Touch The Dark

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 Alighieri'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 mural-sized 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 want 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.

Billy hadn't liked the idea when I'd explained what I wanted in the car. This was the most powerful he'd felt in a long time, and if he was going to waste it on a possession, he stated plainly that Jimmy would not be his first choice. But, like I told him, all I needed was time enough for the loser to tell me what I wanted to know, and then confess his sins to the Vegas PD. Even if he denied it all later, if he had provided enough particulars on a bunch of unsolved cases, he would have trouble eluding justice. And, if plan A didn't work, I could always shoot him. I was already on the run from Tony, his allied families, the Silver Circle and the vampire Senate; after that, the cops didn't scare me much.

Billy Joe and I sat at the end of the bar. I hadn't seen him this juiced up in a while—those wards he ate really must have been something. He looked almost completely solid, to the point that I could tell he hadn't shaved for a day or two before his death. But no one else seemed to notice him, although no one tried to sit on his stool, either. If they had, and they were norms, they'd have felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over their heads. Which was why we took seats far away from everyone else.

"You going to tell me why we're here?"

I glanced about, but there was no one close enough to notice if I started talking to myself. Most of the bar, which seemed to have an exclusively female clientele, was busy ogling the waiters, who happily ogled right back. A handsome black-haired satyr nearby was encouraging one of the patrons to see whether she could figure out where his «costume» began. She had the glassy-eyed look of someone who'd been drinking for a while, but the hands she was running over his sleek black flanks were remarkably steady. I frowned; if I'd still been with Tony, I'd have reported him. He was practically asking for someone to figure things out and run screaming to the cops.

"You know why. He killed my parents. He must know something about them."

"You're risking us getting caught by the Senate, who are not going to underestimate you again, I might add, to ask a couple questions about people you don't even remember? You're not planning on blowing this guy away, are you? A little payback for messing with you? Not that I mind, but it might draw attention."

I ignored the question and ate some peanuts out of a little bloodred serving bowl. Wasting Jimmy wouldn't be as satisfying as taking out Tony, but at least it would be something. A sign to the universe that I'd had enough of people screwing up my life; I was perfectly capable of doing that all by myself. The only problem was the actual killing part of that scenario, which frankly made me nauseous to even think about. "You'll see what he did in a minute if the possession goes okay."

"That's a big if. Demons are the possession experts; I'm only a lowly ghost."

"You never have trouble with me." Billy Joe had been heavily into wine, women and song in life, with a strong emphasis on the first two. I can't help him much with the second need, and I hate his taste in music, which runs to Elvis and Hank Williams. But I occasionally reward him with a drink if he's been exceptionally good, and, of course, that means a little more than buying him a six-pack. Those instances aren't a real possession, though. Although I let him in to use my taste buds, I remain in full control. He plays nice during these infrequent events because he knows that if he doesn't, when his power runs out I'll bury his necklace in the middle of nowhere and leave it to rot. But as long as he keeps to the rules, I let him in on special occasions so he can eat, drink and be merry right along with me. Since I'm not in the habit of getting plastered and trashing bars, it's never quite wild enough for his tastes, but it's better than nothing.

"You're an unusual case. It's a lot harder with other people. Anyway, humor me and answer the question."

I toyed with a tiny death's-head swizzle stick and wondered why I hesitated. My parents' deaths weren't that hard to talk about. I had memories from my street years that I would never willingly revisit, but as Billy Joe had pointed out, I'd been only four when Tony ordered the hit. My memories before that are hazy: Mom is actually more a smell than anything else—the rose talcum powder she must have liked—and Dad is a sensation. I remember strong hands throwing me into the air and spinning me around when they caught me; I know his laugh, too, a deep, rich chuckle that warmed me down to my toes and made me feel protected. Safe isn't something I feel very often, so maybe that's why the memory is so sharp. Other than that, all I know about them came from the vision I had at age fourteen.

