Playing Against Type: Soulgirls, Book 4 (14 page)

“They told me you were here to investigate the casino for mob ties. That if you stumbled across what really was here, it would out us—them—to the world. If that happened, they would have to shut it down, erase it, make it like it never existed at all. To protect all the Tribes, Clans, Prides, Packs and whatever else you want to call them.”

“Who told you?” He wasn’t quite ready to turn around and look at her. The urge to say fuck it and kiss it all away, spread her out on that bed until they shook with the pleasure of it all was like a hard, hot fist in his belly.

“Does that matter? Really?” Hesitancy marked her response and he turned. Worry marred her expression. “It’s just that…the person who told me is someone I trust. But they’re thinking the same thing you are right now. We didn’t have all the facts.”

“Who told you, Pepper? It’s important.”

Conflict played over her expression, she dropped his gaze and stared at the floor. “Heidi told me.”

Her earlier slip. The “hi.” Pacing over to the bed, he knelt down so he could look at her eyes. “Who’s Heidi?”

“She’s the stage manager at the Midnight Mystery Lounge.”

Information clicked together. Pepper suffered from a terminal illness. She came to the Arcana Royale thirty some odd years ago and they helped her for a price. “You’re a dancer.”

“I am.” She winced. “But not right now. They—Heidi told me the only way I could get close to you was if I was human again, so I could see you during the day and I wouldn’t turn to dust if the sun hit me. They lifted the curse from me.”

“Are you sick again?” And he knew exactly why they’d lifted the curse from her—because he’d have sensed it the moment she approached. Being human protected her from him, but not her illness. How long did she have?

“Not terribly. But she warned me that it would come back, that it had never really gone, just suspended. She sends me tea to drink.”

The nasty pomegranate tea she’d forced down during breakfast the previous morning. “Why did Heidi want you to do this?”

“I don’t think she really wanted me to. Someone talked to her. She runs the lounge, the theatre. She’s in charge there. But you know, I think she has to report to…” Pepper pointed upward. “You know.
Them
.”

The Overseers. Despite the gravity of the moment, his amusement resurfaced at her reluctance to say their name out loud. She chided him for lumping everyone who worked in the casino together and then acted like Connor and his ilk were mad, bad and dangerous to know.
Of course, in this case she’s right.
“You trust Heidi?”

“I do. She’s good to us. She doesn’t let anything bad happen, sends a bodyguard with us when we go out from the lounge…and I’ll tell you a secret, I think she’s been instrumental in getting some of the dancers free. Everyone is a little bit afraid of her, but I think she just doesn’t like to let people get close. She’s harsh, but also very thoughtful. She told me last night…she told me she didn’t have the power to let me have a life outside of here…yet. But that whatever I wanted to do, whatever my choice was, she would try to help me make it happen.”

“In exchange for what?”

“For nothing.”

His eyebrows raised along with his skepticism. “No one in this place trades something for nothing.”

“Heidi didn’t ask me for anything. I don’t think she wanted me to do this favor in the first place, but once we went out in the sun and shopped and it…was kind of nice to be back in the world again and see the sky again. I miss the girls. I even miss the performances, but it all seems so far away and everything outside is so different now. So different from what it used to be.”

“Have you spoken to her since you agreed to the favor?”

Pepper nodded. “Last night, after you dropped me at my room. Minion came to get me.”

“Minion?”

“Heidi’s imp. Cute as a button, but a chaotic kleptomaniac.”

Finn wondered if the imp could have trashed his room earlier. The traces of magic left behind had been haphazard rather than methodical. Seemed like imp work. “What did she say?”
 

“She told me there might be a way for me to reclaim my life outside, heal the cancer, but it…it would cost me.”

“Cost what?” The devil was in the details, especially here. “What exactly did she say?”

She frowned. “She said it would cost me something I value. That the cost would be high because it always costs something of value.”

So what price did Pepper put on her life?
What price do I put on it?
Rising, he brushed his fingers against her cheek.
 

She stopped him, catching his hand and holding it. “Finn?”

“Yeah?”

“Your mother died, but you came here to screw with them…but I’m
one
of them. So…”

A little truth for truth, it wasn’t too much to ask. Unless his truth was the price of her freedom—suspicion flamed in his gut and he hated himself a little bit for it.
No, I hate myself a lot. I can afford to lose…she can’t.
“You are
not
one of them. And I came because my mother’s lover sent me an urgent message. She didn’t just die. She’d been murdered.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It really isn’t. It’s sad, it might even flirt with tragic. But my mother dealt in lives, twisting them, perverting them, making them serve her. She never was going to die of old age like a normal person. If she’d wanted a mortal life, she’d have been dead centuries ago.” He sat on the bed next to her. Pepper leaned her head against his arm and took his hand, interlacing their fingers.

She offered comfort. Few people ever got close enough to know him, and fewer still were allowed this form of intimacy. “So you came to avenge her?”

“I don’t know what I thought I would do. Shutting this place down would be nice, but it wouldn’t be justice.” Pinching the bridge of his nose, he sighed. “My relationship with my mother was complicated. Complicated by the fact that she was a witch. At her core, she was power. She amassed it like some women collect shoes or jewelry or those little snowglobes you liked. She could never have too much.”

“But she must have loved you.” Her faith was touching, if naïve.

“Thank you for thinking that. Maybe she did, at first, when I was a baby. I have a few memories of my childhood that were fun. Traveling Europe is one. Playing in museums and later in Egypt playing at archaeological sites and further still in Asia. But I think it was an afterthought more than her goal. When I was old enough to be sent away for education, she did. I could go years without seeing her. And then I found out I wasn’t aging anymore and seeing her became paramount.”
 

