8

BREAD AND THE JAPANESE CIRCUS

Midnightish back in Vegas

We stumbled into the Japanese Circus around midnight. I’d spent the flight poring over Jebe’s journal and what I’d been able to copy off the university servers. After our run through the rain sewers of Vancouver, followed by an uncomfortable helicopter ride to the airport with a pilot who wouldn’t stop staring at our mud-covered clothes, we made it home. At this point though, I really didn’t care.

“Of all the times you could have used your incubus powers,” I said.

“There was no point. He was going to take us to the airport regardless, and he probably won’t want to admit we were even in there.”

“He certainly didn’t make an effort to hide that fact.”

“He didn’t have to.”

I noticed a free spot by the bar out by the pool—the Garden Café. It was still hot despite the evening hour, so people were avoiding the outdoors in favor of the air-conditioned venues inside. There was one nymph behind the bar I recognized. Fantastic. The one thing I appreciated about nymphs? No need for small talk. They didn’t really have the muscle and nerve development for speaking. Might be pretty, but they were still ghouls.

“I need to debrief with security,” Rynn said beside me. “I’m not happy with how quickly the IAA tried to push you around—I expected it at some point, just not so soon. I want to make sure whatever mercenaries they send next can’t get in.”

That sounded just fine to me. I started for the bar.

“And don’t get drunk,” Rynn called after me.

I waved over my shoulder. I doubted very much I’d be paying attention to that piece of advice. “I do not start a bar fight in every bar I visit,” I called without turning around or looking back.

“No, but you have a bad habit of ending your fights there,” Rynn called after me. “And don’t let Siyu find you in those clothes.”

“I’ll clean up after that drink.” I didn’t need to see Rynn’s wry expression to know it was there. I was going to need that drink before attempting to clean up Captain. He’d been getting restless ever since I’d made him crawl his muddied self into the carrier.

I exited into the pool area and grabbed a seat at the garden bar before letting Captain out in all his muddied glory. I figured the layers of grime Captain was sporting couldn’t do too much damage to the patio furniture. Captain lost no time finding a spot to dig in the garden, and I lost no time ordering a beer from the nymph. Out of all the supernaturals that worked at the Japanese Circus, I’d decided I preferred the nymphs—outside Rynn, that is. They never seemed to judge me; they always handed me my beer with a smile, not the once-overs I got from various other species, especially the radish and frog demons. Then again, that might just be their lack of facial nerves.

For all I knew there could be an onslaught of prejudice and judgment behind those pretty green eyes and genial smile. I doubted it though. Killian, as his nametag read, brought my beer way too fast to be nursing any well-hidden contempt.

I settled into my seat and tried to enjoy the quiet. I was on my second Corona, staring out at the empty garden where Captain was rolling in the grass, trying desperately to scrape the mud off, when I became vaguely aware of my phone buzzing.

It was Rynn. He’d been gone what? A half hour now?

I answered the phone. “Tell me there’s good news,” I said.

“There’s been a security breach,” Rynn said, his voice strained. “Some of the cameras in the lobby and main casino floor were accessed and are being monitored from off-site. We’re trying to trace it now.”

I almost let it go, but there was something in his voice besides just the strain of the last few days. “What are you not telling me?”

There was an uncharacteristic pause. “There might have been some fallout from Delhi,” he said carefully.

I frowned. “More fallout?” We’d both already seen the news footage. I took a sip of my beer and glanced up at the TV screen. I spit my beer out over the bar.

Oh no.

I reached over and grabbed the TV remote before Killian could stop me, despite his best efforts.

It was blurry on account of the low-quality traffic camera, and you couldn’t quite see my face, but it was me. Crawling out of a New Delhi sewer and tossing a Molotov cocktail back inside . . . then diving out of the way to avoid the flames from the oil embalming that had gone up like candle wicks.

That hadn’t been in the newspapers. I winced. “Rynn, I think I found the New Delhi fallout,” I said as I watched the sewers go up in flames. “How about I call you back,” I said before hanging up.

I flipped through the channels, which all showed the same thing. One Charity Greenwoods. What the hell were they getting at? Flushing me out? Not with images that blurry. The scroll across the bottom included a few more details about me; weight, hair color, age, but nothing definitive. One thing was for sure, the various channels were very fond of the Molotov cocktail shots . . . and me diving away as the flames boiled out of the grates. If nothing else, the embalming on those priests had certainly been flammable.

