Devil's Gate (Elder Races #4.6)(21)

“I really need to go home now, Aunt Serrie,” she whispered.

“Of course you do,” she said gently. Now was not the time for recriminations or lectures. “Are you hurt?”

Vetta wiped at her face. “Just tired and hungry.”

“All right.” Seremela looked at the backpack that the Vampyre had tossed to the floor. “Is this yours?”

Vetta nodded. Duncan said, “We’re not going to try to retrieve anything else. We’re going straight to our car and leaving.”

“That’s fine, I don’t care,” said the girl, her voice wobbling. “I just want to get the hell out of here.”

As Seremela turned her attention fully onto the backpack that Malphas’s guard had tossed onto the floor, she immediately sensed a warm glow of aged Power. She bent and reached for the pack, scanning it carefully.

When she had been a medical examiner, most of the deaths she had autopsied had occurred through magical or Powerful means, and her magical sense was finely honed.

She was used to handling dangerous residual Power. Usually when she scanned for magic, she could compartmentalize it within moments. A spell cast by a human witch, an item infused with Dark Fae Power, Demonkind, Elven, Djinn or Light Fae—she knew the flavors and characteristics of all their magics, and most of the time she could either disable or contain the spells.

This, though. This was something different from anything she had ever encountered. The harder she concentrated, the deeper the well of Power felt underneath the veneer of that mild, mellow glow. For a moment she felt as though she might fall into something vaster than she had ever experienced.

Astonished and more than a little frightened, she jerked back and heard herself say sharply, “What do you have in there?”

“The goddamn Tarot deck from hell,” Vetta said on a fresh sob.

She turned to stare at the girl. “Where on earth did you get something like that?”

Vetta’s face twisted with a flash of her old rebellious self that crumpled quickly. She wailed, “I stole it a couple months ago. I’m already so, so sorry I ever set eyes on it, so I don’t need for you to yell at me about it right now, all right?”

Seremela angled her jaw out. She said in a soft, even tone of voice, “I can’t help but notice your choice of words, Vetta. You’re sorry you set eyes on it, but you’re not sorry you stole it?”

The girl’s reddened eyes widened with fresh dismay.

Duncan said quietly, “This conversation can wait until later. Seremela, is the pack too dangerous to take with us?”

She gave him a quick glance then turned her attention back to the pack. After a moment, she said, “It doesn’t feel active at the moment, so I don’t think so. It’s a very old item of Power, though. We shouldn’t just leave it.”

“Then we’ll take it,” he said. “As long as you’re willing to look after it and we leave right now.”

She nodded, took the pack and slung it over one shoulder. Duncan strode to the trailer’s open door and looked out. Moonlight edged his set expression and sharp gaze.

Seremela had grown accustomed reading to the subtle changes in his face. When she saw the line of his mouth harden, she asked, “What is it?”

“The only way out of this fenced-in enclosure is through the casino,” he told her. “I noticed when we came in.”

As soon as he mentioned it, she remembered the unbroken line of fence too.

She said to Vetta, “You keep your head down. You stick to me like glue, young lady, and above all, you keep quiet. I don’t care if you see someone you don’t like, or if someone says something you don’t like. You do not antagonize anyone. Do you hear me?”

The girl bent her head and nodded, and Duncan led the way through the enclosure to the back of the casino, where bright flashes of color spilled out from the opening. It looked, Seremela thought uneasily, like the tent had been sliced open and was bleeding light.

They walked inside and along the main aisle.

Silence began to spread through the crowd. Seremela’s stomach tightened as people stared at them. Then the whispering began. Vetta did as she had promised and kept her head down as she walked as close as she could get to Seremela without actually climbing on top of her.

Seremela put an arm around her niece’s shoulders and several of her snakes wrapped around Vetta too. She tried as best as she could to adopt something of Duncan’s calm, non-confrontational manner, while each step she took, each moment that passed, felt as though it took an hour. In vast contrast to how she had felt when they had come into the place, she glanced up at the armed Goblins on the walk overhead and felt grateful for their presence.

A ripple of reaction moved through the crowd like a wave, and she knew they weren’t going to make it out of the casino without some kind of confrontation.

Duncan twisted to face the reaction. He still looked as prosaic as if he were taking out the trash, while her heart was jumping about in her chest like a cat on a hot tin roof. When she saw his lean, mildly interested profile, she felt a rush of emotion so powerful, it almost knocked her on her ass.

I love you, she thought. You have gone so far out of your way for me that you’ve traveled across the country. You’ve faced down petty criminals and a rogue Djinn. You accepted without question when I said that Vetta was innocent, and you’ve done all of it with humor and kindness, and you’re willing to do even this for my niece, whom you haven’t even been properly introduced to.