The Festival of the Moon (Girls Wearing Black: Book Two) (18 page)

Vince imagined Kim wearing a million dollar necklace. In the vision, Kim was wearing the same see-through black dress she had worn to the Masquerade. She looked good in that dress. Not jaw-dropping turn-your-head good, but pretty damned good nonetheless. Certainly doable.

But more than doable and good, she had looked powerful that night, and now, in the vision of Kim that Vince held in his mind, a diamond necklace hanging above her oh-so-perky boobs, Kim looked like someone ready to take on the world.

She looked like an immortal.

What a stupid ass he’d been. Vince had gone to Nicky’s after-party because Annika told him to. It was that simple. It was how things had always worked since freshman year. Vince was just one of a huge group who deferred to Annika on all questions about social graces, from what tie he should wear to which girl he should date. For someone like Vince, who grew up in a culture far different than the one at Thorndike, Annika was a godsend. If there was any doubt in your mind of how to act, of how high society would respond, you went to Annika for the correct answer. So when Annika’s text came out after the Masquerade it seemed only right to do what she said.

Vince was half-way to Kim’s party at the White House when all that business started—if only he had ignored his phone!
 
If only he hadn’t been so loopy from wine and women and song and the presence of the immortals. He had danced with two of them that night and they’d left him in a total stupor. He was barely lucid enough to get his ass to any after-party, much less the right one. When Annika started insisting that everyone needed to be at Nicky’s, he just took her word for it. Of all the stupid, bone-headed things he had done in his life…

In the end, like most of Vince’s problems, this was his dad’s fault. Vince’s dad was so determined to have his only son grow up in his own image, so insistent on “
giving him the opportunities that I never had
,” that he left Vince all jacked up in the head. What kind of place is the Las Vegas strip for a little kid? Gambling and hookers and porn and fighting—Vince’s father owned the Dionysus Hotel and Casino and insisted on bringing his son there all the time. Little Vince, roaming the casino, taking in all the bedlam, wondering when it would be his turn to play.

That’s the thing about being a kid in Las Vegas. There’s fun stuff all around you, but you don’t ever get to do any of it. It’s all off-limits until you’re older.

In its way, it was a brutal childhood, and to this day there was nothing that angered Vince more than the thought of somebody having fun without him. That was another reason he latched onto Annika. She was a girl who attracted fun like a magnet. When he got that text from her saying Nicky’s party was where the fun was, he listened. He obeyed
.

Now, three and a half days later, he was convinced he had chosen wrong. Annika, for all her intuition about these things, had backed the wrong horse.

His doubts began the morning after the Masquerade, when his Aunt Gertrude woke him up and told him all of DC society was buzzing about Nicky Bloom.

“I’ve been on the phone all morning,” she said. “All anyone wants to talk about is this new girl.”

“That’s right…there’s a new girl at school,” Vince said. “We all went to her after-party.”

“Who’s we? How many of you went?”

“I don’t know…twenty?”

Later that day, Vince would have to round that estimate down some. His aunt and her gossip circle had assembled a complete guest list of Nicky’s after-party.

“Fourteen!” she shouted. “Do you know how many showed up at Kim’s? Do you? A lot more than fourteen, I can tell you that. I can’t fathom what you must have been thinking. Kim Renwick is going to be the immortal from your class. We’ve all known that much since you were very young. We talked about this, Vince. When you moved here you and I had a long talk about the way people behaved in this town and what happens to those who want to ruffle feathers. Your father trusted me to keep you in line. He is going to just flip when he hears this!”

Just flip
. Boy, did he ever
just flip
. Five minutes into the phone conversation with his dad, Vince was sorry he’d ever heard of Nicky Bloom.

“The only function this new girl is going to serve in all of this is to show Kim her true friends. The Masquerade was a test, Vince, and you failed. Now the whole family is at risk. You don’t get on the wrong side of the immortals. You need to make this right”

“Okay, Dad. I’ll fix this.”

Vince intended to call Kim that night, but he couldn’t summon the nerve to do it. Fortunately for him (or unfortunately), he had an email from Kim in his Inbox the next morning.

