To my left, I heard laughing. I turned to see a group of young men walking past the delivery entrance to the maintenance courtyard, several of them stumbling. They didn’t notice us, but we weren’t exactly well hidden.

I turned back to Jameson, who was watching the young men with one hand resting on his hip in a gesture I’d seen many times from Jesse. I started. Why would Jameson need to carry a gun? He was a null, like me. Did the vampires in Las Vegas go around armed? I hadn’t seen any suspicious gun-shaped bulges in the ballroom.

There was a “suspicious bulge” joke in there somewhere, but before I could follow that line of thought any further, Jameson held up a hand. “Look, we can’t talk now. I gotta get back before Arthur realizes I wandered off without my bodyguard.”

“Without your what?” I sputtered. In New York, Jameson served as Malcolm’s bodyguard during daylight hours. He was good with a gun or in a brawl. Why would he need his own personal security?

Impulsively, I took a step toward him and put one hand flat on his chest. Jameson reflexively curled his fingers around my wrist, but he didn’t push me away. I tilted my head back again to meet his eyes. “Why are you wearing a bulletproof vest?” I demanded. “What’s really going on here?”

He shook his head, brushing off the questions. The lighting wasn’t great, but in that moment he looked so . . . lonely. Nulls are rare, and by definition, we don’t really fit in anywhere. We’re human, but all our value lies in the Old World. We’re submerged in the Old World, but we can only live there as humans. And there are so few of us that until the last decade or so, we never interacted with one another at all.

We are alone just by existing.

“You can talk to me,” I said quietly.

Jameson’s dark eyes were fixed on mine, but he remained silent, looking troubled and intense. Which were probably the two words I’d pick to describe him overall.

Impulsively, I reached up and laid my free hand flat against his cheek. He covered it with his own hand, closing his eyes for just a moment. Then he moved it so he was holding both of my hands at his chest. He squeezed them gently, and let go, easing away from me.

“Go home, Letts,” he said in a low voice. “Please. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

I stepped back, remembering myself. “Oh yeah, you seem real fine,” I said sarcastically. A new thought hit me, and I took a leap. “Hang on. Do skinners hunt nulls, too?”

Jameson flinched, and I knew I was getting warmer. “What do you know about the skinners?” I demanded.

“Dammit, Scarlett!” he barked, smacking the wall beside me. But it felt half-hearted, like he was following a script. “I told you, stay out of this!”

I just folded my arms across my chest, not backing down. If he wanted to unnerve me with a temper tantrum, he was going to have to try a lot harder than that. “I’m not afraid of you.”

His shoulders sagged. “I don’t want you to be.” He stepped back, away from me, rubbing a hand absentmindedly over his collarbone. I’d seen Jameson without his shirt once, after a run, and I knew there was a four-inch scar there. He’d said it was part of his misspent youth, but he used it like a worry stone. “Please, Letts,” he said softly. “Please, just stay out of this. Go home.”

Was he trying to protect me from the skinners, or was there more to it? “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s happening,” I told him. And I had an idea. “Or would you prefer that I go ask Arthur and Lucy?”

He grunted. “God, you’re still just as stubborn, aren’t you?”

“That’s what everyone tells me, yeah.”

He checked his watch. “I’ve been gone too long already. Can you meet me tomorrow morning?”

“I guess . . .” I wanted answers now, dammit. But I would take what I could get.

“Come on. We gotta get out of here.” He took a step, paused. “Hang on.” Jameson reached for the emergency exit lock, pulling out a small metal object that he’d slipped into what looked like old padlock holes. “In case there’s a fire or something,” he said with a little smile. Then he took my hand, very slowly, like he was afraid I would flip him again. I allowed him to lead me to the little driveway on the left, which led to the street.

“Where are you staying?” he asked.

“Uh, the Venetian.”

A quick nod. “We can’t be seen together, so when we hit the sidewalk, turn left and go to the corner. You should be able to get a cab back. I’ll meet you underneath Vegas Vic tomorrow at eleven, okay?”

I had no idea what that meant, but we were almost at the sidewalk, and it sounded like something I could google. “Fine.”

We reached the street. I turned to go left, more or less on autopilot, when I heard Jameson call, “Hey, Letts?”

I turned. He was walking backward away from me. “That guy you were with, your backup . . . are you guys together?”

Cliff? Hardly. “That’s none of your business,” I said sweetly.

Jameson just shot me a wide grin. “You really do look good,” he said, and then he turned and jogged off.

I just stood there for a moment, my head spinning. I’d seen the show, and I’d found Jameson, all according to plan. So how was it possible that I was even more confused than before?

Chapter 14

It was only eleven o’clock when I dragged myself back into the hotel room, but it felt more like four a.m. I dropped the clutch on the table just inside the door and kicked off my boots so they landed on the closet floor. I walked down the hall—my hotel “room” was so huge it actually required a small hallway—and fell backward onto the bed, staring up at the gilded ceiling. It was probably a direct homage to some fancy-pants Italian painter or ceiling designer or whatever, but like everything else about this ostentatious hotel, the significance was lost on me.

I needed to call Dashiell and fill him in on the night’s events, but I wanted to collect my thoughts first. Arthur and Lucy Holmwood were definitely putting on a show that exposed them as vampires. But I still wasn’t sure they were violating Old World laws enough to be stopped, given that (a) this wasn’t Dashiell’s territory, and (b) no one believed anything they saw in Las Vegas. If David Copperfield could make the Eiffel Tower disappear every night, what was falling from a six-story ceiling unharmed?

Happily, gauging whether or not the Holmwoods were committing a crime against the Old World wasn’t actually my problem. I was a glorified messenger. But I did care about Jameson, and something was happening with him. Something that required him to wear a bulletproof vest and have a bodyguard. What was that about?

I shook my head and rolled off the side of the bed toward my suitcase, where I dug around until I found Bethany’s itinerary. Tomorrow morning we were supposed to be at the spa at eight thirty for massages, followed by a . . . burlesque dance lesson? Ugh. I wouldn’t mind skipping that, if I could come up with a decent lie. Maybe I could blame my pretend seizure disorder. Or my very authentic clumsiness.

I didn’t have the heart to even look at the rest of the bachelorette party events, so I dropped the itinerary on a table. I peeled off the dress and climbed into pajama pants and a soft tank top to sleep in. When I couldn’t put it off any longer, I picked up the phone to call Dashiell.

And someone knocked on my door.

I blinked hard. Who the hell could that be? Jameson? Or maybe Juliet? Cautiously, I got up and went to the door to look. Before I made it all the way there, I registered a vampire in my radius. Oh, great. I peered through the peephole.

A man I didn’t know stood in the hall with his hat in hand. I mean that literally—he had taken a step back, and I could see the cowboy-style hat he held by his waist, as well as his long, duster-style jacket and handlebar mustache. There was an actual red handkerchief tied around his neck, underneath a chin covered in five o’clock shadow. A vampire cowboy? Huh. We got some weird stuff in LA, but this was a first for me. He looked a little disoriented, the way most vampires look when they’re suddenly forced to breathe or die. What can I say, I have that effect on people.