Along with puberty, my cosmic birthday present that year was to see my parents' car explode in an orange and black fireball that left nothing but twisted metal and burning leather seats behind. I'd watched it from Jimmy's car while he made a phone call to the boss. He lit a cigarette and calmly let him know that the hit had gone as planned and that he should pick up the kid from the babysitter before the cops started looking for me. Then it faded, and I was alone in my bedroom at Tony's country estate, shivering with reaction. Childhood pretty much ended for me that night. I'd run away an hour later, as soon as dawn came and all good little vampires were in their safe rooms. I'd been gone three years.

Not having bothered to plan out my escape in advance, I didn't have any of the perks the Feds had thoughtfully provided the second time around to cushion the experience.

There was no fake social security card or birth certificate, no guaranteed employment and no one to go to if things went wrong. I'd also had no real idea how the world worked outside Tony's court, where people might be tortured to death from time to time, but nobody ever dressed poorly or went hungry. If I hadn't had help from an unlikely source, I'd never have made it.

My best friend as a child was Laura, the spirit of the youngest girl in a family Tony had murdered around the turn of the last century. Her family home was an old German-built farmhouse that sat on sixty pretty acres outside Philadelphia. It had some enormous trees that were probably already old when Ben Franklin lived in the area and a stone bridge over a small stream, not that its beauty was the main attraction for Tony. He liked it for the privacy and the fact that it was only an hour's commute to the city, and he didn't take the family's refusal to sell very well. Of course, he could have simply bought another house in the area, but I doubt that even crossed his mind. I guess losing our families to Tony's ambition gave Laura and me a bond. Whatever the reason, she had refused to stay in her grave under the old barn out back and roamed the estate at will.

That was lucky for me, since the only other little girl around Tony's was Christina, a 180-year-old vampire whose idea of playtime wasn't the same as mine, or any other sane person's. Laura was probably close to a century old herself, but she always looked and acted about six. That made her a wise older sibling when I first came to Tony's, who taught me the joys of mud pies and playing practical jokes. Years later, she showed me where to find her dad's hidden safe—with more than ten thousand dollars in it that Tony had missed—and acted as a lookout when I ran away the first time. She made a nearly impossible task feasible, but I never had a chance to thank her. By the time I returned, she had gone. I guess she'd done her job and moved on.

The ten thousand bucks—along with the paranoia I'd learned at Tony's—had allowed me to survive on the streets, but it was still a time I tried to avoid thinking about. The lack of material comforts and occasional danger weren't what convinced me to go back, however. I'd made that decision based on the realization that I'd never be able to get revenge from outside the organization. If I wanted Tony to suffer for what he'd done, I would have to return.

It easily ranked as the hardest thing I've ever done, not only because I hate Tony so much, but also because I didn't know whether his greed would override his anger. Yes, I made him a lot of money and was a useful weapon he could hold over the heads of his competitors. They never knew what I might tell him about them and, while it didn't keep them completely honest, it did cut down on the more blatant cheating. But that didn't reassure me much. Tony isn't always predictable: he's smart, and he usually makes decisions for financially sound reasons, but there are times when his temper gets away from him.

He once took on another master over a minor territorial dispute that could have been solved with negotiators from either side sitting down together for a few hours. Instead, we went to war, always a dangerous business (if the Senate finds out about it, you're dead whether you lose or not), and lost more than thirty vamps. Some of them were among the first Tony ever made. I saw him crying over the bodies after the cleanup crew brought them back to us, but knew it wouldn't make any difference the next time. Nothing ever did. So all things considered, I hadn't known whether to expect open arms or a session in the basement. It had been the former, but I'd always had the feeling that this was as much because I caught Tony on a good day as because I was useful to him.

It took three very long years to amass enough proof to destroy Tony's operation through the human justice system. I couldn't go to the Senate, since nothing Tony had done actually violated vamp laws. Killing my parents was perfectly okay, since neither had the support of another master, and the hit had been made to look like something human criminals had done. As for misuse of my powers, they'd probably have applauded his business acumen. Assuming I even got in to see them, they would have merely returned me to my master for appropriate punishment. But no human DA was going to listen to anything I had to say if I started talking about vampires, much less some of the stuff that went down at Tony's on a regular basis.

