Assuming Jonas’s crazy theories weren’t quite so crazy after all, I needed to find a goddess—fast. And I thought there was a tiny chance that the one I needed was still hanging around. It had been her spell that banished the other gods, after all, so maybe it hadn’t affected her. And maybe she hadn’t wanted to go back to a world filled with a bunch of pissed-off fellow gods. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like helping humanity might have stuck her with us. If she had gone home, wouldn’t her fellow gods have forced her to lift the spell by now? They obviously wanted back in pretty badly, and she could hardly have stood up to all of them. And gods were supposed to be immortal, weren’t they? So if she hadn’t gone home, it was at least possible that she was still here.
But even if that was the case, she hadn’t been seen in three thousand years. And anyone who had hidden that long had probably gotten pretty good at it. Barring a vision with a map, I had no freaking clue where to start looking. And without a clue, I wasn’t likely to get a vision. It was a vicious catch-22.
I needed somebody who could point me in the right direction.
I needed somebody who knew about gods.
I needed a god.
Fortunately, I knew three of them.
Chapter Thirty-two
For a hotel designed to look like hell, Dante’s wasn’t so bad. It had been themed to within an inch of its life by someone who subscribed strongly to the “more is more” concept of decorating. But this was Vegas, where tackiness passed for ambience and vulgarity was all part of the fun.
But this wasn’t fun. This was just plain sad.
“You let guests come down here?” I asked, gazing around at what passed for a bus entrance. A few sickly topiaries guarded a cracked cement floor covered with oil and gas stains. There was trash in the corners and dirt on the walls, an
d the whole place smelled like pee.
“Nobody comes to Vegas on a bus,” Casanova, the hotel manager, said while feeling around inside his suit coat. It was a pale wheat color, one of his favorites because it set off his Spanish good looks. But it was a little incongruous in this setting, like an Armani model who had taken a wrong turn and ended up on skid row. “At least, no one who stays here.”
“So why have it at all?”
“Because some people want to take tours—Grand Canyon, Valley of Fire, Hoover freaking Dam,” he said impatiently. “And they get pissy if there isn’t a place for them to be picked up on-site.”
“And this is what you came up with?”
Casanova shot me a look out of sloe-dark eyes that would have been attractive if they’d had a different mind behind them. “If they’re taking a bus, they’re leaving the casino.”
“So?”
“So they’re not going be spending any money here.”
“So screw ’em?”
“Exactly.”
His hand emerged with a slim-bodied flashlight, which he shone around. There were fluorescents overhead, but they weren’t on. A spill of late-afternoon daylight leached away part of the gloom on either side of the echoing space, and some electric light spilled down the nonfunctioning escalator behind us. But that still left the main part of the garage a dark cavern.
“I don’t think anybody’s down here,” I told him, halfway hoping that was true.
“Oh, they’re here, all right,” he said grimly. “Took my boys the better part of two weeks, but they finally managed to track them. Now come on.”
I pushed limp blond hair out of my eyes and followed him into the gloom, feeling a trickle of sweat slide down my back. The place was hot as an oven—apparently air-conditioning was another thing bus-loving tourists were denied. And despite the fact that we’d been down here only a few minutes, the back of my blue tee and the waistband on my jean shorts were already soaked.
“Why do people come to Vegas in summer?” I complained. “It’s the biggest tourist season, which makes no sense. It has to be a hundred twenty degrees out.”
“The kids are out of school.”
“But most people don’t take kids here. That whole family-friendly thing kind of fell flat.”
“Exactly.” His flashlight bounced off the ceiling, as if he thought our prey might be clinging to the rafters like bats. It didn’t help my mood that, for all I knew, they could be. “The kids are out of school, so parents need a break from the little bastards.”
“It’s a good thing you don’t have children!”
Nervousness had made my voice harsh, but Casanova didn’t seem to take offense. “One of the best things about being a vampire. Now stop talking and start looking.”