Getting Wilde (21 page)

I scowled at the image. It was clearly a reprint, but the likeness of the girls was unmistakable, though I’d only seen one picture of them. Two beautiful young women, their skin almost a ghostly white, their long hair lustrous as it dropped in a thick, gleaming braid to their waists. They were holding hands and gazing out at the viewer with wide, shining eyes, their perfect Cupid’s bow mouths smiling with bridesmaidenly bliss. Only, their bridesmaid’s gowns were decidedly unique. “Togas.”
 

“I remember that description when it came in. Someone had seen them at a private party—no connection to Binion’s, I can tell you that. But they thought they were on drugs of some sort. They were almost in a trance, lying on each other, stroking each other’s hair, murmuring nonsense. ‘Beautiful and tragic,’ my informant said.”
 

“There’s a lot of beautiful and tragic going on in the city,” Nikki pointed out, her keen eyes on the drawing as well. “Why’d they stand out?”
 

Dixie tapped the picture with a long pink fingernail. “Something he saw them do. They were pulled up to meet someone and immediately started crying, pulling at their clothes, their hair. They got hustled right out, but the guy they had done the demonstration for was all outraged. Big spender, apparently, who was looking for some sugar, not some kind of fit.”  
 

I handed the drawing back to her. “Let me guess. He’s dead.”
 

“Found floating in Lake Mead not twelve hours later. Spooked my contact good, but that’s the first and last I heard of the girls, and that was a month ago and more.”
 

I nodded. I’d seen the date inscribed at the bottom of the drawing. They’d been in Vegas five weeks and were now out of public view. They’d only been missing for about eight. There was very little chance they were still alive.
 

Nikki placed a large hand on my shoulder. “We’ll get them.” She glanced at Dixie. “There may be others.”
 

“Well, darlin’, I didn’t think you came all the way over here for my apple pie.” She reached languorously over her desk and scooped up her petal-pink cell phone. “You just run along. We’ll be there whenever you need us.”
 

We turned to go, and I stopped, looking back.
 

“Question for you. That guy by the tattoo parlor. What’s he about?”
 

“Jimmy?” Dixie grinned. “Honey, he’s been here longer than I have. Master with a needle and ink, not so much with his love life. Keeps to himself mostly, ’less you’re his client. His shop may not look like much, but he draws in some pretty high rollers.”
 

“Right.” I frowned, thinking about the image I’d seen in his window. I would have sworn it was… “He’s not part of the council, right?”
 

“Oh Lord, no.” She looked at me, startled. “He’s not even a… I mean…” She frowned. “Bless my soul, I’ve never really spoken with the man. He could be a Connected, but if so, he’s got to be a minor one. All his magic’s done with his needle, nothing more.”
 

“Thanks.” We walked out into the bright sunshine again, and I stared over at the shop. Now the sign read CLOSED, but that wasn’t the only thing that had changed.
 

The large print of the horseman and flag were gone.
 

Death had left the building.
 

I mulled over the image the entire way to Binion’s. Seeing images from the cards in places I didn’t expect them was kind of a thing for me. An ad for Red Devil pizza, a statue of Justice and her scales in the middle of nowhere. The image of a Hanged Man painted on the wall of an Italian bistro. For Death to show up in a tattoo parlor wasn’t completely unusual, but given the givens, I couldn’t help thinking there was a hidden message in its appearance.
 

What could it mean, though? Most of the time, Death meant extraordinary transformation.
 

And sometimes, it just meant a whole lot of Death.
 

We parked a quarter mile from Binion’s. The “Fremont Street experience” included many things, but quick access to your vehicle generally wasn’t one of them. Nikki changed out of her chauffeur getup into her usual street wear and lounged in a rare stretch of shade as I pulled a few cards. Seven of Swords, Pope, High Priestess. Since the Seven cautioned of trickery and the High Priestess could reference the girls’ oracular powers, those made sense. The pope, not so much. But I had a bad feeling about it.
 

