Wilde Card: Immortal Vegas, Book 2 (16 page)

The girl addressed us all, but her gaze drifted to me. Beside me, Nikki stiffened, but with my newly acquired sensitivity, I could feel it all on my own. The girl was definitely Connected.

“Yep,” Nikki said quietly as we followed the young woman to the right, through large oak doors into an equally shadowed and draped room, this one set up like a miniature theatre of the strange. “She’s got the gift. It’s pretty strong too.”

“Please, make yourself comfortable.”

There was a small stage at the center of the room, with a table, two chairs, and an honest-to-God fainting couch. Surrounding the stage was a semicircle of chairs. I kept glancing around for Penn and Teller, but it appeared we were alone in the room.

“You’ll be the focus of Madame Roxie’s reading, yes?” Our usher set a glass of ice water in front of me.

That jolted me. “She told you that?”

“She’s very eager to see you.” She smiled at me, and reached out her hand. It was gloved, so I took it. You simply couldn’t be too careful around Connecteds. She drew me up on the stage and offered me the couch. I took a chair. Nikki sprawled in one of the viewer seats.

“Have you worked with, ah, Madame Roxie long?” I asked.

“Oh no,” she said. “Madame Roxie allows her assistants to stay a year each, at the most. But it has truly been an honor. She’s paying for my graduate studies in psychology.”

“My stars! That must be exciting. Where are you going to school?” Dixie drew the woman’s attention away, giving Nikki and me the chance to exchange glances. Yearly interns? That was interesting.

A bell sounded deep in the house, and the assistant straightened, her pleasant demeanor taking on an edge of excitement. “You’ll see. She’s unlike anything you’ve ever encountered before.”

She was wrong, of course.

The woman who swept into the room took Dixie’s bombshell status and raised it several notches. The first thing you noticed about Madame Roxie was the bourbon in her hand; the second was the Venetian half mask that covered her upper face, tucked neatly into her flowing golden curls. But there was no denying that beneath that mask flowed the smoothly perfect skin of a young woman. Wrapped in a fire-engine red silk dressing gown that was slit up to her thighs, Roxie strode boldly forward with both hands outstretched to greet us, her red lipstick smile stretched almost to the breakpoint over straight white teeth.

“Darlings! How perfect that you’re here.” Her voice was bright, sunny and, like everything else about her, way too young for the age we knew her to be.

Dixie gawked, totally losing all sense of decorum. “Madame Roxie? You’re…you’re the Empress?”

Roxie turned to Dixie, startled for a second, then appeared to take her presence in stride. “Why, Dixie Quinn. I didn’t think I’d see you again. Cooped up here in this house as I am, I don’t much entertain my old friends.” She surveyed Dixie critically. “You’ve aged. Pity. Still, now that we can all verify that I did at least
try
for discretion regarding the Council, there’s no need for this silly thing anymore.”

As Dixie stammered a blend of indignation and awe, Roxie set down her drink and pulled off the Venetian mask. She shook out her hair, and I blinked, momentarily transfixed by her blond, boozy beauty. She was like the original good-time girl, preserved for all eternity.

She tossed the mask to the table. “I don’t know why I care so much. One of the Council’s tricks grants us the ability to hide in plain sight—or did it never occur to you that no one ever questions that the stunning Eshe never ages, that Kreios looks the same now as he did the day he took his seat on the Council?” She threaded her hand through her curls. “I should have learned about them maybe three years earlier than I did, but still. You have to take your opportunities when they come.”

She turned to me, picking up the glass of bourbon and taking a long, appreciative sip while she studied me. I studied her back. She was worth studying.

“Sara Wilde,” she said at length. “I’ve heard so much about you.” She gestured to the couch behind me. “You should lie down. You are…so tired.”

“I’m good in the chair, thanks.”

“As you wish.”

Roxie drifted toward her chair and sat, and I could feel the energy swell up and around her, the very air giving way. She regarded me with an almost palpable pleasure, a cat surrounded with bowls of cream.

“Let me guess. The Magician doesn’t know you’re here. Eshe sent you, and she’s keeping it from him. Eshe, I always did like. Kreios too. But then, what’s not to enjoy about Kreios?”