I didn’t regret it; letting the undead priests crawl out of the sewers would have been multitudes worse. But the resulting fire that had spread for an entire block had most definitely not been part of the plan. Luckily the fire had been mostly contained and there weren’t any casualties being reported, but still. . . .

My phone began to buzz again on the bar. Not Rynn, but a number I did recognize this time around. I needed to ditch it—and soon. Too many people had this number now. “Dennings,” I said, answering.

“Hiboux. I take it you’ve seen the evening news?”

“Bad shots, awfully blurry, didn’t catch my winning smile. You guys are losing your touch in the surveillance department.”

“Just a reminder that we expect you to start delivering.”

“Really?” I took a sip of my beer to give myself a pause. “Because I think it’s a sign of something else.”

“Oh?” Dennings said in her condescending tone.

“All this tells me is that you’re running out of leads,” I said, and hung up before she could add anything else.

I continued to watch myself, over and over, tossing the cocktail into the sewer and running before I could see the flames burn through the grates, all the way down the street. I flipped through the channels and watched as various reporters tried to analyze one Charity Greenwoods. Well, there was one passport and set of credit cards that was about to be shredded . . . and burned . . . then dumped down the garbage disposal. After a few reruns, even I had to admit my antics really lost their touch. I flipped to the Discovery Channel instead. Killian, if he’d been watching, didn’t say anything.

I waited until I finished my beer and watched some cute, large African lions maim their prey before calling Rynn back. “They’re getting desperate,” I said as soon as I heard him pick up. Mercenaries, not too subtle threats, and now a smear campaign. The IAA was digging far into their card deck. I didn’t think it was bottomless; then again, it was the IAA.

“Yes,” Rynn agreed. “The problem is, when people get desperate they do stupid things.”

“And try to screw me all over again.” If their offer had already deteriorated this far . . . “There is no way they’ll hold up their end of the deal.”

“They will—they’ll just make sure they have a loophole. That spectacle on the international news I’m guessing is their loophole.”

I think I preferred it when I was trying to burn the institution to the ground—from well outside their walls, like across the continent.

“They still haven’t given out your real name or location. It’s a smoke screen, meant to scrare but not incapacitate you. It means that you have time to think how you are going to play this.”

I shook my head. This is why Nadya had gotten out. All the IAA did was screw over grad students. No one ever does anything about it because there’s the chance you’ll get one of the few cushy post doc or teaching positions and then the circle of abuse continues. . . .

Rynn kept his voice even. “They need you, and someone’s figured out you aren’t playing ball. This—the news cheap shot—is almost certainly a knee-jerk response to the fact that you’re not behaving the way they need you to. It is poor strategy, and it is going to cost them.”

“How? How is it going to cost them?”

“Because it tells us just how desperate they are. By the time we’re ready to deal with them, we’re going to make sure that they’re going to have to meet our terms, not us theirs.”

I leaned over the bar. Killian lifted a fresh beer with something resembling a questioning gaze. I nodded. This was turning into a three-beer night. “You don’t know them like I do, Rynn. They don’t make stupid mistakes.”

“There’s a lesson I learned years ago from a general who used to abuse his commanders: take credit for their wins, blame them for their losses. This applied especially when he lost his battalions using them as cannon fodder.”

“Don’t those people usually win?”

“For a time,” he admitted. “This one became a minor emperor.”

“Not convincing me of the bad strategy here.”

“The point is, eventually every monster like that needs his army one day. This minor emperor used and abused them so much that he didn’t have a commander left who could—or was willing to—command what was left of his troops. The smart ones had seen the writing on the wall and deserted—while the going was still good, as you like to say.”

“What happened to him—the emperor?”

“The invading army won and stuck his head on a pike—or maybe it was an anthill. The point was that well before his head was severed from his neck, the minor emperor realized that he was the sole source of his own crumbling empire.”

“The IAA isn’t an empire.”

“No, but the analogy still stands. They’ve sown so much discord in their own ranks that now, when they need people, they realize they’ve burned all their bridges.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make them any less dangerous.”

“No,” Rynn agreed. “If anything it makes them more dangerous and less predictable. But when the other side doesn’t have a plan, it makes it easier for us to stay a step ahead.”

There was some truth to that, I had to give Rynn that.