In the end, I'd had to set him up the same way the Feds got Capone. We nailed him on enough racketeering and tax-evasion charges to put him away for a hundred years. That isn't all that long to an immortal, but I was hoping the Senate would stake him for drawing too much attention to himself long before he had to worry about whether his cell had a window or not.

But when the sting went down, Tony was nowhere to be found. The Feds managed to round up and indict some of his human servants, but of the fat man himself there was no sign. Both his warehouses in Philly and his mansion in the country were empty, and my old nurse was dead in pieces in the basement. Tony had left me a letter explaining how his instincts had warned him that something was wrong, so he'd had Jimmy torture Eugenie to find out what I was doing. Vamps can take a lot of abuse, and Genie loved me; it took a long time to break her, but, as Tony said, he's the patient type. He wrote that he'd left me the body so I could dispose of it properly, since he knew how much she had meant to me. And so I'd know what I had to look forward to one of these days.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," I admitted to Billy. "But my parents weren't the only ones he killed who were important to me."

"I'm sorry." To his credit, Billy Joe knew when to stop pushing, and we sat in silence until the waiter returned with effusive apologies. The boss was unavailable for the evening. Apparently, Jimmy had gone home with a headache.

I flirted with the satyr for a few seconds before sending him off for another drink. As he left, Billy emerged from his head, looking surly. "And I thought I had a dirty mind! You don't even want to know what he was thinking about you."

"Got that right. So where's Jimmy?"

"In the basement, like I told you. They posted a loss last quarter, so Jimmy's being sent to the ring."

Talk about childish. The Senate wouldn't let Tony kill me, so he was taking it out on someone else. I stood up and headed for the exit. There were a few things I wanted to ask Jimmy before he made his contribution to the evening's entertainment. But I knew I'd better hurry. The ring was Tony's favorite spectator sport, but it tended to have a detrimental effect on the participants. He had decided a century ago that it was a shame to simply kill anybody who displeased him, and had set up a boxing ring to decide things instead. But it wasn't used for boxing, and only one fighter walked out alive after each anything-goes match. It beat the usual Vegas fights all to hell, and like them, was usually rigged so the right person lost. "How do I get down there?"

Billy located a service stairway by the ladies' room for me, while he disappeared through the floor to do some advance scouting. He reappeared about the time I hit the lower levels, with less than happy news. "Jimmy's scheduled to be up next, and they got him matched against a werewolf. I think it's one of that pack Tony took on a few years ago."

I winced. Great. Tony had ordered their alpha killed to encourage them to move out of his territory, and Jimmy had done the deed. So any member of that pack was required to kill him on sight or die trying. If he got in the ring, he was not walking out again.

I reached for the service door only to find Billy barring the way. "Move. You know I don't like walking through you." I'd fed him once tonight, and that was enough.

"You aren't going in there. I'm serious; don't even think about it."

"The only person who might tell me about my parents is about to be eaten. Get out of the way!"

"Why, so you can join him?" Billy pointed a very substantial-looking finger. "Through that door is a hallway. At the end of it are two armed guards. They're human, but if by some miracle you get past 'em, there's a whole roomful of vamps on the other side. You go in there and you're dead, and without you I'll soon fade too far to do any damage. End result—Tony wins. Is that what you want?"

I glared at him. I hate it when he's right. "Then what do you suggest? I'm not leaving until I see him."

Billy grimaced. "Then come this way, fast."

We fled down the corridor in the opposite direction, and I was soon glad that Billy was there to provide directions. The place was a rabbit warren of tunnels, all painted the same industrial gray. In minutes I had no idea where I was. We stopped several times to duck into rooms, most of which were filled with cleaning supplies, broken gambling machines and, in one case, wall after wall of computers. The one thing they didn't have was people—I guess everyone who was off duty was at the fights.

