Authors: Erin Kellison
“You don’t know Graeme,” she said.
Graeme didn’t interest him. It was the person behind Graeme who did.
Steve hit the call button, and the elevator door opened immediately. “I don’t need to know him.” To prove it, he changed the subject. “Do you like French food? My job has its perks, and this is one indulgence I intend to take full advantage of while we’re here. You can pick the place tomorrow.”
“What if I pick burgers and fries?”
They stepped inside, and the doors closed.
“I can work with that,” he said.
He knew just the place, in fact.
He watched her in the mirror again, this enigma of a girl. Really, she was very beautiful. Her face had a million expressions, each increment of a smile or frown connoting a different meaning, the majority of which he couldn’t parse.
She caught him observing and sent him a narrow, straight-mouthed look, an expression easy to translate:
You’re being rude.
He tried not to laugh again and turned his gaze to the elevator doors, just opening.
They exited The Wake into the raw energy of Vegas street crowds and walked the Strip toward the Bellagio. The fall temps had taken the sear out of the evening, but the pavement still radiated heat. The sidewalks were thick with people moving at different speeds, with different purposes—some in shorts and T-shirts, the occasional group of women in super-short glitter dresses, a crowd of guys being too loud and obnoxious too early in the evening. Music and rhythm came from all directions, spilling out of nightclubs, booming from an outdoor hotel show, all above the constant jangle of slot machines. A giant lightboard scraping the sky simulated the new Rêve inside Caesar’s Palace—Steve had actually toured that one. Well worth the $5K ticket.
Steve was sure Graeme and his cohort had been watching them since they hit The Wake’s lobby. But it wasn’t until Steve felt a telltale static density in his mind that he objected to being followed.
Someone was trying to mark him or drown him into sleep right here on the sidewalk, but it wasn’t going to work. Regardless of what other Chimera thought, recruitment was often a dangerous business. The Revelers he recruited were like Maisie—in trouble, stalked, exhausted, and having difficulty distinguishing between the realities of the waking world and the rush of the dreamwaters.
The static in his brain intensified into a prickly burn.
Okay. If that’s how they wanted to play it…
Arm around his flight risk and strolling with ease, Steve sought back along the path of energy and yanked hard on the Reveler trying to mess with him. Steve felt the Reveler’s shock in the burn’s stream, and then it dissipated as the Reveler lost consciousness.
The attack pissed Steve off. How lame of Graeme to attempt to take him out that way.
A bullet, of course, would do the trick faster and more definitively, but Graeme couldn’t risk an open attack against a Chimera, not without precipitating war against his organization. It was well known that the agents of Chimera had abilities that made them powerful adversaries.
“They’re not just going to let me go.” Maisie was rigid under his arm.
She was nervous. No reason to be. When she understood that herself, maybe she’d be more open to Chimera. Then the hard part would start.
This thug Graeme was not the hard part. Not remotely.
“If you told me who was behind Graeme,” he said, “I could work the line of authority and move this along much more quickly.”
“The line ends in hell,” she said. “Believe me, you don’t want to get there any faster than you have to.”
Steve guessed that was a no.
She wasn’t making this easier, which made him wonder at her reasons. Why not tell him everything? Keeping silent just prolonged their association. She was hiding something.
Of course she was.
The Bellagio’s fountains were an aquatic ballet. Maisie put her back to the water to watch the crowds—she clearly didn’t like being out in the open and vulnerable—but Steve leaned forward on the railing and breathed deeply. He liked the smell of the water against the bite of desert dust and car exhaust. And he’d learned to conserve his energy for when he really needed it.
He didn’t immediately turn when Maisie put her hand on his arm, signaling an approach. This was his meeting, not Graeme’s.
“You look tired, Maze,” a man’s voice said.
Her sister called Maisie that, too, and the nickname actually suited her. Maze. She was fast, complicated, and twisty in the head. But Steve stuck with
Maisie
. However much he liked her—and he did—he wasn’t her friend and wouldn’t pretend that he was.
“This is Party Town. I’m having too much fun to sleep,” she answered.
Steve finally turned and glanced at Maisie. “Is this Graeme?”
The man’s jaw twitched; he was angry or agitated. It would be interesting to discover which one. Otherwise he was square and fit, just past middle age. A strangely calm forehead made Steve think the man might be using Botox to fight time. His clothes, too, skewed urban-trendy in their cut.
Graeme jutted his chin toward Steve. “What makes you think I won’t end this right here, right now?”
How stupid to start with a threat. “The same reason you’re going to stop hounding Maisie,” Steve said, obligingly. “Because Chimera will make doing business Darkside more difficult than losing a runner.”
“You think we
want
her?”
Steve was sure of it, but was happy to go with Graeme’s rejection. “Then this is simple.”
Maisie didn’t look hopeful. In fact, she was going a little pale, eyes not blinking quite as much as they should. She needed to take a deep breath. Everything was going to be fine.
Graeme worked his jaw again.
Agitated, Steve concluded. The man was nervous about something.
“I wish it were simple,” Graeme said, “but it never is with her. She has a package of ours that she hasn’t delivered, and it needs to be. Now.”
Oh really?
Steve glanced over at Maisie.
She made a pained face at the pavement. Busted.
Right. They’d have to have another chat. Perhaps he hadn’t been clear about cooperation, and what that meant.
But it just so happened that this development was convenient, and Steve intended to use it. “You have a hostage, Raymond Blackman, whom we want returned. Let’s make a trade.”
The Blackman situation was a holdover from Chimera’s recruitment of Maisie’s older sister, Jordan. Since Maisie had such talent, it was reasonable to believe that Jordan would as well—and Graeme had known it. Graeme had been forcing Raymond Blackman’s son, Vince, to pursue and secure Jordan. But Vince had failed—was in fact now lost in sleep—and without his son to bargain for his life, Raymond would likely meet his end.