“Rynn, I can’t let the IAA get to them. This, all of this,” I said, meaning the TV news coverage, “just proves it. If they get hold of human magic—real magic that they could use . . .” I let the thought trail off. I didn’t want to add that every time someone in the world of archaeology tried to explore magic with a more hands-on approach, regardless of whether they were a student or academic, the results were always disastrous. Humans using supernatural magic? They were lucky if all it did was blow up a building. But human magic . . . The IAA was dangerous and abusive enough as it was, but with magic they could access . . . ?

I heard the phone muffle as he spoke to someone else. “I’m going to double-check security, make sure all the surveillance is secure one last time before it’s time to meet Lady Siyu,” he said.

Right. I checked the time. It was fast approaching the hour mark before our audience with the dragon lady. So pervasive was my dislike of any time I had to waste in the monster’s presence that I was imagining the click of her heels everywhere I went. Only that wasn’t my imagination. . . .

Shit. I swiveled in my chair only to make out Lady Siyu, immaculate black suit and all, weaving her way along the cement garden tiles, her heels clicking with a less-expensive-sounding clack than they did against the more expensive marble floors.

“Speak of the devil, looks like she brought the meeting to me,” I said as I watched Lady Siyu make her way down the cement path. Her suit and heels just seemed wrong in the more natural setting.

I eyed beer number three. Normally I kept the drinking to a minimum before having to deal with Lady Siyu or Mr. Kurosawa. I took a generous swallow.

Rynn swore. “Try not to pick a fight before I get there.”

“No promises,” I said, before I heard the click of Rynn hanging up.

Lady Siyu stopped a few paces away from me, hands on her hips and sunglasses firmly in place, even though there was no one else in the Garden Café. “Do you have the elve’s artifact yet?” Lady Siyu said. I noticed Killian had vamoosed. Smart nymph.

I watched as Captain stopped his rooting in the garden and shot his nose in the air, sniffing madly. His eyes fixated on Lady Siyu and he began to creep forward, letting out a tentative growl.

Damn it . . . I scrambled off my chair and around Lady Siyu to grab him before he could launch himself. He wasn’t impressed; he squirmed against my grip, but I held on—at arm’s length so he couldn’t eviscerate me.

“No,” I whispered as Captain twisted and tried to push his way out, keeping his eyes on Siyu the whole time.

Lady Siyu’s sunglasses turned down, and I got the distinct impression she was examining my cat.

Captain, sensing the same thing, bellowed at her in all his muddy glory.

Lady Siyu took a step back—but not from Captain’s bellow. Lady Siyu didn’t scare nearly as easily as the vampires. It was the mess. Lady Siyu’s crisp white shirt, expensive skirt, and shoes did not look like they would take well to an angry Mau’s mess.

Captain wasn’t stupid. He’d hit her where it hurt.

Lady Siyu offered a fanged sneer to Captain before turning her yellow gaze on me. “If you do not retrieve that artifact soon, the deal with the incubus will be null and void. Then I will wish my cat returned.”

“Whoever gets Captain gets to clean him,” I said. “Here, be my guest.” It was a bluff; being passed back and forth as a bargaining chip would give Captain more of a complex than he already had, but Lady Siyu didn’t need to know that.

Captain bared his teeth, set his ears back, and let out a hiss from behind my arms.

Lady Siyu hissed right back, her jaw protruding to fit the elongated fangs. Captain huddled closer to my chest. He was still growling, but the hissing stopped.

“Seriously? Hissing at a cat?”

Her lip curled, exposing a single upper fang. “I prefer the animals of any species around me to know their place. Come, you and the incubus are being summoned.”

“Now?” I’d hoped to at least clean up.

“And I thought if you didn’t bring me back an artifact, I’d get to kill you. It appears Mr. Kurosawa’s whim is to watch as we live out our disappointments, over and over. Though,” she said, her head tilting in a pensive gesture, “if you do ignore this summons, perhaps Mr. Kurosawa will allow me to kill you.” She glanced around the garden. “On second thought, stay and drown what’s left of your pitiful life in vice.” And with that, she spun on her heels and headed back into the Japanese Circus.

Captain didn’t come out from behind my legs until the doors had slid shut. Fantastic. I downed the remainder of my beer and placed the carrier in front of Captain. Of all the people on the planet for him to pick a fight with . . . “As if the vampires weren’t bad enough. You realize I can’t actually protect you from her?” I told him.