I thought we were avoiding being seen again when Billy disappeared into another wall, so I didn't waste any time flinging open the door. This time, I was met with a large room stuffed to the ceiling with what looked to be extra props and decorations. A collection of African masks and spears sat beside a suit of armor that was missing the bottom half of one leg. A rather ratty-looking stuffed lion's head leaned against a mummy case, which had been modified to house a poster board advertising a magic show. It was watched over by a huge statue of Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god, who seemed to be glaring at something in the far corner. I followed the line of its glassy, fixed stare and found Jimmy's ugly face peering out of a heavy-duty reinforced cage. The pointed features, slicked-back black hair and shifty eyes were those I remembered, but he must have been doing pretty well recently, because his usual baggy suit had been replaced with a sleek tan number that looked like it had been made for him.

It took him a few seconds to place me. When he'd known me, my hair had reached the small of my back and I dressed in Eugenie's version of appropriate attire for young ladies, which meant long skirts and high-necked blouses. The hair had been sacrificed to a more practical, and far less memorable, bob as soon as I went with the Witness Protection people. It had grown out some since then, but not enough to make much difference. And Jimmy had never seen me in anything like the leather number. After a confused few seconds, though, it clicked. So much for my great disguise.

"Cassandra! Goddamn, it's good to see you! I always knew you'd be back someday. Let me outta here, would you? There's been a big misunderstanding!"

"Misunderstanding?" I found it hard to believe that he really thought I'd just walked back into the organization. Tony might forgive a fourteen-year-old who had run off in what he assumed was a fit of adolescent angst, but an adult who had conspired to destroy him was another matter. I debated leaving Jimmy where he was, but although I liked having him securely behind bars, I preferred to talk somewhere less likely to be interrupted by Tony's thugs.

"Yeah. One of my assistants is trying to get ahead the easy way, and lied about me to the boss. I can straighten things out, but I gotta talk to Tony—"

"You certainly took your time." I looked around at the sound of a tiny voice but didn't see anything. "I found the witches, but one of the vamps caught me. Get me out!"

I glanced at Billy. "Who said that?"

"I'm over here! Are you blind?" I followed the squeak to a small birdcage that was almost hidden behind a peacock-feather fan. Inside was a woman about eight inches high and mad as a hornet. Flaming red hair framed a perfect Barbie-doll face and a pair of pissed-off lavender eyes. I blinked. What the hell was the bar putting in the drinks?

"It's a pixie, Cass," Billy said, looking unhappy. He drifted in front of her cage, and she scowled at him.

Tiny fists grabbed the bars of her cage and rattled them angrily. "Are you deaf, woman?! I said, get me out! And keep that thing away from me!"

"You know her?" I asked Billy, surprised. Apparently, he'd had a more interesting social life than I'd thought.

He shook his head. "Not that one, but I've met others. Don't listen to her, Cass. None of the Fey are anything but trouble."

"She's probably headed for the ring," I protested, trying to deal with the fact that Tony had found a way into Faerie, which wasn't a myth after all.

"These bars are iron, human! I feel sick already. Release me right now!" I blinked, surprised that a tiny voice could echo like that.

"Don't do it, Cass," Billy warned. "Doing the Fey favors is never a good idea. It comes back on you, and not in a good way." Her teeny face flushed an ugly red and she let out a string of imprecations in a language that I didn't know, but he obviously did. "Nasty, vile creature!" he spluttered. "Let her go to the ring, and good riddance!"

I sighed. Whatever or whoever she was, I wasn't leaving anybody to be entertainment for the bastard or his boys. "If I let you out, you have to promise not to interfere with anything I'm doing," I told her severely. "No blowing the whistle on us, okay?"

"You've lost your mind," she said flatly. "And when did you change clothes? What is going on around here?"

That's what I wanted to know. "Do I know you?"

