Lady of Misrule (Marla Mason Book 8) (11 page)

“I am so sick of talking decapitations,” Marla muttered.

“Uh, hi,” Bradley said. “I’m wondering where I can find the city’s Pit Boss?”

The severed head looked at him for a moment, then said, “He has a secret casino under the city.” The head gave directions, which involved going down manholes and walking through sewer tunnels, naturally.

“Thanks,” Bradley said. “What do I owe you?”

“Go to the Flamingo Hotel and bet whatever you’ve got in your pockets on black 13,” the head said. “Give any money you make to the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.”

One of the more weirdly specific requests he’d gotten for payment from an oracle, but easy enough to obey. “Consider it done.”

The floating head shimmered and vanished.

“Pretty sure that was Bugsy Siegel,” Marla said.

“He was... a mob guy, yeah?”

Marla nodded. “Basically the founder of modern Las Vegas. The Flamingo was his casino. Some of his mob buddies put a couple of bullets in his head because he was skimming money from the business. Who knew he had a charitable side?”

“Funny how he wants to give money to a cancer fund. It’s not like he
died
of cancer.”

“Sure, but there’s not a non-profit foundation dedicated to teaching psychopaths to be less greedy. Let’s go. We’ll stop by the Flamingo so you can fulfill your responsibilities. You don’t want the annoyed ghost of Ben Siegel floating around yammering at you because you didn’t stick to your bargain. We’ll grab a bite to eat, too. You don’t brace the Pit Boss in his lair on an empty stomach.”

•

They slipped down the appropriate manhole cover without drawing any unwanted attention, and didn’t have to spend much time in the darker and squishier bits of the city’s underside before they found a door hidden with camouflage magics. Bradley didn’t even notice the illusions making the door blend in with the bricks, because they were so transparent to his psychic senses; he only realized the door was disguised when Marla said, “Good eye, I didn’t even see that” after he pulled it open. There were no locks, presumably because the Pit Boss welcomed people to his secret casino, provided they were clued-in enough to find it in the first place.

From there, the corridors were more sanitary and well-lit, concrete halls illuminated by the bright white LEDs stuck haphazardly on the walls and ceiling. They eventually reached a door that swung open automatically at their approach, allowing entrance to a plush carpeted lounge. The bartender – another junk golem, this one made mostly of bottles and silverware, so he was at least thematic – nodded something like a head toward them and gestured toward the booths and stools, then toward the wider room beyond, where a variety of gaming tables and apparatuses stood.

The lounge area was entirely deserted, and there were only half a dozen people around the gaming tables. A mostly naked middle-aged man strapped to a huge wooden wheel sobbed quietly as he lazily spun, while four people dressed in everything from guttersnipe rags to fur coats raptly watched his rotations. A junk golem operator stood by the wheel counting stacks of chips. Two other men, wearing sopping tuxedoes, knelt with their hands bound behind their backs plunging their faces into washtubs full of opaque black liquid, emerging with writing, tentacled, clawed things in their teeth, which they spat into smaller buckets at their sides. A golem seemingly made of the remnants of a seafood buffet or aquarium disaster attended them, making occasional tick-marks on a clipboard to tally up... something.

Bradley had no idea how either of those games were played, and no desire to find out either the rules or the stakes.

Marla sidled up to the bar. “Looking for the Pit Boss,” she said.

“Mr. Amparan is dead,” the bartender rasped through its lemon-zester throat.

“Yeah, that’s fine. I’m happy to meet the new boss, different from the old boss. Does he have a name yet?”

“Most people call me ‘Yes sir,’” a rumbling voice said. “Come to pay tribute to the new king?”

Marla turned, leaning casually back against the bar, and looked the newcomer up and down. Bradley looked, too, but he wasn’t quite as capable of keeping his cool as she was. He’d heard about what happened to Rondeau in the city, but he hadn’t
seen
it like the Over-Bradley had, so the molten demon that came strolling across the casino floor was something of a shock. His flesh was mostly black stone, but rivulets of lava flowed here and there on his body, and he stood at least eleven feet tall. Bradley wasn’t sure why the carpet didn’t burst into flame wherever he stepped, but it was probably just magic.

