There's No Business Like Mage Business: Casino Witch Mysteries 3 Read online

  Natasha grabbed the chair opposite me. “Ella, how many times have I called you to hang out since we met?”

  “Three?”

  “Twelve. Once a month ever since we met. At first, we grabbed a lunch here or there, and I thought we were getting close. Then ever since you declared yourself a Monza, you’ve been busy every single time. The last few times, you haven’t even returned my call. If I didn’t know how amazing I was, I would be a bit insulted.” She smiled at me. “If you don’t want to be friends, then you can just tell me. You haven’t answered me about my favor. Do I already know your answer?”

  I opened my mouth to tell her I was busy. That I needed to train. That I would love to, but I just couldn’t. But I didn’t have the heart to say it. We locked eyes, and I was sure she knew exactly what was going through my head. Her face was gentle and open. I knew I could tell her about everything. I thought I was ready to, but something stopped me, and I lowered my eyes to my feet instead.

  She stood up, and as she passed, she gently squeezed my shoulder. “How about this—if you ever get time, then you can call me.” She walked to the door and left. She didn’t sound angry so much as disappointed in me.

  And so was I.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I stood over my kitchen sink, eating some General Tso’s chicken, and checked my watch. I had texted Bear and Badger, letting them know that I would be free the rest of the day as well as the next week and a half. Normally, we trained for a few hours in the evening, a favor to my late father and me. They had stepped in to help me train in secret, none of us knowing why my dad had hidden my heritage from me and my very existence from not only the entire the mage community but also his two closest friends.

  They owned businesses on the two floors below my loft, so the walk over shouldn’t take long. I opened up another container and grabbed a cream cheese wonton.

  Thankfully, all the training burned calories like crazy. Working magic was like running a marathon, lifting weights, calculating mathematics, and writing a novel all at once. By bedtime, I was so physically tired that I could barely shower before passing out, often on top of the sheets, and my brain was so fried that more than once, I had stepped into the shower still wearing socks.

  Vanessa said I never had fun—boy, was she wrong. The takeout was proof. I had gone all the way across town to get my favorite Asian food. Rambler wasn’t as big as Vegas, and though it had excellent restaurants all over the city, it still fell into the takeout trap of treating the entire continent of Asia as one food location. It served Korean, Japanese, Indian, Chinese, and Vietnamese food with no rhyme or reason. But the food was excellent, and that was all that counted. I had ordered pad Thai and made my own Mongolian barbecue to go in addition to the wontons and General Tso’s chicken. I would have the leftovers for breakfast and lunch.

  “I’m fun,” I said to Patagonia, who was working her way through some chicken I had boiled just for her.

  She stopped mid-bite, a small chunk of chicken falling from her mouth as her jaw hung open and she stared at me briefly. Then her teal eyes squinted shut, and she fell over. A wheezing hiss escaped from between her pointed fangs.

  I was pretty sure she was laughing at me, though Vanessa swore familiars weren’t capable of it. “Hey!” I said. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

  She stopped and returned to her food so her rear was pointed in my direction. When I heard the telltale sound of a Patagonia fart, I waved my hand around to dispel the smell before it could reach me. Chicken farts could ruin anyone’s meal, except Patagonia’s.

  She looked over her shoulder at me and farted even louder. Her hissing laughter started up again until her eyes went wide and she started hacking and coughing. Bits of chicken flew out of her mouth, and I rushed over to whack her back until a large hunk of chicken was dislodged and landed on my shoe with a wet thud.

  I leaned over to kiss her furry head, my heart pounding after my scare. She fought to get back to her food. And I got a napkin to clean my shoe.

  Afterward, I grabbed one more wonton and packed up the extra food before checking my phone. No missed calls or texts. I had hoped Vanessa had messaged to say we were cool, but not a peep from her. I would have also expected Bear and Badger to acknowledge me, but nothing from them.

  But I wasn’t surprised not to hear from Natasha—she had been pretty clear that she wasn’t going to message me. I needed to apologize or something, but I had no idea what to say. I couldn’t help her by working on her show, and I didn’t have time to go hang out, so what would I say? I couldn’t just text and tell her that I was sorry but had no intention of changing my behavior. Could I?

  I was just debating taking a shower when the doorbell rang. I had been feeling gross and sticky but also anticipated hours more of training. What was the point in cleaning up if I was just going to get all gross again? But the decision was made as I trotted to the door.

  I flung it open to see Bear. His real name, the name I had known him by when I moved here, was Lou Freeman, and he ran a security firm, Freeman Security, on the second floor of the building. He was tall, wide, and burly, which was probably how he had gotten his nickname. Normally, he came to practice in something loose and lightweight since we often worked up a sweat between the training exercises and the yoga. He was surprisingly flexible for a man of his build. But this time, he was still in his business outfit—black from head to toe except for the company logo printed on the right side of the chest of his polo shirt. And he was alone, no Badger in sight.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  I let him in. “Of course, anytime. Did you get my text?” I followed him into the living room, or rather, the area I thought of as my living room. The top floor of the building was an open-air loft, so the kitchen, living room, dining room, entryway, and hallway were all one gigantic space. Only the single bedroom and two bathrooms had walls to call their own.

