"Hang on. We're somewhere near Vegas, aren't we?"
"Yeah, about thirty miles out. This place looks like a ranch, 'cept there're no horses, no tourists and the ranch hands dress a little funny. 'Course, it don't matter, since all any humans ever see is a big, bare canyon with a lot of keep-out signs."
"Thirty miles?" Billy could draw energy from the stored reserves in his necklace for up to fifty. "Don't tell me that while I've been bespelled, moved halfway across the country, threatened and imprisoned, you've been at the casinos!"
"Now, Cassie darlin'…"
"I can't believe this!" I don't get angry with him often, since it's mostly a waste of time—he is the definition of incorrigible—but this was the last straw. "I was almost killed! Twice! If you don't care about that, think about what happens to your precious necklace if somebody guns me down or rips my throat open. Let me spell it out for you: it ends up in some old lady's jewelry box in Podunk, USA, a hundred miles from nowhere!"
Billy Joe looked chastened, but I doubted it was guilt over what might have happened to me. He is unable to stay away from his home base for too long or his power runs dry—which was why I knew he'd be along sooner or later. The farther from the source he gets, the faster his strength bottoms out. His nightmare is getting stuck in a rural, one-horse town with no honky-tonks, strip clubs or gambling dens within reach. For him, it would be the equivalent of Hell. With me he had a guaranteed urban environment, since it's hard to hide in a small town. He also had something even more important.
Over time, we'd developed a sort of symbiotic relationship. Billy Joe is one of those spirits who can absorb energy from a living donor, rather like a vamp. Vamps take life energy through blood, which in magical terms is the repository for the life force of a person. When they feed, they receive part of the donor's life, which substitutes for the one they lost when they crossed over, at least for a while. Some ghosts can do the same thing, and like vamps, they don't always ask first. But Billy Joe vastly prefers a willing donor, not to mention that he says the «hit» is much longer lasting from me for some reason. In return for my agreeing to give him additional energy from time to time, he had agreed to keep watch for signs of Tony's impending return. Right then, I felt cheated.
"If you aren't going to be any use, I should sell this ugly thing." I rubbed some steam off the mirror and took a look at the monstrosity around my neck. It was hand-wrought gold, heavy and intricate, with a mass of squirming vines and flowers around a central cabochon ruby. The junk dealer had assumed it was glass, since he wasn't used to seeing nonfaceted jewels and it had been encrusted with years of accumulated dirt. Even all cleaned up, it was, without doubt, one of the ugliest necklaces I'd ever seen. I usually wore it inside my clothes.
"I'll have you know, I won that off a countess!"
"And judging by all the pawn marks, it was real important to you, wasn't it?"
"I always redeemed it, didn't I?" Billy Joe was starting to sulk, so I decided to lay off. I needed him cooperative if I was going to find out anything.
"I don't want a fight. I'm not up for it tonight. I just need to know some stuff, like why the Senate grabbed me and…"
Billy Joe held up a hand. "Please, I know my job." He settled back on the tub and talked while I examined my knees. Raw-looking scrapes and bruises had flowered on both of them despite the height of my boots, promising stiffness by tomorrow. I knew I should feel lucky that I was alive to be an aching mess, but somehow that thought failed to cheer me up. Maybe because I didn't think I'd stay that way for long. "That vamp outside, Louis-César, is on loan from Europe. He's some kind of dueling champion. It's said that he's never lost a fight, and from what I hear he's been in hundreds."
"He can add another to the total after tonight." Not that it had looked like the guard was much of a challenge, but I guess it counted since he had decapitated the guy. "Did you know Tony bribed some lunatics