Tiny green and lavender wings ruffled agitatedly on her back. "I can't believe this," she said in disgust. "I'm on a mission with an idiot." Her eyes narrowed as she scanned me. "Oh, no. You aren't my Cassandra, are you?" She threw up minuscule hands. "I knew it! I should have listened to Granddam: never, ever work with humans!"

"Hey, a little help here," Jimmy called from behind me.

"Just go," the pixie told me. "And take the ghost and the rat with you. I'll deal with this myself."

I had the feeling I needed to know what was going on, but staying around for a prolonged conversation probably wasn't smart. I pulled the latch on her cage, ignoring Billy's comments, and ran back to Jimmy. Unfortunately, his pen had a lock on it that required a key to open. "How do I gel you out of there?"

"Here," Jimmy slid up next to the bars. "They forgot to frisk me. The key's in my coat. Hurry up; they'll be back anytime!"

I reached for his jacket, but my hand stopped a foot away from the bars and simply refused to go any closer. It felt like an invisible wall of thick, sticky molasses had closed around it, one that didn't want to turn loose. The pixie buzzed over while I was struggling to pull my hand back. "I'll free the witches," she said, "but I need you to open a door for me."

"I can't even open this one," I told her, using my left hand to try to pull the right free. That backfired, leaving me with two hands that wouldn't go forwards or pull back. I was well and truly stuck.

"It's a tar-baby spell," Billy said, hovering about anxiously. "We need the release."

"It's a what?"

"That's slang for a really strong variation of a prehendo. I'm guessing that anything that gets within a certain perimeter of the cage is gonna get caught like a bug on flypaper, and the more you struggle, the tighter you're gonna be trapped. Try not to move."

"Now you tell me." His warning came about a second after I'd panicked and kicked out with my foot, only to have it get caught, too. Sometimes I really hated magic. "Billy! What do I do?"

"Stay still! I'll look around. It's gotta be here somewhere."

"Come back!" I yelled after him as he streamed off towards the suit of armor. "Get me out!"

Jimmy swore. "It has to be that thing." he said, pointing upwards. I now noticed what looked like a week-old baked apple hanging from a chain above the door. A second later I recognized it as one of those ugly, shrunken-head key chains they had in the lobby gift shop, along with skeleton tie tacks and "I did it at Dante's" T-shirts. Tony has no shame when it comes to making a buck. "It's the only thing that shouldn't be here."

The pixie flew up to examine it and almost bumped heads with Billy Joe, who'd come back to have a look. "Stay out of my way, remnant," she ordered. Billy was about to say something—probably fairly profane—but someone beat him to it. A shriveled, raisinlike eye popped open on the head and regarded the pixie with annoyance. "Call me that again, Tinkerbell, and you'll never get this door open."

I just stood there, not able to believe I was watching a pixie have a conversation with a shrunken head. I think that was about the time I gave up on logic and just decided to go with the flow. If I was lucky, someone had spiked my drink and I was hallucinating. No one said anything, so I figured it was up to me. "Can you please open the door?" I asked calmly.

The eye—there seemed to be only one working—swiveled to me. "That depends. What can you do for me?"

I stared at it. It was a shrunken head. The options were pretty limited. "What?"

"Hey, you look familiar. You ever come by the voodoo bar? It's in the Seventh Circle, upstairs. I was the star attraction, you know, a lot more popular than those lousy floor shows this loser booked. People would tell me their orders and I'd shout them out to the bartenders. It went over great. Everyone thought I was this sophisticated audio-animatronics thingy. Sometimes I told jokes, too. Like, what would they call Bugsy Seigel if he became a vamp? A fangster!" The little thing cackled maniacally. "I crack myself up, you know that?"

"It is evil," the pixie stated flatly. I nodded in agreement. Extensive warding was impossible in a place that ran off electricity, but was this really the best solution Tony had been able to find?

"Oh, we got a heckler, huh? Okay, how about this one? A guy walks into a bar in Hell and asks for a beer. The bartender says, sorry, but we only serve spirits here!"

