Page 76 of Seph

“Wining and dining. Maybe a little flutter?” Simeon leaned affectionately against the girl, fumbling behind him to grasp Emily’s hand and drag her along.

“We have many games of chance.”

“I hear you have quite the magic act, too?”

“Our chanteuse? She is very magical indeed, but there are no feats of illusion here.”

Emily wondered if Simeon’s ears could pick up the false notes in the woman’s voice.She’s lying. Everything here is an illusion. Vegas itself might as well be a mirage.

“Can’t wait to see her performance,” Simeon slipped several folded bills into the woman’s hand with vampiric stealth and speed. Her eyes widened, and she tucked the money into the white, flowing folds of her skimpy dress. “Get us a good table, will you, precious?”

“Of course. But Circe won’t perform again tonight. Tomorrow, she’ll do a matinee, and then she’ll have something extra special on Halloween.”

“Oooh, intriguing. Do you offer rooms? And do you come with them?”

I’m going to stake him just for being that good at flirting. What am I, chopped liver?

Oh, wait. I would have killed him if he flirted like that with me.

“You can get many amenities here, sir. Dinner? The chef does an amazing loin of pork with rosemary and roasted apples and root vegetables.”

“Not kosher, love. What have you got in the way of a nice, rare steak?” Simeon slipped away from their hostess and wrapped his arm around Emily’s waist.

“Your waitress will be with you shortly,” Blonde and Buxom slid away with a wink after depositing them at a stage-side table in a dark, dimly lit dining room that oozed atmosphere and hypnotic jazz.

“Pork!” Emily hissed, sitting in the chair Simeon held out for her.

“I know. Poor devils. Maybe you ought to get something vegetarian.” He pulled his wallet out and extracted cash. “Won’t use the card here.”

“Smart.” Emily shivered, looking around with studied nonchalance. She couldn’t panic, even though she knew that the specialty pork had likely been human in the recent past. They had to get the Lethe’s Dust circulating among Mnemosyne’s priestesses. Another shiver.

Emily turned. “We’re under a vent. The AC is blowing right on me.”

“Want to switch?”

“No. I want you to step outside for a smoke.”

“I gave it up, Em.”

She rolled her eyes. “Go to the parking garage and get our bags. Let’s skip dinner and get a room.”

“If we skip the meal after we get a table, they’ll know something is off. Look.” Simeon watched a couple at a nearby table leave a pile of cash and traipse back to the main entrance. “Some people have to leave. If they didn’t—the police would eventually find out. They can’t whammy the whole LVPD—too much attention if a whole bunch of cops start disappearing or losing their marbles, too. Order dessert. We’ll get a room after.”

The main goal of getting inside the building was to get access to the people inside of it—and the ventilation system. “This isan old building.” Emily stepped out of her heels and stood on a chair.

“From the fifties. But I’m sure it’s been updated here and there.”

“Definitely. For instance, air conditioning, like a whole building HVAC system with a central location that controlled it? That wasn’t around.” Emily hopped back from the vent with a satisfied smile. “This is a central system, put it more recently. You can tell by the type of steel.”

“How the bloody fuck—”

“Common sense, and my father hammering it into me that people do not actually crawl through ventilation shafts in real life. Hide in one, yes. Get from point A to point B? Rarely. And certain types are sturdier than others. This is a central air system, and it’s still cranking because Las Vegas is still hot at the end of October.”

“Hurrah for building a gambling den in the middle of the desert.”

“If we can get Lethe’s Dust into the right vents, we’ll get it pumped out to a lot of people at once. But we need to wait until that matinee. Circe will be performing. Almost everyone will be packed into the dining room and near the stage.” Emily looked at the door of their room, where the hotel floor plan rested behind its plexiglass cover. A line was marked in red and another in blue to show the emergency routes from the building. “Let me look at this for a bit. I’m sure I can figure out where to dump most of the dust to get it to blow through the ground floor, particularly the dining room.”

“You find the place, I’ll get it in.” Simeon moved with vampire speed, back and forth from the door to the window by the time she blinked.

---