ol’ Ras has left the Senate with a diplomatic nightmare on its hands ’cause of his rampage. The Fey are livid and say if the vamps can’t deal with this they’ll do it themselves. They lost one of their nobles in the crossfire, and you know how they are about that kind of thing.” Actually, I didn’t. I’d never even seen an elf or talked to anyone who had. Some of the vamps at Tony’s didn’t even believe they existed. The rumor was that they were some elaborate prank the mages had been playing for centuries, to try to convince the vamps that they had powerful allies. “The mage’s circle is pissed, too, though I don’t know why, and are calling for Rasputin’s head on a platter. The Consul has to deal with this soon or people will start thinking she’s weak. Mei Ling’s good, but she can’t fight all the challengers who’re going to climb out of the woodwork if this ain’t stopped.”

  “But she isn’t fighting Rasputin.”

  “No, and like I said, she ain’t happy about that. Word is, that’s why she ain’t here—she’s off hunting him. She’s almost outta time, though. The duel is set for tomorrow at midnight. I think she plans to bring back his head on a pike before then.”

  “Okay, I wish her luck. But you still haven’t told me what all this has to do with me.”

  “’Cause I don’t know, honey chile.” I hate it when Billy Joe gets southern. It means he’s either joking or about to turn sarcastic, and I didn’t want to deal with either. His usual accent is a Mississippi drawl combined with bits of Irish brogue left over from a childhood starving on the Emerald Isle. He’d immigrated, changed his name, and made a new life in the New World, but he’d never completely lost the accent. I glared at him. No way was I putting up with attitude now. He’d done pretty well, but I was pissed that he’d totally missed Tony’s return. That was, after all, his main job.

  “What else do you know? Is that everything?” I had learned a long time ago that Billy Joe is a damned good spy, but he can’t be trusted. Oh, he’s never lied to me—that I know of—but if he can get away with leaving something out that might cause him trouble, he’ll do it.

  “I wasn’t sure whether to tell you, after that whole thing with Tomas. You probably don’t need to hear about another bottom-feeder right now.”

  “Tell me what?” I ignored the dig at Tomas, whom Billy Joe had never liked, mainly because I agreed with it. I started checking out my sorry pile of once-expensive club wear and decided that the boots and skirt, both leather, could be salvaged. But the shirt was wrecked and the bra was partially burnt, although my back felt fine. It was one of the few parts of my body that didn’t hurt. The shirt was no big loss except that I didn’t have anything to replace it with, and would prefer not to go back into the living room in nothing but a robe. I actually didn’t want to go back in there at all but couldn’t think of a good excuse to avoid it.

  “Jimmy the Rat is in town.”

  I stopped trying to scrub the dried blood off my skirt and slowly looked up. See why I’ve put up with Billy for almost seven years? Every once in a while, he earns his keep. “Where?”

  “Now, Cassie, love, don’t go doing something crazy.”

  “I’m not.” Jimmy was Tony’s favorite hit man. It had been his hand that planted the bomb in my parents’ car, thereby ending any chance I had for a normal life. I’d been looking for him even before I broke with Tony, but he’d proven surprisingly elusive. I did not intend for him to slip past me again. “Where did you see him?”

  Billy Joe ran a hand through what had once been chestnut curls and sighed deeply. That’s not an automatic thing for a ghost; he does it on purpose. “He’s at Dante’s on the strip, one of Tony’s new places. He manages a bar there. But I don’t think surprising him is a good idea. The place is probably crawling with Tony’s thugs. Las Vegas is second only to Philly in his operation.”

  “Don’t lecture me about the business I grew up with.” I stopped before I went on a rant about Billy perusing the sights of Sin City instead of checking out the place properly, so I’d know exactly what I was facing. I’d forgive a lot if his addiction to gambling resulted in me being able to get my hands around Jimmy’s neck. “I need a shirt and a way into town, plus Tomas took my gun. I want it back.”

  “Um, you might want to rethink that.” Billy looked shifty and I groaned.

  “What? There’s more? Out with it!”

