"Welcome to Glitterhame Neversleepsand the Tir-na-Og Resort Hotel and Casino! I'm your friendly neighborhood VIP greeter, and you two are certainly VIPs."
Beth blinked, looking around herself as the Portal dissolved behind her. She and Kory stood in the center of a pristine greenwood of towering oaksa Node Groveand beneath her feet, the ground was covered with thick emerald moss in which violets and tiny blue starflowers bloomed. But beyond the trees she could see neon in every shade of the rainbow, and the light overhead was filtered through the glass skylight of the casino atrium, ten stories above.
"I'm Geraint mac Merydydd, but you can call me GerryMeredith, as it were. Prince Arvindel told us you'd be coming. It's November, the temperature is a balmy 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and sunset is at 4:33 today to be followed by a waxing moon. Please adjust your calendars and watches and return all tray tables to an upright position before exiting the heartwood."
Though two days ago it had been August, Beth's time, in the world two months had passed, as she and Kory had used the Gates at Everforest and Neversleeps to arrive both when and where they wished to. In essence, it was time travel, though the elves rarely used the gates in that fashion, and Beth's mind had been boggled the first time she'd understood that it was possible.
"But why don't you use it? Go back in time and change things that went wrong? You could keep Perenor from buying the Node Grove, keep Susan from building the Poseidon machine"
"The web of the world is woven as Danu wills," Kory had told her, "though we may affect some small threads of Her weaving, we dare not unravel the design. I am but a Magus Minor, with small gifts, and so I do not perfectly understand the why of these things. Our wisest Adepts could explain, though they might not choose to. But it has always been so."
"But how do you know when 'now' is?" Beth had asked, frustrated. "If there's no time in Underhill, and you can go back and forth in the time of the World Above as you please, how do you know?"
"And what else is a Node Grove for, but to anchor the hames into the 'now' of the World Above?" Kory had answered, smiling. "And that anchorage is vital if we are to come and go between the two worlds in safety and ease. There are worlds as real as your own, places in the World Above, where there are no Node Groves, no Portals, and no Elfhames. Such worlds are difficult to reach, and easy to become lost in forever, nor does magic work so well in such worlds as it does here. And so we accept time as the precious gift it is, and do not make light of it."
"After all, it does keep everything from happening at once," Beth had quipped, and let the subject drop. As far as she could figure, the Sidhe used time the way humans used magnetic north: as a useful aid to navigation, but something they could ignore if they chose. Still, they were in November now, and in a day or so they'd go back Underhill, and if she stayed there long enough, everything would sort itself out. So long as she didn't think any more about it, her head wouldn't hurt. And meanwhile, there was their host to consider.
Gerry Meredith looked as if the description "lounge lizard" might have been invented just for him, and his glamourie made him look humanthough far more handsome than any human had a right to be. He was wearing a white sharkskin suit with the casino's logoa Celtic dragon coiled around a towerembroidered in gold over the suit pocket, and a black satin shirt open to the waist. His short black hair was slicked straight back; he wore an ornate gold hoop in one ear, a host of gold chains around his neck, and jewel-studded rings on every finger.
"We're, uh, pleased to be here," Beth said, taking the proffered hand. Gerry's smile broadened into a conspiratorial grin.
"Quite a shock, isn't it? We like to think of our little casino as a teensy bit of home here in this great big desertand where better to hide something than in plain sight? The tourists think that the Grove is just part of our lovely Celtic ambiance, and with the trees indoors instead of outside, we aren't disrupting the local ecology eitherwhich is more than I can say about some people, with their seventy-five-thousand-gallons-a-day-lost-to-evaporation waterfalls. Well! No point in weeping over what can't be mended, is there, dear ones? Let me get someone to take your luggage, and we'll show you to your suite. If there's anything you've forgotten, you can probably find it in one of our tragically-trendy concourse-level shops. All on the house, of course. Nothing too good for our honored guests."
He snapped his fingers, and two bellhops dressed in tights and doublets arrived. Gerry pointed at the two small bagsBeth and Kory didn't plan to be here very long, but each had brought a few things just in case. "Those go to the Lady In The Lake Suite in Tower Four," he said. Each man picked up a bag and walked off through the wood, and Gerry turned back to Beth and Kory.