“We good?” Nikki asked. Shed of her uniform and cap, her perfect brown mane of hair was pulled into an all-business ponytail, and her statuesque figure made the most of shiny black
tights above her black stilettos. Her silky fuchsia halter top had a death grip on her chest, but her tiny bolero jacket was not exactly functional. When I nodded, she looked down at herself in sudden concern. “How in the hell am I going to pack a gun in this?”
 

“You’re not,” I said, reaching into my boot and tossing her the switchblade I kept there for special occasions. Because I’m festive like that.
 

She grimaced as she slid the blade out of sight between her breasts. “I’m better with a gun.”
 

“I’ll keep that in mind.”
 

We headed off. Vegas being Vegas, we didn’t draw much attention as we strode down Fremont Street. We reached the old casino in a few minutes. The stench of the place—cigarette smoke embedded into the very walls—greeted us almost before we entered the door, but it didn’t take long to get used to the gloom inside.
 

Binion’s was an old-style casino, and by old-style, I meant broke down and wheezing, with the barest glimmer of its old glory days shimmering beneath the worn façade. We pushed our way toward the cigar purveyor at the back of the building, and I slid my hand in my jacket, fanning through the cards. I pulled another one from the center of the deck.
 

“I love it when you do that,” Nikki murmured beside me. “What’s tricks?”
 

“Miss Wilde, what is it you think you’re doing?”
 

“Wheel,” I said, ignoring Armaeus. Apparently, our detour to Dixie’s had given him the time he needed to get his bearings again. He’d figured out that we were no longer on our way to his fortress with the Devil in tow, and I somehow suspected Kreios wasn’t breaking any land-speed records to get back to HQ. Why couldn’t Vegas have been built on a lake? “That’s not especially helpful, though. It’s not like we haven’t already passed a half-dozen roulette tables in this place.”
 

“True. Then again, none of those were hanging at eye level, pretty much like a big red X marks the spot.” Nikki smirked. The dark, stained-paneled corridor led down toward ominous-looking restrooms at the far end, but what Nikki was eyeing was an old clipping pasted to the paneled wall with a roulette wheel prominently featured. She scanned down the panel for a doorknob, but there wasn’t any in evidence. Still, the place had the
feel
of a door. “You think—” Nikki began.
 

“You ladies lost?” A gruff voice at my side drew me up short, and Nikki stiffened as well.
 

Her voice, when it sounded next, was a study in tremulous fear.
 

“We…we have
questions
that no one can answer. Not right, not the way we need them to be,” Nikki said, her words barely a mumble, as if she’d mixed the wrong pills and downed the combination with a tumbler of vodka. “We were sent here for help. Please, honey—we have money. Lots of money.”
 

I kept my head down, doing my level best to scuff my boots on the ground. I never could pull off feminine, so I did better with desperate and ragtag.
 

“
You’re
looking for answers?” The man leered, sticking his face into Nikki’s chest. “You come back up front when you’re done, and I’ll give you all the answers you need.” He laughed at his own joke, then banged on the wall. The panel behind the roulette wheel image pulled back, clearly a one-way door, and red light poured out of the opening. “That way.” The bouncer jerked his thumb toward the ominous hallway.
 

“No, do not—”
 

The Magician’s warning was cut short as the bouncer shoved us forward, apparently either not expecting us to be armed or not caring. Stupid, but not surprising in the community of dark practitioners. It was as if the things of this earth somehow took a backseat to true mystical powers. We walked down the shadowy hallway, peering through the murky red light. The place
stank so badly, it was a miracle anyone ever came back here on purpose.
 

Then we were dumped into a much larger room with pounding music and the acrid smell of burning flesh heavy in the air. When my eyes finally adjusted, I revised my opinion. Based on what I was seeing, it was a miracle anyone made it out alive.
 

The place was a demon hole.
 