“I met your predecessor once,” Marla said. “He liked to wear pin-striped suits. Diamond stickpin. Ruby pinky ring. Always chomping a cigar. I admired the guy, you know? I have respect for the classics. But... big naked demon guy? I dunno. Lacks subtlety.”

“You should know I’m new to this job,” the demon said. The players in the casino looked at him nervously, but not as nervously as they
should
have, as far as Bradley was concerned. Then again, you probably had to be a pretty stone-cold type to come gamble in this place anyway. The boss crossed his immense arms over his chest. “Basically, I don’t have any sophisticated procedures or mechanisms or flowcharts in place. I just kind of kill people who annoy me. Are you going to annoy me?”

“Oh, almost certainly. My name’s Marla Mason.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“Wow,” Bradley said, because he wanted to contribute something. “You
are
new.”

“You two would look good if you were reduced to piles of charred carbon, I think.” The Pit Boss tilted his head, regarding her like a decorator considering a new set of drapes.

Marla yawned, rubbed the side of her nose, and said, “I’m going to need a couple of things from you. I’d say ‘favors,’ but that would imply they’re something I might have to repay someday, and that’s not happening. So maybe we’ll call them ‘boons.’ You’d like that, right? New king, big boss – granting boons is all part of the deal.”

“Oh, I give people things,” the Pit Boss said. “They just have to
wager
for them, and win.”

Marla rolled her eyes. “Ha. Like I’m going to bet with
you
, when you inherited the old boss’s stash of luck. No thanks. I know you were born yesterday, or near enough, but I wasn’t. Nah, we’re going to make a different kind of arrangement. The kind you’ll understand.”

The creature swelled, the cracks in his body widening, revealing deeper fissures of molten glow. “Oh yeah? What kind is that?”

“Extortion, obviously. Let’s go talk in your office. I’d hate to embarrass you in front of your customers.”

“What’s stopping me from burning you to ashes where you stand?”

Bradley couldn’t help it – he squeaked out a laugh. The Pit Boss swung his head, which was now growing something like bull’s horns, in Bradley’s direction, scowling tectonically. “What’s funny?”

“The gulf between what you think you know and what you actually know,” Marla said. “You can try to burn me if you want. I know you beat Regina Queen, and hey, that’s legitimately badass. But see, you were conjured pretty much to exist in opposition to her. You’re like Regina’s supernatural antidote. But me... You’re not made to match me.” She reached out and pressed her palm against his cheek. The sound of sizzling flesh was followed a moment later by a sweet, charred, meaty smell that Bradley didn’t find remotely appetizing despite its superficial resemblance to the scent of roast pork. Marla didn’t so much as flinch as her hand charred – that kind of stoicism was a formidable trick of the mind, Bradley knew, because she wasn’t actually impervious to pain. She drew back the burned lump of her fist and held it in front of Pit Boss, and he actually took a step backward as her flesh healed, flakes of ash falling away as new skin appeared, first pink, then darkening to the same even road-trip tan the rest of her exposed flesh possessed. “Point made,” she said. “Let’s talk.”

“Maybe you can heal, but that won’t help if I dip you in concrete and dump you in Lake Mead –”

“B, why does everybody have to push me?” she said. “Don’t they know I have better things to do?”

She lashed out, her dagger suddenly in her hand, and in several swift strokes she carved a blocky uppercase letter ‘M’ into the Pit Boss’s molten chest. The streaks of lava he had instead of blood (or lymph, or whatever) tried to flow into the empty spaces, but stopped at the borders of her slashes. The Pit Boss whimpered, and that was strange, because Bradley had never heard a walking volcano whimper before.

“Oh, hey,” Marla said. “You recognize this knife, don’t you? It’s the one you found in Rondeau’s storage unit. The dagger you couldn’t lift, the one that cut the fingers off anyone you sent when they tried to touch it. And here I am, holding it – the rightful owner.”

“You’re a friend of Rondeau’s,” the boss rumbled, rubbing a hand over his scarred chest.

“Oh, yeah. Maybe not his best friend. We’ve had our ups and downs. But definitely his most
dangerous
friend.” She let the point of the dagger drift and weave, making little figure-eights and curves in the air. “I once wrote the first couple of letters of my name on someone’s ass with a bullwhip, when he annoyed me,” Marla said in a low voice. “You’re annoying me worse than he did. Want to continue this in private? If we stay here in front of your employees and customers I’m afraid you’ll do something stupid to try and look like a big bad boss man, and then I’d have to write my whole name on you, and maybe Rondeau’s, too.”