  He glanced about, but there was no help in sight. “You don’t have to worry about Jimmy anymore. He did something to upset Tony, and when I left, he was being taken to the basement.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, he’s probably out of the picture already, or will be soon, so there’s no reason to run off. At least not in that direction. I was thinking maybe Reno…”

  “You don’t know that he’s dead. He could be down there rigging slot machines or something.” The basement had been a euphemism for Tony’s underground torture chambers in Philly, but here it might mean exactly what it said. “Besides, nobody gets to kill him but me.”

  In reality, although he certainly deserved it, I had serious doubts that I could kill anybody, even Jimmy. But that didn’t mean I had no reason to want to see him. Tony had done his best to make sure that I never learned anything about my parents: I had no photos, no letters, no high school yearbooks. Hell, it had taken me years to even find out their names, from old newspaper accounts of their deaths, which I’d had to sneak around my bodyguards to read. Eugenie and my tutors had all been people whom Tony acquired from other masters shortly after my arrival at court and didn’t know anything about the operation before then. Those vamps who had been with Tony for years and might know something were so closemouthed that I knew without asking that they’d been warned not to talk to me. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that he’d gone to that much trouble simply to focus my affection on him, especially since he rarely made any efforts to win me over. No, there was something about my parents Tony didn’t want me to know, and if he and Jimmy had actually fallen out, I might finally have someone willing to tell me about it.

  Billy Joe bitched, of course, but I was too busy trying to make the salvageable part of my outfit presentable to care. He finally gave up. “Fine, but I’ll need an energy draw if you expect me to play fetch. It’s been a tough night, and I don’t got the juice to spare.”

  I wasn’t pleased. I felt like crap and had to go off someone in Vegas; I didn’t need this. But I could hardly go scouting around MAGIC headquarters myself, so I motioned him over without the usual fuss. Billy Joe put a hand on his chest. “Be still my heart.”

  “Just do it.”

  I swear he felt me up as we merged, assuming that a cloud of mist can feel. Knowing him, I’m pretty sure it can. He blew against me and, as always, the feel of him was soothing to my frazzled nerves. I’ve heard that norms find the company of ghosts terrifying or, at best, chilling; to me, they’ve always been like a cool breeze on a hot day. Under the circumstances, I didn’t just open up and welcome him; whatever part of me convened with ghosts pulled him inside like a frightened child gripping a teddy bear.

  For an instant I had flashes of his life: our ship pulled away from a distant shore and we watched the gray, windswept coast recede through a haze of tears; a pretty girl, maybe fifteen, wearing too much makeup and a dance-hall costume, gave us a knowing smile; a young, would-be hustler tried to cheat us, and we laughed as we pulled the ace out of his boot, then had to dodge the knife his accomplice threw. It was often like this, and through the years I’d Seen enough mini newsreels to be amazed that Billy had survived as long as he had.

  Finally, he got comfortable and started the draw. It was usually not an unpleasant experience, just tiring, but this time pain flared through my body as soon as he began. It wasn’t overwhelming, more like a burst of static electricity on a doorknob, but it sizzled along my veins until silver s
parkles flickered behind my eyelids. I tried to order him out, to say that something was wrong, but all that left my mouth was a startled wheeze. A second later, the sensation flashed bright enough to leave negative imprints on my vision. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone. A warm wind swept across me, so thick it felt like liquid; then Billy Joe erupted out of me and zoomed around the ceiling a few times.

  “Woo-hoo! Now that’s what I call a meal!” His eyes were sparkling and his color was bright, more so than it should have been.

  I straightened up and, for the first time in a while, didn’t feel like collapsing. Instead of being tired and a little cranky—my usual reaction to Billy Joe’s snack sessions—I felt wonderful, rejuvenated. It was like having a full night’s sleep compressed into a few minutes, and it was definitely not normal. “Not that I’m complaining, but what just happened here?”