“No one sent us.” I shifted in my chair. “But while we’re on the topic, why aren’t you on the Strip? There’s that castle—”

“Lovely, isn’t it? Makes me happy that it’s there, off in the distance.” She leaned back. “And I’m not hiding, sweetie. I remain in the city to spite Armaeus, not to cower from him. I stick in his craw like a piece of gristle he can’t spit out, and Lord, if that doesn’t make me sleep easier at night.” She winked at me. “Still, you can tell him I have no interest in joining his crusade. The Council has proven quite beneficial to me, and I thank them for it. But I’m quite fine with my limited involvement.” She waved the glass, grinning at me. “I can tell you what you want to know, though. The newcomers to Vegas. Why they’re here. I’m right, aren’t I, about your question? I’m always right.”

She took a long drink as I nodded. “And your payment?” I asked.

“Oh, we can dispense with that.” She leaned forward, her face suddenly intent. “Despite the fools who’ve flocked to the city, there are some legitimate players of interest here too. Perhaps fifty who are dangerous, but maybe three of real concern. There had been four, but Monsieur Mercault has quite unaccountably gone missing. He will not be in play for the scroll cases Armaeus covets so deeply.”

“He’s…” I tried not to gape at the flood of information. “Do you know what happened to Mercault?”

She smiled. “That is another question, Sara, with a different price.” She lifted her glass in a toast. “For your purposes, you most want to pay attention to Grigori Mantorov, Russian and quite proud of it. Appears to be a gentleman, and of course, there’s that divine accent, but make no mistake, he’s as dirty as it gets. You want to know who is behind the Connected trafficking, particularly the trafficking of the youngest of souls, you need merely to go to his door.”

The youngest of souls?
“How do you know him?”

She shrugged. “It’s a shared knowledge. I don’t have to sit on the Council to know what they know. Another advantage of living in the city. They tend to think very…loudly.”

Anger riffled through me. If Roxie knew this guy, that meant the Magician knew him too. Knew him and hadn’t told me about him. “Grigori Mantorov.”

“Yes, but he’s not the only one who will be here. Annika Soo will be too, and she ‘s not to be ignored. Chinese, also proud of it. Powerful, deadly, and constantly furious. Her, I would watch out for.”

“Agreed.” I did know Annika Soo. I’d never been hired by her, but I’d narrowly escaped her minions twice. I tried to tamp down my mad to get the information I needed. If Annika Soo was actually here, that was out of character. “She usually prefers to poach artifacts from finders after the fact, instead of hiring out the wetwork herself. Why is she getting involved personally?”

“A strategic move to show she’s still very much in the game. It’s no secret that the balance of power is shifting in the arcane black market. Her interests are at stake, and her position, and her pride. She won’t allow anyone to take what she believes should be hers.”

“So Annika, Grigori—are they Connecteds? Or just rich?”

Roxie lifted a silk-clad shoulder. “Power is a matter of nuance. You know that. One man’s intuition is another man’s psychic gift. One woman’s ability to shift is another woman’s hallucination brought on by mental illness. It’s all in what we can accept into our lives, or what we choose to use.”

I stared at her. “Are. They. Connecteds?”

“I think for your purposes, it is best to assume so.” Not exactly an answer, but Roxie kept going. “The third party is your primary concern, however. He has money and intelligence and charisma. And, unless I miss my guess, he’s a Connected too: Jarvis Fuggeren.”

“Wait.” I sat back. “I thought Fuggeren was the one
selling
the gold.”

Roxie smiled. “Jarvis Fuggeren, as was all his family before him, is a master of playing both ends against the middle. You want to know the real reason why he is conducting this sale at the Rarity and not in the privacy of his own home?”

“Showboating?”

“Information gathering. He knows about SANCTUS but not who is behind them. Who the power players are. And he knows better than to invite them to meet in secrecy. His caution is for naught, though. Wherever he goes, the arcane black market follows. They trail after him like dogs, ready to feast on whatever spoils he leaves behind.”

“Yeah, well, what about the low-level psychics who’re here in the city? They don’t know Fuggeren, or about his gold. They frankly shouldn’t know about SANCTUS. What’s set them off?”

Roxie lifted her brows. “There are some questions even I don’t deign to answer. Not yet. But I will tell you this. SANCTUS is an organization that thrives on its secrecy. They prefer to pick off the Connected community in a death by a thousand cuts.”

Yeah, I’d witnessed a good dozen of those “cuts” littering Mercault’s estate.