"She's right; it is evil," Billy Joe said.

The pixie conked the head with the flat of a tiny sword she pulled off her belt. "Release her, or I will chop you into bits!"

The eye managed to look surprised. "Hey! You're not supposed to be able to do that! Why aren't you stuck like her?"

"Because I'm not human," the pixie said through gritted teeth. "Now, do as I say and stop stalling!"

"I would, honest, but I can't without authorization. I messed up once and look where that got me. All I wanted was a fast car and some faster women to put in it. Now I'd settle for my body back. Only, it's scattered around all over the place since that voodoo bitch carved me up. Give me a break. I got a little behind in my payments, sure, but come on."

"You owed Tony money," I guessed.

"I had what you might call a run of bad luck with the cards," it said with dignity.

"So Tony sold you to a voodoo priestess?" It didn't surprise me. Tony gave a new meaning to the phrase "pound of flesh."

"And then made me work in his stupid casino," the head ranted. "Then a few months ago, they got worried cause one of the regulars began to suspect that I wasn't just a pretty face, and I got stuck down here. No more parties, no more pretty girls, nada. It's been damn depressing. But hey, maybe they'll shrink you and we can hang out together. Literally. What do you—"

The pixie stopped the tirade by making good on her promise and hacking the head clean in two. I stared as the two halves swung free for a few seconds, each on one end of the thin chain; then they knitted themselves back together in front of my eyes. "Hello, already dead, remember?" the head said testily. "You may be able to hurt me, Tink, but it won't be in time to help your friends, here. For that, we hafta cut a deal."

"What do you want?" I asked quickly.

"My body, of course. Get those witches in there to reverse the bokor's mojo and put me back."

I stared at the crazed little thing. "That's insane. No one can reverse something like that. Even if we somehow looked up this voodoo woman, even she couldn't—"

"I'll promise," the pixie said impatiently. "Now, release her."

The head turned back to her so fast it would have had whiplash if it still had a neck. "Say that again."

To my surprise, she looked perfectly serious. "I will take you into Faerie. I don't make any promises about what you will look like, but you may acquire a body. Some spirits manifest there in a physical form."

"They do?" Billy asked with more interest than I liked. The pixie ignored him.

The head paused. "I gotta think about this," it said and suddenly stopped moving.

"Why does this thing say 'Made in Taiwan' on the bottom?" Billy asked, peering at it from about an inch away.

We exchanged looks, and Billy didn't need any prompting. He passed into the head and reappeared a few seconds later, looking pissed. "There's no consciousness in there, Cass, not to mention that it's plastic! Someone enchanted it to wake up if anyone got stuck in the tar baby. I'm guessing it set off an alarm and was trying to delay us long enough for someone to get here."

"Then why did it suddenly shut up?"

"As a guess, we made an offer it didn't know how to answer."

I closed my eyes and forced myself to calm down before I had a heart attack and saved Tony some reward bucks. "So, what are we supposed to do? We already tried attacking it!"

"We need the password, Cass—the release. Sometimes it's an object that you have to touch, or it can be a password. But this place is full of stuff! It'll take me some time to work through it all."

"What's going on? Who're you talking to?" Jimmy demanded.

"There's supposed to be a trigger around here, or a word that can force that thing to release me," I explained briefly. "It isn't real; it was triggered by the spell."

Jimmy looked surprised. "You mean that ain't Danny?"

"And Danny would be?"

"That shrunken head Tony made outta what was left of some guy back in the forties. We made it the model for our key rings." He looked annoyed. "You mean they put one of those novelty heads down here? What, I don't even rate the real thing?"

It was just as well I was stuck, or I'd have been tempted to thump him. "Do you know what the release is or not?"

He shrugged, still scowling. "Try 'banjo. " As soon as he said it, the stuff holding me in place was simply not there anymore. I'd been pulling away, useless though it was, and the momentum landed me on the floor on my already bruised backside. Jimmy grabbed me through the bars and hauled me to my feet. "You're wasting time!"