"Now if you'll come along with me, you can see a bit of the casino on the way up to your rooms," Gerry said. "I understand you'll be attending Comdex along with 250,000 other lovely people? A very busy time of year for us. We have your passes and badges all taken care ofwe can pick them up along with your keys when we get to the deskbut of course you'll be wanting to take care of all the teensy details yourselfwe don't pry. Discretion is our watchword here at Neversleepsafter all, if we told everyone simply everything, what would there be left to gossip about?" Still chattering, Gerry ushered the two of them through the little greenwood.
Beth could see that there were colored floodlights ringing the base of each treethe place must look amazing at nightand in the distance she could hear the splashing of a small fountain.
Neat. They can use magic practically openly, and the mundanes'll think it's just another special effect. Nobody ever really expects to be told the magician's secrets, now, do they?
At the edge of the heartwood a red velvet theater rope marked off the trees from the rest of the casino floor and discouraged casual wanderers. There must be five acres under this roof, Beth marveled, looking around. When Kory had told her that elves were running a casino in Las Vegas she hadn't been sure what to expect, but she sure hadn't expected . . . this.
The motif here in the main casino was Celtic kitschas if Liberace'd had a heavy date with the cast of Riverdance, with a lot of Camelot and some Robin of Sherwood thrown in. The carpet beneath their feet was a multicolored Celtic knotwork pattern, dizzying to look at for very long. Half the wait staff wore kilts and poet shirts and looked like demented Highlanders, while the other half wore diaphanousand very shortglittery togas with sequined Celtic motifs and sparkly "fairy" wings.
The air was filled with soundpiped-in Celtic music (rather good, to Beth's surprise, and not the potted Muzak one usually heard in public buildings), the ching! of slot machines and the clatter of jackpots being paid off, the low calls of the croupiers, the hum of a thousand conversations, and over it all, the ring of other bells and chimes she couldn't begin to guess the reason for. Despite the fact that it was broad day, there were plenty of customers, both at the banks of gleaming slot machines and clustered around the tables. Las Vegas was a true 24-hour town. "Neversleeps" indeed. For once, that Sidhe quirk must come in really handy, Beth thought.
While the table games were pretty standardpoker, blackjack, baccarateven the slot machines carried out the theme of the casino, with leprechauns, pots of gold, rainbows, castles, and dragons prominently displayed on the faces. But the wackiest thing, in Beth's opinion, was the twelve-foot-high vertical roulette wheel that towered over the rest of the casino floor, prominently captioned "Arianrhod's Silver Wheel of Fortune." It promised a $100,000 payoff on double zero, and the most frequent payouts on the entire Strip.
"Oh, my," she murmured to Kory, pointing circumspectly. "Have they no shame?"
"None at all, my lady," Gerry said brightly. She'd forgotten how acute elves' hearing was. "We give the tourists what they come to seeand if we have a bit of fun with it, too, where's the harm? We run the quietest, safest, friendliest house on the Striponly the people who need to lose do so here, and the people who need to win do that too. It all works out." He beamed at them happily.
"Friendly, perhaps. But how honest?" Beth wanted to know. This whole place was too big, too gaudyand too good to be true. It made her suspicious. What were they really up to?
Gerry grinned at her conspiratorially, obviously aware of her reservations. "Devil a bit, m'lady, but does that matter? The good are rewarded, the wicked are punishedand as for those who are sick beyond our power to help them and wish to lose themselves in games of chance as others do in drink or Dreaming, why, somehow they never come in our doorsor if they do, it's for a quick drink, a pull of the slots, and then they're on their way. We harm no one here, nor allow anyone to come to harm. This is Tir-na-Og, the Land of Dreams, and all our dreams are pleasant!" Gerry swept his arms wide, indicating the casino floor with a proud flourish.
"But surely more need to win at your tables than need to lose," Kory pointed out. "If more money is paid out than taken in, how do you survive?"
"As to that, Prince Korendil, it's a fine old Vegas tradition to cook the books, and really, we don't even need to do much of that. More people need to lose money than you'd thinkfor one reason or another. We get a lot of convention traffic, and with two five-star restaurants and three shows nightly in Merlin's Enchanted Oak Room, we do quite well. And if there are any shortfalls . . . well, there's fairy gold aplenty here in Tir-na-Og!"
With enough kenned gold to back it, Beth supposed, any business could afford to run at a loss. And casinos had traditionally been used to launder funds . . . though somehow she suspected that Tir-na-Og was one of the few casinos in Clark County without a Mafia silent partner hovering in the background.
