Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Caleb stared at Ty, who looked imperturbable as usual, standing there in the middle of the earthen chamber, the map they’d just discovered in his hands. “Delia can’t be a river guardian, or whatever you want to call it. She has a life in Las Vegas.”
The other man’s shoulders lifted almost imperceptibly.
It sure seemed as if he didn’t care whether Delia was forced to uproot herself from everything she knew and everyone she loved just so she could babysit the Colorado River and make sure a bunch of demons didn’t turn it into their personal playground.
“I don’t think that’s anything we need to worry about right now,” Pru cut in. “We need to find her first.”
“And stop whatever Sellers is doing,” Ty agreed. “But at some point, someone will need to step in and pick up the reins so the river doesn’t remain unguarded. It’s too powerful…and too vulnerable…to trust that fate will protect it.”
“Okay, fine,” Caleb said. The first order of business was to find Delia. After that, well, they’d figure it out as they went.
“We should go back to the hotel,” Prudence said. “I want to look at this map next to a modern one to see if these stars make any sense.”
Considering they didn’t have any other real plans of action, her suggestion appeared to be the best thing to do for now.
Ty guided them out of the chamber with its four guardian witch’s knots, along the narrow corridor that connected it to the basement at Alba Sanchez’s home, and eventually back upstairs.
They locked the back door behind them and got in Caleb’s Range Rover. The drive over to Harrah’s didn’t take very long, less than ten minutes, and they made a quick detour into the gift shop to see if they could find any maps.
Luckily, the shop had both guidebooks with maps and even the old foldout kind — “great for when your nav craps out on you,” the clerk helpfully said — so once the three of them were back in their suite, it was a simple enough task to get out the hand-drawn map Ty had found in the hidden chamber and lay it out on the table in the dining area next to the one they’d just bought.
The twists and turns of the river were easy enough to follow, so it didn’t take too much work for them to line up the maps and take note of the correspondences.
“There’s one right up by the dam,” Pru said, a slender finger tipped with chipped green nail polish tracing the line of the Colorado River. “And another at the park.”
“Both power spots,” Ty responded, his expression thoughtful. “I think whoever made this map was calling out the places where their protective spells would be the most powerful.”
“And another on the Arizona side of the river where there’s that little carve-out with the island,” Caleb added.
Pru leaned over the maps, dark eyes intent as they scanned the two side-by-side documents. “And a big one right beneath the Aquarius Hotel.”
No wonder Caleb had felt buzzy and strange when he’d entered the place. At the time, he’d simply thought it was the power of the river acting on him, but now he knew it must have been something much more than that.
“With the final one down at Big Bend State Park,” Ty finished.
Pru straightened and pushed a lock of dark emerald hair away from her face. “Great, so we know that these are power spots, and we know where they’re located. What are we supposed to do with any of this?”
A very good question. Although Caleb knew he had a particular set of gifts — and understood that Ty probably possessed many more, even if he hadn’t yet revealed all of them — none of this was going to help them locate Delia.
Unless, he supposed, they went to one of those “power spots” and somehow used its energy for a form of divination. He hoped Ty knew how to do something like that, because he sure as hell didn’t.
Even as the half angel opened his mouth to reply, Caleb instead heard Delia’s voice.
Caleb, I’m being held beneath one of the towers of the Aquarius hotel.
Immediately, he responded, Delia, are you all right?
No answer. Somehow, he got the impression that she’d used every reserve of energy she had to get out that one blast of thought.
It had been enough, though.
He looked over at Pru and Ty, both of whom were staring at him, their expressions mirroring a sort of identical concern that might have been almost humorous if the situation hadn’t been so dire.
“I know where Delia is,” he said.
Pru blinked. “How?”
“I just heard her in my mind. She said she’s under one of the towers at the Aquarius Hotel.”
In any other sort of circumstances, saying such a thing out loud probably would have prompted an uneasy chuckle from the other party, along with a query as to whether he was feeling all right.
Now, though, Ty and Pru both understood they were working with forces that couldn’t always be easily explained.
In fact, Ty gave a nod, as if this bit of information had provided an important piece of the puzzle.
“Of course,” he said. “We just discovered that the hotel was built on top of one of the river’s power centers.