  He sat on a chair and indicated I should sit down. “I did get your text, but that’s only a small part of what I need to talk to you about.”

  I waited for him to continue. He was slow to speak, and I had learned over the past year not to rush him. I had known him since I moved here four years before, though then, I hadn’t known he, or anyone, was a mage. I knew he rented a floor from the building I had inherited, but we had only been casual acquaintances until I had discovered my abilities the past year.

  He finally settled on where he wanted to start. “I heard from my great-great-aunt Colleen today.”

  I sat up. “What did she say? Is she coming?”

  His great-great-aunt Colleen was a Monza, and he had contacted her months before to see if she could come and help me with my training. He had even given me her journal. Hidden inside had been a second journal outlining some training exercises that I had been doing on my own. My progress over the past six months had been extremely rapid, and I was sure that the secret training was helping me.

  “Yes, but not right away. She has been working on a secret project and felt that she couldn’t abandon it right now.”

  “Did you tell her my situation?”

  “Do you really expect me to share anything over an unsecured line? Plus, despite your concerns, you are rather safe, and the people she is helping aren’t.”

  I averted my eyes, embarrassed. “No, totally. You’re right.”

  “She is coming. I told her that you had the journal and were training about eighteen hours a day. We had a long talk, then I went and talked to Badger. This can’t continue.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You need to cut back and slow down. Badger and I both have our businesses to run, which we have been neglecting. We’re tired. You’re tired, even though you won’t admit it. You’re cruising for some major burnout, and for what?”

  I jumped to my feet. “To survive? I can’t slow down. I’m fine. I’m better than fine. I’m great. No chance of burnout.”

  “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”
>
  I paced the floor. Why did everyone have to give me such a hard time? “I’m fine!” I practically screamed, my voice shrill as it echoed in the cavernous loft.

  He just grunted and waited.

  I took a different tack. “I appreciate everyone’s concern, but like I told Vanessa and Natasha, I’m fine.”

  “Natasha Andersson? Has a comedy show at the Magia?”

  “That’s her. Why?”

  “Interesting. And why exactly were you telling them that you’re fine?”

  I groaned and flopped back down on the couch next to Patagonia. I needed to talk about it, and frankly, Bear was probably the best person to do that with. “Auntie Ann is out of town for two weeks and left behind a list of exercises for us to do. Today, we finished the list, and Vanessa figured we would take off the next week and a half. Can you believe that?”

  “What did you plan to do?” He let out a gigantic sigh as if just asking me the question exhausted him.

  “Go through them again. Then again, until Auntie Ann got back. She had to go help out some royal family or something. Just because she had to leave doesn’t mean that I can just sit around twiddling my thumbs.”

  “How did you and Vanessa solve your difference of opinion?” He leaned back, sounding less like a security professional and more like a shrink. He was even tempered, often counter to Badger’s more excitable nature. It didn’t surprise me that he did well at his job. Vin also worked in security, and they were similar in many ways.

  A knot twisted in my chest at the thought of Vin. I must have been pretty upset to let the thought of him cross my mind. After six months, I had gotten pretty good at blocking him. I focused instead on the conversation. “She said I never had any fun and worked too hard. Sometimes she really shows her age. All she wants to do is party and goof off. She’s spoiled. Her family’s crazy rich, and she’s had all the best training since she could talk.”

  “Aren’t you being a bit tough on her?” He lifted an eyebrow.

  “Maybe a little. She said she was worried about me, but I think it’s just that she isn’t as driven as me.”

  “What did you guys decide?”

  Patagonia crawled onto my chest to lick at my face. She had definitely grown since I had first been bonded with her. I shoved at her to get her off me, but she was impossible to move when she flopped onto her belly and dug her claws into my shirt.

  “Vanessa took a job at the Cauldron Festival at the Magia Casino. That’s Natasha’s doing. She invited Vanessa and me to go work in her act because two of her performers got jobs suddenly and quit the show.”

  He leaned over and watched my face closely. “Those girls didn’t quit. They were murdered.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I gasped. “How do you know that? What happened? Are Vanessa and Natasha in danger?”

  “Yes, they might be.”

  I jumped off the couch and started searching for my phone. “I need to warn them.”

  “Ella, sit down.” When I didn’t respond, he got up and grabbed my phone off the kitchen counter. “They’re safe right now. Sit down and let me start at the beginning.”

  I settled onto the couch, perched right on the edge with my hands on my knees, ready to push off at a moment’s notice.

  “After I talked with Aunt Colleen and Badger, we decided that you should cut back on your training—”

  “What does this have to do with Vanessa and—”

  He held up a hand, halting me. “I’ll get there. I promise. You’re training too hard. At some point, you can actually start going backward and develop mental blocks. You need to be out in the world more. You need to be using some of this magic in a practical way. You have made amazing strides with your magic, but when you have been solving murders, your growth has been triple that.”