"I do hope you'll be able to make the time to stop in and see one of our shows. The prettiest girls, the most toothsome boys, and more. Magic. Real magic. Stage illusionismprestidigitation in the grand tradition of Kellar, Maskelyne, Houdinithe very best in the business!"
"Real magic?" Kory said, delighted. He turned to Beth. "We mustwe could see the show tonight!"
"Why not?" Beth said. It was strange, when even a Magus Minor like Kory could perform feats of magic that no human could hope to duplicate, that most of the elves she'd met were bonkers for stage illusionism, which involved no "real" magic at all, just misdirection and sleight of hand. It was just another aspect of their endless fascination with human creativity, she guessed, but it did seem odd. Like their obsession with microwaves. And their lust for pretzels.
Elves were pretty strange when you got to know them.
"Splendid! I'll get you tickets for the midnight showand you can have dinner beforehand in the Merrie Greenwood. You'll see us at our best, I assure you!"
It seemed to Beth that they'd been walking for miles. It was hard to tell, with all the mirrors and flashing lights, and the casino floor was laid out in a labyrinthine path that required anyone passing through it to loop around and double back, passing the maximum possible number of temptations, to reach their destination. But at last they reached the hotel desk.
It was an imposing structurethe desk itself, nearly as wide as it was tall, was pure white Carrera marble with gilt accentsand was carved with fierce warriors and mythical beasts in an antique style, sort of Xena Meets the Monks of Lindisfarne. The space behind the desk was paneled in a good approximation of golden English oak, and all the informational signs were done in uncial script, with illuminated initial letters after the Book of Kells. But the staff behind the desk was courteous and professional, all wearing matching white Tir-na-Og blazers with nametags. Beth supposed that none of them were Sidhe; though she couldn't be sure. The Seleighe Sidhe had the weirdest notions of what was fun, sometimes.
Gerry stopped at the end of the desk, under a sign that said "VIP Services," and spoke to one of the staff.
"The Misthold party is here. Be a good little elf and fetch me their check-in package."
"Of course," the woman behind the counter said. She flashed Beth a dazzling smile. "Welcome to Tir-na-Og. We hope you'll enjoy your stay with us." Her name tag read: Hi! My name is Galadriel and her slitted pupils were narrowed against the dazzling lights.
Beth blinked. Gerry had spoken no more than the truth when he'd called her a "good little elf." She was probably Low Court, one of the host of Sidhe linked almost symbiotically to the anchoring Node Grove and its Gate. Low Court elves could not travel any great distance from the trees to which they were linked, either in Underhill or in the World Above, and would die if their parent grove was harmed. Unlike their High Court brethren, the Low Court elves were unable to completely disguise their Sidhe nature. They were also said to be more scatterbrained and mischievous than their High Court brethren, with less of an interest in the futureit was from encounters with members of the Low Court over the centuries that most of the tales of "mischievous spirits" had entered human myths, while the High Court figured predominantly as shining heroes and sometimes gods.
But that was a long time ago, Beth thought, watching the saucy sidhe tuck envelopes, keys, maps, and coupons into a white leatherette folder with the hotel logo stamped prominently on it in gold. From gods to resort owners. Wonder if they miss the olden days? Galadriel handed the folder to Beth with a cheerful smile. Probably most of the people who stopped by her counter didn't even notice her eyes, or thought they were costume contacts.
"Will you be needing anything else, Ms. Kentraine, Mr. Korendil?" Galadriel asked.
"Uh . . . not right now," Beth said, taking the folder. This place was as strange and unworldly in its own way as the Goblin Market and Rick's, and at that, the Tir-na-Og wasn't that different from most of the other A-list casinos on the Strip. I guess the guy who said that truth is stranger than fiction knew what he was talking about. . . .
Galadriel wished them both a lovely day at the Tir-na-Og Resort Hotel and Casino, and Beth and Kory followed Gerry past a row of shops selling souvenirs and sundriesthe high-priced designer boutiques were on the other side of the casinoand over to a bank of elevators. The doors were golden, showing the castle-and-dragon logo being dive-bombed by a number of scantily-clad fairies with jeweled wings. He led them to an elevator at the end that was marked "Penthouse Suites Only."
"You'll need your room key to access the elevator, and it only stops at the top two floors," Gerry explained. He took Beth's portfolio from her and extracted the room key, fitting it into a slot beneath the row of buttons. When he did, all the buttons lit up, and he pressed one of them. Beth immediately felt the sensation of weight that told her she was in a high-speed elevator.
"How many floors does this place have?" she asked.
