Shattered (Alchemy Series Book #3) (12 page)

I looked down. If I hadn't been such a wimp I might have known
, but I'd been avoiding the humans. I walked through their areas but not among them. I'd stopped trying to talk to them.

"D
oes she know where they went?" I asked just as Dodd burst into the room.

"What did you get?" Dodd asked. "Do you know where Sabrina is?"

"Let me just explain this from the beginning. Sabrina had contacted the other people on the list, who were all
changed
. She explained the situation to them. There was no coercion at all, she simply told them what was at stake and what was being requested by the senator. They agreed to think about it, meet the next day and make a group decision.

"
The humans have been getting a bit unfriendly toward the
changed
and lumping them in with anything not human. They were getting some of the blowback directed toward us, who they view as the cause of all this. That being said, we can all understand the additional motivation to leave.

"
They all met and decided to go. Sabrina spoke to Oslo to coordinate the logistics, because she knew you wouldn't agree to this," Dark looked at Cormac. "Or you," he added, looking at Dodd. "It gets interesting here. They were all afraid to leave at night but Oslo informed them that the rippers weren't a threat to the
changed
. They only feed on non-magical beings."

It was just like Burrom had thought
, but it still didn't completely fit. "What about the Keepers that were eaten that first evening?" I asked. "That doesn't make sense."

"
I asked Colleen, but she didn't know enough about that to question what she was being told."

I didn't doubt it
. The humans hadn't been included in a lot of the meetings and no one wanted to talk about that night. Only one issue remained. "Sabrina knew. Why would she not question it?"

"I have no answer for
that," Dark said. "Maybe she did but Colleen doesn’t know."

"So what happened
between then and when we found her?" Dodd said, not caring about anything else.

"They left
at three in the morning, with Oslo leading the way. They made it to Fire Valley, where they were attacked by a group of humans that were also
changed
. Colleen didn't know how many. It was dark and they'd been avoiding using any lights."

"How did she know they were
changed
?" Dodd asked in full interrogation mode.

"One of them had wings and another breathed fire.
"

"Yeah, that would do it," I said.

"She said in the chaos, she didn't see everything that went down. The
changed
with the wings was the one that tried to take her. His fingers grew talons when she tried to get away. Then, while she was struggling, a bolt of lightning came out of nowhere and hit him. When it hit him, his talons clenched and dug into her, causing the puncture wounds she has.

"She thinks she did it somehow
, because he was holding her when it happened and she wasn't affected by it."

"So where was this creature then?
He didn't die?" Dodd asked.

"She heard
who she thought was the leader scream to leave her behind. They grabbed their wounded guy and left."

"Does she know
where they went?" Dodd pressed.

"No, only has a vague direction
."

Dodd, who'd been pacing the room, slammed his fist down on the bar.

"This isn't bad. Now we know where to start and we also know who to send," Cormac said. "I want an examination of every person here. We need an exact count of the
changed
."

"We can't force them to come," I said preemptively.

The look on his face said otherwise. "I feed and shelter them. I can do whatever I please." He ignored the look on my face and looked back at the guys. "Dark, start seeing what you can dig up."

Dark got up to leave and Dodd
went with him. No one had time to sit around these days, with the way things were going.

"Dodd, I need a minute before you go back
," Cormac said, halting him before he left.

"Sure, what's up?"

Cormac looked at me and I instantly knew what this was about. He was waiting for me to tell Dodd I needed a room on his floor. He was letting me ask, to save face. He didn't seem to care it was going to crush me to do it. Did he think I could turn to stone, like he had?

I looked at Cormac. Nothing. Not a glimmer of regret. Not a glimmer of anything for that matter.

I cleared my throat. "I'm going to need another room."

D
odd's jaw dropped as his eyes shot from mine to Cormacs.

I cleared my throat before I continued. "Cormac
thought your floor would be a good idea, but I've got another arrangement in mind."

It took Dodd a second to speak. "Okay, just let me know." He hightailed it out of the room quicker than I'd ever seen.

"Where are you going?" Cormac asked, the second Dodd shut the door.

"Not your problem," I said,
rage starting to replace the hurt I was feeling. I left him standing there to go pack my bags. I wouldn't spend another night in this penthouse. I wish I could say the same thing about the whole casino, but there wasn't much help for that yet. Maybe after we found Sabrina.

Cormac
asked all human refugees to report to the seventh floor where Burrom and his people would check for an
unusual
amount of magic. Not just magic, but unusual amounts. Some humans had a certain small amount of magic naturally, even in normal times. They would be called psychics, seers, freak shows, or maybe just weird Aunt Sally. The guess was that it was mostly these humans that were now the
changed
.

N
ot a single person showed up. From the way I heard they'd been treated lately, I didn't blame them one iota. It was supposed to be confidential, but when a floor full of people saw you get branded as
magical
, there was no way it was staying secret.

Next, Cormac
demanded it. He sent Burrom and his not so merry crew out amongst them, to document every human with an abnormal amount of magic. It was no secret why Burrom had agreed to help. He was as crafty as they came, always keeping his options open, looking at every angle. And the one thing I've learned about Burrom was he liked power, not because he wanted to take over, but because he was old and smart and knew how to survive. I understood why he was one of the few people on a very short list of those Cormac respected, even if he didn't exactly like him.