The Pit Boss scowled around the room – the gamblers and human employees were studiously ignoring him, and the golems didn’t care anyway – before nodding and walking toward the back of the casino, smoke rising from his body. Maybe that was a sign of irritation, or shame. Reading the body language of demonic tulpas was beyond even Bradley’s considerable abilities.

Bradley started to follow, but Marla put a hand on his arm. “Hang out here, all right? I don’t think he’s smart enough to make real trouble for us, but keep an eye on things, make sure our escape route stays open.”

“Sure.” Bradley couldn’t read minds, at least not without making an effort, but he was plenty intuitive. “But what’s the real reason you don’t want me in there? You still don’t entirely trust me?”

Marla chuckled. “I trust you as much as I trust any living soul, B. But the Pit Boss is the kind of guy who puffs up when he’s got an audience, and he’s stubborn enough anyway. If I get him alone, with no one for him to impress and no cheap seats for him to play to, I bet he’ll be a lot more reasonable.”

“Makes sense,” he said. “Maybe I’ll do a little gambling.”

“Just don’t bet anything we can’t afford to lose.” She patted his cheek with her now-unburned hand and went after the Pit Boss, who stood glowering a few feet away, waiting with no pretense of patience.

Bradley skipped the gambling, opting to sit at the bar and sip a caffeine-free cola and look at the long row of bottles reflected in the glass. Sometimes being an addict was a drag. Booze had never even been the problem for him, but booze made stupid ideas seem like good ideas, and he’d learned long ago that, for him, liquor was a door that could easily lead back to heroin. The bartender was no good when it came to conversation, so Bradley tried to empty his mind and feel the vibes of the universe, except the vibes of this particular part of the universe were desperate and squalid and gross.

A pretty young woman in a short red sequined dress and shiny hair the same shade slid onto the stool next to him, turning a practiced and professional smile his way. “Hey there, handsome,” she said. “Not in a sporting mood?”

“Not my kind of games.”

She put a hand on his thigh. “Oh yeah? What kind of games do you like?”

“Ah. Sorry. Not the kind you play with women.”

She tossed her hair, and her features shifted, smoothly changing, becoming no less pretty but decidedly more masculine, the jawline stronger, the chin more pronounced, with just a hint of stubble. The breasts, which had been generous but not shockingly so, receded as her chest and shoulder’s broadened. “Sorry about the dress. Unless you like it. I’ve got other things I could wear, too. We could play dress-up, even.”

He looked at her – him – more closely now, and saw blue flames dancing deep behind her eyes. “Whoa,” he said. “Are you, what, an incubus? Succubus? Are those just
one
kind of creature, that changes appearance to suit the situation?”

The creature leaned back. “That’s a trade secret, handsome. Usually I’m good at reading desires – it sort of comes with the job – but looking into you is like looking into one-way glass, so I took a guess, and guessed wrong.”

“I’ve got some pretty solid psychic armor.” Bradley tapped his temple. “It’s hell on fortune tellers too, drives them crazy. I’m not in the market for any kind of companionship, though, thanks.”

“Ah, well, can’t blame me for trying. You’re awfully pretty.”

“Thanks. If I had gone with you, would you have sucked out my soul?”

“I don’t even know what souls are,” the creature said.

“Me either,” Bradley admitted.

“Your life force, though... well, maybe just a nibble.”

The bustle of the casino went silent, and Bradley looked over to see Marla come strolling back from the direction of the Pit Boss’s office, whistling “This Old Man.” He thought “The Farmer in the Dell” was the more traditional whistlin’ ditty for a badass who’d just shown up an enemy, but either way, you couldn’t argue with the classics.

“We’re good,” she said. “We can pick up my motorcycle at –” She stopped dead. “Inky?” she said. “Is that
you
?”

The creature stared at her for a moment and let out a low whistle of his own. “Marla
Mason
?”

She embraced the – Inky? – and Bradley couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d leapt up on the bar and started singing the hits of Broadway. She let go of Inky and looked him up and down. “Your taste in fashion has gotten worse.”

“You know this... guy?” Bradley said.