"Twenty-five," Gerry answered promptly. "The top two floors are for Paladin-class guests such as yourselvesand most of our Underhill guests, of which we're seeing more every year, I'm delighted to say. You'll find no Cold Iron anywhere in our Paladin-class accommodations, and of course you'll have noticed there's very little deathmetal on the casino floor. Why, even the flatware in our restaurants is silver, not stainless."
"You must lose a lot of it," Beth said.
Gerry smiled. "Not really. Most of our guests think it's plate, not worth stealing. And it's enchanted to come back, anyway, if someone tries to take it out of the building. Much easier that way."
At that moment the doors opened.
The hall carpet was a deep rich purple, bordered in a subdued knotwork pattern in gold that was picked up in the wallpaper. Reproductions of some of the more whimsical Pre-Raphaelite paintings hung on the wallsnot that Beth was sure they were reproductions. Some of the hames entertained themselves by collecting art and literature about the Fair Folk that was created by humans, and that would certainly be right in line with Glitterhame Neversleep's corporate culture.
"This way, dear ones."
They passed a few tastefully gold-leafed doors with various Celtic motifs done on them in low reliefserpents, claddaughs, Celtic crosses, triskelionsbut not many. These were the kind of suites that every Vegas casino kept for its high rollers, and Beth had heard that they were enormous.
At last they arrived at their destination. Gerry opened the door with a flourish before handing the key card back to Beth.
"Welcome!" he said, stepping back so they could enter.
"Oh, my," Beth said.
They stood in the main room of the suite. The curtains were drawn back from one curving glass wall to show her the eastward-looking view of the late-afternoon Strip. The Superstition Mountains were a faint blue smear in the distance, and even with the dust and fuss of the city's building boom, the air seemed clear and impossibly crystalline. She could see the various casinos all the way down to the MGM Grand and Excalibur, looking tawdry and faintly apologetic without their nighttime neon.
"There's a balcony on the other sideand, of course the Roof Terrace. And now, I'll leave the two of you to settle in. If you have any questions, or need anything at all, no matter how infinitesimal, don't hesitate to give me a jingle. My card is in your information packet, and as you already know, we never sleep here in the City of Sin." Gerry waved gaily and sauntered out, closing the door behind him.
"And I thought Underhill was weird," Beth said. Tearing her attention away from the viewit was mesmerizing, and would be more so come nightfallshe turned to inspect their lodgings.
It was obvious no marketing department or consumer focus group had been consulted in decorating the suite, because their suggestions would have run to the bland, the inoffensive, the middle of the road. And this wasn't that. It had a cheerful vulgarity, a no-holds-barred excess, a lurid exuberance that made Beth smile. See? the room almost seemed to say. It's okay to play around with bright colors. No Fashion Police here! And remember: Glitter is Good.
If she'd had to characterize the style, she'd have said Celtic-Egyptian, providing, of course, it'd come by way of the Sun King's court in France. There were several sectional seating groups in bright colorsred, blue, purplestone-topped gilded tables in the shapes of fantastic beasts, paintings and a few statues and some knick-knacks and several vases filled with gaudy lilies scattered across the top of the bar and the entertainment armoire. The whole room fairly radiated self-confidence, the cheerful happiness of someone secure in their own style, no matter how far from the mainstream that might be.
On the coffee table was a large fruit basket, a jeroboam of champagne, and an equally enormous candy box with an unfamiliar logo, all gifts of the management. Beth went over and lifted the lid, puzzled. This couldn't be chocolate . . . ?
It wasn't. The box was filled with marzipan and divinity, candied apricots, caramels, sugar-glazed nutmeats: in short, everything but chocolate. Oooh, Purina Elf Yummies. Cool.
"I must say, we're certainly getting the VIP treatment. As advertised," she said to no one in particular. Kory was wandering around the room like a cat in a strange place, picking things up and setting them down. He went off into the bedroom. Beth followed, nibbling on an apricot.
The bedroom was decorated mostly in soothing blues and greens: there was a second bar, a second television, and enough closet space to get lost in. It had a bed bigger than anything Beth had seen outside of Underhill dominating the room, with a green velvet tufted headboard that went halfway up the wall, and a matching half-canopy jutting out above it, satin-lined drapes held back with tasseled gold ropes.
