Aces Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 5 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Other Books by Jenn Stark

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Forever Wilde

  A Note From Jenn

  Acknowledgments

  About Jenn Stark

  Aces Wilde

  Immortal Vegas, Book 5

  Jenn Stark

  Copyright © 2016 by Jenn Stark

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-943768-14-1

  Cover design and Photography Gene Mollica

  Formatting by Bemis Promotions

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in encouraging piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase/Download only authorized editions.

  Other Books by Jenn Stark

  Getting Wilde

  Wilde Card

  Born To Be Wilde

  Wicked And Wilde

  One Wilde Night (prequel novella)

  For You

  Chapter One

  In life, it is said, each of us must play the Fool.

  Simon had the part down perfectly.

  “Take it easy,” I muttered as he bumped into me for the third time. “You don’t want to draw attention.”

  “Then move it already.” The Fool of the Arcana Council squeezed past me, squinting in the predawn gloom. Ahead of us, a recently unearthed Roman gate beckoned from its cordoned-off place of honor at the Hippos dig site, the spot still carefully brushed free of sand and gravel. “I’ve got places to go, my doppelgänger to see.”

  Not this again. “You know that mask has barely a passing resemblance to you, right?”

  He grinned. “I know that I’m famous, is what I know. So let’s move before my fans get here.”

  Ignoring Simon’s grin, I stared hard at the Roman gate, arguably the most intriguing find of the Hippos excavation site since the discovery of the mask of Pan several months earlier. Despite my comment, the ancient mask did have a decidedly Simon-esque look about it. That artifact had put Hippos on the Arcana Council’s radar, but now, with the discovery of the Roman-era gate, the Council was in full damage-control mode. Enough to send me in with trumped-up credentials, a trowel, and my trusty Tarot deck.

  And Simon.

  “They found the mask right over there,” he whispered now, pointing to the left. “Did you see that? Did you see the marker? Right in that exact spot. That close to the surface, in such good shape—it wanted to be found, you ask me. You ever feel like that’s the case? Like the artifacts you’re searching for want to be found?”

  “Not as often as I’d like.” I moved past the gate excavation and deeper into the remains of the fallen city. Another mound of rubble gave way to a cleared rectangular space, with columns forming a few long lines. “Here,” I said. “This is what I think this morning’s cards were trying to show us. It’s the only thing that looks close to a set of swords lined up together.”

  “Totally,” Simon agreed, his awed tone evocative of the mid 1980s…which made sense, given that was when he’d taken his seat on the Council. As the Arcana Council’s youngest member, Simon might look like a shiftless twenty-something hipster in his Chucks and skinny jeans, skullcap and T-shirt, but he was a bona fide master of digital everything. Now he angled his magic-enhanced LIDAR ground-penetrating scanner between the pillars of the ancient forum.

  “Yeah—something’s hollow under there,” he said. “Gotta be the chamber where the locals stashed Eshe’s platter of doom. She’s going to owe us so large.”

  He wasn’t wrong. The Arcana Council’s High Priestess had apparently lost a scrying shield in Hippos during what had been a Pan party for the ages. While the ancient Pan mask discovered a few months ago had lost its mojo, however, the shield could still potentially rock the nonmagical, non-Connected world. Eshe needed that like a fourth eye.

  Now Simon was buzzing with energy, his gaze sweeping the ground. “Four of Swords, you said, that’s the first of the two cards you pulled, Four of Swords.” He spoke the words like a benediction. “We got this. Four pillars, four swords.” He glanced back to me. “There’s no way down below, though. That’s a problem.”

  I shook my head. “The entry’s not supposed to be obvious. Otherwise they’d have found it already.” I scanned the rest of the forum site. There were multiple collections of pillars in the wide space, lined up neatly. “Keep going.”

  The voice behind us brought us up short. “Ms. Wilde, Mr. Pew. You’re up early.”

  The small man’s rich Greek accent rolled over us. I pivoted as Simon stifled a giggle, the Fool’s amusement at his trumped-up surname knowing no bounds.

  “Well, there are so many people once the day gets started,” I said with a guileless smile. “It’s tough to get a perspective on what this place looked like.”

  Andrico Fonti’s brows lifted, white tufts of straw on his weathered face. “It’s the forum that holds your interest, though? That surprises me. We’ve gone through it piece by piece. The excavation has moved on to more interesting possibilities.” He waved at the piles of rock forming the broken-down walls. “I expected to find you at the gate. We resume digging there today.”

  I didn’t buy Fonti’s casual good cheer. This international excavation was the brainchild of Israel’s University of Haifa, allowing them to move thousands of years of dirt a year from the earthquake-buried city for relatively little cost. Fonti, the dig’s communications coordinator, had stuck to us like frosting on an Oreo since we’d shown up at the site earlier this week, tracking our every move. Supposedly, we were representatives of ultra-private, ultra-rich donors to the Haifa University cause…which wasn’t exactly untrue. But there were scores of such donors from all over the world tramping these grounds. We shouldn’t have attracted our own parasite.