  Billy Joe grinned. “Some vamp has been leeching your strength, darlin’, probably to keep you from trying to escape. He drained a lot of your energy into a sort of metaphysical holding pot, and warded it with some of his own so you couldn’t access it until he released you. I accidentally broke through the wards when I tried to draw from you, and got one hell of a rush.” He waggled his eyebrows at me, and they were almost as brown and solid as they must have been in life. “Damn, let’s party!”

  “Party later. Right now I need my stuff.”

  Billy Joe saluted smartly and streamed out of the window like a glittering comet. I sat on the side of the tub and wondered who it was who had done the hocus-pocus. Not that it mattered; it just gave me yet another reason not to trust anyone. Not that I’d been planning on it.

  I’d finished the cleanup by the time Billy Joe got back. He floated through the window, scowling, and his hands were empty. “I left everything outside. That thing’s gonna be a problem.”

  “What thing?” I grabbed a towel to keep from standing around in only my panties and walked over to the window. I saw what he meant as soon as my hand reached for the latch and it tried to scream. I stuffed the end of my towel into its newly acquired mouth and stared at it in annoyance. Wasn’t it enough that they’d put wards on my energy, parked a bunch of master-level vamps outside my door and stranded me somewhere in the middle of the desert? Did they really need a charm on the window, too? Apparently, someone thought they did.

  “Somebody cast a Marley on it,” Billy said.

  “You think?” I asked sarcastically, squatting to examine it more closely. The old-fashioned, bulbous latch had suddenly grown a pair of beady little eyes and a big, fat mouth. It was trying to spit out my towel so it could yell a warning, one that would no doubt slice right through the silencing spell and alert everyone in the outer room. When I tried to grab it to hold it in place, it started sliding back and forth along the length of the window, avoiding my hands. Looking at its expression, I think it would have bitten me if it could have. I narrowed my eyes at it. “Get me some toilet paper,” I told Billy. “A lot of it.”

  A few minutes and a lot of silent swearing later, the little Marley sat immobilized, with a full roll of toilet paper stuffed in its mouth and the cords from the window blinds tied around it about nine times. “That won’t hold it for long,” Billy said dubiously, as the tiny alarm vibrated with indignation. A few wisps of paper drifted out of its mouth and floated to the floor as we watched.

  “It doesn’t have to.” I lifted the sash and jammed it open with the plunger Billy found under the sink. “They’ll know we’ve escaped soon enough anyway—this place is warded all to hell.”

  I began quickly sorting through the pile he dragged in the window and decided that, overall, he’d done a good job. My gun was back and I even had an extra clip he’d rounded up somewhere, plus he’d dropped a set of car keys on top of the shirts. On the down side, the tops were not exactly what I would have chosen. I should have specified no hooker wear, but a gal can’t think of everything. My boots and mini looked cute and sassy when I was adequately covered up on top; spilling out from the most conservative of Billy Joe’s finds, I looked like I ought to be charging by the hour. I pulled my hair into a ponytail using Louis-César’s clip, but although it was neater, it didn’t make me look much more innocent. I took one last look at my appearance in the mirror, sighed and pocketed the keys. As soon as I managed to find the garage, I’d take out the stress of the day on a certain old acquaintance and probably feel much better.

  Chapter 6

  Tony is a scumbag, but I can’t fault his business sense. Dante’s, on a prime stretch of land near the Luxor, had a crowd even at four thirty in the morning. I wasn’t surprised: it’s perfect for Las Vegas. Modeled on the Divine Comedy, it has nine different areas, each with a theme corresponding to one of Dante Aligheri’s nine circles of Hell. Visitors enter through a set of huge wrought-iron gates decorated with basalt statues writhing in agony and the famous phrase ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. They are then rowed across a shallow river by one of several gray-robed Charons and deposited in the cavelike vestibule, where a red and gold layout of the place is painted muralsized on the wall.

  A guy dressed like King Minos—with a convenient name tag explaining that he was the guy who assigned sinners to their punishments—was handing out paper copies of the map when I arrived, but I didn’t need one. The layout was kind of logical: the buffet, for example, was in the third circle, where the sin of gluttony is punished. It wasn’t difficult to figure out where to look for Jimmy; where else but circle two, where all those guilty of the sin of lust are chastised, to find a real, live satyr?

