Dead of Night (Ghosts & Magic #1) (30 page)

She was holding a separate device up to the camera, and she kept it there as I pulled the door open and slipped inside, then reached back and tapped her hand. She swung herself through and pocketed the device again. If anyone had been watching the feed, they would have only seen two frames of blur, and nothing else out of the ordinary.

The guard was still in the can, and the rest of the workers were done for the night. The only thing we had to worry about were cameras, and they rotated on set schedules, leaving small blind spots at timed intervals. Dannie and I kept pace with them and each other, ducking out of the way as the lenses tracked past, and getting to the service elevator before Mr. Security finished his nightly crap.

It wasn't like we had just walked up to the hotel. Two months of planning had gone into the job for House Blue. We'd paid a guy to hack into the cameras and watch the guard. We'd paid a guy for the little devices that had gotten us in. We'd paid a guy for full schematics to the thirty-second floor. The cost of doing business, according to Danelle. We'd lost half our take before we'd even started.

What we lost in profit, we gained in safety. The information reduced our risk of getting caught, and as far as Dannie was concerned this work was as easy as it came. Perfect to get me started on the life of a ghost. It also paid better because it was a two man job.
 

We reached the thirty-second floor in silence. Just before the doors opened, Dannie leaned up and kissed me on the cheek. "Good luck."

I nodded, ducking out when the doors moved aside and stepping out into the hallway. Most people were asleep by now.

Danelle didn't join me. She took the freight up to the roof. Two person job. Her part was separate from mine. I felt a pang of concern for her, mixed with a measure of excitement. I was on my own.

I walked down the hallway, unconcerned about being seen. My part was the easy part. As I approached room 3270, I reached into my pocket and found a small scalpel and a pair of glasses. I put the glasses on and palmed the scalpel, also removing my cell from another pocket and looking down at it, like I had received an important message that required me to stand there and stare at it. I shifted the scalpel in my grip at the same time I glanced through the specs towards the door.
 

Upscale hotel room security meant a magnetically locked deadbolt and either a card or fingerprint based access mechanism. The whole thing ran on electricity, with a battery-powered failover buried inside the wall. It was unbeatable against conventional attacks; the doors couldn't be brute-forced without a battering ram, and if the fingerprint security had been used only the finger or a remote signal from security could open it up. The downside was that it was all electronic. And while the wall offered enough shielding that a hand-held E.M.P. couldn't bring it down, it still required delivery from one power source or another.
 

In other words, wires.
 

Wires could be cut.

The glasses were black market, finely-tuned for infrared, and they could pick up even the small amount of voltage that was moving to the lock, giving me a clear path of the electrical signals. The wires were bundled tight, and hitting the wrong one would put the whole thing on lockdown and send an alarm signal back to base. This would have been a tough job for a lot of people, but I had a lot of practice cutting tiny wires from a packed group. It wasn't much different than repairing muscle and nerves.

I had to pause for a minute and stay on the phone, as a couple came wandering past. They were in their fifties, dressed for an evening at the theatre or a fancy restaurant. They hung all over one another, laughing loudly and making drunk asses of themselves. They probably didn't even notice me standing there.

Once they were gone, I put the phone away, turned, and powered up the laser scalpel. It dug into the wall without issue, through the E.M.P. shielding to the wires behind. It took only a couple of minute flicks of the wrist to sever each of the connecting wires. There was no sound to indicate the door was open, but when I took the handle and gently pushed, it moved without a fight.

I slipped inside and eased it back closed. My heart was racing and my body coursing with adrenaline in an even mix of fear and excitement. I looked around with the glasses still on, checking for bodies inside the blackness of the room. It was supposed to be empty, but there was someone in the bed. Shit.

I stood motionless, waiting to see if they would cry out, ask who was there, invite me to join them, or anything else to indicate they were awake. I heard a soft gurgle, followed by another. Sleeping.