  Simon remained blithely unconcerned. His gaze was on the forum’s pillars, and I could practically hear gears churning as his brain kicked into overdrive. To him, the world appeared as an ever-widening matrix of angles and connections and probabilities, but right now I needed him focused on the Four of Swords—three upright pillars or rocks of some kind, one horizontal. Never mind the sleeping guy the card also depicted, I suspected he wouldn’t figure into this reading. One bit of crazy at a time.

  “You’ll be here for another week, your manifest says,” Fonti continued. “So much longer than mo
st of our donors.”

  “Israel is a long way from Las Vegas.” I shrugged. “We figured we might as well see as much as we could.”

  “See it,” Simon blurted, then he swung his gaze to me. “See it. Right. We wanted to see it.” His grin was wide and eager, and I shot him a quelling glance that had no impact at all. “And there’s a lot to see, really. Four times more than I would have expected.”

  Fonti blinked at him, clearly startled, and for once I didn’t mind Simon’s silliness. It seemed to puncture the Greek’s concern that we were a threat to anything but his patience.

  Still, the coordinator tilted his head. “You look familiar, Mr. Pew. Is this your first visit to Hippos?”

  It was the third time the Fool had been asked such a question, and Simon’s delighted laugh was only slightly manic. “I have that kind of face,” he said.

  “I suppose…” As Fonti hesitated, Simon put a little more effort into his smile until the man’s face cleared. “I’ll leave you to your morning walk,” Fonti said. “If you have any questions, I am, of course, at your service.”

  He moved on, and it was my turn to scowl at Simon. “Did you put some kind of go-away whammy on him?”

  “Nothing permanent.” Simon laid a modest hand on his chest. “Still, see? You’re so wrong about that mask—everyone can see the resemblance. It’s like Pan’s my long-lost grandpa.”

  “Well, do me a favor, don’t stand next to it anytime soon. We don’t need a family portrait posted on Facebook.”

  “Not a problem.” Simon lifted up his handheld device again. “More importantly, I found our four swords. Last set by the wall, down on the left.”

  I swung my gaze that way even as we ambled down the long, open space of the forum. “There’s only two upright pillars.”

  “Nope, three,” he said, gesturing. “The third one’s broken off but still standing. Right next to one that’s completely on its side.”

  We approached the large stone columns, and I paused, looking up. He was right. From this angle, the ancient pillars formed the exact perspective of the Four of Swords—three up, one down. A thick knot of rock jutted out in an aggressive overhang beyond the tableau, where it appeared that the digging had stopped after the trowels had met solid stone.

  Simon began circling the pillars, muttering nonstop. “Two of Pents was the next card, right? Two of Pents. A man holding two objects, balancing, balancing…” A second later, he shook his head. “There aren’t any pentacles here.”

  “Keep your pants on.” I continued staring at the overhang. “Fonti still watching us?”

  Simon glanced over my shoulder. “He’s on the ridge now. Facing us, yep, but talking to someone else.”

  “Watch him.” I turned as if to study the columns while edging backward toward the overhang. The cards were apparently going to be a literal interpretation after all. “The Four of Swords shows a reclining man, a sleeper. Someone injured, whatever. He’s on his back.”

  “His back.” Rather than continuing to watch Fonti, Simon swung toward me, his attention squarely on the overhang as well. “Of course.”

  Before I could stop him, he dashed past me and hit the dirt, scurrying under the rock. If Fonti noticed, he didn’t give any indication. I stepped back, pivoting slowly. “Simon…”

  “Sara!” The urgency in the Fool’s voice was unmistakable, but not as strong as the tremor that rumbled through the ground beneath my feet.

  “Whatever you’re doing, quit it,” I said through my teeth. Simon had an eerie electrical connection with anything he touched. I hadn’t expected that to be a problem in a place where the only electricity for miles was the result of what looked like Soviet-era generators. Up on the ridge, Fonti scanned the forum, clearly looking for Simon.

  “There are two carvings,” Simon said from under the rock. “I can almost reach them with my hands. Like handles or seals, but pressed into the stone here. Two, Sara.” His words were gleeful. “Just like your cards said. Two!”

  I’d been hunting artifacts for long enough to recognize disaster when I saw it. It was one thing for me to hurtle myself over the abyss, but the Fool was a member of the Council. An important member. He wasn’t supposed to end up broken. “Don’t touch anything, Simon,” I snapped. “Fonti’s coming, and we don’t want to—”

  Simon’s gleeful cackle overrode my words. “This is so cool!”

  There was a loud crack. Another tremor zipped through the ground and rolled the entire length of the forum. By some miracle, all the pillars stayed standing. Up by the newest excavation site, however, a blowhole of water suddenly burst into the sky, showering Fonti and the archaeologists next to him with mud and debris.

