Embrace the Night
Page 25

I had heard of them, but the memory was vague. Just something about a lot of ancient monuments being constructed on parallel lines. “Assume I know nothing,” I told her.
She smirked. “I always do.” Françoise said something in a language I didn’t know and Radella flushed bright red. She slapped her tiny hand down, making the whole cabinet shudder beneath her. “Quiet, slave! Remember to whom you’re speaking!”
“I always do,” Françoise told her sweetly.
“Ladies!” I looked back and forth between the two of them, but nobody was going for weapons, which made it a pretty congenial conversation for those two.
“To put it really, really simply,” Radella said icily, her eyes still on Françoise, “ley lines are borders between worlds: yours, mine, the demon realms, whatever. When those borders collide, you get stress, like when two of your tectonic plates rub together. And stress creates energy.”
“Like magical fault lines.”
“That’s what I said!” Radella snapped. “Only in this case, there’s no land to move, only magical energy getting hurled about. Therefore, instead of earthquakes or tsunamis, you get power, which can be used for various applications by those who know how.”
“Like running portals.”
“Under certain circumstances. If two particularly strong ley lines cross, they might generate that kind of energy, but it doesn’t happen often.”
“Then all we have to do is look for this sink thing,” I said excitedly. “If it’s putting off that kind of power, it should be easy to find!”
Radella sighed and muttered something I was just as glad I couldn’t understand. “There are ley lines all around Vegas,” she finally said. “But none cross anywhere near here. The closest area where they do is the MAGIC enclave, which is why it was built where it is.”
“So what was Tony using?” I asked impatiently.
“As a guess?” Radella pursed her little mouth. It made her look like professor Barbie. “Death magic. Quick, powerful, easily obtained.”
“As long as you ’ave the stomach for eet,” Françoise muttered darkly.
“Wait a minute.” I was really hoping I’d heard wrong. “You’re saying that, even if I find Tony’s portal, I’d have to kill someone to use it?”
Radella shrugged. “Well, you know. Not anyone you like.”
“I’m not committing murder!”
“I theenk I could power ze portal,” Françoise said, “for a short time. With some help.”
She was looking at me, but I shook my head. “I was never trained. Tony was afraid of having a powerful witch at court.”
“But…you know notheeng?” She looked horrified.
“Pretty much.”
“But, you run ’ere and zere”—she made some flailing motions in the air—“doing theengs, all ze time!”
“As opposed to what? Waiting for someone to come kill me?”
“But, eef the dark mages catch you, they weel drain you of your power! Eet would be awful!”
I smiled grimly. “Yeah. Only they’d have to get in line.”
“Quoi?”
“Nothing.” I glanced at the pixie. “We can worry about how to power the damn thing once we find it. Any little ideas on that?”
She looked thoughtful. “It has to be a hidden portal. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“We know it’s hidden!” I said, exasperated.
“No, hidden hidden. As in, not in this world until summoned.”
“Did you hear me just say I know nothing about magic?”
Radella scowled. “Think of it like a door. A door that uses energy whenever it’s open. So you keep it closed until needed.”
“When you open it with a sacrifice.”
“Right. But if that’s how this portal works, there’s probably a special incantation to summon it.”
“Let me guess. You don’t know the incantation.” It figured.
“It’s different for every portal, a password known only to the users.”
“Who are now all in Faerie,” I reminded her. “How am I supposed to get it?”
A sly look came over her tiny, doll-like face. “Perhaps I could figure something out, for the right price.”
I narrowed my eyes at the scheming little thing. “Now what?”
She fidgeted, trying to look nonchalant. I thought it was just as well she was too small to do any gambling; with a poker face like that, she’d have been soaked in five minutes flat. “I want a second casting of the rune,” she finally blurted out. “In case the first one doesn’t result in a child.”
I got busy checking out another gun for a moment. I’d been under the impression that we’d already agreed that I’d give her the rune, not just cast it. Maybe the thing was more valuable than I’d thought.
“All right,” I said slowly, trying to sound reluctant. “Another casting.”
“With no restrictions! Even if I get with child on the first, I still get the second!”
