Embrace the Night

I don't know why it was such a surprise. The magical underground changes fast, with three years being more like three decades. I'd stayed in Chicago a few days anyway, feeling restless and strangely anchorless. I hadn't dared to contact Tami after returning to Tony's, for fear he'd find out and take revenge on her for helping me. But subconsciously I'd always assumed that I would return one day and that nothing would have changed. And now that it had, I wasn't sure what to do about it.

Growing up in a place where any sign of weakness was quickly exploited, I'd learned how to bury inconvenient emotions, not how to release them. When even the youngest vamp was better than a lie detector at sensing physiological changes—a slightly elevated heart rate, the tiniest catch in breath, the too rapid blink of an eye—you learned self-control or you didn't last long. I discovered in Chicago that a lifetime of practice is hard to reverse, even when you don't need that skill anymore.

I'd roamed aimlessly around a few old haunts, including the bakery where she'd worked, but nothing had looked the same and I didn't recognize any of the people. After a few days, I realized that Chicago hadn't been home; Tami had, and she was gone. So I left some flowers in a corner of the old building, even knowing I was just feeding the rats, and moved on.

"How did you know where to find me?" I asked Jesse.

"Jea

"Jea

"Yeah. She not very good. She don't see much and mostly it's stupid stuff. She's only five," he said disparagingly. "But Tami thought it was a good idea. She said we was to go to you, if something happened to her. After it all went down, we got on the bus."

"After what went down?"

"The mages came. They took her." Black eyes bored into mine, already anticipating the answer to a question he hadn't yet asked. I knew that look, too. I understood a thing or two about betrayal.

"I'll take care of you," I heard myself say, and wondered if I was crazy. So far, it had been a chore just looking after myself. Tami must have been desperate to send them to me, when I had the biggest target on my back of anyone. I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but there wasn't time. I'd get some answers, but first we had to lose their pursuers.

I peered around the side of the curtains again to see that Casanova had joined the vamps holding off the mages. He was wearing a vest that jumped and crackled with animated flames—part of the menswear line, I assumed. It set off his dark hair and olive complexion nicely, but didn't do much for his expression. War mages weren't his favorite people. But while he could give them a hard time, he couldn't throw them out without cause, and they were between us and the exits.

I did a swift count of the gang, which numbered eight in total. Nine, I corrected, as the baby a girl was clutching a little too hard started to sniffle. Way too many to shift.

I glanced at Françoise. "I could use a diversion."

"'Ow beeg?" she asked casually.

"Beeg."

"D'accord."

She moved to the other side of the stage and started chanting something under her breath. Within seconds, a bank of dark clouds rolled in, settling over the catwalk with complete disregard of the fact that we were indoors. Chairs were knocked over as people scrambled to their feet, and the background murmur almost instantly became a roar. The witches apparently knew a bad sign when they saw one.

The mages suddenly stopped playing nice, shoved identification in Casanova's face and started up the aisle at a run. That was about the same time that something slimy and green hit the catwalk. I didn't even have a chance to identify it before a lot of other somethings followed, bursting out of the rumbling black mass of clouds like popcorn. The current model's pretty chiffon dress went from a pleased peach to an angry dark green, a hue that almost matched the skin of the toad that had slammed into her shoulder.

She screamed as part of it started oozing down her chest, and she stumbled back down the catwalk. But as it was fast being littered with little broken bodies, most smashed and split open, it was pretty much inevitable that she'd slip and go sliding on her butt. Things sort of went downhill after that.

Protective spells were being fired off on all sides, which, when they impacted the kamikaze amphibians, caused fleshy fireworks in midair. This made the witches in the middle of the room, who were being liberally splattered with frog guts, even less happy, causing them to turn on their sisters with abandon. That slowed down the mages, but I could still see them, grim and determined, wading through the fracas toward us.

"Are there any more of you?" I asked Jesse.

He said something, but I couldn't hear him over the sound of the audience's chairs smashing into the battered mages. Of course, they were slamming into a lot of other things, too, blown here and there by the wind and the spells and the mayhem. But I didn't notice anyone else disappearing under a mountain of expensive painted wood. It looked like the mages had stepped on one too many witches' toes.

"What?"

"No!" Jesse screamed in my ear. "We were the only ones who got away!"

"Okay. Let's get away again."

Chapter 6

Miranda took one look at my dress, which had shifted to an agitated swirl of autumn leaves, and her ears went back. It was convenient to have such an obvious hint to her mood, since I'd never learned to read her very well. The fur on her catlike face might have had something to do with that, or possibly gargoyle expressions were too different from human ones for me to decipher.

The current group of Misfits crowded in behind me, leaving dirty footprints on her pristine white tile floor. I'd brought them to the room-service kitchens since I wasn't sure where Miranda lived. She was the leader of the group of Dark Fey that Tony had been using for cheap labor, but I only ever saw them at work, chopping and dicing with preternatural speed or pushing laden carts through Dante's halls.

They rarely paused except to pose for photographs with guests, who assumed they were midgets in suits. I wondered if anyone ever noticed that their film always came out slightly blurry, the same way their eyes never quite managed to focus on the small servers. Tony had spent a fortune to ward the casino, although considering the amount of alcohol that the majority of the guests put away, he probably hadn't needed to bother. I doubted he'd been so generous in accommodations for his workers, so what I wanted from Miranda was likely to hurt.

One of the kids, a girl who looked about twelve but who I later learned was sixteen, was holding a baby. It was maybe four months old and a little rumpled around the edges, wearing a pink T-shirt with a diaper and only one sock, its cheek flushed from being pressed against the girl's chest. I was about to launch into my carefully prepared speech when Miranda smiled, showing sharp fangs in her long, grave face. She was no longer looking at me.

I turned to see that several gargoyles had edged to within arm's length of the girl, close enough that she sent me a pleading look while clutching her infant tighter. "They won't hurt you," I assured her. "The Fey…well, they're really fond of babies."

It was a ridiculous understatement, as was becoming obvious. One of the larger gargoyles, with a dog's head above her spotless chef's whites, almost ran into a wall because she was waving at the infant while making a cutesy little face. Miranda's eyes were also fixed on the child, with enough longing in them that I started to worry. "Right?" I gave her a poke, and she swatted a paw at me. The claws weren't extended, thankfully.