But the bathroom, so far as Beth was concerned, was the star attraction, filled with enough Eurogadgets that by rights it should have launched you into orbit, not just gotten you clean. There were heated vibrating massage beds, towel warmers, infrared lamps, a heated floor, an omnidirectional step-in shower, and a whirlpool Jacuzzi big enough to baptize an entire parish at one go. The counter was filled with bottles of complementary toiletries, everything from bath gel to toothpaste, and there were more fresh flowers in a silver bowl, filling the room with the scent of roses and oranges.
"Can we take this whole place with us when we go back to Underhill?" Beth asked, only half joking.
Kory smiled. "I think Maeve would like it. I think I would, too. I have never . . . seen any place quite like this in your human world."
"Just goes to show you what happens when you turn elves with money loose in Las Vegas," Beth quipped. "Now, we'd better go start making those phone calls and find out where those vendors Ray promised to hook us up with are going to be tomorrow."
Travis Booker already knew he was in over his head. His ID (should he need to produce it) said he was working for Greenwood Security Limited, one of the Paranormal Defense Initiative's screen organizationsand if that were really the case, he'd have no problems. Greenwood Security had a booth at Comdex; it was actually a legitimate business, providing on-site security services for vendors concerned about industrial espionage. The fact that its findings trickled upstairs to its governmental masters was something that very few peopleits clients not among themneeded to know.
Until ten months ago, Travis had been a researcher. There wasn't much else you could do with a Ph.D. in folklore and anthropologywhen he'd written his paper on urban myths, he'd had hopes of a bright publishing career, or at least a plum teaching job. Neither materializedbut the United States Government in its infinite wisdom had plenty of jobs for someone whose only real talent was hitting the books. He knew he was working for one of the alphabet agencies, but even Travis wasn't sure which one: his paycheck said General Services Administration, just like everyone else's; he'd been hired by the State Department (just like everyone else), and his time was occupied either in preparing briefing memos on whatever esoteric subject appeared in his in-box, or in boiling other such documents down into two-page memos.
It seemed to him sometimes that life would be simpler if they all just stuck to writing two-page memos in the first place, but the same governmental department that swore it was too busy to read the information it asked for also insisted on in-depth coverage of its subject.
Then one day a man had come to him and asked him if he'd like a new job. Travis had warmed up to Parker Wheatley immediatelythe man was obviously a Washington insider, clearly going places. Wheatley had said that he was forming a special new department, and Travis's qualifications and clearances fit him admirably for work there.
For a while his new job was the same as the oldhis paychecks still came from the GSA, and he even had the same officebut instead of putting together reports on the political history of Afghanistan, the subjects he was called upon to research were universally wacky. UFO sightings over major cities. Appearances of elves and fairies since 1900. A list of cryptozoological sightings organized by geographical area, with special reference to those grouped around sites of current nuclear power plants. He found it a nice change to be able to put his degree to some use, but wondered vaguely what his tax dollars were up to, if his new employers were investigating Bigfoot.
After a while, he began receiving what were obviously field agents' reports, with a request to match the descriptions in them to the closest known folklore motif. Curiosity was something discouraged in Travis's line of work, but he couldn't help beginning to piece things together. There actually was something out there. Something with huge implications for national and global defense. Something that had been here before, leaving legends in its wake, and was back again now. John Keel had called them "ultraterrestrials"; Keel's being a sort of Unified Weirdness Theory that whatever the source of this weird phenomena, it was Earthly and continuous, not extraplanetary and recent, in origin. Travis duly wrote a lengthy paper cross-referencing The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials with Arne-Thompsen and passed it up the chain of command.
Shortly after that, Parker Wheatley had called to invite him to lunch at the exclusive Cincinnatus Club, and Travis had leaped at the chance. Something was definitely up, and he suspected he was about to be given a chance to find out what.
What he didn't expect was to be offered the chance to be a field agent for the newly formed Paranormal Defense Initiative, successor in interest to Project Broad Church, for which he had been recruited. Mr. Wheatley had assured him that he could pick up the field skills he needed as he went alongwith intensive coaching, of coursebut that it was very important to the PDI to have field agents who had some idea of what they were dealing with.
"My doctorate is in folklore," Travis reminded him, trying not to be overawed by the vibrations of money and power that filled the Cincinnatus Club's dining room. It very much resembled an exclusive English men's club of the 19th centuryit was meant toand was the sort of place that people like Travis rarely saw. Parker Wheatley, on the other hand, was obviously a frequent guest.
"So it is," Mr. Wheatley had said. "And surely you've gained some idea of our mandate from all the work you've been doing for us?"