  Sure enough, Pan’s Flute was the watering hole for the second circle. In case you somehow missed the Hell and damnation theme the lobby had going, the bar was a bit more blatant. I didn’t so much as flinch on entering, since I’d seen similar rooms before. For someone a little more sensitive, however, it must have been a shock to enter a room that was decorated almost entirely with dismembered skeletons. Renaissance Italy, where Tony had been born, experienced regular outbreaks of plague. Seeing their friends and family die and hearing of whole villages being wiped out made people somewhat morbid. Ossuaries, chapels built entirely out of the bones of the deceased, were the era at its most extreme, and Tony’s homage was no exception. Elaborate chandeliers made of what looked like—and, knowing Tony, possibly were—human bones swung from the ceiling, interspersed with garlands of skulls. More death’s-heads were used for candle holders, and drinks were served in skull-shaped goblets. They were fakes, with tacky glass “rubies” for eyes, but I wasn’t so sure about some of the others. The napkins showed the Dance of Death in black on a red background, with a grinning skeleton leading a parade of sinners off to perdition. After guests adjusted to all that, I guess the waiters weren’t as big a surprise.

  I had expected humans in togas and furry trousers, but the creature who greeted me at the entrance was the real deal. How the hell they convinced people that their waiters were only wearing elaborate costumes I’ll never know. The rudimentary horns that poked out of the satyr’s nest of mahogany curls could have been as fake as the ring of acanthus leaves he was wearing, but his costume—consisting solely of an overstrained leather G-string—did nothing to conceal his obviously real fur-covered haunches and glossy black hooves. It also showed without a doubt that he approved of the plunging neckline of my purloined black spandex top. Since satyrs generally approve of anyone female and breathing, I didn’t take it as a compliment.

  “I’m here to see Jimmy.”

  The satyr’s big brown eyes, which had been sparkling with pleasure, clouded over slightly. He took my arm in an attempt to draw me against him, but I stepped back. Of course he followed. He was young and handsome, if the whole half-goat thing didn’t make you want to run screaming. Satyrs tend to be well endowed by human standards, and he was gifted even for one of them. Since sexual prowess is the defining element in satyr society, he was probably accustomed to getting a lot of attention. He didn’t do much for me, but I didn’t w
ant to appear rude. Satyrs, even the old, bald ones, think they’re God’s gift to women, and messing with their happy fantasy tends to have bad results. Not that they turn violent—they’re more likely to run than fight—but a depressed satyr is a miserable sight. They get drunk, play sad songs and loudly complain about the duplicity of women. Once they get started, they don’t stop until they pass out, and I wanted information.

  I let him tell me how beautiful I was for a few minutes. It seemed to make him happy, and he finally agreed to go see whether Jimmy was available after I swore that the boss and I were only friends. I really hoped Billy had been wrong for once about Jimmy’s predicament. Running around the lower levels of Tony’s version of Hell didn’t appeal.

  I had thought of a plan on the way over that might get me the information I wanted, assuming Jimmy was still alive to give it to me. Since I’d seen him outside more than once in daylight, I was pretty sure he wasn’t a vamp. Most magical creatures can’t be turned—not to mention that I’ve had vamps tell me they taste really foul—but I wasn’t so sure about Jimmy. I knew he wasn’t a full satyr, since he had human legs and his horns were noticeable only if he got a really close haircut. There were many things that other half could be, but I’d never seen him demonstrate any impressive powers or start turning purple or something, so I was pretty sure he was half human. That would be in keeping with Tony’s habit of keeping a few nonvamps around to manage business when his regular muscle was asleep. I wasn’t completely certain that a human-satyr hybrid couldn’t be turned, and some of the most powerful vamps can stand daylight in small doses if they’re willing to expend a lot of energy for the privilege. But I really doubted that a first-or second-level master would be running errands for Tony. Besides, I’d never gotten that good old vampy feeling around Jimmy. So, unless Jimmy was warded nine ways to Sunday, Billy Joe ought to be able to manage a brief possession.