Chapter 27

It was another several hours before the last hunters left the Bellagio.

In the end, it hadn't taken much to rewire the hunters into a better form of themselves. They all possessed more Connected abilities than I had originally suspected, as evidenced by the magic that flowed and hissed beneath my fingers as I traced the lines of connection through them. Their abilities varied with their natural talents, and no one was completely sure of how they would manifest, but contented themselves with listening to Roland's stories of his brawler fists and magical sensitivity, while imagining how their own abilities might manifest.

In return, they pledged their skills to the Hall of Justice, should I ever have need of them. It was a trade none of them made lightly given Gamon's dark presence, taking down their names and memorizing their faces as they stepped up to take their place in line. Where necessary, I trusted their fear of her even if I suspected their goodwill toward me would wane, though time would tell.

Now only Emilio remained, practically buzzing with excitement. "It's happening!" he announced. "I don't need to wait any longer. It's happening. I can feel the healing power flow inside me, and that's what I'll do. I will heal. I'll take the place of the grandmother shaman of our village, and I will heal both illnesses of the body and the mind. It is why she sent me to you, yes? She knew. I understand that now. She knew. Hmmmm." He quirked a glance at me. "Do you think I will become psychic like her?"

I smiled at him, utterly exhausted. "I don't know? Will you?"

"Exactly." The grin he shot me lit up the whole room. "Thank you, Justice Wilde. You didn't have to do this. Didn't need to."

I winked at him. "I know, I know. And I probably shouldn't have. Don't make me regret it, okay?"

"Never," he promised. He turned to the door, bubbling over with enthusiasm.

I watched him go, then sagged back in my chair at the conference table, thoroughly drained. By the time Nikki returned, it took both her and Nigel's efforts to haul me out of my chair and get me outside into the dry desert air of the Vegas night.

After a bit more prodding, we made it out to the Strip, blending in with the tourists. Nikki and Nigel walked beside me, all of us soothed and maybe even healed a little by the press of humanity, the ebb and flow of chatter and the clackety-clacking casinos. By now, it was pushing midnight, and it was a star-filled night, the moon a bare crescent, even skinnier than before to my eye.

"The new moon comes in a few days. That's not good," Nikki said, squinting up at the sky.

I glanced at her. "Why not?"

She shrugged. "I mean, I'm not Dixie, so astrology isn't really my thing, but I know this much. The moon is strongest when it's full. That's its flowering moment, where it extends its efforts and bounty across the world. That's why you launch ventures you've been working on at a full moon, if you go in for that kind of thing. It's a good time to harvest, to reap what you've sown, to get paid for your efforts, like that. The new moon, however, is a much shadier situation. Literally. She's dark. You can't see her. It's the best time to set intentions and see the person you might become in the fullness of time, but it's not a good place to strike, to attack. She's just not strong like that in her new moon phase."

"That explains part of the reason why the Star or the Shadow Court or whoever is behind this brought her out of hiding when they did," Nigel mused. "If the Moon is at a position where she's just not that strong, she can be more easily bent to someone else's agenda."

"The Moon reveals that which is hidden," I muttered. "She's already done that in spades. If Viktor is working against the Council, that can't stand."

"Agreed, but," Nikki countered, "not to put too fine a point on it, what do we really know about the Council?"

I shot her a look. "What do you mean?"

She waved a hand at the Flamingo as we passed. "We've got these demigods of great and mighty power—hell, you've become a demigod of great and mighty power, same with Gamon, same with Simon—and yet we still don't know everything that's going on. I love Mr. Wizard so much it makes my heart hurt, but he's been holding out on us, or, worse, he doesn't know everything there is to know. If the Moon crawling out of Atlantis triggers a big reveal of all the mysteries of the world, I say that shit needs to start here at home. We need some answers. And don't think I haven't asked Mrs. French for some history books on the Council from Justice Hall, but no dice. As big as that library is, it's chock-full of cold cases or the detritus of solved cases, but nothing we can use."

"Solved cases…" I said. "I wonder…"

Nigel looked at me. "If you're wondering the same thing I am, I'm more than a little concerned, but I'm way ahead of you. What if we're not the first Council-friendly souls to run afoul of the machinations of the same organization we're standing up to help? I mean, surely that's happened before. And what if, in particular, it was a complaint involving the Moon? Perhaps we can find out more about her that way."

"That'd be back from pretty much the dawn of time," Nikki said. "I wouldn't even know where to start looking."

"Well, that's the beauty of it," Nigel countered, growing more excited. "You start back at the very beginning. Anything past, oh, I don't know, 3000 BC is probably going to be a winner."

Nikki and I glanced at each other. "You think?" she asked as I felt a soft pressure against my mind, a questing touch. I hadn't registered how firmly I'd erected the wards against anyone penetrating our conversation until now, but I knew the Magician's touch when I felt it, and I welcomed it. It felt like far too long since I'd connected with him.

"I tell you what," I said. "You two head back to Justice Hall, wake up Mrs. French if you have to, and see just how far back our files go. It never occurred to me to ask exactly why the Council split once before, when the Moon, the Star, and the Sun spun off from the mother ship. Maybe it's not a bad idea for us to see if we can figure that out."

"Done," Nikki said. She glanced from me to the enormous shadow fortress that anchored the far end of the Strip, Prime Luxe. "You going to see Mr. Big?"

I nodded. "He has to know everything that went on with this night, if he sent Gamon to stop me and allowed Viktor to get as far as he did. He's peeling back the veils of everything the Shadow Court and I guess maybe the Star is trying to keep hidden. I think he believes he just needs to stay one or two steps ahead of them to win. But I'm beginning to have my doubts that that's the best strategy."

