“Where does that leave things with you?”
“Hopefully, here. I’ve got enough to handle in Vegas. Don’t think that I’m happy about our little firebug choosing the Strip to make his message known. I’ve been waiting for a while for this place to become ground zero for some sort of magical throwdown with the Council. I’m surprised it’s taken this long.”
“Yet another reason we need you with us when we talk to Armaeus,” I said, the soul of reason. “If there’s something building up that’s going to become a problem for Las Vegas specifically, not just the Council, everyone needs to be prepared. There’s a whole lot of psychics that are drawn to this area. It could very quickly become a lightning rod for the supernatural. That’s…problematic.”
Brody snorted. “That’s one way of saying it. We’ve also got our share of straight-up crime that has nothing to do with the supernatural. If you think for one second that’s not going to ramp up as well in the middle of a Connected conflict, think again. A lot of these guys have their feet on both sides of the trade, both technoceutical-related dealers and straight-up dirtbags. They go where the money goes. They don’t care about the product.”
“So we need to talk to Armaeus, is what you’re saying,” I drawled.
Brody pushed angrily away from the table. “He is not sending me back to Interpol.”
We cashed out and headed for the street, where Nikki had her car called for us. But I was still chewing on Brody’s assessment of the current strain of drug dealers dabbling in the technoceutical market.
“They don’t care about the product, you said. Do they actually understand the product?”
Brody grunted something noncommittal. “I’ll let you know when we nail one.”
It surprised me I’d never really thought of this before. I’d been so immersed in the arcane aspects of the technoceutical drug trade, and its uniquely Connected clientele, that it never occurred to me to consider other players in the game who weren’t Connected. That, of course, put me in exactly the same category as the Magician. The Arcana Council had been created to manage Connected concerns. We had developed our entire ethos based on this tiny subset of humanity in isolation from its non-psychic counterparts.
But what was the reality? Was there a lot more cross-pollination between Connected and non-Connected criminals than we’d considered?
Obviously, the lower-level players, the drug pushers in the arcane market, might well not be Connected, because, as Brody said, they would take their money however it came, but what about the master players? I’d always assumed that high-level Connecteds wouldn’t deign to deal with non-Connecteds because they considered non-Connecteds inferior. When you had psychic abilities, that kind of trumped anything an ordinary mortal could do, no matter how rich they were. But maybe I was looking at this entirely the wrong way. Maybe I had always looked at it the wrong way. Maybe I was letting my own prejudice get the better of me.
How much better did that make me than the asshats at the Odermatts’ little soirée of superficiality? I felt a little sick to my stomach considering it.
We piled into the car with Nikki at the wheel and headed off down the Strip. It wasn’t a long drive by any means, but in the million-and-one-degree heat, it wasn’t a journey we were going to venture on foot.
As we drove, I found my attention turning to the soaring shadowy homes of the Arcana Council that shimmered high above the tops of the man-made casinos, spectral visions unable to be seen by anybody but the most powerful Connecteds. The gorgeous glass fool’s cap over the Bellagio, which was the Fool’s home. The twisting lava lamp of a night club that shot high above the Flamingo, home to the Devil. The tiny cottage on a simple platform that lifted precariously above Excalibur that was the Hermit’s home. The black monolith that shot up from Paris casino, stern and unforgiving—much like its owner, the Emperor.
Technically, both the Devil and the Emperor had been running the Arcana Council for the past several weeks, but the Devil had become the de facto leader as Armaeus had not stepped up to take his rightful role. Instead, the Magician had retreated to his own fortress, which we approached now, a shimmering tower of glass, metal, and stone with a thousand pointed turrets, as ghostly as the wispy clouds it soared above. Prime Luxe, the Magician’s fortress.
“So, what’s the plan here?” Nikki asked pragmatically as she eased the car into the valet station. Even if the attendants didn’t recognize the car, the moment Nikki stepped out, the entire valet squad brightened. Two different guys came scurrying over, ready to assure her of their undivided attention and solicitude while taking care of her vehicle. We waited until they had driven off with the silver Mercedes, then entered the building.
“Honestly? We go right at it. Something’s going on that Armaeus isn’t sharing, and we need to know what it is,” I said as we approached the elevator banks for the Luxor. The entire place gleamed with kitsch, fake gold, and cheap brass-and-glass fixtures, but there was one elevator bank that stood out from the rest, at least to me.
Brody couldn’t see it, or at least he never let on that he could, though he had some Connected ability. You couldn’t hang around the Council for terribly long without some of the crazy rubbing off on you. His ability was augmented when he was with us, which was something else that pricked at me, another jagged piece that poked my intuition, though I couldn’t quite understand why. We entered the jet-black elevator bay after its doors swished open, and I waited for them to close again before continuing.
“I haven’t seen the High Priestess out of one of her hallowed silos in I don’t even know how long. Today, she was not only circulating with the great unwashed, she had an intern with her. And she got dirty.” I thought about that, the desperation with which the normally fastidious High Priestess had pawed through the churning ashes in front of Harrah’s.
“She did seem legit freaked out,” Nikki agreed. “That’s not her usual MO. I didn’t like it.”
“No new incidences of fires, though,” Brody said. “But why set the blazes in the first place? It’s almost got to be a warning.”
“Not a warning. More of an invitation.”
The Magician’s voice that greeted us as the doors snicked open was cool and controlled, and no longer held the contemptuous edge that had defined it so much of the time I’d heard him speak, particularly during explanations. Then again, a lot had changed recently. Namely, as the result of a spell he’d orchestrated himself, Armaeus had forgotten every memory he had of me.
All of them.
While nobody likes to be forgotten, it’s particularly hard when you’ve been forgotten by the only man you’ve ever loved…and the only man who’d ever loved you.
Irritation sparked as I fought back the pang of loss. The Magician and I were working through our issues. I needed to look forward, not back.
We stepped out of the elevator, and to my surprise, we were not in Armaeus’s main office, with its miles of plush carpeting and ornate, oversized desk. Instead, we were in his library. Rosewood floor-to-ceiling shelves stretched as far as I could see. I knew from past experience that beyond those shelves lay study tools that went a little beyond your normal academic library, like arcane torture devices and fiery conflagrations and pits of darkness that had no bottom.