My part of the job was to steal a necklace, a blue diamond. I didn't know what was important about it, and didn't care. All I knew was that House Blue wanted it, and they had offered to pay Miss Daaé and an accomplice quite well to retrieve it and take care of the thief. The diamond was in the room somewhere.
 

The thief was on the roof.

We'd known he would be there, because Blue knew who he was. Not another House, but a former employee who thought he would be safe outside the reach of the magical fields. A man who knew enough to be stupid, but not enough to keep himself alive. He'd be on the phone, trying to make deals. He'd gotten himself a raw one.

He was Danelle's problem.
 

I gave my eyes a minute to adjust to the dim light that was filtering in past the heavy drapes, and then crept slowly towards the bed. It would have made sense that the diamond would be in the safe, but I discounted that as soon as I had been able to see the person on the bed.

A woman. Young, naked. The clothes laying next to the bed suggested a prostitute.
 

The diamond was hanging from her neck.

He had probably bought her so he could bring her up and do her with the rock around her neck... a double-fuck, you could call it. I needed to get it away from her, without her raising a fuss. The easy part had gotten a little more complicated.

I stood right next to her, considering. My eyes wandered to the nightstand, where a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels was resting. Drunk? Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
 

I didn't just lean over her to undo the clasp. Instead, I shrugged off the suit jacket and went around to the other side of the bed. I laid down next to her and waited for her to move.
 

She didn't.
 

I turned on my side and draped my arm over her, putting my hand on her breast and again waiting for a reaction.
 

Nothing.

I put my face against the back of her head, and nuzzled her neck. She gasped and squirmed slightly, but she didn't cry out in fear or say anything, and a moment later the light snoring resumed.

Satisfied, I took my hands off her and ran them down her neck until I found the clasp for the necklace. I opened it without a problem, and then carefully extracted it from her. I half-expected her to wake up once the weight of the diamond was off her chest, but she just shifted slightly and continued sleeping off the Jack. I let myself smile as I got away from the bed, grabbed my jacket, and pocketed the rock.
 

She was still asleep when I closed the door and walked calmly to the main hotel elevator. You didn't need a card or a print to get down, only to go up.

I met Danelle half an hour later. She opened the rear door of the van and hopped in, closing it and sighing. "I hope you had an easier time than I did."

I was sitting in the passenger seat, and I turned to look at her. She wasn't injured, but she had blood on her cheek and stains on her arm.
 

"What happened?"

"They didn't tell me the asshole knew how to fight. He turned on me when I put the knife to his throat, managed to knock me back. I had to stab him in the neck, and he bled all over me. A fucking mess."

"You killed him?" I hadn't killed anyone yet. I knew one day I would have to, but I wasn't looking forward to it. It was enough of an adjustment just to hear Dannie talk about it so casually.

"Yeah. Did you get the rock?"

I held it up so that it caught some of the light from the street. "Piece of cake. He left it on a whore, and the whore drunk on his bed."

She laughed. "Grab my phone from the dash, will you? Let's call this in."

The phone was the only thing in the glove compartment. I passed it back, and she dialed the number. I heard a slight click. It was the only indication anyone had picked up.

"Done deal," she said. A deep voice mumbled something. "Got it." She hung up. "He said we can toss the diamond, it's a fake."

"What?"
 

"Don't look at me like that, I didn't know."

I took the blue diamond and brought it really close to my face. "I risked my life for a fake?"

She came forward to the driver seat. A set of keys appeared in her hand, and she got us moving. "Get used to shit that doesn't make any sense. That's how the Houses work. Teaching someone a lesson for stealing a fake diamond is worth it to them, even if that means a ghost gets screwed. We got our money, which means your treatment is paid for next month. Better yet, you aren't a virgin anymore. Welcome to the profession." She turned her head and smiled at me. "It's time to celebrate."

