Trouble with Gargoyles: an Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 3) by Tricia Owens Page B

you think that is?"
    "Because eventually it would be noticed by the non-magickals. They use computers to test the odds. They'd know the moment something wasn't right, and then they'd investigate. That would lead them to us. All of us."
    "No!" Kleure barked out. He literally barked it. "The Oddsmakers don't fear that. They change the odds when it suits them. Why are they the exceptions to their own rules?"
    Uneasy, I shook my head. "I couldn't tell you." Nor did I want to hazard a guess.
    "We are treated like criminals. If we break their pointless rules we face a punishment of death or, if you're fortunate, an irreversible loss of your magick. Funny, isn't it, that the best outcome when you're dealing with the Oddsmakers is to lose the very essence of who you are?"
    I said nothing. The Keyhole wasn't a pro-Oddsmakers environment. While I mostly agreed with their resentment of the magickal bosses, I wasn't stupid enough to say as much aloud. Not while the Oddsmakers continued to foster their unhealthy habit of kidnapping me and dragging me to their underground lair.
    "What I and my pets do is encourage humans to play," Kleure went on, calmer. "Nothing more. A gambler walks by any one of my pets and suddenly he feels lucky. He feels he has a chance. Whether those players win or lose after that point is not my concern. My job is only to provide the impetus for gamblers to take a seat and pull out their money. That's all the casinos want. Players. "
    "So when someone says they've got a 'feeling', the truth is that they've probably brushed elbows with one of these guys." I motioned at the dogs. "Or girls."
    "Exactly. It's a very positive, uplifting business." Kleure bared his teeth again.
    I'd buy the London Bridge before I believed him. Kleure was a mischief maker who'd learned to adapt his particular skillset to Las Vegas. He was an old being. Stories of him as Kludde had gone around Europe for ages where he had lured travelers into the woods where they'd wandered lost for days. Now he was here, making bank off his hobby of screwing with humans.
    Nevertheless, how he made his money wasn't my concern. It was just small talk before I launched into the nitty gritty.
    "Obviously you're a huge success and that's probably brought you into contact with a lot of—"
    "Tell me who you're asking about, Anne. You've wasted enough of my time already."
    I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder. That was why I'd brought Melanie. Instead I focused on Kleure, who no longer looked friendly.
    "A creature," I began, "which my sources say is likely a shifter, has been asking about me. They've gone so far as to threaten to torture a friend of mine in order to get that information. I don't appreciate that. I don't appreciate it at all. I want to know who it is."
    "So you may kill them?"
    The blunt question didn't throw me at all. "We'll see."
    The blue flames in his eyes flickered. "A predator after my own heart. Though of course I'd never hurt another living soul."
    The dogs in the booth made weird chuffing noises and two of them yipped. I took that to be canine laughter.
    "Do you know who it is?" I pressed. The atmosphere in the Keyhole was beginning to weigh on my nerves, as though the walls and everything within them were moving closer. I tried to recall the largest shifters I'd seen in my quick scan of the place: there had been wolves, but any larger predators? Any bears or lions?  I couldn't pull them up in my memory.
    "Before I answer your question," Kleure drawled, "I'd like to know why you believe I would help you."
    I held his flaming gaze. "Because we're on the same side."
    I made it an ambiguous statement on purpose. The same side could mean anything—we were both predators, we were both magickal beings, neither of us spent a lot of time around cats…I'd let him decide.
    "I'm not your friend, Anne." Kleure leaned forward. "In fact…no one here is your friend. Not while you're the lapdog of the Oddsmakers."
    Crap. I hadn't considered