"Banjo?"

"We have passwords for restricted areas that are changed every few weeks. I approved the new list a couple days ago, and that was the first word on it." He saw my expression. "The boys are hired for brawn, not brain."

"But why 'banjo'?"

"Why not? Look, I have to come up with a couple hundred of these a year, okay? I ran out of abracadabras a long time ago. Besides, you wouldn't have guessed it, right?"

"I still need you to open the door," the pixie reminded me as I finally found a leather key chain in Jimmy's suit coat. My hands were shaking, but it was obvious he couldn't let himself out. Somebody had run out of handcuffs, or maybe they didn't like him any better than I did. Both his hands had been smashed, and they weren't merely broken, but ruined to the point that not a finger or joint appeared to be working. I was betting that, even if he got out of this, he'd made his last hit.

"I'm trying!"

"Not that one," she said impatiently. "The one by the cage where they put me." She whirled around my head like a tiny cyclone. "Against the far wall. My hands aren't big enough to turn that oversized knob."

"Give me a minute," I told her as the stubborn lock finally sprang open. Jimmy shot out of there at a dead run, heading for the hall. I glanced from him to the demanding pixie. "Follow him," I told Billy. "I'll be right there."

"Cass—"

"Just do it!"

Billy went off in a huff and I rushed to open the door the tiny virago indicated. I was about to turn and follow Billy when I found out what Tony's latest business venture was. Three brunette women, all about my age, sat back-to-back on the floor inside a rust-colored circle. Their hands and feet were bound, and makeshift gags had been stuffed in their mouths. I stared. "My God. He's slaving now?" Even for Tony, that was low.

"As good as," the pixie replied, flying over to the women. She grimaced and looked back at me. "This is worse than I thought. I can deal with the circle, but I can't get them loose."

I ran forward, wondering if one of the other keys on Jimmy's ring would work, and hit what felt like a solid wall. It didn't look like there was anything there, but my bruised nose said otherwise, and my ward flared, spilling golden light around the room. The pixie began chattering agitatedly. "Stupid witch! It's a circle of power! I'll destroy it, then you free the women!"

I moved backwards and my ward calmed down, although I could still feel it warm against my back. "I'm not a witch," I said resentfully, wondering if my nose was broken.

The pixie had dropped to the floor and started rubbing at the circle. It was made of a dried substance that flaked off slowly. "Okay. The Pythia's not a witch. Got it."

"Can't you hurry?" I asked after a minute, wondering how far Jimmy had gotten in his condition. "And my name is Cassie."

Sharp lavender eyes gave an exaggerated roll. "I used to think it was the position that made you so annoying, but you were born this way, weren't you? And I'm doing the best I can! The blood has dried and it's not coming off easily."

"Blood?"

"How do you think dark mages perform a spell? It takes a death, stupid." She started mumbling in that other language, while I hugged myself and tried not to think about what Tony was doing with a member of the Fey, some slaves and a circle of blood. He'd been on the wrong side of human law as long as I'd known him, but this contravened both mage and vampire rules as well. I didn't know when he'd turned suicidal, but I suddenly wanted out of the casino in the worst way.

Finally, my small accomplice finished cleaning a narrow line through the circle, and I heard a small pop. "Is that it?" I asked her. It seemed kind of anticlimactic.

She sat on the floor and panted. "Well, try it!"

I walked forward, tentatively this time, but nothing blocked me. I knelt quickly by the nearest woman and started trying keys. Thankfully, the third one worked. I pulled the gag out of her mouth, and she started screaming. I started to stuff it back in, before she alerted the whole casino, but she caught my hand. She began a rapid string of French in between kissing my wrist and whatever else she could reach. I didn't understand much of what she was saying—my only other modern language is Italian, and there aren't a lot of crossovers between the two—but the light brown eyes that were looking at me almost worshipfully rang a bell.

