“But they’re supposed to be here! Why is there no security?”
“There’s plenty of security for a hotel,” Augustine said. “Which is what this is supposed to be!”
He was right, and at the moment it was starting to look like insanity that the vampire senate’s West Coast headquarters was situated in a Vegas hotel. But after their old HQ was destroyed in the war, they’d needed a stopgap measure. And this place had been big enough, and the guy who built it had been a paranoid nutjob who used better-than-average wards, and it had recently been inherited by one of their own. . . .
None of which were sounding like such great reasons at the moment.
“And nobody thought to maybe improve the wards?” Carla demanded.
“They did—on the upper floors,” I told her. “The lower couldn’t have the best wards because they’re too sensitive—some crazy tourist could have set them off.”
“Why are we talking about wards?” Augustine demanded in a shrill whisper. “All we need to know is that they’re down. And without them, we’re sitting ducks. Do you have any idea what those people out there can do in twenty minutes?”
“But we have the Pythia,” the reporter repeated, looking between the two of us.
Augustine and I exchanged glances. “I assume you can’t shift back an hour or two and warn us?” he asked, looking like he already knew the answer.
“If I could, I’d have already done it.”
“Then can you shift us out of here?”
“No.”
“Then it’s as I said before—we have to get ourselves out of this.”
“Yes, but not this way.”
“Then I hope you have a damn good idea,” he snapped. “I’m all out!”
I stared at the broken doll bodies of the mannequins. And at my pulled pork sandwich trampled in the debris. And at Deino, pulling on a scarf that was still stuck to her, static cling–style.
“Yeah,” I said. “I have an idea.”
Chapter Seven
“Pythia!” The mage’s spell-enhanced voice boomed through the lobby. “Stop stalling! Will you surrender the girl or not?”
“I will.” I reappeared in the burnt-out hole of a front door. “How do we do this?”
“No!” Rhea shouted. “Lady, please—”
She cut off when the knife at her throat abruptly tightened.
“Have your people send Lizzie down,” the mage told me, nodding at the bank of elevators across from Augustine’s, near the lobby. “When she’s in our hands, you’ll get your acolyte back.”
“Yes, in pieces!”
“You don’t trust me?” He looked stricken. “And I thought we were having such a nice conversation.”
The short break seemed to have improved his temper. He was back to the faux genial crap that was somehow more nerve-racking than the brief glimpse of crazy. He was also smiling again, and just the sight of that was enough to make my blood curdle.
“We’ll meet in the middle,” I said, trying to keep the revulsion out of my tone.
“We will not. Do you think me so foolish as to let you touch her? You’ll shift her away, and as you said, I will have nothing.”
“I won’t shift her, because I won’t be there. Some of my associates will meet you, and see to her safety. When she’s in their hands—”
“No!” That was Rhea again, suddenly going from quiet passivity to thrashing fury. “No, don’t do it! Don’t give them—”