This was dangerous ground, for thinking was next door to prying into matters that didn't concern you, and a good way to lose your job, your clearances, and your government pension.
"Well, really, sir, I'm just doing my job. And I know I'm not seeing the full picture. After all, it isn't my job to speculate. Only to provide factual information."
"Let's just suppose for a moment that I were to ask you to speculate. Based solely on the material that crosses your desk in the line of duty, of course, and with the full understanding that you don't have all the pieces. I'd be interested to see what you'd come up with."
"Well . . ." Wheatley obviously wasn't going to let him off the hook. "I guess I'd have to say that you're interested in a class of phenomena whose manifestations explicitly predate 1947, and in fact have occurred in essentially the same form as far back as we have written records, though the interpretation of them has naturally changed over time."
"Neatly put," Wheatley said. "And what would you say those phenomenal manifestations are?"
"I can't say," Travis pointed out. "No one knows. I can say that at various times in history, these same phenomena have been classed as gods, demons, various forms of non-deific supernatural beings, and, most recently, as space aliens, of which the Alien Grey is the most commonly recognized, but certainly not the only type. Whether there's really anything thereand if there isn't, why people keep seeing them with such peculiar consistencyisn't something I can tell you."
"Well, then, Travis, let me put the question I asked you earlier in a different way: would you like to go and see for yourself?"
Put that way, it had been an offer he couldn't refuse, one which had led him, over the course of nearly a year, to standing around a Las Vegas airport in the ugliest green suit imaginable, looking for . . . what the rest of the PDI was looking for: Spookies.
Travis hated the green suit, but the stealth technology woven into the fabric didn't take dye very well, so Headquarters said, so the field teams were stuck with looking like a bunch of forest-green fashion plates. Fortunately, in a town like this, they didn't stand out, and Travis had to admit that the cut itself was stylish.
Las Vegas was far from PDI's usual beat, but Headquarters had gotten a tip that some Spookies might be showing up at Comdex, so he'd been tasked to keep an eye out at McCarran International to see if he spotted one coming in through the airport. Spookies could look like anything, but the black box on his wrist impersonating a watch didn't lie. It was designed to respond to the presence of parasympathetic energy, and PS waves always meant Spookies.
Nevertheless, he'd been as surprised as anyone to see his watch light up when the tall woman passed him. He would have stared at her regardlessshe was well over six feet tall, even without the high-heeled black boots, and had long red-streaked black hair that hung straight to her waist. He slipped on his sunglasses to take a better look. Their special filtering technology was supposed to cut through Spookie illusions as if they weren't there, and for the first time, Travis'd had a demonstration of what that meant. His quarry's business suit and porn queen boots vanished. Now she was wearing what looked like a black velvet riding habit, and she had the ears.
Gotcha, babe. You may run, but you can't hide. His heart raced with excitementhe knew the Spookies were dangerous, often savage, and totally unpredictable, but he was actually seeing one up close! He hurried to follow her as she headed out the front of the airport toward the waiting line of cabs.
The cab ride to the Strip was short, and he had no trouble keeping hers in view. She pulled up at one of the casinos; he stopped his cab at the next one and walked back, following her inside. His black box promptly lit up again, and this time the entire face went red, unable to give him a directional indicator. The whole place was loaded with PS energy!
He shook his head, suddenly dizzy. He had an urge to go back out onto the street, back to the airport, but a sense of duty stopped him. He'd tagged a Spookie, and he wasn't going to stop until he chased her down. PDI was always hoping for the pot of gold: a live Spookie capture, not just a bunch of glimpses and second-hand reports. If he was involved in a capture, it could mean promotion, maybe even a bonus.
Maybe I'd better report in, he thought, worried. The GPS locator all field agents wore would let the local office know where he was, but no more than that. Just then he spotted her again, over at the Reservations Desk.
And she was surrounded by Spookies. Half the people behind the desk looked just like the ID sketches he'd seenthe long pointed ears and brilliant overlarge hypnotic eyes. He swept a glance around the rest of the casino. More of them. The place was crawling with Spookiesa whole nest of them!
He started to panic, then controlled himself. They didn't know he was here, and they didn't know about the PDI. He was safe for the moment. And he needed to find out as much as he could about what they were up to before he made his report.
Roderick Gallowglasshis name was Rhydderich, but Roderick was close enoughwas a happy elf. He'd been security chief for the casino for the last three years, and he never tired of watching humans. They were so endlessly inventive, so passionate. A joy to work with, reallyand with the whole place loaded to the gills with Trouble Begone spells, he rarely had to do anything more taxing than point out the bathrooms to bewildered tourists.