Graeme shook his head. “I don’t know anything about him.”
That was a lie. “How about you make some inquiries?”
Move this negotiation up off the street and to his superior.
“How about she delivers the package?”
Maisie made an impatient sound at Graeme. “I’m not going to deliver it, which I have told you about a thousand times.”
“You took our money. You’ll deliver.”
“I can repay whatever you advanced her,” Steve said. Then to Maisie, “Do you still have the package?”
Her gray eyes glittered with the reflection of the Bellagio’s watery silver lights while she considered answering—
Don’t play games,
Steve wanted to warn her—but then she nodded.
“Excellent.” He turned back to Graeme. “When you give us Raymond Blackman, we will return the package to you, and you can find someone else to deliver it.”
“She has to finish the job.” The muscle on the side of Graeme’s jaw flexed.
Steve smiled. “No, she doesn’t. It’s the best offer you’re going to get.”
“The package is time sensitive. It needs to go tonight.” Graeme nodded toward him. “You can take it, if you want.”
Steve smiled wider, almost incredulous. “Not in a million years. We’ll make the exchange, and then you will disassociate yourself from Maisie, or Chimera will assist you in that endeavor.”
Graeme smiled widely, too. “She can’t become one of you, not with her past. Not with the way she loves money. She’ll come back to us. Probably sooner than later. Might as well be now.”
He turned to Maisie, who had disengaged from both of them, standing slightly apart, glancing off into the crowds, probably contemplating an escape.
Some of what Graeme had said, unfortunately, was true. Maisie Lane had gone into business with the wrong people. The relevant point was she’d stopped, in spite of how difficult it would be to escape Graeme’s grasp.
“Maze,” Graeme said, “you can have the future we discussed. You can’t doubt now the possibilities, the chance. What you want is within your reach; only fear keeps you back. You can have everything. Or nothing.”
Maisie lifted her head and looked Graeme square in the eye. “I never wanted any of that. I just needed some money. But you can’t pay me enough to come back.”
Right there, Steve thought. She’d reached a limit, which meant she had them. It also meant she wouldn’t try to kill him.
Probably.
Not that she’d have had to do anything directly violent. With Maisie’s skills, she’d only have to lose her victim in the dreamwaters, or maybe even abandon him in the Scrape, so that he wouldn’t rouse in the waking world. It was a coward’s way to kill, because her victim wouldn’t be dead, not really. Just forever lost.
This scenario, however, was not a danger to Steve.
The first time he’d encountered the Scrape, its perpetual dust storm harrying grains of sand into ripples of desolation, was when he was five, when he named it for the line his foot had drawn in the sand, though he hadn’t crossed into it then, thank God. He’d been ten when he’d ventured out. The coma lasted three weeks. He hadn’t been lost there since.
“I’ll let you know once I have the package,” Steve said to Graeme. “And then we can arrange an exchange.”
Graeme’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a freak. You and all the other Chimera will die. Maze will beg on her knees to be the one to kill you.”
“Okay,” said Steve. Random, grandiose threats couldn’t scare him. He kind of liked them. They added a little something extra to the conversation. “Until then, you’ll leave her alone.”
Graeme merely made a face of disgust, angry and mean, and walked away.
Steve turned back to Maisie, who’d been given so many chances already. “Anything else you want to tell me?”
Because he was sure there was indeed more to tell.
She grimaced at him and delivered a typically Maisie opaque answer. “Not really.”
***
Starched white tablecloths, uncomfortable modern chairs. A waiter going on and on about some free-range type of goat and the special for the night. So this was fine dining.
Maisie gnawed her lower lip while she read the menu.
Octopus. Beef cheeks. Duck tongue. Really?
Steve had already set his menu aside and was waiting for her. Yeah, well, the man could wait. She was hungry, and the menu was seriously stressing her out.
“What’s in the package you didn’t deliver?”
“I have no idea.” Swordfish seemed okay. Not sure about the accompanying seawater foam, though.
“You didn’t look?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
The way he said it ticked her off, as if he thought she hadn’t looked because she knew she’d find something bad.
How about… “Because it’s none of my business.”
But yeah, she guessed there was something illegal inside. Memories in particular were in high demand. The transfer of memories had been banned in the US, but the ongoing legal argument contended that while commercial Rêve companies operating in the US had to abide by American law, once a dreamer was Darkside, no country had jurisdiction. Darkside itself was a lawless new world.
“You weren’t curious?”
“No.”
“You seem like a curious person.”
“You seem like a—” She stopped herself.
The man was trying to help her, and it was a sure thing he’d die for it. Wasn’t his fault he irritated her. Uptight. Controlling. Always calm. Maybe it was his name.
Steve.
That long
e
sound made her cringe every time.
Steeeve.
But his name wasn’t his fault, either.
“Why didn’t you deliver it, then?”
Maisie meant to shrug, but the motion turned into a mini writhe of discomfort. She couldn’t just shrug off what she’d seen. And Steve deserved to know.
“I was going to,” she said. “I crossed into the person’s dreamspace intending to hand it over.” She swallowed hard, sweat breaking out in her hairline. Her heart rate ratcheted up, as if part of her were still there. Maybe she wasn’t hungry after all. “But the dream they’d sent me to was really,
really
bad. So I bolted.”
“What do you mean by bad?”
Dank fear rolled over her, making it hard to breathe. Blood. Pain. Death. She pressed her lips together, not to keep from saying anything, but to keep what she’d seen from escaping through her voice into the waking world. She didn’t want to make it more real than it already was.