He didn’t know anyone who knew this story. Not even the other Overseers. Had Connor known the real story, he might have rethought the plan to lure Finn to Las Vegas. “It took me ten years to track her down. She was irritated with me because a busy woman doesn’t have time to coddle childish requests… Childish. I was sixty-five years old and I didn’t look a day older than I do now.”

Pepper straightened and stared at him. Her mouth opened and then shut.
 

“Exactly. That’s when she told me she used me as a reservoir. She stored extraneous power inside of me, and used it like a battery. It consumed other power to sustain itself, and thus me.” Actually, the explanation had involved a great deal more about spell traps and the fact that he was perfect in every way. It took her nine months of casting, coincidentally while she was pregnant, to make the intricate spell work just right.

“That’s why you’re a null? Your mother did that to you?”

“But that’s just it, I’m not a null.” Finn shook his head. “I’m a lot worse. I’m a magical magnet. I can strip power away and consume it, refilling my reserves, preventing any other weaving or spell from getting a hold of me. It took me a century to figure out how to control it, but I do. Sometimes it just happens if she takes too much, but it’s what she referred to as the perfect clean energy. It doesn’t require blood sacrifice or loss. Whatever it is, it’s long and ugly and I’m alive and I cannot die.”

“Immortal?”

He eyed her, she looked a little pale beneath her cosmetics. “More or less.”
 

“How old are you?”

“Well, older than you. But I was born just after the American Revolution…so 1778-ish? I forget. Before electricity and internal plumbing. The human mind was never meant to keep memories as long as I’ve been around, so the first hundred years have kind of bled together.”

“Oh my God,” Pepper gasped, so much for being the same age. “And you…wait…if you
eat
magic, why would they let you in here?”

“That, my dear, is the fifty million dollar question.” Connor’s answer surprised the hell out of him—but after what Pepper said about Heidi, he understood it. It was a game of power, a game in which he was a piece Connor wanted to wield just as his mother had wielded him.

“And?”

“And I want to meet your Heidi.” He had some choices to make.

Pepper hesitated.

“I only want a conversation with her, I swear. I want to ask her about you.”

“What can she tell you that I can’t?”

She can tell me why Connor wants to destroy the protections on the Midnight Mystery Lounge.
“A lot, I imagine. But one question we both need answered. What cure is there for you? And what does she need from me to get it?”

“She said it had to involve something I value…”

Finn didn’t have the heart to tell her that she valued Heidi. Not yet. “I know. Can you arrange a meeting?”

“Probably.” Wariness returned to her voice and he lifted their joined hands to kiss her knuckles. “But it will have to be tonight. She usually locks the theatre during the day.”

“Okay then. Let’s go have breakfast and try not to think about it for a while.”
And enjoy a few hours before I have to make a decision.

They spent the day exploring the casino. Finn knew places Pepper didn’t even realize existed, because she’d never ventured out of the theatre on anything more than playful forays to the gaming floors or maybe another theatre to see how they put on their shows.
 

On the fourth floor, a library and recreational area opened up onto a patio deck with a swimming pool, where they had breakfast at a shaded table. On the first floor, the shops fed into each other and like a dragon’s warren of loot—a gift shop extended into a flower shop which then turned into a clothing store and further to a chocolatier. He spoiled her with constant purchases that were whisked back to her room before she could say no. They skipped the slots and he took her instead to the movie theatres, where she made herself sick on popcorn, red licorice and sweet tea. The downside of her returned human appetite, however, was the side effects of binging had returned. She worried about how much she ate—but it all tasted so good.

A late lunch of burger baskets and people watching turned into a game. Finn could peg people just by watching their interactions. He pointed out one couple where the man was planning to propose and that the woman would say yes. They had a front row seat when the guy sucked up his courage. Another couple sailed through, all prim and cold and aristocratic.

“Vampires,” Finn commented as he sipped his drink.

“They came in the front door,” Pepper argued. “And the sun is shining.”

“No they didn’t. They came up from the garage over there, but they blurred through the crowd to fake their arrival for the cameras. Too many tourists in here and they’re aware of it.” The romance convention was still in high swing.

“I wonder if the book signings are today.” She swirled a fry in the ketchup. “I think the convention rooms are down there.” She motioned to one of the long hallways jetting away from the lobby and main casino floor.

“We can try to get you in. Maybe you can introduce me to the real Virginia DeWylde.” He waggled his brows.

Her face warmed and she sighed. “You’re never going to let me forget that are you?”

“Not any time soon. Though I admit, you really thought quick on your feet to come up with that.”

“I didn’t,” she admitted with a wince.
 

“Did you just make that name up?” asked Finn.

“I honestly don’t know where it came from. The words just spilled out of me and they seemed to be working. I’m actually a terrible liar.”

“It’s one of your more fascinating qualities given how most people are good at it.” He collected their trash and rose, but she still had a few fries left and she liked sitting next to the fountain. The hustle and bustle flowed around them like a living stream and they were the rocks. Instead of sitting back down, he waited on his feet, studying the crowds. “Where do you think the story you told came from?”

“I don’t know…Heidi works in mysterious ways.” Pepper grinned. “I opened my mouth and the story came out.”

Finn spared her a look. “Has it happened since then?”

“I don’t think so…except for that weird thing last night.” Tension locked up her neck. She’d meant to ask Heidi about that—hell, she’d meant to do a lot of things, but the damn disease exhausted her.

“The losing time?” Apparently Finn knew exactly what she meant.