Claimed By Shadow by Karen Chance Page A

that side of the business and I wasn’t one of them. He took most of them with him when he disappeared, and the rest left with the last shipment a week ago. They aren’t here.”
    I glanced at Miranda. “You must have come through the portal. You have to know where to find it!”
    She shook her head. “On other ssside, we sssee. But here, no.” She draped a dishcloth over the head of a nearby gargoyle. “Like ssso.” The blind gargoyle ran into Pritkin, or more accurately into his legs, which was as far as the tiny thing could reach. The mage removed the towel and sent him back to Miranda with a little push.
    “They must have been blindfolded before they were sent through,” Casanova translated. “I suppose Tony didn’t want them to know how the setup worked, in case the mages got hold of them.”
    “What about you?” I asked Pritkin. “The Circle must have access to a portal.”
    “We use the one at MAGIC.”
    I sighed. Of course. It made sense that MAGIC—short for the Metaphysical Alliance for Greater Interspecies Cooperation—would have one. It’s a sort of supernatural United Nations with representatives from the mages, vamps, weres and Fey, and the delegates from Faerie had to get there somehow. On the plus side, it was nearby, in the desert outside Vegas. On the negative, MAGIC was crawling with the very people who were looking for me, and not to wish me a happy birthday. It remained to be seen whether I’d live long enough to celebrate my twenty-fourth, but sticking my neck in the noose didn’t seem like the best way to ensure that. Unfortunately, portals into Faerie aren’t exactly thick on the ground, and any others would doubtless be guarded, too. On the theory that it’s better to go with the devil you know, I decided to opt for MAGIC. At least I’d been there before and knew a little about its layout.
    “Do you know exactly where it is?” I asked. MAGIC had a big compound; it would be nice if he could narrow things down.
    Pritkin looked at me incredulously, but whatever he might have said was drowned out by the sound of sirens going off. They were just a faint, tinny klaxon through the silence bubble, but Casanova swore loudly. “The mages have entered in force—that’s a general alarm.”
    “Get the humans out,” Pritkin ordered.
    Casanova nodded, not protesting the grip the mage had on his arm. “It’s already being done—standard protocol is to claim a gas leak whenever there’s an emergency and to evacuate everyone. And the mages are supposed to avoid hocus pocus in front of norms, aren’t they?”
    “Normally, yes. But they want her badly.” Pritkin jerked his head at me.
    Casanova shrugged. “Any fireworks will be thought to be part of the show, as long as no norms are injured. This place was designed to look this way for a reason—we’ve had slipups before.” From Pritkin’s scowl, I was guessing they had gone unreported. “Let’s get all of you safely away from here, then I can concentrate on damage control.”
    “Where’s the nearest emergency exit?” I asked.
    “Thanks to you, most of them are overrun. Your best bet is the one leading to the basement of a liquor store on Spring Mountain, just off the Strip.” Casanova moved towards the room service phone and plucked it out of the claws of the gargoyle taking orders. He glanced over his shoulder. “I’ll have a car waiting out back of the store for you, but that’s as much as I can do.”
    “Wait a minute. You have a house safe, right?”
    “Why?” Pritkin asked suspiciously.
    “Oh, crap,” Billy said.
    “You want to risk taking them into Faerie with us?” I demanded.
    Billy groaned and looked at the Graeae, who were chowing down on finger sandwiches. “Considering what popped out last time? Hell no.”
    I looked at Casanova, who was in the middle of a phone conversation. “They’re bypassing the security system almost like it isn’t there,” he informed us, relaying a report. “A group of