  “Simon!” Giving up all pretext of subtlety, I flattened myself to the ground and peered beneath the overhang. “What did you…?”

  But Simon was gone. The overhang now sheltered a slender crevice into the earth, as if the entire wall had lifted up at the touch of the Fool’s hands. Scrambling forward, I peered into the darkness, but there was no Simon, only dust-filled black.

  “Simon?” I called again. No response.

  I shoved myself over the edge.

  The fall wasn’t far, and I had the advantage of hitting a relatively soft body at the end of it.

  “Oof!” Simon groaned, shoving me off him and onto the rough stone floor. “You’re heavy.”

  “And you’re an idiot.” I rolled to my feet, crouching in the darkness and letting my eyes and ears adjust. I could hear water churning beyond the far wall, but this chamber was still and shrouded in gloom, barely illuminated by the skylight we’d opened. “Don’t ever rush in like that. It’s dangerous.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s what I do. And look.” He lifted a penlight to illuminate the near wall. Two more disks. “Easy peasy,” he said, standing.

  “Don’t—”

  Simon didn’t listen. Instead, he placed his hands on the wall. More debris clattered to the ground as the gaping hole leading up to the forum floor sealed shut. The Fool flipped his penlight to his face. “How cool was that, right?”

  I stared at him. “Cool as in we have no way out, Simon. Pretty much exactly that cool.”

  “You worry too much.” He sent his beam bouncing around the room. “Look at this place. How did it survive the quake thousands of years ago? There were two tremblers that leveled the city, right? Yet it all looks totally chill in here. Has to be some powerful magic, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It…” I looked around. The room we were standing in was pristine—but beyond the chamber’s arches were layers of fallen rock that’d clearly been there a long time. I pulled out my own penlight to avoid Simon’s overcaffeinated wobble.

  “That must have been the main temple chamber, through there, next to some kind of aquifer,” I said, flicking the beam toward the biggest archway. The light picked out the carved edge of an ornate table or stone chest, almost indistinguishable in the rubble except for its deep port-wine stains. “That looks like the edge of an altar, maybe used as a makeshift bar.” I moved the penlight beam slowly, scanning the small, four-cornered space. “This room seems more like storage.”

  “Storage of awesome, maybe,” Simon said. He darted forward, then pried open a box and peered inside. “Cups and flagons. A lot of them. Homies liked to party.”

  “Well, you know. Pan.”

  “Right.” He sighed. “I kind of thought there’d be a statue or something of him down here, though. Maybe a note. I’m not feeling any of that.” He moved to another crate. “How long d’you think we have?”

  “Until they notice we’re missing or until we die of starvation?”

  “I have Twix bars.”

  “I’m so relieved. But this place isn’t big. I don’t think we’ll be here long.”

  I was wrong, of course. Two more storage crates yielded nothing but intricately worked ruby and gold jewelry. Pretty but ultimately useless, though Simon pawed through them with unfettered delight.

  “
Eshe’s shield is how big?” I asked.

  “She couldn’t remember. The size of her face, she said. That’s not so big.”

  “Better than her ego, which wouldn’t fit in this room.” Was it me or was the air getting a little stuffy down here?

  Gritting my teeth, I looked again at the room. Really looked this time. I didn’t have magic, but I did have a strong sense of intuition, and right now it was picking up on the energy radiating from the chamber’s walls and surfaces. This was different from the rushing water that Simon’s initial jolt of magic had sent raging to the surface. There was something here, something that—the Fool was correct—wanted to be found.

  Following the pull of that energy, I moved to another storage box carved out of the rock. I put the penlight in my teeth, then heaved the container’s lid free. “Mmph.”

  The tenor of my grunt caught Simon’s attention. “What?” he asked, before realizing I couldn’t speak around the light. He abandoned his own crate and joined me, adding his wiry strength to mine. We didn’t get the lid pushed far, but we got it far enough.

  Score one for instinct.

  Simon whistled low. “This looks promising,” he said as rich silk fabric pooled beneath the dust motes. “Eshe is going to flip.”

  He reached in and pulled out a thin, cloth-wrapped package, straining with the effort as he shimmied it out of the narrow space. The moment he cleared the lid, I dropped it, the resulting boom bouncing off the walls. Simon laid the package on the closed box. “This is the coolest.”

  “Yo, wait. Keep it—” I broke off.

  Ignoring me, Simon reached up and tugged the fabric free. It fell apart in his hands, revealing what lay beneath—a perfectly round shield. The Fool’s penlight beam illuminated the shield’s dull gray surface, but instead of reflecting back, it seemed to pull the light in, concentrate it.

  “Holy shit,” Simon breathed.

  I understood the sentiment. The image on the shield’s surface started as little more than Simon’s blinding light, but then it cleared. A weird sort of mist bubbled over the edges, and in the center of that mist, an image flickered and rolled—a fight, a battle. No, not a battle.