Carrie Vaughn - Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand

“You’re bluffing. You have to be bluffing.”

“You willing to make that gamble?”

My voice pitched higher, almost hysterical. “This is Vegas. Shouldn’t I be?”

I had a thought then: What if this were Cormac? If he were here, threatening to open fire in a crowded lobby unless I did as he asked, would I believe him? Did I really think he’d do it? No, of course not. But looking at Sylvia, she had something more than the cold, calculating, unwavering expression that I’d seen in Cormac when he was on a job, when he was about to kill—or had just killed—something. Someone. She had a fanatical glint to her expression, a berserker edge. I remembered what Brenda said: Sylvia didn’t play by rules. So yes, I believed if I pushed her, she would shoot me here.

I started walking, and she fell into step at my arm, and a little behind, guiding me out of the lobby and down the hallway to the elevators. She was half a head shorter than I was. I could totally take her. Right until she pulled that gun. I wondered what she planned on doing. Taking me to a room, maybe. Shooting me quietly, dumping me out with the trash. Or maybe taking me out to a car, driving out to the desert, out of sight of the thousands of surveillance cameras. No one would ever know.

I tried to keep her talking. People fired guns less when they talked. “Found a buyer, then, did you? Someone willing to put a hit on me? Because most people aren’t willing to go that far. I’m famous, you know.”

She sneered. “This one’s for the fun of it.”

“So,” I asked. “Does this mean you got Ben, too?”

“Why would we want him? I sure as hell don’t know what he sees in you, but I don’t have a beef with him.”

Which meant they didn’t know he was a werewolf, weren’t gunning for him, and hadn’t gotten to him. I should call Brenda.

I swallowed and kept my breathing steady. Kept Wolf settled. Had to think. “Cormac’ll go after you when he finds out about this. You know that.”

“Cormac’s in a box. There are ways of getting to him. You don’t actually think he’s safe in prison, do you?”

A million ways someone could die in prison, and no one would think it strange. God, what a mess. I couldn’t even warn him.

Had to run, had to fight, couldn’t just give up, had to do something. I could feel fur tickling the inside of my skin. Any minute now, I’d split open and Wolf would leap out. If I couldn’t save myself, she’d do it for me. That’s how it worked.

My breathing came too quickly, and I was sweating, even in the frigid air-conditioning. We were in a quiet hallway now. Boris walked about two dozen steps behind us. The doors we passed looked like they opened to utility closets or offices—locked in both cases, inaccessible as an escape route. Maybe once we got outside I could run.

We were near Odysseus Grant’s theater. I wondered...

There, around the corner, was the emergency exit I’d used when I sneaked backstage.

I bolted.

What did I have to lose? We were out of the crowd. She couldn’t hold the death of innocents over me anymore. I didn’t look back to see if she was drawing her gun or not. I had to get out of there and hope I could run faster than she could shoot. I could run fast. Wolf flowed through my veins.

Footsteps sounded behind me, but I was faster. I slammed into the door, shoving it open, and kept going. In a crack of thunder, drywall exploded behind me. Gunfire. She was actually crazy enough to shoot inside the hotel. But she only hit the wall. I sped up.

I thought I could lose her in the backstage maze, circle around, find another exit, get away. Call Evan and Brenda. Call the police. Anything.

I dodged into another hallway, painted black. Then I must have taken a wrong turn, because I ended up onstage, toward the back, looking out over an empty theater and the back of Grant’s equipment. The curtains were open, and Grant himself stood downstage. He looked like he was practicing with the Chinese rings, loops of silver interlocking, clicking as they linked and unlinked so quickly I couldn’t follow.

Then, because Wolf was at the front of my senses, because everything was sharp and brilliant and the world around me was moving a little bit slower—and maybe because I was standing behind him—I could see it. The ring in his hand never moved. He kept his grip on the same spot, always hiding it from the audience, and worked so quickly he only made it look like the rings changed places, linking together, slipping apart. Two of the rings were already connected, permanently, but he kept the joint hidden, so they looked like just two more rings hanging on his arm. And one of the other rings had a gap in it. He kept the gap hidden in his hand while slipping the other rings into and out of it. He handled them fluidly, perfectly. I never would have been able to tell, if I hadn’t caught that odd glimpse.

But it was still magic, because I certainly could never manipulate the trick as well as Grant. At least not without a lot of practice.

He turned around, as if alerted by the pressure of my gaze. The rings stopped and dangled from his hands instead of dancing. At first he seemed annoyed, scowling, but I must have looked desperate, flushed and out of breath, because he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m being followed, they want to kill me,” I said, pointing behind me. I sounded incoherent to my ears, but I didn’t have time to give any more detail.

He glanced over my shoulder, and I turned, afraid that Boris and Sylvia had sneaked up behind me. They hadn’t; only the two of us stood onstage. But I could hear breathing echoing among the rigging backstage. They were close.

Grant must have sensed it, too. He marched to the painted cabinet, sitting innocuously to the side. “If you would step in here for a moment.”

I laughed, a tad hysterically. “You’re going to hide me in your trick cabinet? You really think that’s going to fool them?”

“Please, just step in here. Everything’ll be fine.” He sounded like someone urging me to drink the Kool-Aid. “And whatever you do, don’t move.”

What the hell? Maybe it would actually work. I stepped in, and he closed the door, relegating me to darkness.

Cautiously, I felt around the inside of the cabinet. I didn’t know the trick of the device that made people seem to disappear. Grant hadn’t told me, so I couldn’t activate the mechanism, spring the trapdoor, or whatever. All I could do was stand there. I strained to listen but couldn’t hear what was going on outside. Had they found me? Was Grant able to put them off?

I barely had room to move. I felt the door in front of me, the two sides around me, inches from my arms. I took a step back, expecting to come up against the back of the box. Then I took another step, and another. Three steps back. I’d walked around the cabinet; it wasn’t that big. There couldn’t be that much room inside.

Shifting my arms, I felt for the sides—which weren’t there.

Looking around, I saw shadows. Which was impossible, because the box was pitch-dark—not a sliver of light passed inside. But I could now lift my arms, stretch them all the way out from my sides. My steps didn’t echo like they should have on the wood floor of a cabinet. I glanced over my shoulder, half-expecting to see a snow-covered forest and a lamppost. I didn’t see much of anything: shifting tones of gray, like clouds passing over a nighttime sky. A breeze touched my face, ruffling strands of my hair across my face. Which was impossible—I was inside a box.

And standing on a piece of ground, with dirt under my feet. The air had a strange scent, marshy, decayed, like a swamp, or an aquarium that needed cleaning. Algae, fish, and mud. I shivered with cold, and a dampness crept under my skin, touching my bones. I hugged myself.