"I'm pretty much voting for team Sara on this one," Nikki said, and Nigel grunted his agreement.

"All right, choppity choppity," Nikki continued. "We're heading back to Justice Hall by way of the Flamingo, I think. I need a drink. Those complaints against the Council have been sitting up in that mausoleum for six thousand years. They can wait another couple of hours."

I laughed. "Truer words were never spoken. Get some rest after those drinks, okay?"

I hadn't gone more than a few steps, however, when I felt someone coming up behind me. On a crowded night on the Strip, this wasn't an unusual feeling, but this was no ordinary gambler, as I realized when she reached my side. Death's steps were long and certain, her body lithe and hard. Cool reassurance radiated from her in all directions—not the comforting reassurance that everything was going to be okay, but the understanding that it wasn't going to be okay, it was simply going to be.

"War is coming," she said.

Of all the things I anticipated her saying, that…wasn't one of them.

I slanted her a quick glance, taking in her sharp, fair features. Death wasn't a conventionally beautiful woman, but you couldn't help noticing her, with her long, straight nose, chiseled features, and the shock of white-blonde hair she wore swept over one side of her head and shaved along the other. She was famous among certain circles as a tattoo artist and an airbrush specialist, and she looked the part tonight with her black leather jacket hung loose over a gray tank, beat-up jeans, and black boots. She ambled easily, her hands in her pockets, and she looked neither happy nor sad.

War is coming. The clattering slot machines seemed to take up the cadence as we passed the open doors of a casino. War always comes.

"Okay…" I allowed. "Will I know that war when I see it?"

She chuckled a little grimly. "You're already in the thick of it. I've been watching for a long time, yet it never seems enough years pass between the great upheavals. The hubris of the old is that they think that no one ever watches them, that no one truly sees. But what they forget is that all humans die. They are but a spark of life that breaks free upon this plane, surges to varying heights, and then dissolves. Some of those flames flash quick and hot, some linger over decades. A few, a very few, linger over centuries. But all humans die. Only immortals know what it's like to pass the natural arc of a lifetime and still find yourself standing. You may yet see the future beyond your normal span. Possibly."

"I'm not sure I'm really excited about the fact you can't say that with a little more certainty," I said, going for sardonic but ending up sounding a bit dismayed. The truth was, I felt dismayed. This cozy audience had all sorts of doom and gloom attending it, and there was a knot growing in my stomach so heavy, it reminded me of the Star of Arabia stone from the bad old days. "You can see the future, can't you?"

"I can see death," she corrected. "But the death I see does change. Humans, mortal or otherwise, have the capacity to cause that change. Generally speaking, anyway. But there comes a time when so many lifetimes have been lived that the psyche becomes more fragile, more easily broken. Sometimes it's an obvious break, and sometimes it's calcified in such a way that it becomes a thing of beauty, hard and crystalline, with no outward indication of the chaos within."

"Cut the crap," I said abruptly. "Does Armaeus die? Does somebody else close to me? Is that what you're warning me about?"

Death's smile was sad. "Oh, Sara Wilde, I regret to inform you that you will know the deaths of those you love over and over again. You've seen it already so many times, and you'll continue to see it. That's not why I'm here this night, though. It's not my place to warn people of the deaths that come for them. Not bodily deaths, anyway."

"Uh-huh," I said, because I was an adult like that. "I find myself wondering why you can't just come out and tell me directly whatever's on your mind. I didn't think anybody constrained Death."

She lifted a shoulder, dropped it. "The discipline of long experience."

Yeah. I couldn't argue that. A soft wind had picked up as we passed darker alleyways, heading for the far end of the Strip, where the Magician's fortress loomed large.

"I've found that when people know what's coming, they change its course," Death continued. "It's why they've sought out diviners of the future all these centuries untold. Not because they wish to know what's going to happen to them, but because they wish to control it. I've found I'm not immune to that desire as well. But I've seen more than people think. I've seen them when they weren't looking. I've gone between the planes and found the truth embedded in the very stones."

"You're talking about the In Between," I said, remembering those dark passageways I'd stumbled into in Ireland, searching for yet another truth, trying to hold off yet another war and only partially succeeding, given that we were at its doorstep once again. I sighed. "Look, I know you want me to figure something out, but it's been a really, really long day. What do I need to know?"

Death laughed softly. Then she seemed to take pity on me as we came around the curve of Las Vegas Boulevard, and drew closer to the Luxor casino, atop which the Magician's fortress soared. "It's important for you to be strong when facing death, especially those you don't expect. But it's perhaps more important to know that no one ever really dies, Sara. Our time on this earth is but a blink, except when it isn't."

"Okay, well, if your intention was to freak me out, congratulations. You succeeded," I groused. Death shook her head.

"Of all places it could go, the Council came to Vegas to ground its power into the deepest, darkest magic it could find. And now we're almost all but complete here."

"Well, sort of," I said. "We've got the Moon set free, but we don't know where she is, and God knows about the—"

But Death waved a hand, silencing me. "To fight this war, there will be death and there will be transformation. Be at peace, Justice, and let what happens happen. But please, know this. Of all the Council members, you have the ability to cause the greatest destruction, a perfect storm of alchemical retribution. Don't use it."

I stared at her, wanting to deny what she was saying, but more nervous about why she was saying it. "Um, seriously. Who's going to die?" I asked again.

Death only smiled at me. "Everyone dies, if they're lucky," she murmured.

And then she slipped away into the night.