He mewed at me before settling inside, if for no reason other than to get the last arguing noise in. I shook my head and pulled my phone out to text Rynn the change in plans, then hefted Captain over my shoulder and headed back inside the Japanese Circus’s immaculate lobby. We were garnering stares this time—not that there were many people lingering, but still, it was enough to make even me self-conscious.

“Paintball,” I said to one couple who looked a little too long for my liking as we stood outside the elevator doors. “They added mud in the arena for realism.”

They nodded as if in understanding but picked up the pace.

A woman dressed in a light pastel blue suit who had also been waiting for the elevator ahead of me gave me a long once-over and quickly took a few steps back.

“Must be my winning smile,” I whispered to Captain under my breath.

Then again, I doubted any of these people would know a winning smile unless it was packaged in a wrapper they could digest and understand.

Three months ago that would have bothered me. Now? Their loss. I had people who went out of their way to see past my shell. People who couldn’t be bothered to actually see the world around them? Like Rynn and Nadya said, they should be pitied.

As I watched the couple and woman retreat, it occurred to me again that even if the supernaturals did manage to crawl their way out of the proverbial closet, it might be that the people at large would decide as a collective that they didn’t want to see any of it.

The elevator door opened. “Time to face the dragon, cat,” I said before stepping inside the mirrored and decorated car.

Rynn was waiting for me outside the massive black-and-gold doors. So was Lady Siyu. In contrast to me and Captain, somehow, somewhere between checking security and arriving here, Rynn had managed to clean up.

I hadn’t, and decided I wasn’t going to bother apologizing for the bits of crumbling, stagnant mud my shoes left with each step.

Lady Siyu glared at me, then turned her attention to Rynn. “I expected an incubi to at least attempt to keep your pets cleaner than the humans do theirs.”

Rynn gave me a once-over and shrugged. I just stood there, Captain slung over my shoulder, rumbling in his carrier—whether at the fact that he could smell Lady Siyu or that he wasn’t out on his leash, I couldn’t be sure and frankly didn’t care.

Lady Siyu flared her nostrils. Apparently neither of us was rising to the bait on that one today.

She turned her back on us to push the massive doors open, the plumes of gray smoke billowing out into the hall, curling around my feet. I shivered. Despite the heat, this room always gave me the chills.

Rynn followed her in first. “I assume there is a point to this appearance besides threatening Alix and her house cat?” he asked.

“There is business to be discussed with Mr. Kurosawa. You and the thief,” she added, nodding toward me.

“What about?” I asked.

“He didn’t say and I didn’t ask.” After a moment of only the slot machines chiming around us and the click of Lady Siyu’s heels against the marble floor, she added, “Mr. Kurosawa is in a mood.”

Fantastic. Assuming that Mr. Kurosawa had been in good moods whenever I’d dealt with him before, I was pretty damn sure I didn’t want to see his bad mood.

“If they want the artifact so badly, they’d let me get back to the damn job,” I said to Rynn.

“I know,” he replied. He sounded tired—something that almost never happened. And distracted.

“Are you—okay?” I hesitated over the “okay” part. I was not usually the one on the asking end of that.

He shook his head, and it occurred to me we were keeping a very respectable distance behind Lady Siyu.

“Just worn out from the political infighting. Between the elves and the IAA.” He trailed off and let Lady Siyu turn a corner ahead of us before giving me a pointed stare. “I’m starting to think the two are connected. There’s too much coincidence,” he said, lowering his voice to the point where I didn’t think even Lady Siyu would be able to detect it.

“Now you’re starting to sound like me with the paranoia and conspiracy theories.” Elves involved in the IAA’s current witch hunt for World Quest—to what end?

Rynn took my arm gently and steered me down a corridor I hadn’t realized was there, hidden from my human eyes. “To hinder us or coincide with our search? It’s questionable whether they know behind their own machinations. I left this work for a reason, Alix,” he added. “I wanted to avoid being dragged into supernatural plots and games.”

“Do you think they’d have left you alone if you had stayed in Tokyo?” I don’t know why I asked it exactly, but I did.

He inclined his head, considering, then sighed. “No. As tempting as it is to blame leaving Tokyo, it wouldn’t be true. They’d have found another way to involve me—the elves, Mr. Kurosawa, or whoever else might have a stake in this game. No, I prefer this. This way at least they haven’t blindsided me completely. You aren’t the only one trouble has a habit of finding.”