I wasn't sure about trusting Burrom
myself, after the other night's debacle. I was running at a deficit in the trust department, which was why on Monday morning, I was following him around from human to human. One thing I already knew for sure, being part of the magical Gestapo wasn't doing a lot for my current social standing, especially since everyone seemed to already know I'd moved onto Burrom's floor.

I'd shown
up there yesterday with a hastily packed bag like a beggar. I knew he'd take me in and I knew it was one of the last places Cormac would want me to go. Too bad for him. You don't get to kick someone out and then dictate where they move; even Cormac couldn't pull that off. Well, he might be able to with most people, but I wasn't going to let him.

My room was a bit of a shock to me.
It was the only room Burrom had open and it looked like it had been done over with a medieval castle in mind. Burrom tried to tell me it had spontaneously looked like that one day, which was why no one wanted it. My guess was someone who was good at charms was having a little fun with the casino decor.

Walking down the hallway with him now, I spotted another patch of stone. Patch might be downplaying a spot that reached from floor to ceiling
, six feet wide.

"Burrom, you've to get your people to stop doing this," I said as my hand ran over stone that felt alarmingly real to the touch.

"Not my people."

"Who's doing it then?"

"Not sure, and don't care. I'm more concerned that you don't trust me, Jo," Burrom said as we worked through the room check. "It hurts me, Jo, that you would think so little of me. I thought when you decided to move in we were forming a real bond."

I almost snorted at his comment. Burrom was as thick skinned as they c
ame. Nothing hurt his feelings and my lack of trust for him was becoming one of his favorite jokes. "Am I wrong?"

"I didn't say that
," he replied with his own chuckle as we hung back and waited for the female Fae with us to knock on the door of the ninth floor and ask for admittance.

The people inside didn't answer but
we knew they were in there. The female Fae, Angela, read them the same warning we had been giving out since we began. "If you don't open up, this room will have the locks changed by this evening and you will be forced to find new lodgings outside of the casino."

We waited the five minutes it took most of them to open.
Earlier in the day, one group made us wait fifteen minutes. At sixteen minutes, Burrom had scared them with some crazy Fae mojo that made them think the room was on fire. They'd run right out. The other humans must have been listening at the doors or something. The rest of that floor was a breeze after that.

Th
e door finally creaked open to reveal what appeared to be a young husband and wife, with what might once have been a human toddler. It was hard to tell, with the black fur and the hissing, if a child was indeed still under there.

We strolled in and another of the Fae with us laid a hand upon the husband, single shake of his head. Wife was next up, and again, single shake of his head. When he went to lay a hand upon the
cat child, the mother clung tightly to her. I wasn't sure why we even bothered to confirm. The yellow eyes and fangs weren't enough?

And holy cow, h
ow many more
changed
like this were hiding in their rooms?

"How long has she been like this?" I asked the mother.

"It started slowly, with just some little areas of peach fuzz, but then we woke up one day and she was like this. Are you going to take her? She's only two years old." Tears streamed down the mother's face and the father positioned himself in between us, like he'd have a chance to stop us if we decided to take her.

"No one is going to take your child," I said before Burrom or any of the other Fae could speak.

The mother's eyes came to rest upon me. "You swear?"

I couldn't swear for everyone
so I made the only promise I could. "They'd have to do it over my dead body." I'd kill Cormac myself if he tried. I glanced over at Burrom and he looked everywhere but me. I didn't add that it could possibly come to that and then they were on their own.

We left the room and the family with a false sense of peace. Burrom took the accounting sheet from our Fae helpers as
we both headed to our next potential victims -- oops, I mean humans.

"Don't touch her
, Burrom," I said, referring to the cat girl.

"She's a babe. I'd have no use for her."

"And when she's not?"

"I'm going to g
round before that will happen."

I nodded. I could accept that. I wasn't sure when exactly he was going to ground
, but he'd be there long after she became an adult. At that point, she was on her own. Kids, yeah, okay, I'd go down with the ship for them. In this world, as an adult, you had to help yourself a little, because there wasn't any hero showing up to save you.

At some point, I'd thought I was a hero in the making. All I made was a gigantic mess.
My cape had gone up in flames that night in New York. The small fragment of the human population left hated me. I'd grown up a loner, only watching out for myself. Then at some point, I'd started to care. I'd started to want people. Now look at me. What a mess. I longed for the days I didn't care. And to make matters worse, I'd emptied the last contents of my flask a floor ago.

It took the entire
day to go through all the floors and we still missed the lion's share. Word was spreading fast and people were disappearing. I didn't know where they hid, but as word got out, less and less people were in their rooms by the end of the day.

I'd still seen more than I wanted to. There was a
spider woman on floor fifteen that had a cocoon built in the corner of the room. On eighteen, we had a giant. The guy used to be a professional linebacker, but now he couldn't sit in a chair without crushing it. A woman on twenty couldn't leave the shower stall for more than hour because of the water that streamed from her pores and there was a human pretzel on thirty-two. Today had been a serious revelation.