I got a weird feeling in my stomach. I knew this woman. She was plumper and looked far less haggard, but otherwise, little had changed since I'd seen her stretched on a rack enveloped in flames. I did a double take, but there was no denying it. That face was seared into my memory, and a glance at her fingertips showed them to be heavily scarred. As impossible as it was, a seventeenth-century witch was sitting in a casino in modern-day Vegas. Presumably a dead witch, since no one could have survived what I'd seen her put through. Any other day, I would have seriously considered passing out; as it was, I just pressed the key into her hand and scrambled back out of reach.

"I have to go," I said shortly and fled. My plan was simple: find Jimmy, question him, turn him over to the cops, then run like hell. Other complications I could do without.

I didn't need Billy to figure out that going back the way we'd come wasn't a great idea. If anyone was coming for Jimmy, that's the route they'd take, and my one gun wouldn't help much against the kind of hardware Tony's thugs carried. Not that I had seen any employees, muscle or otherwise, since hitting the lower levels, a fact that was beginning to worry me. It was early morning, sure, but a place like this never slept. There should be people around, especially if the ring was on tonight, but the hallways echoed emptily. I followed the corridor until I came to where it diverged. I paused, confused, until Billy floated through a wall and beckoned to me. "In here."

I entered through a nearby door to find myself in an empty employee break room. Jimmy was half-hidden behind a soda machine. "There's a doorknob," he said when he saw me, and pointed at the wall with his elbow, "right about there. But I can't do anything with these." He held up his mutilated hands and I hurried forward. Behind the machine was what looked like an expanse of the same off-white, slightly stained dry wall that made up the rest of the room. But it rippled around the edges, although I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been expecting it. The perimeter ward was getting old. I slid my hands along the wall until I grasped what felt like a knob, and pushed.

A door opened onto a narrow corridor that, judging by the dust on the floor, didn't get a lot of use. It wasn't a surprise. Tony always had multiple exits, half of them hidden, in his businesses. He told me once that it was a leftover from his youth, when armies went marching through Rome on a regular basis. He'd almost burnt to death when some Spanish soldiers in Charles V's army sacked his villa in the 1530s, and ever since he'd been paranoid. For once, I was grateful for it.

We ran down the hidden hallway, then climbed up a ladder at the end. Or, rather, I climbed and shoved Jimmy up in front of me. His hands were a major handicap, but he used his elbows, I pushed from below and somehow we made it. We burst out of a trapdoor into a locker room. A human wearing a sequined devil costume blinked at us blearily but didn't ask questions. He worked for Tony, so he was probably used to assorted oddities.

Jimmy scrambled to his feet and ran for the door, puffing like a freight train, and I wasn't much better off. I definitely needed to add gym visits to my to-do list, right after running for my life and killing Tony. The locker room exited onto another of those plain gray hallways, but mercifully, it was a short one. A few seconds later, we were standing near a forest of faux stalagmites overlooking the river. A Charon was rowing a few weary gamblers back towards the entrance a few yards away.

"Hey, where do you think you're going?!" Jimmy had started off without a word and didn't so much as flinch at my shout. Wrestling him to the ground wasn't an option, but fortunately, I knew something that was. "Billy, get him!"

I took off after Jimmy and felt Billy Joe flow past me like a warm breeze. He was usually cold or at least chilly, but he was hopped up on some vamp's wards and had energy to burn. But Jimmy reached the vestibule in record time and was heading for the gates when he suddenly stopped and stumbled backwards. I realized why when I saw Pritkin, Tomas and Louis-César coming in the main entrance. I didn't worry about how they'd found me or what they had planned. I grabbed a handful of Jimmy's elegant suit coat and dragged him back into the hallway.

"You aren't going anywhere until we talk about my parents," I informed him. Some of the larger stalagmites were between us and the trio from MAGIC, and I briefly thought we'd gotten away without being seen. Then I heard Tomas call my name. Damn, I was busted.