We went back to our place so she could shower and change, and then we headed out, spending the next three hours in a dive downtown. It was the kind of place that only the most brazen or stupid would hang out at into the early morning. The kind of place where I had been jumped almost a year ago to the day. I almost wished I could find those assholes, to give them a little taste of what I'd learned in the months that had followed. Firearms training, martial arts, and magic. Fucking death magic. Necromancy. It scared the shit out of me, and I pissed myself the first time I brought a dead thing back to life, but damn I wanted to see their faces when I touched one of them, drained the life from the body, and brought them back under my control. I wanted to see them piss themselves.

I explained all that to Dannie on the ride home, stammering and slurring every word of it in a drunken daze of excitement. I felt more alive than I had since before the biopsy. I felt like I was in control, that my future was my own, and that I could do right by Karen and Molly by earning enough to provide something for them.
 

By the time Dannie opened the door to our small house, all of the drink and the excitement and the adrenaline had gotten to me. She was half holding me up, drunk enough herself, and leading me to my bedroom across from hers. When we got there, I started thanking her for everything she'd done for me, and telling her how she'd saved my life. I cried while I told her how I would have died without her, and how I loved her for being there for me. Even more, I was aroused for the first time in months, despite the drink. So I kissed her. Then she kissed me back. Our hands found parts of each other above our clothes, and then our hands found each other's clothes to remove them, and an indelible and unfortunate memory was made.

CHAPTER FORTY

Chowdah.

"You don't get it, do you, Baldie? There is no fucking way in hell that is going to happen."

"Come on, Amos. This is for Dannie."

Amos wiped his brow. "You're making me regret I told you anything about it."

It was nine o'clock, the morning after. I'd only gotten about three hours of sleep after Jin had helped me with the meds, and had woken up with her head resting on my chest, and her breath tickling my skin. I'd sat and stared at the wilting chunks of black and purple hair before gently shaking her awake. There was something about her that was scaring me, and moving into a dangerous place in my mind.
 

The good news was that I felt a lot better.

A cold shower and a change of clothes from my shitty suitcase had refreshed my spirits, and helped me focus on moving forward, not looking back.
 

"He's the only one who might know who this Tarakona asshole is." It was the third or fourth time we had circled back around in the argument. Each time, the fight got a little more intense. "What the fuck are you so afraid of?"

We had traded the stolen Impala for another rental car, courtesy of Amos. It was a big Cadillac, the newest, fanciest model that could be rented, the car of the fat ghost's dreams. He had picked it up while we were asleep, somehow getting his bulk down the stairs and out the door without making a sound. He'd explained the math that had allowed him to do the switch alone when we had gotten underway, leaving the gated community and heading north. It was impressive.

Now we were standing behind the car, in a parking lot across from a Walmart. The weather was still shit, leaving us cast in a gloomy gray.
 

"You think because I worked for Mr. Black, that means I shouldn't be afraid of him? Just the fucking opposite. Eighteen years, I never met him face to face. Talked to him on the phone twice. Got my orders from his negotiator sometimes, but most times from fixers."

"He trusted you with Dannie. That has to count for something."

"Means he'd kill me quick instead of slow... maybe. I want to get even for Dannie too, but pulling Black into this shit, that's a bad idea."

Jin put her hand on my better shoulder. "Just forget it, Baron. We'll find another way."

I couldn't believe it. The man who had grabbed a werewolf by the head and shoved a gun into its throat was afraid to make a phone call? I reached over and unlatched the trunk, swinging it open and pushing the remaining ice from Dannie's face.

"Look at her."

Amos looked at me.

"Fucking look at her, Amos. Tell Dannie you're too afraid to call in some favors and find out where Black is. Tell her that its better that you die, and that I die, and that the guy who's recruiting ferals to his cause gets what he wants. Forget about House Red, and just think about that. Tell her you could have done something to stop it, but you were too much of a baby."

His eyes moved reluctantly to her face, pale and peaceful, save for the hole in her forehead. "Fuck you, Conor. You don't know you can stop him. He's got at least three of those monsters, and you have what? The corpse of a woman with no legs?"