“Why not?” Ray demanded. “You said they have you over here all the time—”
“They do!” Beads of sweat were forming on the bald head. “Every time something goes wrong, I’m their go-to. It’s not enough they steal my idea; they expect me to make it work, too! And for fifteen years’ experience, what do I get? A pissant consulting fee!”
“And a card somebody canceled.”
“It still worked at the gate! That probably means I’ve just been bumped down a level in clearance.”
“They’re not worried about you; they’re just battening down,” Rufus translated.
James’ dad was the fourth member of our little squad, and I was unhappy about it. He looked like an older, darker, more wizened version of Curly, except instead of curls he had a little ring of snow-white fuzz around his head, and unlike Curly’s deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression, his was shrewd and focused.
I’d nipped by his shop to get resupplied, because I was out of almost everything, and had let slip what was going on. I’d hoped it would get me access to the not-entirely-legal stash in his back room. Instead, it got me a partner.
And there was no getting around it. If I hadn’t agreed to take him along, he was going to scream bloody murder to the Corps, which was all this needed: a bunch of jarheads with too much magic and a serious lack of subtlety. We needed to get in, get out, and do it quietly. We did not need the Corps. So Rufus it was.
I just hoped I wasn’t going to have to tell James that I’d gotten his dad killed.
“We’ll go in the front,” Curly was saying. “It’s okay; they know me—”
“They know her, too!” Ray said, gesturing at me. “That’s the whole point!”
“So leave her out—”
“She’s the vargr! We can’t leave her out!”
We also couldn’t stand around discussing this. After Curly spilled the beans, Marlowe had given us exactly one hour to locate the weapons and rescue James before he sent in his boys. They were already getting into position, a literal army of vampires ready to swoop down on the cache as soon as we found it—assuming we did. Because the damned things read like people and this place was packed.
It was the only reason Marlowe gave a shit about James: he assumed he’d be with the weapons. And considering how vindictive Alfhild was, and that these things could level half the city, rushing in without knowing exactly where they were wasn’t smart. Of course, neither was letting her do whatever she was planning, hence the compromise.
And my latest ulcer.
Because guess who was supposed to deal with Alfhild if she spotted us?
Rufus had been watching me. He patted the big black suitcase he was carrying. Among other things, it contained a duplicate syringe to the one I had taped to my thigh.
“We get this in him, and he won’t be a problem.”
“But Alfhild might,” I pointed out. “She can jump to somebody else if she loses James.”
“Maybe not. They share a consciousness at the moment, from what I understand. If he goes out fast enough, she may, too.”
“May,” Ray said darkly. “That’s great. We may not end up in the stewpot. I feel much better now.”
“You can stay behind,” Rufus said curtly.
The man was laser focused, looking like he was ready and able to take on the whole place by himself. But he wasn’t. Which was why I stepped on Ray’s foot, to shut his mouth, even before Curly grabbed him.
“No, he can’t! He can’t stay here! You promised!”
Curly was a little squirrelly without his friend/teddy bear.
“He can stay. We can all stay,” I said. “We just have to find a way through that door without anybody noticing!”
And then someone did it for us.
I jerked my neck around when what sounded like a bomb went off. And was just in time to see the sturdy security gate come flying through the ward and skidding down the middle of the street. Where it was promptly run down by Frankentruck, burning rubber, billowing smoke, and looking like a ride straight out of hell.
“What the fuck?” Ray said, stumbling back, although we were nowhere near the drive.
But then, neither was the truck. It smashed through a flower bed, careened back the other way to crack the fountain, and finally straightened up to gouge the blacktop, all while leaking enough fiery oil to set the pretty bushes on fire. It didn’t hit the brakes until it was halfway up the great swath of steps, just missing Claire’s Batmobile, and sending a bunch of beautiful people scattering and screaming.
The engine died a second later, judging by the clouds of smoke cascading out from under the hood. It was almost enough to hide Louis-Cesare’s expression as he jumped out of the way, and to obscure the front entrance in billows of white. Great big billows.
I looked at the guys; the guys looked at me.
“I think I just wet my pants,” Curly breathed.
And then we were darting across the road, up the steps, and through the entrance, unnoticed by the security guys, who suddenly had their hands full.
We ran through the atrium, which had a ceiling covered in strips of hanging, rippling glass that resembled seaweed, and which were chiming in the wind and smoke blowing through the doors. And then we veered off to the side and around a corner, because Curly was heading for the john, damn him! Ray shrugged at me and followed; Curly was the only one who knew anything about this place and we needed him.
“What are the trolls doing here?” Rufus asked, as I pretended to check a stocking to get my hair to fall in my face.
“Don’t know. Olga’s been searching for her nephew, who we think was taken by slavers—”
“Well, she won’t find him here! And she’s likely to screw up this whole thing!”
I glanced at him through my bangs. “You wanna tell her that?”
Rufus looked like he was considering it. But the dustup behind us was already getting heated, with a few fists being flung around—along with something else. Something that zipped here and there through the fog like dark bugs. Dark bugs with eyes. Dark bugs the size of soccer balls that—
“Damn,” I said, with feeling.
“What now?”
“Reporters.”
And, sure enough, a couple dozen camera balls were whizzing about, getting in people’s faces. Along with what appeared to be every reporter in town, jumping out of a bunch of cars that must have followed the truck, and screaming questions at the security guards. We needed to get gone.
Luckily, Ray pulled an annoyed-looking Curly out of the bathroom a moment later. “Can’t a guy take a piss?”
And then we were through, into the huge main room.
I caught it in glimpses, because there was so much to take in all at once: a white marble floor with a mosaic of the sculpture outside, and “Oceanid” carved around it in gold. A huge wall of glass on the opposite end, outside of which a passing ship was lit up like a Christmas tree. Slot machines, table games, a large bar with an abstract wave pattern in the big open space directly ahead. And on the walls—
I had no freaking idea.
The nonglass sides of the building had four balconies going up, all overlooking the main room. They were connected to the ground floor by open staircases fore and aft, the ultramodern kind that seemed to hang in space all by themselves, although that wasn’t the weird part. The weird part was what was on them.
Large, round doorways studded the walls in lines, like portholes on a ship. There were no actual doors, leaving the openings dark and kind of ominous. Except for one, on the lowest balcony to the left, which had just lit up with a circle of little lights curving around it, inset into the stone.
The lights were shaped like a bunch of orange squid, colorful and oddly cartoonish, glowing against all that white. But they seemed to make a bunch of people really happy. Because a sizeable chunk of the crowd peeled off and headed that way, some with glasses still in hand, chatting and laughing and booking it, as much as high heels would allow.
“What’s going on?” I asked—nobody, because I was the only dummy still standing out in the open like this.