Lady of Misrule (Marla Mason Book 8) Read Online Free PDF Page B

and the recessed circular pit in the center of the room where Mr. Amparan usually sat with his cronies and held audiences was filled with frozen water, like an ice-skating rink.
    Most of Mr. Amparan’s upper body was sticking out of the ice, his dark skin tinged blue, his mouth open in surprise, arms lifted up to fend off an attack.
    “Hello, boys.” Regina Queen spun around on a bar stool in the lounge. A frozen statue of a bartender stood on the other side, holding a by now very chilled martini shaker. “Is Marla home yet?”
    “Not as such, ma’am,” Pelham began.
    “Ah. You came here hoping to get help, didn’t you? Some of Mr. Amparan’s men tracked me down and brought me here to meet with him. First he tried to threaten me. Then he tried to pay me off. Then I got bored and killed them all.” She shook her head sadly. “How is it you still don’t take me seriously? I supposed I’d better kill one of you, too, to drive the point home.” She lifted one long-fingered hand, almost lazily.
    Rondeau pulled out the squirming bag of luck and threw it on the ground between Pelham and himself, where it fell open and spilled forth an aromatic smoke of concentrated good fortune. (It smelled a bit like smoky poker rooms, a bit like horse shit, and a bit like the gasoline stink of a NASCAR track.) Regina’s aim was off, thanks to their burst of good luck, and a potted palm two feet to Rondeau’s right turned to ice and shattered. Rondeau and Pelham ran for the exit, gaming tables and chandeliers turning to ice and shattering in their wake, and scuttled up the ladder to the street above.
    Regina didn’t follow, but they didn’t dare return to the suite, just in case. They found a bar, one of the few that was still open, with half the tables supporting humming space heaters, and a handful of dedicated drunks at the bar wrapped in winter coats and, in one case, a stinking old horse blanket. The guy under the blanket was muttering about how this was wrong, all wrong, Las Vegas was Hell, and Hell wasn’t supposed to freeze over.
    Pelham and Rondeau ordered hot toddies and sat in a corner, sipping, close to one of the heaters.
    “We have to kill her now,” Rondeau said. “I mean, I’m as civic-minded as the next guy, let’s do our bit to save the people of Las Vegas, for sure, but – she’ll kill us , is the thing. It’s personal now.” He sighed. “I was hoping to make this someone else’s problem, but we’d better find an oracle and ask it how we can stop Regina.”
    Pelham nodded. “It seems the only sensible path.”
    “No, getting in a car and driving until we’re south of the equator is more sensible, but I like it here, at least when the city’s not frozen over, so let’s try this other thing first.”
    They lingered over their drinks, though. Oracle-hunting was cold work.
    •
    “There’s one here,” Rondeau said at last, his voice muffled by the scarf wrapped around his face, despite the heater in the car running full blast. Pelham doubted the car would have started at all if it hadn’t been enchanted to run with magical efficiency.
    Finding oracles was always a tricky proposition. Rondeau could sense likely locations for them, but only in a hot-and-cold sort of way, so they’d driven around for a while on the deserted streets. Now they were parked in front of Bally’s Las Vegas, one of the most decidedly un-magical places Pelham could imagine, especially on this icy night, with only a few of the windows in its hotel towers lit. Just about everyone who could get out of Vegas had done so by now. “Why here?”
    “Fire,” Rondeau said. “This used to be the MGM Grand. There was a terrible fire there back in 1980, killed 85 people, injured close to a thousand. This oracle... I think it likes fire.”
    “Seems promising, given the nature of our adversary,” Pelham said.
    They got out of the car, stepped into the brutal moonscape, and walked slowly toward the covered moving sidewalk that