Chapter 15

The return to Las Vegas was unsettling for a couple of reasons. The speed with which the Magician whisked us out of Cairo's market and back along the circuits to home wasn't all that startling, I was used to that. But when Armaeus left me outside the office door to Justice Hall, I got the sense that something was off.

First, he left without another word, whispering away from me almost as soon as he'd ensured my safe arrival. Second, I felt out of sorts, like my internal clock had been set askew. I patted my pocket to make sure I still had the Moon's class ring, then moved down to the doorway almost nervously, not sure of what I would find on the other side. Mrs. French, almost certainly. Possibly Nigel and Nikki, but otherwise? It had only been a few hours, after all.

The door didn't open as I approached, which was another indication that something was a little off. I keyed into it with a touch of my hand, using the fingerprint recognition system Simon had installed at some point, but which I rarely needed given the keen sensitivity of Mrs. French. But nobody appeared on the other side of the door. The Hall was silent, the library apparently closed.

I frowned, suddenly uncertain.

"Mrs. French?" I called, only to hear an "Oh!" from deep within the library, as if I'd startled the head librarian nodding off at the stacks.

Mrs. French emerged from the main library a few minutes later, and I blinked to see that she was in a long gray house robe, a white cotton nightgown visible beneath its severe folds. Her gray hair, normally swept up in an efficient bun, was braided down her back, and she looked so unexpectedly small to me that my heart caught. I lifted my hands in dismay.

"What time is it?" I asked, thoroughly confused. "We weren't in Cairo that long."

"Oh, indeed you were, Justice Wilde," Mrs. French said, her demeanor as cheerful as always. "It's going on two a.m. If you would like me to ring up Nikki, I'm sure she's up to no good in one of the local clubs. She seemed intent on showing Mr. Nigel a good time. Her words, I should say, not mine."

"Two in the morning?" I blinked. That was another twelve hours lost in translation. Had the Magician and I gone somewhere else without me realizing it? Would he have done that to me willingly without telling me? It had been ten in the evening when we'd left Cairo, which should've equaled early afternoon in Vegas.

Armaeus?I reached out mentally, but there was no response. What had just happened here? Had the Magician tried some sort of test of my sensitivity, which I had clearly failed?

I didn't know, but I couldn't deny the growing pit in my stomach as to what it might mean. Something weird was going on with the Magician, as if he were a puppeteer with a few too many strings dangling and no more marionettes to move. I shook off my dismay as Mrs. French looked at me expectantly. "No, no. You don't need to find them. I can. Have you heard anything from Sariah?"

"Oh! Well, yes, indeed. She called several hours ago. She has taken it upon herself to assist Dixie Quinn in some task, and she seemed quite delighted. She said you knew all about it, and advised me not to worry, so of course, I instantly worried. But Nikki and Mr. Friedman had already set off, and as Miss Pelter was also heading to the Flamingo, I thought it prudent to advise Mr. Kreios."

"They were going to the Flamingo?" I asked. "Dixie and Sariah?"

"Yes—the whole lot of them. I thought it rather odd, but Mr. Kreios assured me he would keep a close eye on everyone. The Flamingo tends to attract some rather obscure players, I'm given to understand. It's perhaps the darkest of the casinos on the Strip."

I lifted my brows at her assessment. I couldn't say I was surprised at the observation, or that I disagreed with it. The Flamingo had been built in the 1940s by one of the most notorious gangsters who had come to the man-made oasis that was Las Vegas, and it served as said gangster's primary residence. But that wasn't what disturbed me.

"Um…has anything else happened in the last twelve hours or so?" I asked. "Any other disturbances in the Force?"

It was a testament to Mrs. French's familiarity with me that she didn't even blink at the odd question.

"Indeed, we've got nearly two dozen requests for aid," she confided. "Interestingly enough, they've come mostly from artifact hunters, pleas for help that were generalized, not necessarily directed to you, but just—"

"To come save them?" I asked, but she shook her head.

"Not even that coherent, I'm afraid. More pain, fear, and confusion. I've tallied them all for you. They've come in mostly on scraps of parchment, sent with expedience, not finesse. I figured given what Mr. Friedman said, you would want to know their locations. They're from all over the globe."

"Sites known as lost cities?" I asked, but again, confoundingly, she shook her head.

"Not lost in the traditional sense, though certainly each has its own shadowy district. But Nikki cross-referenced them with her contact at the House of Swords, and additional information came back almost immediately. Most of the sites are primary locations of the darker operations on the black market. Syndicates that we have barely begun to look into, I believe she said."

Oh, great."Any affiliation with the Shadow Court?" I asked, but Mrs. French merely lifted a hand and dropped it.

"We still know too little about that organization, I'm afraid. Even those members the Council managed to single out during their last attack have scattered far and wide. Nothing attaches them to these missives, but nothing doesn't attach them either, if you see what I'm saying."

I did, but it didn't make me feel any better. "Where do you think I'd find Nikki now? Still at the Flamingo?"

Mrs. French sniffed with only cursory dismay. "Oh, I wouldn't think so. She's never in one place for too long, I'm given to understand. She was curious about the Sahara, wanting to see what the Sun was up to. I rather expect you'll find her there."

She was right.

