“Um. Our family trees are written on demon skin. They hide some of our darkest spells in them.” She frowned. “Why, what does that have to do with anything?”
Grimm had said people were after his family tree, but I hadn’t believed him. I’d thought it was the coin.
Then I’d thought it was Black Spells of Savannah and the Undead.
I swallowed hard. “What kind of spells?”
Bridgette stared hard at me. “Breena, why does it matter?”
I tucked the book under my arm and pulled out the yellow envelope, taking out the freaking demon skins scrawled with Goblinese.
She held out a hand, trembling, her eyes scanning it quickly. “This is bad, Breena,” she said, looking up at me with large eyes. “The spells in here, they are some of the worst I’ve ever seen. Bringing back monsters that have been wiped out for generations.”
The Silver Lady’s words reverberated in my head.
“Is there a way to bring . . . vampires back in there?”
Please say no, please say no, please say no.
She scanned the pages for too long, long enough to give me hope, and then she shoved them back at me as if she couldn’t bear to touch them anymore. “Yes. There’s a spell in there to bring a plague of vampires down on us. This is crazy, why would they . . .” she trailed off, muttering to herself. “I can’t even believe this! We’ve always been taught to stay as far from vampires as possible. To have nothing to do with them.”
I looked at the pages in my hands. “Maybe this is why. No matter how you look at it, we can’t leave them here, and we can’t take them with us.”
Bridgette was shaking as badly as me now. “I can’t believe anyone would even write that down. Why?”
I shook my head. “No idea. But it’s a stupid thing to do.”
I put the Black Spells of Savannah and the Undead on the ground and dug around in my bag, pausing to point at Alan’s stupid face and then snap my fingers to make him stay put.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Like I said, we can’t take it in with us. Which means we have to destroy it right now.” I found the small package of matches I’d stuffed into my bag at a bar Suzy and I had gone to for drinks.
“Won’t work,” Bridgette said. “Fire will only make the magic come to life. We’ll have to find another way.”
“Damn it!” I shoved the matches and everything else back in my bag, making Alan grumble. All I could do was hope that my accidental paper swap didn’t end up hurting a lot of people. “Skel, you stay here and guard Crash.”
I didn’t necessarily want to leave him out here by himself, but I wasn’t sure we had much of a choice. Whatever whammy Karissa had hit him with, it had hit him hard. Robert, Bridgette, and I jogged away—well, I jogged, he swayed quickly, and she scurried to keep up—down the line of the wall, my hand on the surface of it, feeling for anything we could use to get in.
Because I’d watched Labyrinth too many times not to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the writers had been right about goblins liking illusions and mazes and whatnot . . .
“There’s this part in the movie,” I said as if they had any idea what I was talking about, “and it was just an illusion, but that illusion made it nearly impossible to see . . .” My hand dipped into an opening I hadn’t seen, and I slid to a stop and stared at the wall. “Hot damn, apparently the movie got it right. You two, stick close.”
I stepped into the opening. In front of me was a second rock wall, about two feet away from the first and set up with an illusion that was hard to break. To either side of that second wall were paths that led away from the wall. I stepped around and stared down a long street into what looked like the Strip in Vegas. I’d been there once, years before, and the sounds and lights were spot on, even if the names of the businesses were totally off kilter.
Tits and Bits
All Your Jewels
Gimme Yo Money
To name a few. More notable than the radical honesty of their marketing was the lack of people—or goblins. I stood at the far end of what looked to be a long stretch ending in what could only be a massive set of front doors. A ridiculously tall platform stood in front of them. I dug around in my bag and pulled out the binoculars Sarge had given me earlier.
Alan spilled out because I wasn’t quick enough to stop him this time.
“Bree—”
I snapped my fingers at him to shut his face.
Putting the binoculars to my eyes, I scanned the platform.
A big throne had been set up, its back to me, and several goblins stood next to it, one wrapped in thick ropes.
“That’s got to be Grimm,” I muttered, feeling very 007 as I swept my gaze across to the other side of the throne.
When I saw the tall and very human figure that stood there, I wanted to clamp my hands around his neck and squeeze until his eyeballs popped out. But it was the Silver Lady next to him who really had my attention. She’d been with him this whole time, dragging the stuffing out of him, which was awesome.
It also meant she might know where my friends were being kept here in Goblin Town.
I put my hand up to her, hoping she’d see me.
Nothing.
I lowered the binoculars, trying to think my way through our problem. My gran had always said no problem was impossible to solve—you just had to consider the tools at hand. Robert was invisible to most people, but could goblins see him? I realized I hadn’t outright asked Bridgette.
Which reminded me of another potential problem: she wasn’t even supposed to be here. “Will they hurt you if they see you?” I asked her.
“They might kick me back out, but they won’t hurt me,” she said.
And then I looked at Alan.
He glared at me. “What?”
He could talk to the Silver Lady, and he could probably get there without anyone seeing him. “I need your help.”
He burst out laughing. “Tough shit. I’m not doing anything for you.”
I shrugged, grabbed him by the ear and started to stuff him back into the bag. He pawed at my hands, fighting me, but I had him all the way in except for his head in a matter of seconds.
“Wait. Stop. What if I make a deal with you?” Alan whined. “Don’t put me in the bag anymore, and I’ll do what I can to help you.”
I grimaced and shook my head. “Yeah, you’ll have to do better than that. Robert is my backup plan, and he is far more trustworthy. And you’re a pain in my ass even as a dead man.”
“Friend,” Robert whispered.
Alan wormed a hand out of the bag, holding it out to me. “Okay, okay. What if I help you with this . . . whatever this is, and you . . . you help find out what happened to me.”
I pursed my lips. “But if you get in the way or start yapping, I’ll stuff you back into the bag.”
“Okay, okay, deal.” He held his hand out and I took it, yanking him from my bag. Confusion stole over his face as he glanced around. “What do you need to do in Vegas?”
I pointed to the front gates, not bothering to point out that this wasn’t exactly Vegas as he knew it. “There’s a woman next to Davin the dick. She’s a ghost like you. I need you to get her and bring her to me.”