Today, however, might be different.
He'd spotted the Unseleighe the moment she walked in the door, of coursethat "you are all peasants" arrogance would have been a dead giveaway, even if she weren't swaddled in glamouries that rendered her true seeming invisible to humans (though not to Roderick)but the Tir-na-Og was a neutral zone, protected by truce. So long as they didn't make trouble, members of the Dark Court were as welcome here as were the Bright.
The man who'd followed her, however, was a different proposition. There was something odd about himnot quite magic, but odd nonetheless. Roderick could see the casino's wards swirl around him, unable to get a good grip, and felt an urge to rest his own eyes somewhereanywhereelse. As he watched, Roderick saw the man hesitate, staggering a little as the magics did their best to push him out the door. But Tir-na-Og's gentle wardings were not designed to combat a determined will, only to turn aside those who could be encouraged to go elsewhere. Obviously the young man in the green business suit thought he had business hereand with the Unseleighe lady, at that.
The lady picked up her registration and headed for the elevators, and the nervous young man moved to follow.
Ah, laddie, the likes of her isn't for the likes of you. Time for me to save you from yourself.
Roderick moved forward to intercept the young man as he attempted to follow the lady into the elevator. He nearly didn't make itfor some reason, the green suit was particularly hard to see in the casino's misleading illumination.
"Excuse me, sir. Those elevators are for guests only. May I help you?"
The young man turned toward him, anonymous in his sunglasses, and Roderick saw his mouth gape with shock. "You're one of them too!" he gasped, reaching into his jacket.
He sees me as I truly am, Roderick realized, equally stunned. Not so stunned that he didn't take the young man's arm gently but firmly, keeping him from whatever he was reaching forand hustled him through a door marked "Staff Only."
The nervous young man did his best to put up a fight, but Roderick's greater strength put paid to that airy notion, and by the time the lad thought of shouting, they were well away from public eyes. A small spell opened the door of one of the Quiet Rooms, and Roderick dragged his charge inside, plucking the object the lad had been reaching for from his pocket as he did. On the streets of Victorian London, Roderick had been an accomplished pickpocket, and he liked to keep up the old skills.
His fingers tingled and burned with the presence of Cold Ironnone of this new-fangled steel or alloy, but the pure deathmetal itself. The device resembled an old-fashioned zip gun, but instead of bullets or darts, it held a clip of inch-long iron spikes. It might annoy a human, but it would kill or cripple one of the Sidhe. He tossed it quickly into a containment bin for later examination, and rubbed his blistering fingers together. A nasty piece of work that, put together by someone who knew more about Roderick's kind than was strictly comforting.
"Now. What can we do for you?" he asked pleasantly. It was still difficult to keep an eye on his young guestbaffling that, as Roderick could detect no magic, though the force acting upon him certainly wasn't physical. Still, whatever power the young man had of avoiding the eye, it would do him little good in a small locked room.
"You can let me go. I've done nothing wrong," the ladlittle more than a boy, really, even by human standardssaid sullenly.
"Au contraire. You were on the verge of annoying one of our guests, and you just tried to kill me, as well you know. Best make a clean breast of things, lad. If you're in trouble, we can help you."
"Help us? We've had more than enough of your kind of help! I I have nothing to say." The lad backed away, putting the table in the center of the room between them. His expression was hard to read through the mirrorshades, but he sounded terrified.
As well he might, did he have dealings with the Dark Court, Roderick thought philosophically. Still, that didn't mean he had to bring his vendetta here.
"Nothing to say? Let me help you," Roderick said. He cast a simple glamourie, one that would make the young man see him as a trusted friend.
Nothing happened.
Roderick frowned, moving toward the boy, who recoiled. "I'll call the police!"
"From here? A good trick, that. I rather think you ought to tell me who you are, firstand if you canna do that, then you'll have to show me."
He cornered the boy quickly, and plucked the glasses from his face. As Roderick touched them, he felt a tingle of not-quite-magic, from the glasses and the suit as well. It was they which held the interference to his spells, not the lad. Possibly not a private vendetta, then.
Ruthlesslyand with little cooperationhe searched the boy, removing all loose objects from his person. No other weapons, and not much in the way of the gadgetry and paperwork humans carried with them everywhere they went. He tossed the items to the table and looked through the wallet.
"Well, now, Travis Booker, what business is it that you have with the Sidhe?"