Twenty minutes later, I entered the glittering main casino of the Sahara, walking into the wall of sound that was so familiar to any of the casinos along the Strip—the clattering yammer of the slot machines, the buzz of conversation, the music set behind the noise to give the feeling of both complete insulation and isolation. A quick scan of the energy in the room indicated that while there was plenty of magic going on, it was decidedly lower level—the bubbling possibility of scoring a big prize, the knife-edged panic of making a wrong bet. But none of it spoke of the freewheeling loquacious style of Nikki Dawes or the Brit I suspected she had well into his cups by now. That meant I'd have to find her the old-fashioned way. I continued moving through the casino and followed the signs for the pool area.

Jackpot.

As I stepped outside, I heard Nikki's bright, delighted laugh. I scanned the area, expecting to find her in the center of a crowd of the young, beautiful resort set of Vegas, embodying the irony of the old casino that had been made new again. To my surprise, however, only Nigel was dancing attendance on Nikki. And he was grinning at her like a loon.

Nikki saw me first.

"Dollface!" She waved me over with a lift of her enormous glass, a wildly orange-tinted concoction with a pineapple wedge stuck on the rim. "We want to know everything."

Nigel turned as well, somewhat less steadily. He sobered up visibly as he caught sight of me. Not because he was on the job and I was some sort of team lead, but because of the same sixth sense that had always flipped on for him when a job was about to start. It was a feature of being an artifact hunter, with the need to get the jump on anyone else who might be after the same McGuffin you had targeted.

"You found him," he said.

I nodded as I settled into a cabana chair next to them. A server appeared almost immediately with another giant glass of something fruity. I took it and handed it over to Nikki, then held up a finger.

"What's your house scotch?" I asked.

"For you, it's Glenmorangie." A new voice spoke, rich and redolent with the sound of the real Sahara, complete with shifting sands and flapping silks. I looked up and then up farther as the newest member of the Arcana Council strolled to our table, a bottle in one hand and a cut crystal glass in the other, with the telltale amber liquid gleaming within. Rippling with muscles visible through the thin material of his caftan, his golden bronze skin gleaming, and his bald head mirror bright—like Mr. Clean playing Lawrence of Arabia—the Sun handed me the glass and put the bottle on the table beside us before turning and murmuring something to the server. The young man nodded and moved off smartly—not scurrying, still walking with a swagger—but definitely hopping to it.

Nikki watched him go appreciatively.

"I must say, I sincerely approve of the new management at the Sahara," she drawled. "Every single one of your staff, young or old, big or small, conventionally or unconventionally beautiful, carries themselves as if they own the world."

"I am but a humble servant to the owners of this physical building," Qadir said, gesturing expansively. The Sun had no drink, and I didn't know what millennia-old djinn drank, for that matter, but he seemed on the edge of ebullience, so something was coursing through his veins. I reached out with a flick of my mind and traced the sparks of energy that radiated through him from the medallion that hung around his neck. He'd inherited the Sun medallion from the last Council member who had occupied his role. I knew Armaeus had spent some time researching the medal, but I never learned the outcome of that research. Another mystery.

Qadir slanted a glance to me. "In the night, it becomes more difficult to discern the thoughts of those around me who are as strong as you, Justice Wilde."

I smiled. I wasn't wholly certain of all the Sun's supernatural abilities, but one of them definitely required me to avoid bright shafts of sunlight if I wanted to stay hidden from him. He also could break himself apart into many smaller versions, but I suspected that that had more to do with his Djinn heritage than his capacity as Sun. However, there was no disputing perhaps the most marked of his abilities, that of buoyant influence.

Was that what I had to thank for Nikki's and Nigel's unexpected bonhomie? I narrowed my eyes at the Sun, and he smiled expansively.

"What is life without love?" he asked.

I barely kept from rolling my eyes. Still, Nikki hadn't chosen this location because she was interested in a party. I needed to take advantage.

"What do you think about this outreach effort on the part of the Moon?" I asked him.

Once again, Qadir smiled expansively, but shrugged. "I don't think the Moon is behind it at all. My predecessor's memories are quite hazy of both the Moon and the Star, let alone of the relationship they'd forged with his long-ago ancestor who knew them best. Inherited knowledge is never reliable and often slanted to the benefit of the person doing the remembering."

I nodded. "Fair enough. But why don't you think the outreach is legit?"

"Oh, I think it is quite legitimate. I just question the source," Qadir said. "The Moon, by all accounts from anything I can conjure up, has been a careful schemer, one who loves the shadows and does not seek the light. Unlike the Sun, who walked with humanity and happily so, even if he hid from the Council, the Moon preferred to stay tucked away."

"Preferred to or was forced to?"

Qadir turned to look at Nikki as she spoke, his thick brows lifting. "A worthwhile question, and one that should give us all pause. Because if, in fact, she was forcibly hidden away, and yes," he turned, waving off my immediate question. "I do believe she is a feminine presence—if she has been held against her will, then who is doing the outing? Is it the Moon finally finding a crevice in the veil between the worlds to get her message out…in such an elaborate and obvious fashion? Or is it a trap, and we're being lured in to free a spirit who does not want to be freed?"

Nigel pinched the bridge of his nose. "So, are we rescuing Roland, the Moon, or a third unknown party or artifact?"

Qadir spread his broad hands. "You can see the conundrum."

I sighed, lifting my hands to my temples. Oh, I could see it all right. "So you're saying we shouldn't even make the attempt to find the Moon?"

Qadir shook his head. "Not at all. In fact, you must make every effort to do so. Because if you don't, someone else will, and I suspect that will be a far worse scenario than any of us would like to manage."

Nikki scowled, and Nigel sat up straighter. Qadir was right, of course. We were being herded like all the other hunters to this chase, but the stakes were higher for us. If anybody was going to find the Moon, it had better be us.