Hunt the Moon

tackiness passed for ambience and vulgarity was all part of the fun.

But this wasn’t fun. This was just plain sad.

“You let guests come down here?” I asked, gazing around at what passed for a bus entrance. A few sickly topiaries guarded a cracked cement floor covered with oil and gas stains. There was trash in the corners and dirt on the walls, and the whole place smelled like pee.

“Nobody comes to Vegas on a bus,” Casanova, the hotel manager, said while feeling around inside his suit coat. It was a pale wheat color, one of his favorites because it set off his Spanish good looks. But it was a little incongruous in this setting, like an Armani model who had taken a wrong turn and ended up on skid row. “At least, no one who stays here.”

“So why have it at all?”

“Because some people want to take tours—Grand Canyon, Valley of Fire, Hoover freaking Dam,” he said impatiently. “And they get pissy if there isn’t a place for them to be picked up on-site.”

“And this is what you came up with?”

Casanova shot me a look out of sloe-dark eyes that would have been attractive if they’d had a different mind behind them. “If they’re taking a bus, they’re leaving the casino.”

“So?”

“So they’re not going be spending any money here.”

“So screw ’em?”

“Exactly.”

His hand emerged with a slim-bodied flashlight, which he shone around. There were fluorescents overhead, but they weren’t on. A spill of late-afternoon daylight leached away part of the gloom on either side of the echoing space, and some electric light spilled down the nonfunctioning escalator behind us. But that still left the main part of the garage a dark cavern.

“I don’t think anybody’s down here,” I told him, halfway hoping that was true.

“Oh, they’re here, all right,” he said grimly. “Took my boys the better part of two weeks, but they finally managed to track them. Now come on.”

I pushed limp blond hair out of my eyes and followed him into the gloom, feeling a trickle of sweat slide down my back. The place was hot as an oven—apparently air-conditioning was another thing bus-loving tourists were denied. And despite the fact that we’d been down here only a few minutes, the back of my blue tee and the waistband on my jean shorts were already soaked.

“Why do people come to Vegas in summer?” I complained. “It’s the biggest tourist season, which makes no sense. It has to be a hundred twenty degrees out.”

“The kids are out of school.”

“But most people don’t take kids here. That whole family-friendly thing kind of fell flat.”

“Exactly.” His flashlight bounced off the ceiling, as if he thought our prey might be clinging to the rafters like bats. It didn’t help my mood that, for all I knew, they could be. “The kids are out of school, so parents need a break from the little bastards.”

“It’s a good thing you don’t have children!”

Nervousness had made my voice harsh, but Casanova didn’t seem to take offense. “One of the best things about being a vampire. Now stop talking and start looking.”

We edged farther into the darkness and my hands started to sweat, and not just from the heat. He was right about one thing: most of the people flooding into Vegas these days were adults, with fully half of them seniors. Which might explain why the three old crones we were after hadn’t been attracting the attention they deserved.

Well, that, and the fact that they were ancient demigoddesses with more than one trick up their sleeves. That was what had me clutching the slim black box I carried hard enough to leave my fingers white. It was a magical trap, the kind that had once imprisoned the trio known as the Graeae long enough for their story to fade into legend.

I suspected that they didn’t want to go back in.

That was fine with me, because I didn’t want to put them there. I just wanted to ask them some questions, assuming we ever found them. But Casanova wasn’t exactly an altruistic kind of guy, and I’d had to fudge a little on my motivations.

“I don’t know why you’re being so helpful all of a sudden,” he said suspiciously, as if he’d heard my thoughts.

“I’m always helpful.”

“You’re never helpful! You drop problems in my lap all the time and then disappear somewhere and leave me to deal with them.”

“Name one.”

“Those blasted kids you swore would be out of here two weeks ago!”

He was referring to some magical orphans he had less than charitably taken in until we could find other homes for them. The casino had more than a thousand rooms, but the two the kids were occupying preyed on his shriveled little soul. He acted like it was causing him actual pain.

“Tami is working on it,” I said, talking about their de facto foster mother. “It’s hard to find a house big enough for that many people that’s reasonable to rent.”

“And why bother when you can stay here and eat me out of house and home?”

“They don’t eat that much.”

“In comparison to what? Starving marines?”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, they’ll be out soon—”

“That’s what you always say.”

“—and I’m helping you today, aren’t I?”

“About damn time, too,” Casanova muttered, stopping to peer into a curbside drain as if he seriously thought someone might have squeezed down there. I looked in along with him until my brain conjured up a memorable scene from It, and I shied back nervously. He glanced over his shoulder, an annoyed frown creasing those handsome features.

“What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” I didn’t really think there were any homicidal clowns down there—or any ancient goddesses, either—but you never knew. This was Dante’s. Crazy was what we had for breakfast when we ran out of Corn Flakes.

“Good, because this is all your fault,” he complained. “You are not going to come up with another reason not to help me.”

I didn’t say anything, because technically, he was right. I’d sprung the gals from jail, and nobody seemed to care that it had been an accident. Least of all Casanova, whose beloved casino had become their favorite stomping ground.

“Why are you so interested in getting them out of here?” I asked, as we moved onto a loading dock. “They’ve been out for almost six weeks, and the worst thing I’ve seen them do is rip apart a slot machine.” And anyone who had ever played the one-armed bandits on the Strip could certainly sympathize with that.

“Well, one little thing would be that they keep breaking into the upper-level suites,” he said acidly. “The Consul came out of her bedroom the other day to find them swimming in the pool on her balcony!”

I grinned.

“It’s not funny!”

Considering that it had once been my balcony, before she’d pulled rank and kicked me out, I kind of disagreed. “Did they eat all her food?”

“There wasn’t any food. But they drank all the booze and beat up the guards she sent to remove them. They were there almost three hours before they went off to terrorize someone else. She wants them gone!”

“And God forbid anybody should inconvenience her,” I said sourly.

To my surprise, Casanova agreed. “I’m losing money every day that the damn Senate stays in residence. They’re using half of my suites—for which I’ve yet to see a dime in payment—co-opting my staff, taking over the conference rooms and eating me out of house and home!”

“This is only temporary. They’ll be gone soon.”