A slot machine went off beside us, and I had to do some fancy footwork to avoid touching the stream of gold coins that shot out. I swear the ghosts in a few of those things had a twisted sense of humor. Probably from being locked up in a slot machine for so long.

I caught Rynn watching me as I avoided the coins. “And there’s you,” he said. “If I had stayed in Tokyo, I might have avoided being dragged into the confrontation a few more months, but I wouldn’t have you.”

I felt the same way, though I didn’t always express it eloquently. I might have said something to that effect, but we’d cleared the last corner of the maze.

Mr. Kurosawa was waiting for us on the black leather couches facing away from us. I probably would have missed him if it hadn’t been for the billowing smoke—and the red, emberlike glow emanating from his skin.

I held Captain’s carrier a little tighter and drew in a deep breath to calm my nerves. All right, Alix, gird your loins and let’s see what’s got Mr. Kurosawa in a mood.

“I hear you have yet to find the artifact,” Mr. Kurosawa said, still facing away from us.

If there was one thing I’d learned about working with supernaturals like Mr. Kurosawa over the past few months, it was to make sure expectations were managed.

I cleared my throat. “It’s not that simple,” I said. “First, the IAA decided to involve themselves—”

“In other words, no,” Lady Siyu offered.

I stuffed my temper and started again. “Look, finding the suit the elves want so desperately while the IAA breathes down my throat is a significant mitigating factor.” It would have helped if he’d turned around so I could see his face. You could tell a lot about a dragon’s temper by how well they were holding their human form. I didn’t think it was my imagination that the room’s temperature went up a fraction.

Lady Siyu arched one of her perfect black eyebrows. “And taking out jobs for third parties is in direct violation of your contract with Mr. Kurosawa.”

I stopped myself swearing. Outright denying Lady Siyu’s well-worded accusations rarely went my way. I was always better off with the facts.

“Actually,” I said, “they seem to be under the impression I work for them. I tried to explain I work for a dragon and wasn’t interested in their job, but they don’t seem to give a flying fu—”

Lady Siyu didn’t give me a chance to finish. “And you expect us to believe that you, a thief, refused their prize?” She gave a derisive sniff.

Oh, hell, screw diplomacy. Never had a talent for it anyway.

“You think I’m a greedy thief? Then why the hell would I accept a job from an organization that I know won’t pay the fuck up. And speaking of getting screwed over, the situation with this artifact the elves oh so want me to find isn’t nearly as straightforward as you seem to think.”

Lady Siyu frowned at that, and I caught the movement of Mr. Kurosawa’s head as he turned to watch me with his black, white-less eyes. Whether with feigned or genuine indifference, I couldn’t be sure.

“Look, I realize I’m not as familiar with elven politics as you—”

“Then maybe you should hold your tongue. Unless you’d like me to take it,” Lady Siyu started, but she was silenced by a hiss of breath from Mr. Kurosawa. I took that as my signal to continue.

“But something is very wrong.”

“Are you suggesting the elves are being dishonest?” Mr. Kurosawa said, deliberate with his words, no trace of his Japanese accent over his cultivated American.

It always paid to be very careful with how I worded answers to Mr. Kurosawa. “Depends what you mean by dishonest. Have they lied? Probably not, but they most definitely didn’t give me all the information they have on the Lightning Armor, and—”

“Which you have no proof of,” Lady Siyu snapped.

Deep breath . . . “Like I said, it depends what you consider dishonest.” I shrugged and took a gamble. “Despite what the elves claim, I don’t think they necessarily all agree on whether they really want it. I think the elves are fighting about it, and it’s spilling onto this job.

“The last record of the armor was in the early 1200s, when Jebe had it. It disappeared after that. Jebe is the last known link, yet the elves went out of their way to try and keep any information he or the Mongols recorded out of my grasp. Why? Why go to all the trouble of negotiating a deal, then crippling my efforts to actually find it? That’s the question you should be asking.”

“And while you’re at it,” Rynn added, “ask yourself why the IAA has taken such a sudden interest in Alix with an army of mercenaries. It reeks of the elves—”

Lady Siyu turned on him. “And I am sick and tired of listening to your heavily prejudiced objections to the elves’ business practices—”

“Because I’m the only one in this room who has ever worked with them!”

“Enough,” Mr. Kurosawa’s voice echoed through the casino with a preternatural amplification. Both Rynn and Lady Siyu fell silent.

