“We need to speak with Spooner,” Lon said. “Is he here yet?”

“Oh, yes. He’s here. A little indisposed at the moment back in one of the gypsum rooms. I’m sure he’d love company, if you two would care to join him.”

“It can wait,” Lon said.

David shrugged as if it were our loss, then turned to me. “What’s your knack, dear?”

I smiled. “You first. What’s yours?”

“Temperature control.” The air around my legs warmed considerably. That explained the earlier heat from the wrist kiss. It felt pretty good, admittedly. The cave was cool and damp and I regretted not bringing a sweater.

“David,” Lon scolded.

“Pooh.” The gray-haired man frowned in disappointment and the heat faded. “Let me get you both drinks and find the others. I’ll be right back.”

He sauntered off, swaying a little as he walked. I took a step and swayed myself. Then I eyed the braziers. “What the hell am I inhaling?” I whispered.

“Ketynal.”

He gave me a questioning look, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. Ketynal is a mixture of two powdered roots, one of which grows only on a couple of islands in the Philippines. That particular root is expensive and hard to come by, but I use it in one of my medicinals as a calming agent. However, when combined with the second root, it synergizes to create a compound that gets you buzzed and lowers inhibitions.

“Try not to get too close to the braziers,” he warned.

Too fucking late for that.

27

We spent almost an hour in the smoky ballroom rubbing elbows with various members of the inner circle, The Thirteen as they called themselves. To my dismay, I was left unattended for a small chunk of time and fell prey to David again, along with a couple of city councilmen who tried to grab my ass, and an heiress in her fifties who did. I had to get out of this place before things got worse.

After all the freaking out I’d done earlier about Lon’s enhanced abilities, I genuinely hoped that he was monitoring me now. Distress signal! I thought. Mobbed by smarmy demons trying to cop a feel … where the hell are you? I had no idea how well he could hear my thoughts in a crowd like this, but it was worth a try. In the meantime, I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for him to rescue me. I made an excuse and shuffled off into the melee, navigating my way between chattering cliques and underdressed servers. The occasional transparent imp ran underfoot, making me itch for my portable imp portal.

As I made my way toward the back of the room, I slipped out of the crowd and edged around a stone wall. Without warning, an arm grabbed me around my waist. I squealed as I was yanked behind the wall into the shadows. Panicked and furious, I rammed a clenched fist back over my shoulder and struck a hard blow on my assailant’s face.

“Oww!”

Released, I twirled around, ready to fight … only to find Lon holding his hand over his eye.

“Goddamn!”

“Oh, Lon—I’m so-o-o sorry. I didn’t know it was you.”

“Jesus, that hurt.”

I shook out my hand. It hurt me too. “Why’d you grab me like that? I thought it was one of the drunk perverts.”

He rubbed his eye. “You asked for a rescue. Next time, I won’t bother.”

“You heard me?” I moved his hand away from his face to inspect it. His left eye was shut. After a couple of squints, he finally relaxed it.

“I told you I could. Are you ready to talk to Spooner?”

“What?”

Lon leaned down, his horns nearly touching my forehead. He lifted my chin with his fingers and studied my face. “Are you already so high from the ketynal that you forgot our mission?”

I slapped his hand away. “Not too high to injure a man twice my size.”

He chuckled, then leaned closer and spoke in a low voice near my ear, “Come on, then … Cady. Clock’s ticking.”

We made our way through the noisy cavern, his hand warming the back of my neck as he guided me forward. For a moment, my mood improved. But when I figured out where we were headed, I wasn’t all that keen on going to the back rooms, where Lon said things “got worse.” Awesome.

An armed guard nodded at Lon and parted thick red curtains that obscured a dim passageway beyond. We stepped through, and the red ballroom lights changed to blue. Water-etched lines ran the length of the narrow stone tunnel. Below our feet, the flooring was gouged and uneven. The sounds of the party faded behind us, replaced by a variety of grunts, groans, and moans that echoed from small chambers lining the corridor.

“Jesus, it smells like a brothel back here,” I whispered.

“No money exchanges hands.”

“That’s a shame. Someone could be making a fortune.”

“Don’t get any ideas. Turn left up here.”

We yielded to an even narrower passage guarded by a chubby college-age Earthbound who was too busy browsing the Web on his cell phone to pay us any attention. We continued past him, and after three small chambers, we turned into a larger one curtained off with a threadbare piece of green fabric.

Inside was a spacious, round room lined with gray rock walls; the ceiling was so low at the entrance that Lon was forced to duck his head to clear it. Dull, opaque veins of crystallized gypsum hung from the ceiling and trellised down the walls like crystal rosebushes.

Toward the back of the room, a single showerhead hung straight down over a round pit carved into the floor; water steadily dripped down and drained into a hole at the base of the cavern wall. The left side of the room was occupied by three thick mattresses pushed together on the floor. Tumbling off the mattresses were dozens of pillows, most that had seen better days. Dozing among them were two nude bodies, a male and a female.