"The what?" Travis clung to one hope onlythat the months of hypnotic conditioning he'd undergone would protect him from the Spookie's alien psionics. Without his special glasses, the Spookie looked like anyone elsea big blond bodybuilder type, well over six feetbut Travis knew better. It was one of themthe enemyand now Travis was a prisoner in an undeclared war. He owed it to humanity to reveal as little as possible about who and what he was. Only the PS detector he was wearing could possibly implicate the PDI, and its components would fuse if it were taken from him; it was designed to self-destruct within a few minutes if its ambient temperature dropped below 98.6. He pulled it off and tossed it to the table. "There. You've got everything. Now can I go? I'll leaveI won't make any trouble for you."
"You've already made a certain amount of trouble, young Travis. Why not spare us both the rest? You already seem to know a bit more about us than would ease my mind, but we've always been on good terms with your folk. What business do you have with that lady? I warn you, she's no one to be trifled with, but if she's done you harm, perhaps we can mend it."
"Is she your queen?" Travis asked, probing for information even though it did not look as if he'd ever be able to use it. They had so little hard information about the Spookies that any crumb was valuable. He asked what business I had with the Shiis that a personal name, or a tribal designation? Oh, Lord, if I could only sit him down and ask him some questions. But Travisand the other field agentshad seen the morgue photos of people who'd tried that, their bodies burned almost beyond recognition by a combination of hard radiation and corrosive poison. By nature and inclination, Spookies were merciless predators, using their mental power to trick and destroy their prey.
But weirdly, his question only made the Spookie laugh. "My queen? Not bloody likely, young Travis. Nay, she's nowt but trouble for your kind and mine, if she takes it into her head to make it. But she's here peacefully, and so should you be."
"I . . . all right. I won't make any trouble." Could escape be this easy? The briefing book said that Spookies didn't think like humans. Maybe a promiseeven if one he had no intention of keepingwould be enough to get him out of here.
"Now how am I to believe you, when a moment ago you were so hot at hand?" the Spookie protested, smiling his inhuman smile. "Perhaps if you were to tell me all about yourself, we could come to some accommodation."
The Spookie looked into his eyes, and Travis found himself unable to look away. He felt a pressure in his head, as if the air had grown suddenly dense, holding his skull in a soft yet merciless grip. But the conditioning held, and he said nothing.
The Spookie sighed, pretending disappointment. "Ah, Travis, you're being less than forthcoming with me, aren't you, coming here as you have with armor and weapons? Still, we can settle this peaceably, can we not?"
"Kill me, you mean?" the young cockerel blustered, still full of fight.
Roderick sighed inwardly. Too much television, that's what it was. Everybody thought that violence settled things, as if it didn't just put off the trouble to a future time. And the lad seemed to be able to resist all Roderick's encouragements to confide in himworrisome, but a certain percentage of humans were naturally resistant to mind-magic, and Travis might be one of that happy few.
Ah, weel, there's more ways to skin a cat than by buttering it with parsnips.
If the lad couldn't be induced to tell why he was here, surely making him forget all he'd seen would serve nearly as good a purpose? Let him hunt elsewherein vainfor his vengeance.
"Kill you?" Roderick asked. "Nay, you'll live out your years in quiet content. But you'll trouble us no more, Travis Booker."
It had taken a great deal of Power to set the spell, to wipe the lad's mind clean of the day's events and cast him into slumber, but in the end, Master Roderick was well satisfied with his work. When Travis lay asleep on the floor, he examined the items on the table, but found nothing odd about them, and tucked them back into Travis's pockets. As for the suit itself, perhaps he'd been mistaken, for the heavy cloth held no trace of magic or spellcraft that Roderick could senseand in any event, he could hardly take it and leave young Travis to foot it home in socks and smallclothes, now, could he? But the strange glassesand the lethal little weaponwould remain here. Roderick would show them to Prince Gelert, and see if his lord could make any more of them than he had. But young Travis would trouble them no more.
And the puir laddie had broken his wristwatch, as well, for it lay cold and dark and unresponsive in Roderick's hand. He shrugged, and buckled it back onto Travis's wrist. Now to put him in a cab, the slumber spell timed to lift as Travis reached the hotel whose key had been among his things. With any luck at all, he'd just think he'd fallen asleep on the way to his destination, and with a little time, the boy's own mind would create a plausible tale to fill in the missing hours.
Another crisis solved. But I do wish I knew what had set him on.