Silence settled in the air, only interrupted by the buzz of the electric slot machines and the odd chimes of a winning hand.

“An interesting hypothesis,” Mr. Kurosawa finally said.

I took that as permission to continue. “First they don’t give us nearly enough information to really track the suit down—a few descriptions, piecemeal bits. From what I gather, the elves have the best supernatural archives around. They have more on the suit; I mean, some of the diagrams are so off kilter that the only way they could suspect the suits were the same is that if they had other text to go with it.”

“And the IAA?” Lady Siyu asked, her voice poisonous.

“Like Rynn said. I think it’s an awfully big coincidence that the IAA only pulled out their big threats right after we managed to find the book the elves tried to hide.”

Silence fell across the room again as plumes of smoke flowed out across the casino floor from where Mr. Kurosawa sat perfectly still. This time not even the slot machines ventured a sound.

Mr. Kurosawa finally stood and faced us. He was dressed in one of his expensive suits, but his skin was bright red and his teeth were black and serrated. Smoke trailed freely out of his nostrils as he strode to where Lady Siyu was holding a folder.

“This changes a number of things,” Mr. Kurosawa said to her. I got the distinct impression something else silent was said.

Then Mr. Kurosawa turned to me. “It is imperative that you deal with the armor while I . . . discuss some issues with the elves.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but I stopped short at the smile Mr. Kurosawa gave me and the glimpse of his black, pointed teeth. I don’t think I’d ever seen his skin quite this red—was that steam rising off of it? I stifled a shudder. Dragons had a harder time than most hiding their form, though Mr. Kurosawa was good at it, probably because of his penchant for ten-thousand-dollar suits. There was very little a dragon liked more than his treasure.

“You will also need to deal with this IAA issue,” he added.

Wait . . . what? “Since when do I work for them? Or take care of two contracts at once—with mercenaries?” I said.

“The IAA is a mess of your own making,” Lady Siyu snarled, slinking in a slow predatory circle around me.

“Like hell it is. Oh shit!” I stumbled back as she dropped her clipboard and lunged for me, red lacquered claws out.

I ducked behind a nearby slot, narrowly avoiding a grazing claw. Served me right for baiting a Naga.

“Okay, before you try to kill me, hear me out. Hey!” I ducked as she made a swipe around the slot machine, aiming for my left side.

“If they are not after you for your transgressions, then what?” Lady Siyu wasn’t hissing or lunging at me anymore, but she also wasn’t backing down.

“Because I’m the best and they don’t stand a chance of tracking the World Quest designers down without me.”

“Then why have you been pursuing them? You think I didn’t know about your side excursions searching for them? If not for the reward of treasure, then what interest could it possibly hold for your thieving hands?”

Shit. This was the part I’d been hoping to avoid. I was not about to tell Lady Siyu and Mr. Kurosawa, of all people, that I figured the World Quest duo had stumbled across a lost city made of human magic. I didn’t like whatever idea it might churn up if left for too long; on the other hand, lying to them was suicidal. “Because I am sick and tired of the IAA crushing everyone under their heels. Me, World Quest, any graduate student that doesn’t kowtow the right way—”

Lady Siyu snorted and looked at me with disgust. “If you expect us to believe for one minute—”

“Believe whatever you want. Look, you want a selfish reason? Fine. If the IAA finds them first, they’ll shut down World Quest. Forever. I’ve sunk three years of my life into that game. Do you have any idea how long it’ll take to reach the same level in a new one?”

“That is the most idiotic reason I’ve ever heard.”

“Make up your mind, then! Do you want honest or selfish?”

Mr. Kurosawa stopped us midargument with a derisive noise.

My heart pounded as he turned those black, calculating eyes on Lady Siyu, then me.

“It appears the IAA was not truthful with you, Lady Siyu,” he said.

And just like that he turned his back to us and headed back to his black couch, where he returned to a magazine that had been left upside down on the coffee table.

“Mr. Kurosawa—I implore you.” Her heels clicked furiously against the tiles as she chased him.

He held up a hand that silenced her voice and brought her to a standstill. “And it will cost them. Explain to them that they were most clearly and sorely mistaken upon any assumption that my antiquities thief agreed to any contract. Furthermore, she has emphatically expressed her intent to refuse any future contracts offered due to egregious outstanding payments. Any further attempts on their part to contact or interfere with Alix Hiboux’s employment with me shall be severely frowned upon.”

