.
I nodded
because my mother’s bosom buddy status with Fate meant I had leeway no other Diakonos —the half-blood children of the gods—could claim.
If I wanted to keep my leg up, I needed to make sure nothing interrupted their
girls’ night out.
She waved and
then disappeared. I was plunged into the air-conditioned Mortal Realm. The
decay and cologne scent faded beneath the smell of tourism. I took in the view
from the lofty height atop what I assumed was the Stratosphere’s tower.
Just once it
would be nice to enjoy Las Vegas like anyone else instead of always being
favor-bound. Styx, it would be nice to enjoy anything like anyone else. But alas, this was my life. This was who
I was.
Woe-is-me-moment
behind me, I sent out a pulse of magic awareness. Pings returned from all
sides.
Vegas was a magical city despite its heavy reliance on
electricity. I’d have to change my usual procedure of homing in on a magical
signature. There were simply too many here for that to work. For this favor,
I’d find the largest concentration of power signatures within my two-mile
radius and also monitor for spikes.
The magical
signatures congregated thickest a mile away at what was likely the central
portion of the strip. A sole response came from the ground below. Only one
witch was in the Stratosphere resort. That figured because this wasn’t the
trendy area.
Time to find my way down from the tower. After a long elevator ride, I glided down the quiet corridor toward
the hotel’s main casino floor, narrowly avoiding the security. Pumping music on
the ground floor from the central bar proved Vegas was hopping even early on a
Monday morning. The heavy bass nearly covered the hum of the slot machines’ digital
bells and whistles.
I strode
through the game floor and on into the heated night without pausing at any of
the glimmering devices. Few tourists waited for cabs. That suited me fine. I
slid into the back seat of an SUV, telling the guy in the driver’s seat that I
wanted to go to the Flamingo—the only resort I could recall at the strip’s
center.
The cabbie
eased us out of the drive, zipping along the quieter northern strip streets. We
plunged into the traffic on the main boulevard. I held onto my seat as the
driver zig- zagged into narrow spaces. Soon he demanded
a ridiculous amount of money for fare given we’d traveled less than two miles.
My steady
pulse of magic awareness hadn’t turned up anything new as the cab had moved
down the strip, but it had reinforced my findings. The magic concentration did come from the center, but rather
than from the Flamingo, it came from across the street at Caesars Palace.
One of
countless covens in the country had probably converged on Vegas for a weekend
of fun. Perhaps a witch would fail at poker and attempt to take it out on the
casino in retaliation. I’d seen worse reasons for witches going berserk.
I tracked the
group down to Caesars’s posh spa across from the equally posh restaurant in a
quiet hall on the second floor. The spa didn’t appear to be open—because the
door was locked when I pushed on it—but there were definitely witches inside.
There had to be an employee entrance somewhere. I simply had to find it.
A woman in a
pale yellow polo and black pants disappeared into a small door hidden in the
golden wainscoted wall. My employee entrance? I gave
her a few moments to move away from the door. Then I followed her lead.
An RFID reader
blended within the trim to my right. Electronics were beyond my ability. I
called on the aether , tugging a bit of Air magic into
me, and then willed it to give me a visual representation of the hardware
holding the door shut. The standard pin tumbler lock would be easy to pick … if
I’d had pick tools. Instead, I used small bursts of Air to align the pins with
the shear line. It was only a matter of turning the plug with my fingernail
after that.
After a quick
check to make sure no one had noted my breaking and entering,
I nodded
because my mother’s bosom buddy status with Fate meant I had leeway no other Diakonos —the half-blood children of the gods—could claim.
If I wanted to keep my leg up, I needed to make sure nothing interrupted their
girls’ night out.
She waved and
then disappeared. I was plunged into the air-conditioned Mortal Realm. The
decay and cologne scent faded beneath the smell of tourism. I took in the view
from the lofty height atop what I assumed was the Stratosphere’s tower.
Just once it
would be nice to enjoy Las Vegas like anyone else instead of always being
favor-bound. Styx, it would be nice to enjoy anything like anyone else. But alas, this was my life. This was who
I was.
Woe-is-me-moment
behind me, I sent out a pulse of magic awareness. Pings returned from all
sides.
Vegas was a magical city despite its heavy reliance on
electricity. I’d have to change my usual procedure of homing in on a magical
signature. There were simply too many here for that to work. For this favor,
I’d find the largest concentration of power signatures within my two-mile
radius and also monitor for spikes.
The magical
signatures congregated thickest a mile away at what was likely the central
portion of the strip. A sole response came from the ground below. Only one
witch was in the Stratosphere resort. That figured because this wasn’t the
trendy area.
Time to find my way down from the tower. After a long elevator ride, I glided down the quiet corridor toward
the hotel’s main casino floor, narrowly avoiding the security. Pumping music on
the ground floor from the central bar proved Vegas was hopping even early on a
Monday morning. The heavy bass nearly covered the hum of the slot machines’ digital
bells and whistles.
I strode
through the game floor and on into the heated night without pausing at any of
the glimmering devices. Few tourists waited for cabs. That suited me fine. I
slid into the back seat of an SUV, telling the guy in the driver’s seat that I
wanted to go to the Flamingo—the only resort I could recall at the strip’s
center.
The cabbie
eased us out of the drive, zipping along the quieter northern strip streets. We
plunged into the traffic on the main boulevard. I held onto my seat as the
driver zig- zagged into narrow spaces. Soon he demanded
a ridiculous amount of money for fare given we’d traveled less than two miles.
My steady
pulse of magic awareness hadn’t turned up anything new as the cab had moved
down the strip, but it had reinforced my findings. The magic concentration did come from the center, but rather
than from the Flamingo, it came from across the street at Caesars Palace.
One of
countless covens in the country had probably converged on Vegas for a weekend
of fun. Perhaps a witch would fail at poker and attempt to take it out on the
casino in retaliation. I’d seen worse reasons for witches going berserk.
I tracked the
group down to Caesars’s posh spa across from the equally posh restaurant in a
quiet hall on the second floor. The spa didn’t appear to be open—because the
door was locked when I pushed on it—but there were definitely witches inside.
There had to be an employee entrance somewhere. I simply had to find it.
A woman in a
pale yellow polo and black pants disappeared into a small door hidden in the
golden wainscoted wall. My employee entrance? I gave
her a few moments to move away from the door. Then I followed her lead.
An RFID reader
blended within the trim to my right. Electronics were beyond my ability. I
called on the aether , tugging a bit of Air magic into
me, and then willed it to give me a visual representation of the hardware
holding the door shut. The standard pin tumbler lock would be easy to pick … if
I’d had pick tools. Instead, I used small bursts of Air to align the pins with
the shear line. It was only a matter of turning the plug with my fingernail
after that.
After a quick
check to make sure no one had noted my breaking and entering,
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