“Agreed.”
Radella swallowed. “What kind of help do you want?”
“Whatever is needed.” I wasn’t about to let her impose conditions, either.
“I knew you’d find a way to talk me into this insanity,” she sniped, but her heart clearly wasn’t in it.
“Do we have a deal?”
“Oh, you damn well know we do!” I smiled, and she grimaced back. “Don’t be so smug, human. You haven’t heard my idea yet.”
Dante’s front entrance is something out of a medieval nightmare, with writhing basalt statues, tortured topiaries and an honest-to-God moat. The front door handles are agonized faces that moan and groan and utter its famous catchphrase, telling all who enter to abandon hope—along with their wallets. But demented decor is expensive, which explains why the back looks more like a modern warehouse, with loading ramps, overripe Dumpsters and a plain chain-link fence surrounding a crowded employee parking lot.
Françoise, Radella, Billy Joe and I landed in Dante’s parking lot two weeks in the past. It was still a few hours before the sun, or anyone with any sense, would think about rising. In other words, high noon for the types I needed to see.
Radella’s big idea was to go back in time before everyone who knew how to summon the portal left, and get the incantation out of them by whatever means necessary. I had amended that to exclude beatings, knifings or anything likely to result in the total trashing of the timeline. Françoise had added a refinement by mentioning that she could probably erase the short-term memory of anyone except a powerful mage. So we had a plan—we just needed the right guy. And Casanova’s predecessor, a slimy operator known as Jimmy the Rat, was my best guess for man in the know.
“Je suis désolée,” Françoise said, apparently talking to the bottom of the chain-link fence.
I exchanged looks with the pixie, who merely shrugged. I bent over to get a better look and found myself handcuffed to the fence post. “What the hell?”
Françoise stood back and crossed her arms, regarding me with a fair imitation of Pritkin in a mood. “We weel go. Eet ees too dangerous for you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You ’ave not the skill in magique, n’est-ce pas?”
“What’s your point?”
“You ’ad to breeng us ’ere; zere was no choice. But you do not ’ave to risk yourself now. We weel talk to thees gangster while you remain where it is safe.”
“I can handle Jimmy!”
Françoise didn’t answer, but she got this look on her face, like she was perfectly happy to stand in the parking lot for the rest of the night discussing it. I tugged on the cuff, but she must have liberated it from Casanova’s storeroom, because it was good-quality steel. All my efforts did was rattle the fence and piss me off.
“Okay,” I said. “You go, me stay. Have fun.”
“You aren’t serious,” Billy said incredulously.
“You weel stay right ’ere?” Françoise looked doubtful. Maybe she’d expected me to argue more.
I jangled the fence again for effect. “Do I have a choice?”
“I don’t trust her,” the pixie said, eyeing me narrowly. “We should stick her in a closet.”
“I have a gun,” I pointed out.
Radella frowned. “She’s right. She could shoot the lock.”
“I was thinking of something a little more animated,” I told her, not entirely sure I was kidding.
“Eet is for your own good,” Françoise said, biting her lip. She suddenly looked uncertain.
Radella snapped her fingers. “We knock her out. Then we stuff her in the closet. A really small one,” she added viciously.
Françoise didn’t even bother to look at her. “We return soon,” she promised, then turned on her heel and strode away.
“Yeah, I’ll just wait here like a glorified taxi driver,” I called after her. Her shoulders twitched slightly, but I didn’t know if that was from shame or from not knowing what a taxi was.
“Okay, that was really—” Billy began.
I held up my free hand. Françoise paused by the back door and looked in my direction. Probably wondering why my hand was hovering in the air. I waved at her and after a minute she and Radella let themselves in through the employee entrance. As soon as the door closed, I shifted two feet ahead. Behind me, the now empty cuff banged against the fencing.
“I forget you can do that now,” Billy said.
“So do I, half the time.” I rubbed my wrist and looked around. There was no one in sight. It occurred to me that maybe I should have looked before doing my Houdini impression.
“Why didn’t you just show them that they were wasting their time?” Billy demanded.