A favorite construct of the practitioners of the dark arts, demon holes were half-club, half-rave, all illegal. Bodies were packed into the tight space, writhing and churning, partiers of every shape and size, all of them clearly transported by any of a dozen synthetic cocktails mixing drugs, hallucinogenics, and magical stimulants. Music blasted from every direction, so loud the bass practically jumped the floor. How had we not heard this outside? Then screams of delight went up, and we saw the central attraction as we passed along its outskirts.
 

Six young women, undoubtedly the young women who’d gone missing from Dixie’s care, were tied together on a long rope, blindfolded and standing in the middle of the room. The first in their line was a tall, willowy girl with white hair that might have once been long, but was now blunt cut and spiked, serving as a goth-like crown atop her head.
 

Snaking around the women was a sort of small labyrinth of flame made by ropes soaked in something toxic, sending up short, flickering curtains of blue-white fire. The game was immediately obvious and chilling in its cruelty: the girls were expected to work their way out of the maze without getting scorched, calling upon their apparent “psychic abilities” and intense intuition about the movements, thoughts, and experiences of each other to get the job done. From the looks of their worn, emaciated forms crisscrossed with burns, however, their Sight was weakening along with their bodies.
 

“Sweet mother of Jesus,” Nikki hissed beside me.
 

“We’ll get them,” I promised her. “There are only six?”
 

“Six is enough.” Nikki peered around the dark room. “And I wasn’t lying to Dix back there. If Binion’s has these girls out on display, who the hell else do they have? This place is a shithole, but it’s got a reputation for high-grade black magic.”
 

“Then keep a lookout. But we have to keep moving.” Because Dixie’s girls weren’t the only lost souls in this den, and perhaps more importantly, they weren’t the ones who would give us the answers we were supposedly seeking. The guy at our back pushed us toward another door, this one flanked by two enormous bodyguards, their muscled bodies like something out of a comic book. Thick plugs stretched the guards’ earlobes and heavy metal horseshoes hung from their wide noses, and their soulless eyes watched us levelly as we approached.
 

Their heavily pierced and modded bodies were also completely naked, a fact that was not lost on Nikki. “I do admire their personnel standards here, I’ll give you that,” she said. The men didn’t respond, but I could feel their gazes focus on Nikki. Scowling in stereo, they stood aside at the sharp command of the man behind us.
 

The door swung wide to welcome us into the room of Oracles.
 

The thick stump of a man at the center of the room was not the most interesting thing in the place, but he was the most important. Even better, I knew him. Sort of.
 

Son of a bitch.
 

Jerry Fitz had been one of the few buyers of magical artifacts I’d been told to steer away from by many of my earliest mentors in this business. I hadn’t realized he’d set up shop in Vegas. I wouldn’t have pictured him at Binion’s either. The guy had money, and a whole lot of it. What was he doing in the back room of a two-bit demon hole on Fremont Street?
 

I struggled to remember what I knew of Jerry Fitz. He’d started out life as an oracle of sorts, then had quickly figured out that the big money was in pimping the talent, not putting himself out there on the line day after day, particularly as the Connected community got darker
and more dangerous. He picked up a mini-harem of psychics drawn to his charisma and money, and when the first one had tried to leave, he’d made such a vivid example of her that no one else had attempted it. After that, it was merely a matter of luring in new talent with money and drugs and protection, keeping them locked down and performing at the rate he needed them to perform, and then going where the money was.
 

And the money had apparently led him here.
 

Once again, this was quite a few rungs down on the evolution scale. What was I missing? It was dark, it stank, and the crowd outside had seemed decidedly low-rent. True, he had total dominion, but I hadn’t heard a word breathed about Fitz in the past few years. For a megalomaniac like him, that was tantamount to forever.
 

More intriguing, it looked like he was going to be our personal moderator on today’s Q&A session. For someone who had a rep for turning over the dirty work to his minions, that was unusual. Was he seeking a particular question to test his process or tip him off to danger? Had he become more OCD over the years? Was he trying to branch out, learn new skills?