Of course, going to see the cardinal vampire alone was not without its risks. Jameson had suggested the Holmwoods would kill me on sight, and there was a chance that they might be there. I decided to pull on my bulletproof vest, just to pacify Jesse’s imaginary voice in my head.
But I wasn’t too worried. If Silvio was the dim-witted figurehead he seemed to be, there was no reason for Arthur and Lucy to be randomly hanging out with him.
Besides, I was not without my own defenses.
I didn’t bother to suppress my radius when I left my room. If anything, I let it blaze around me like a calling card. Introducing myself to Silvio would mean I was “coming out” as a null in Vegas, so there was no point in exhausting myself trying to hide it any longer.
Of course, as soon as I got off the elevator on the ground floor, vampires started trickling through my radius like flies bumping into a bug zapper. It was disorienting at first, but after a few minutes—and a lot of stares—I adjusted and kept moving, ignoring the men and women who had stopped dead in the middle of the casino floor, craning their heads to find the null. Let them look. I was moving too quickly for them to pinpoint me anyway.
According to Wyatt, Silvio had recently moved into a suite at the Mandarin Oriental, one of the newer big resorts on the Vegas Strip. It was easy enough to get a cab, but we had to fight through some of the Friday-night traffic. While I waited I looked up the Oriental on my phone. Apparently it was unique among the behemoth hotels in that it didn’t actually have a casino floor, which meant it catered more to the deeply rich than to the usual gambling riffraff.
On the inside the Mandarin Oriental was decorated like a P.F. Chang’s that had come into some money, covered with a sheen of Vegas gloss. Cardinal vampires always have security around, so as soon as I reached the center of the main lobby, I let my radius expand. Three vampire thugs appeared out of the crowd almost instantly, looking around like they might be able to actually sniff out the big bad null. I approached the nearest one and waved a hand. “Hi, I’m Scarlett,” I said cheerfully. “I would like to see Silvio, please.”
The thug—a beefy white guy with a hooked nose that must have been broken a lot when he was alive—did a double take, his eyes going so big that I had to fight not to smirk at him. “Who . . . I can’t . . . but . . .” he sputtered, and I almost had to feel sorry for the guy.
Aw. He was so stupid it was cute. “It’s okay,” I assured him. “Just call Silvio on the phone and tell him that Scarlett Bernard, the null, is here to see him. I can wait.”
The big eyes narrowed, but he could see the logic in the suggestion—or maybe he just couldn’t think of a better one. At any rate, he made the call, and within ninety seconds he was escorting me through the hotel and toward a private elevator.
If you called Central Casting and asked them to send you a stereotypical Italian American gangster type, I’m fairly certain you’d get someone who looked exactly like Silvio. He was a short, stocky guy with olive skin, a suit with no tie—possibly because his neck was too thick—and an honest-to-goodness pinkie ring. He sat on a leather couch in the little seating area, with two vampire goons standing near the wall on either side.
I wasn’t surprised to see the goons—although vampires are mostly loners, cardinal vampires need extra security in case another vampire decides to attack. If anything, I was a little surprised that Silvio didn’t have more people. If the city had just settled a long-standing leadership dispute, he should have been more wary.
Unless he knew for a fact that no other vampires were going to challenge him.
All three vampires gasped a little when they hit my radius, but they recovered quickly. Too quickly for vampires who hadn’t been human in centuries. I’d bet Wyatt’s stack of cash that they’d been near Jameson recently. Interesting.
Silvio stood up as I approached, taking a deep breath and buttoning his suit jacket.
“Hello, Silvio,” I said first, holding out a hand. This was on purpose. Older vampires don’t often bother with handshakes, probably because they see themselves as above that kind of base human flesh-pressing. Nobody pets the cow before they eat the steak. But I had made Silvio human at the moment, and I wanted to remind him of it. Kind of a petty little power move, but I never said I was above that. “I’m Scarlett Bernard. I’m a null from Los Angeles.”
Silvio allowed me to grasp his hand, though he put no effort into reciprocating. “I know who you are, Miss Bernard,” he said, taking his hand back. He didn’t actually wipe it on his nice pants, but I could practically see how much he wanted to. “I assume that Dashiell sent you here to check up on my city. Please inform him that—”
“Oh, on the contrary,” I said cheerfully. Silvio’s eyes widened. I had interrupted him? “I’m not here representing Dashiell at all. I just have a few questions for you about your missing vampires.”
He made a show of looking elegantly baffled. “My missing . . . I don’t understand.”
“At least thirty-eight of your people have disappeared in the last few months. There is a rumor going around that there are skinners in town.” Without waiting to be asked, I went to the grouping of plush furniture and plopped down on a couch.
Silvio’s frown deepened, but he went to the adjoining armchair and lowered himself onto the edge. “Skinners? In Las Vegas?” he scoffed. “You’ve received bad information, Miss Bernard.”
“Then how do you explain the missing vampires?”
Slowly, Silvio leaned back in his chair, squirming a little. He wasn’t used to having to make a human body comfortable. “I’m not sure I understand. You’re not here on behalf of your city’s cardinal vampire?”
“Nope.”
“And you don’t work for any official Old World organization, because there isn’t one anymore. So why are you asking about this?”
I had decided to tell part of the truth. “I happened to be in Las Vegas this weekend, purely for pleasure,” I told him. “But I was approached by a local vampire, who is concerned about these disappearances. I do take a number of freelance ventures when I’m in Los Angeles, so I agreed to poke around a little.” I gave him a sunny smile. “I wasn’t aware you were Las Vegas’s cardinal vampire when I took the job, but I assume you’re all right with it. I’m sure you’re just as anxious as I am to find out why your vampires keep disappearing.”
He ignored the commentary and went right to, “Which vampire hired you?”
“I’d rather not say.”
Silvio glanced at the men on either side of him. Why don’t cardinal vampires ever have female bodyguards? Man, sexism really is eternal. “Leave us, please,” he told them.
The thugs exchanged glances, but they did as they were told, disappearing through the same door we’d entered. Probably going to stand in the hallway with one hand crossed over the other.
Silvio shifted in his chair again, looking me up and down. I forced myself not to fidget.
“Ordinarily,” he said at last, “I would have Domingo and Telly force the vampire’s name out of you, just on general principle.”
A wave of fear crested inside my stomach, but he couldn’t smell it on me while he was human, and I made sure my expression didn’t change. “However,” Silvio went on, “you are in a unique position of being valuable to a man I’d like to stay on good terms with, so instead I will just explain to you, Miss Bernard, that we do not have skinners in my city. If it is true that vampires are disappearing, I’m sure that is simply because they have chosen to do so.” He spread his hands. “As you may have gathered, I came into this position fairly recently. There are always people who decide to leave when a new power rises.” A self-satisfied smile broke over his face, which did not make it any friendlier.
“Do you even know how many vampires live here?” I asked. “Aren’t you keeping track of their numbers to make sure there’s no overfeeding? All of that is pretty standard in Los Angeles.”
“This is not Los Angeles,” he said through his teeth. “Now, as a courtesy to you and your boss, I will overlook the fact that you stormed in here demanding answers, and simply wish you a good evening.” He stood, buttoning the damn jacket again. “The next time you are interested in coming to town, I am sure you’ll have your cardinal vampire call for permission first.”