When Lady Siyu didn’t immediately turn on her heels, Mr. Kurosawa added, “You are dismissed.”

With one last hate-filled glare in my direction, she turned on her heels and headed back into the maze. I almost pitied the IAA agent who was on the receiving end of that call.

I held my breath and waited for the other proverbial shoe to drop. It was when Mr. Kurosawa worded things that way—that legal way—that I knew there was a catch.

“Not that I don’t appreciate it, Mr. Kurosawa, but I’m pretty sure all that will do is piss them off more,” I said as Lady Siyu’s clicking heels faded.

“Oh, I am almost certain that will be the effect. In fact I fully expect them to retaliate,” he said, smiling at me with those black teeth. “The IAA bureaucrats and the elves share a common habit of getting so caught up in their own internal games they forget the external consequences.”

“No offense, but me being dead or tossed in an IAA jail—”

Smoke billowed out of Mr. Kurosawa’s nose. “Who do you think in the supernatural community helps their . . . problems disappear? Eventually my lack of cooperation will reach someone in charge and the carefully arranged dominoes in this scheme will begin to fall and expose their hand. In the meantime? I suggest you do what you do best.”

Steal things. And run. Not necessarily in that order.

Smoke was filling the room now. It was up to my knees, curling around my calves in a manner that could only be described as predatory. And the temperature was decidedly getting warmer. I felt the squeeze from Rynn on my shoulder. It was time for us to leave.

“I will offer you one more hint, Owl,” Mr. Kurosawa called when we were already deep in the maze, his voice carrying through the slot machines as if he was standing there beside us. “The politics being played by the IAA and elves reek of someone arrogant enough to ignore my favorite force of nature.”

“Which is?” I called out.

“Chaos” came the dark hiss of Mr. Kurosawa’s voice from the closest slot machine. I jumped back out of reflex.

I waited for him to add anything else, but the maze was silent. Even the slot machines seemed to be wary.

As Rynn led us out of the maze, I made sure to keep him in my sights despite the wheels churning in my head, trying to tease things apart.

We rode the elevator up to our floor in silence. When it opened, I stepped out into the empty top-floor hall where my suite was and opened Captain’s carrier. He shook his front and back paws a few times and grumbled his discontent about the dirt, but he headed toward the door with his tail up.

Rynn stayed in the elevator. “Security?” I asked.

He nodded. “I want to be somewhere I can watch things when Lady Siyu delivers her message to the IAA. The mercenaries won’t stop, Alix. Not when there’s a pay day at hand, and not now that the IAA has made you a target, despite whatever sway Lady Siyu can scare out of them.”

I nodded. I’d figured that. I waited for Rynn to reach out and touch me, kiss me, like he usually did when we parted ways to work, but he didn’t. He only stared at a spot on the mirrored wall as the doors slid shut.

Preoccupied. I knew it wasn’t me, but still . . .

Captain meowed beside me.

I cleared my thoughts and followed him down the hall to our suite. “Come on, I can fix the mud, but you’re not going to like it,” I told him as I opened the door and let him waltz inside.

He headed straight for the food and water in the kitchen. Me? I finally had the chance to strip off my muddy clothes. I changed into sweats and dropped my computer on the desk before heading into the bathroom to start the bath water running.

While the tap ran, I grabbed a beer out of the fridge—one of the Belgians Rynn had me trying—and turned on the TV over the bathtub to see if the coverage in New Delhi had changed. It hadn’t, which, all things considered, wasn’t a bad thing.

I settled in and watched the news, the door slightly ajar so Captain could get in when he was done stuffing his face with kibble. Lady Siyu had succeeded where I’d failed; enforcing his diet.

Beyond my exploits in India, the news was filled with basic stuff. Normal world problems: terrorists, politics, people getting fleeced out of millions, some innocent man who had been locked behind bars for fifteen years because of a corrupt local legal system, etc. I really was starting to wonder whether helping Mr. Kurosawa was making things better. Would things really change if the supernaturals came out of the closet? Or maybe it would just add a new flavor to the same old problems.

I’d had my eyes closed and was only half listening to the TV while I rested my head and let the warm water penetrate my bones. It felt as if I’d been on my feet for days; come to think of it, I had. The last time I’d had a good sleep had been in the hostel in Nepal.