  I chewed on my lip, thinking of the last murder I had worked on. It had been at a cheese convention, and despite the near-death experiences and severe injuries, it might have been the last time I felt really alive and at my best. Of course, that was also when Vin had turned his back on me and started dating Tiffany again.

  I clenched my jaw, and my nails bit into my palm before I let out a long sigh. Not only was Tiffany a mean, hateful person, but also, the fact that she was with Vin, last I heard, made it even worse. She always had a nasty phrase or jealous word to share with me. Luckily, she had quit working at the Golden Pyramid Casino months before, so at least I didn’t have to see the picture advertising her burlesque show all over the casino.

  Vin has also quit right after the cheese convention. It was a mixed blessing. Maybe if we had kept seeing each other, we might have been able to at least be friends, though I knew that wasn’t what I wanted from him. And if I couldn’t be with him, then better not to see him at all. A clean cut would help me heal. But if that was the case, why did it still hurt so badly six months later?

  That investigation had taught me other things. I had transformed into a spectral rat and gained the ability to “smell” magic. It wasn’t actually a smell but a new sense that my brain had closely associated with smell or sometimes taste. I had found mentions in Colleen’s book of this ability but nothing in depth. It was another topic I wanted to discuss with her. Auntie Ann and Vanessa hadn’t understood what I meant and assumed it was just confusion from the spell, a spell that Auntie Ann had refused to allow us to use again until we had covered other topics.

  Not to mention, I could have sworn I heard Patagonia’s voice in my head when I was a spectral rat, but like much of my mage experience so far, I had far more questions than answers.

  “I don’t know if I would call the investigation fun, but I did learn a lot.” I was still suspicious and didn’t want to heartily agree or disagree with anything he said until I knew where he was going.

  “Right, you learned a lot in a short period of time. Skills are one thing, but application is another. In order to apply things, you need to be in real-world situations.”

  “Okay…” I waited for the other shoe to drop.

  “You can’t do that if you spend all day training at the casino, and we thought—”

  This was an argument we had repeated at least once a week for the past year since I had started my mage training. “I’m not quitting what I do at the casino. You know how I—”

  He held up his hands. “Hold on. Let’s just set that whole thing aside. Ann Russo is out of town for the rest of the week?”

  Ann Russo was her legal name, but she had always insisted I called her Auntie Ann. She wasn’t my aunt, of course, but it was nice to feel as if I had family. “Yes, and next week. She used to train people all over the world but not for the past year. She has stayed in Rambler to work with me at great expense to herself. This client really needed her, something about an out-of-control teenager who keeps making furniture disappear.”

  “Furniture?”

  I smiled. “She accidentally moved the entire contents of the tack room into the middle of her parents’ bed while they were in it.”

  He sucked air in through his teeth and let out a low chuckle. “So you have nothing to do for the next week and half, anyways. Badger and I already discussed it. He doesn’t have anything for you to do, and then something came up this morning with one of my clients that would be perfect. The fact that Natasha offered you a job is beyond a coincidence—it’s a sign from God that you are meant to do this.”

  Something stirred in me. Was it excitement? I didn’t have all the details yet, but my heart was beating a little louder, and everything felt a bit brighter and clearer. My magic pooled around me. I could sense the aura, which was crisp and fresh like melons and cucumbers. I tried to tamp down my excitement. I should be training, but nothing could stop the feelings building inside me.

  I tried to keep my voice steady. “Tell me more.”

  I must have given something away because Bear smiled broadly, as though he had already won the fight. He might have been able to read my emotions, a skill that he never admitted t
o having but one I had long suspected of him.

  “I’ve been working extra security for the Cauldron Festival at the Magia Casino. The Magia has their own security, but the festival said it was common for them to hire an outside firm as well. They wanted to keep everything quiet, so I got some of my best guys, and we have all been rotating attending the festival undercover.”

  I chuckled. “You’ve been attending the Cauldron Festival?”

  “I know. I’m not exactly the demographic they put up on the posters, but there are enough older men in attendance, hoping to pick up a young mage, that I didn’t stick out too badly.”

  “Why did you go undercover at all?”

  “The festival and the casino don’t always have the same goals. Each is looking to cover their own behinds. The organizers behind the Cauldron Festival have several other events throughout the country each year, and apparently, this is their standard procedure. I’ve worked with them for the last five years.”

  “And something happened to the gals that were working for Natasha?”

  “Yes, but they weren’t the only ones. Two other gals died, for a total of four.”

  I sat up straighter. “The festival started on Sunday. That’s four in four days. How in the world are they keeping this a secret?”

  “Anytime there is a large number of mages together, you get trouble: drunken fights, age-old grudges between families, black magic, et cetera. But so far, these have been written off as Legacy overdoses.”

  “Oh.” I had a passing familiarity with Legacy. The first set of murders I had helped investigate were all started by an accidental Legacy overdose. “I thought you said it was murder. Do you think they were forced to overdose?”

  “How do I explain this...” He sat back and pursed his lips. “Do you know that nowhere on earth is there such a thing as accidental magical drug overdoses? I spent all morning on the phone, and apparently, Legacy is the only drug connected with death by overdose, and they only occur here in Rambler, Nevada.”