“But the collection of Connected currently assembling in Las Vegas is, if you’ll pardon the pun, a
rarity
,” Roxie continued. “It will prove to be a temptation that SANCTUS cannot ignore. Here they can kill a community of psychics and believers in significant numbers, without any repercussions. Here, more importantly, they can warn off the next wave of the curious, those low-level Connecteds who aren’t yet fully aware they have abilities.”

I thought about the people I’d seen in Dixie’s chapel. “Those people aren’t SANCTUS’s targets.”

“Of course they are.” Her smile was hard, jaded. “Curiosity must be punished as much as action, in a war like the one SANCTUS is fighting.”

“But why, specifically, are they here, anyway? Who lured them? There were
flyers
, Roxie. Some of these people had visions. All of them were being instructed to come here, to Vegas, for solstice, and it’s all come together in the past several days. There’s no way SANCTUS has that kind of infrastructure on American soil.”

Her gaze didn’t waver from mine, but neither did she speak for a long moment. Long enough for me to play connect the dots with my fried cerebral cortex. “No. No way.”

Roxie sighed, then sat down her drink and reached out to touch my hands. I let her do it, too. The flow of her energy was light and full, but it couldn’t reach the hard center of me, a core that was quickly turning to ice and stone. “The
Council
drove them here?” I demanded. “All these innocent people? They herded them here like
sheep
to draw the wolves down on them?” Not the Council, I knew. Armaeus. Armaeus had done this.

Roxie’s mouth tightened, but her eyes remained steady. “The role of the Council is to assure the balance of magic.”

“Are you freaking kidding me?” I yanked my hands away. “These people have no idea they’re about to be dropped into the middle of a
war
, Roxie. You and your precious Council
know
that.”

“Not mine.” She drew herself up as well. “I have not allied myself with the Council for decades.”

“Well, maybe it’s time you reconsidered that. These people can’t stand up to SANCTUS—they’re not prepared for it.”

“Armaeus believes—”

“Armaeus is
wrong
, Empress.” I spit out her honorific like a curse and stood. “You’re all wrong. And a whole lot of people are going to die if you freak shows don’t get that through your heads.”

Dixie’s phone buzzed, and she jumped, clearly not expecting it. “I swear I shut it off…” She frowned down at her screen. “Sweet Mother Mary and the angels.” She looked up at us, eyes wide. “The Deathwalkers are here.”

Chapter Fifteen

Nikki fled the room first, moving faster than I’d ever seen her rock a pair of stilettos. Dixie was on her heels. I stayed put, staring at Roxie as color flooded her face.

“Deathwalkers?” I asked. Clearly I needed to keep better tabs on my Connecteds, but I’d been
busy
. “What’s a Deathwalker?”

“A coven of witches from the Old Country.”

“Like, what, Germany?”

She flapped a hand at me. “Chicago. They were prominent during the mob rule in Vegas but lost interest in the seventies and the mob tried to carry on without them. That went well. Since then, the Deathwalkers entered into international finance and trade, went clean, you could say. But if they’re here…”

My head was spinning. “You’re telling me that Armaeus sent
them
an e-mail too? To sweeten the pot further for SANCTUS?”

“No. That wouldn’t have maintained the—”

I turned away, unwilling and unable to hear the word “balance” anytime in the next century. Nikki and Dixie were already screaming at each other when I joined them in the car, and we raced back to the Strip in a blur. The coven had decided we would meet in a diner, and we roared up to the Blue Moon at three p.m.—typically a downtime, according to Nikki, unless a bunch of Deathwalkers had recently shown up. Instead, the parking lot was packed with vehicles.

Inside, however, there was only one table taken, by three people. Whether the diner had been full before and everyone had taken a convenient walk, or the cars in the parking lot were an illusion, I wasn’t sure. But a line of servers stood frozen behind the counter, not making a move toward the trio—two women and one man.

I couldn’t blame them. The group was preternaturally pretty, in a high-cheekboned, perfectly chiseled sort of way. The woman in the center, clearly their leader, stared at us with stony disapproval. The other two focused their attention on their hands, which they held in a loose cuplike formation on the white paper place mats on the table in front of them. Their lips moved in a silent concert, but I couldn’t see any power sparking from them. Nikki was too tense for there not to be something going on, however. And then there were the servers. You didn’t work long in Vegas without becoming jaded, but these people were seriously spooked.