Even though demons have a difficult time with the river’s energy, if August Sellers has been able to harness it somehow — even partially — then he would have been able to create an effective prison somewhere on the hotel’s grounds. ”
“Delia said she was under the hotel,” Caleb told him, and the other man shrugged again.
“Then we’ll have a better idea of where to start.”
“How will we know which tower, though?” Pru asked.
Again, a valid question…although Caleb thought he already knew the answer.
“Sellers would want to keep her close,” he said. “So I’m pretty sure she must be underneath the tower where his office is located.”
“Let me check on that,” Pru said.
She pulled her laptop out of her satchel, which she’d slung over the back of one of the chairs in the dining area. A few seconds of typing, and then she gave a satisfied nod.
“All the corporate offices are in the north tower,” she announced. “So I guess we know where we’re going.”
Yes, now they knew where they were headed…even if Caleb had absolutely no idea what they’d do once they got there.
They’d been to the Aquarius just the day before, but it still felt as if a hundred years must have passed since then. Now they knew where Delia was — well, a ballpark idea, anyway — and Pru thought she had a notion as to what they should do next.
“I’m sure the lower levels are off-limits to guests,” she said. “Most of the time, though, those sorts of places only have keycard access, which should be easy enough to circumvent.”
“How?” Caleb asked. They’d gotten a table in a corner at the Cove Bar, figuring they needed to have some sort of base of operations, although they knew better than to order anything stronger than some iced tea or soda. “Or do you have some computer hacking experience I don’t know about?”
For all he knew, maybe she did, although he’d mainly gotten the impression from Delia that Pru’s main private detective superpower was knowing which databases to access to find a particular piece of information.
None of it was illegal, but quite a few of them required a P.I.
license before you could go poking around in there.
“Unfortunately, no,” she said. “I was thinking of something a little more hands-on.”
“Such as?” Ty responded. His expression was both dubious and wary, as if he’d guessed what she was probably up to but was sort of hoping it might turn out to be something different.
“Ye olde ‘bump and snatch,’” she said. “I dated a guy for a while who was a pickpocket. You would not believe how much money he made off tourists who were careless with their purses and their wallets.”
Caleb grinned. “Oh, I can guess. Considering how crowded the streets in Las Vegas usually are, he probably did around low six figures, right?”
She smiled back at him, pointedly ignoring the outraged look on Ty’s face.
Well, angels — and half angels — tended to be a bunch of goody two-shoes.
“Sometimes more than just ‘low,’” Pru replied. “He had a fence who would help him get rid of the watches and the jewelry. You’d think a person would be smart enough not to be walking around in a crowd wearing a Rolex worth twenty-five grand, but people’s cluelessness continues to amaze me.”
“And the plan?” Ty asked, now sounding positively testy.
“I’ll go out in the casino and look for people wearing lanyards.
If they’re ID-ing themselves that way, then I’ll know they must work for Aquarius’s corporate offices in the north tower.
All I have to do is brush by one who looks like they’re really not paying attention, and voilà!
I’ll have instant access to the lower levels. ”
She stood up then and straightened the hem of her shirt.
“Be careful,” Caleb warned her. “The last thing we need to deal with right now is bailing you out for petty larceny.”
Her dark eyes flashed with amused scorn. “I know better than to get caught. You two hang out here — this shouldn’t take me more than ten, fifteen minutes tops.”
After delivering that reassurance, she headed out of the bar and into the casino proper. Once she was gone, Ty sent Caleb an annoyed glance.
“We shouldn’t be letting her do this.”
Funny how he thought they were “letting” Pru Nelson do anything.
“She’s a big girl,” Caleb said, then drank some of his Coke.
Mostly, he avoided soda, but today he thought he could use the extra jolt all the sugar provided.
“It sounds like she knows what she’s doing.
Besides, do you have a better idea? Can you just magic one of those key cards off one of the employees so Pru doesn’t have to stoop to petty larceny? ”
“Different types of intervention have different…consequences,” Ty said, his expression a mixture of annoyance and concern. “Bypassing technology is one thing. Taking something directly from a person crosses another line entirely.”
“Right,” Caleb said. “Wouldn’t want you to break your angelic code of honor.”