I almost drifted off, and if I had, I probably would have missed it entirely. Just in time, I opened my eyes and frowned at the screen. It couldn’t be . . . there was no way.

I upped the volume and sat up.

“Vampires in Las Vegas? Really?”

“Yes, there has been a reporting of vampires in downtown Las Vegas.”

Shit. I hadn’t heard wrong. They had said the magic V word. Rynn was going to love this. So was Mr. Kurosawa. Lady Siyu? She’d be pissed someone had dared break Mr. Kurosawa’s rules, but as far as what she’d actually think of a vampire jumping the girls? Probably, deep down, she thought it was an improvement.

But before I could catapult myself out of the bathtub and probably break my neck, the hosts continued.

“An elaborate prank orchestrated as a publicity stunt for the upcoming ‘Noir by Night,’ the newest show coming to Vegas this October.”

Relieved, I settled back down into the water. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was a horrible prank to play on tourists, but man was I ever happy to see it wasn’t real vampires. Still, I left the channel on.

They drifted off into more benign news on the upcoming weather—no rain and hot, real fucking surprise for Vegas . . .

It had all been an elaborate prank. Still, I suppose it was a window into what things might be like if vampires and other supernaturals started to slip through the cracks out of the closet. I remembered what Alexander had said would happen—self-made Van Helsings and towns overrun with crazy cannibalistic vampires.

I took a swig of my beer. I think I was happier not being in the supernatural know.

Captain chose that moment to stride in. He chirped and sniffed around the room before jumping up on the bathtub sill to sniff the water. Cats: they might hate water, but they can’t stop themselves from investigating. A love-hate thing I suppose.

He mewed at me again. “You so aren’t going to be impressed with this,” I told him. But, since Captain was a cat, and only had a rudimentary understanding of English, he ignored me and went back to sniffing at me and the water.

“But you also need to get that mud off, soooo . . .” I continued.

There were two ways to give a cat a bath. The first was to let them know what was happening. I really don’t recommend that with their hating water thing.

The second was to make sure they didn’t see it coming.

I waited until Captain was looking away—that was the other critical part. You can’t ever let them blame you.

I batted the water at him. As the drops hit his fur, Captain swung his head around to see where the offensive water had come from annndd slipped.

For a moment he just sat there in the water. Soaked, eyes wide in shock at the humiliating offense that had just befallen him, he made a clumsy grab for the edge to pull himself out but slipped right back in.

“Not so fast.” I grabbed the pet shampoo and had him soaped up before he knew what hit him. I think he was a little shell-shocked.

He let out a baleful mew as I massaged his head. “Tragedy of your own devices, buddy,” I said.

After I had Captain rinsed and cleaned, I did my best to dry him off. Still damp, he slinked away, probably to find a pile of my clothes to finish drying off in. I pulled my clean sweats back on and headed into the living room.

Rynn still wasn’t back, so I decided to delve once again into the mystery of the samurai. I pulled Jebe’s journal out of my bag and opened my laptop.

There was a note from Nadya sitting for me in my inbox.

Got your message on the journal and the IAA. It’s disconcerting but there has been no sign of them over here.

That was a relief. What I read next though wasn’t.

Things are . . . more involved in Tokyo than I’d hoped. I’m still figuring out a way to fix things. Don’t worry, it isn’t unfixable, just . . . complicated. I’m working with Rynn’s people at Gaijin Cloud and I think we’ve come up with a plan.

I thought about texting or calling, but if things were as complicated businesswise as Nadya hinted, then me throwing in a beeping or buzzing cell phone was going to hinder, not help.

I opened up my email to fire off a response. That had the opposite effect of making me not worry, I wrote, and sent it off before setting attention back on research.

I don’t like working in a void. I do better with details. And right now I was going on too many assumptions where the IAA and the elves were concerned.

And, with Nadya out of commission in Tokyo, that meant I was the one who was going to have to ping my contacts. I went to the fridge and poured myself a shot of tequila and grabbed another beer, which I needed in order to swallow the ass-kissing I was going to have to do.

Oh God, I was going to get an earful from Benji . . .

I noticed a flickering message in the bottom left-hand corner of my screen.

Hey, Byzantine—you up for a World Quest session?

I closed Carpe’s message without responding. I wasn’t up for dealing with the elf just yet.

After I sent off a few emails, I settled back in to read Jebe’s journal and his accounts of the horde’s invasion of the west.