Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

“Oh, honey.”

She remained stiff, and for a moment I was afraid she was going to bring up the weapons again. “It’s hard to be a diva when you’re allergic to your boa.”

And as I murmured in sympathetic agreement, we donned our trinkets and masks and finally reboarded the party bus. To fanfare and music, but also to discover we weren’t the first team back. Terry had beat us to it, reportedly mouthing the word “yacht” like a guppy gumming air right before he passed out. Bummed about the loss, Cher wrapped her boa around his neck, which I loosened as soon as she headed for the bar.

Good, I thought with a relieved sigh. Maybe alcohol would make her believe she’d imagined my explanation of Zodiac warriors and a woman who became a mortal to save the city. I certainly could use a drink after safely traversing the night. With any luck it would also blot out the knowledge of a man with a dead forest of fingernails and unwanted omens.

One, I knew, who waited inside a house of shadows for my return.

The other teams returned by midnight, exhausted from the hunt and disappointed by their loss. Those who could be easily bought by free booze and food-the majority of the partiers, it turned out-were appeased by the sight of the newly arrived caterers, though a few poor sports flounced off in sore-footed pique. I never understood that response to disappointment. If you didn’t have a yacht before and you still didn’t have one, what had you really lost?

Shaking my head as Suzanne hurried off the bus to coax them back, I turned back to Cher. “Who planted the clues for the treasure hunt?”

She was holding up a hand mirror as she fiddled with a replacement nose ring, while sitting third in line for a real piercing. Now that she’d taken off her boa, she’d returned to her healthy, mildly blitzed self. “What? Oh, one of Arun’s people. He’s got an army of them apparently.”

“Apparently?”

A squeal sounded behind us, and she slid along the velvet bench, still gazing at her reflection. “Well, I’ve never actually seen any of them. They’re like elves. They work in the night. Even when I stay overnight at the compound, my cocktails appear out of nowhere, or I’ll enter the dining room to find my food set, and still steaming. But his servants? They’re nothing but shadows. It’s kinda creepy…in a decadent sort of way.”

No, it was kinda creepy in a creepy sort of way. Was someone from my old life using Arun and his wealth to get close to my mortals? The coincidence was certainly uncanny, though I couldn’t think of who it might be. As far as I knew, only the agents of Light were aware of the connection between Cher’s family and me, and they were charged with protecting all mortals. Besides, if the Shadow agents knew, these bubbly socialites would already be sleeping in a shallow grave.

Still, my mind winged back to the feeling of being stalked while on the scavenger hunt. I looked back at Cher for signs of concern, but she was busy tousling her hair. I might have to warn her of impending danger later, but I decided against it now. She needed to be steady for her piercing.

Glancing over, I saw Terry holding statue-still, clearly waiting for a new earring. All I could see of the piercer was his hands and forearms as they rubbed alcohol over the area, but Terry was leaning forward into the light, his face ashen with anticipation.

“Are you sure you want to do this? Terry looks like he’s going to pee himself.”

“Terry’s a wuss.” Still peering into the mirror, she gave her newly tousled hair an experimental toss. “I have my Momma’s strong constitution.”

I thought of Suzanne running after a handful of spoiled debutantes, all huffy because someone didn’t hand them a yacht. It made me want to order her into therapy where someone could talk to her about being a chronic people pleaser.

“I mean my real Momma,” Cher said, catching my look and wincing in return. At least she recognized the disorder. “She wrote me letters when she found out she was dying. Loads of them filled with all sorts of advice. I still have them.”

“Wow.” Cher’s birth mother had passed away around the time Cher hit double digits, when a girl would need a mother most. Her father met Suzanne not long after, but because it’d been a May-December romance, he too had since passed. In all the years since, it’d been Cher and Suzanne going it alone, more girlfriends than mother and daughter, with Olivia a steady and welcome third wheel.

Slowly, Cher nodded to herself. “She thought of all the things I’d most need to know-the names of the best plastic surgeons in town, her personal shopper’s home number-and wrote them all down. My father accidentally stored them with her belongings, so I didn’t find them until recently.”

“What a wonderful gift.” Why couldn’t my mother have left me with a treasure trove worth of knowledge and advice? I could have used a straightforward lesson on paranormal espionage and politics. “You’re very lucky.”

A high-pitched squeal sounded as Terry’s earlobe came under fire. Cher glanced back and gulped, her Momma’s constitution getting a test-drive. “Guess it’s time,” she said as a pasty-faced Terry wobbled past. The bus wasn’t even moving.

“Want me to come with?” I asked as Cher shot him a finger wave.

“Accompanying one’s best friend in all things that will eventually be attributed to a misspent youth is in the BFF contract. You know that.”

“I misplaced my copy.” I said, but held out my hand.

“I’ll send you another.”

We strode to the bus’s dark back corner with as much boldness as we could while holding hands. The piercer was reclined, sucking back an entire bottle of water like he’d just run a marathon. Cher’s brows pinched as she took in his scuffed boots, workman’s jeans, and shiny black vest, but he didn’t note it from beneath the low brim of his Stetson. My guess was that he came from one of the rougher ink parlors, and I whispered as much to Cher. “He probably has a name like Tank or Bruise or Bomb.”

We giggled and she settled in the L-shaped corner. When I dropped down next to her, the piercer raised his head and my smile dropped like a stone.

“Hello, Archer.”

Harlan Tripp leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees and cracked his knuckles. I blinked twice, my mind needing an extra moment to catch up as I stared at the rogue Shadow agent I’d both mocked and left frying in another world.

Trapped there, I corrected, swallowing hard. His body set to a slow burn in a world closer to earth’s core than this one. I wouldn’t have recognized him as Shadow if we hadn’t met before, but knew full well a charred skeleton lurked beneath his exterior of flesh, as did breath so rancid it could billow from hell’s belly itself. I couldn’t smell it now, but memory alone had my palms sweating.

My first impulse was to throw myself in front of Cher. My second was to run…though realistically I couldn’t save either of us. Tripp could catch me, kill me, without breaking a sweat. Even a rogue, stripped of troop status, could blow a hole through a mortal’s life with a rap of his fist…and Tripp was famous for loving to do just that.

I was fucked.

“Can’t say I like whatcha done with the place,” he said conversationally, motioning to the fat painter’s splats of neon outside the bus, like he saw it everyday. Telltale neon bulged from the desert floor, but beyond that there was little that remained of the Vegas he’d left. As proof, he said, “Was that a fucking pirate ship settin’ anchor in the middle of the Strip?”

“The light show’s a nice touch, though,” Cher said, oblivious to the tension between us.