I want to have lunch with you
, the email said.
I’ve reserved us a room for Wednesday afternoon at The Tumbler. Let me know if you can make it.

It was as if she knew he was ready to talk. He’d heard that about the Renwicks. People said they could be like mind-readers if they wanted something from you.

Now he was here with Kim, talking about her desire to vacation in Australia and about her family’s million dollar necklace.

Kim put on a big, plastic smile. “Let’s talk about why we’re here,” she said. “Shall we?”

Vince nodded.

“I was disappointed when you didn’t come to my party,” Kim said. “I thought I could count on you.”

“Yeah, about that…I’m sorry,” Vince said. “I was pretty drunk and I made a poor choice.”

“Lots of people were drunk, Vince.”

He pulled his knees together, as if preparing himself for a kick to the groin.

“I wish I could take it back,” he said. “I want to make it up to you.”

“I’m listening,” Kim said.

Vince noticed a slight quiver in his fingers. How embarrassing this all was. Vince was supposed to be one of the tough guys at school. In just a few days he’d be one of the boys from the senior class who would step into a ring for Brawl in the Fall. He had been trained from youth at the most expensive fighting gyms in Vegas. And he was the son of the most powerful casino magnate in the world, a man who stared down mob bosses and prize fighters and every manner of shark. It didn’t make sense for him to cower before a prissy rich girl from DC. But here he was, shivering like a lost puppy.

“Well, as you know, I’ll be an entrant in Brawl in the Fall--”

“I don’t want to talk about Brawl in the Fall,” said Kim, putting some ice in her voice. “Brawl in the Fall is a given. If you win, you will bid on me at the Date Auction with all of your prize money plus whatever else your family can afford, which is a lot, isn’t it, Vince?”

His eyes were looking down at his drink. “Yes,” he said.

“You and I both know why your family’s done so well these past few years,” Kim said. “In the middle of a recession that’s demolished property values in Vegas more than anywhere else in America, the Weir family has been doing fine. More than fine. Isn’t that right?”

And there it was. She knew. Of course she knew. Her dad was Galen Renwick. They always knew. That was why she was a shoe-in to win Coronation—she knew everything. That was why Vince’s decision to go to Nicky’s party rather than Kim’s was the dumbest one he ever made.

He cleared his throat, making a dry, ugly sound. “That’s right, my family’s doing well,” he said, following the words with a quick gulp from his water.

The door behind him opened and the waiter came in with a rolling tray of food. Vince and Kim sat silently while the waiter laid a series of plates on the table between them, announcing each dish as he placed it down.

“Pear and Walnut Salad with Blue Cheese Crumbles...Chilean Sea Bass…”

Vince didn’t want to continue the conversation with Kim, but he didn’t like that he had to pause it either. With every plate the waiter put down, the tension increased. It was as if a watch was ticking somewhere and would stop when the last plate of food was down and the waiter was gone.

“…and finally,” the waiter said, “spinach ravioli with white wine cream sauce. Enjoy.”

The wheels on the waiter’s cart squealed quietly as he rolled it out of the room.

“Dig in,” Kim said.

“Oh no, ladies first, I insist.”

“I’m not eating,” said Kim. “This is for you.

Vince sat still, totally befuddled, and wondered if this was some kind of trick.

“You’re not eating?”

“I had a big breakfast,” Kim said. “Go ahead. Eat. This is some of the best food in town.”

“Okay…I guess I don’t even know where…”

“Here,” Kim said, reaching across the table and grabbing Vince’s empty plate. “Let me do it for you.”

Kim assembled a plate of food for Vince with portions from each of the dishes in front of them, lecturing him as she did so.

“You made a mistake, Vince, and you want a chance for redemption, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Vince said, his voice cracking like it did when he was in eighth grade.

“Now is your chance,” Kim said. “I want to hear it from your own lips. I want to see how loyal you’ll be when I’m immortal. Tell me what I already know, and don’t leave out a single detail. Prove to me that I can trust you again.”

She put the plate of food down in front of him. Vince stared at it, getting a queasy feeling in his stomach as he processed what Kim just said to him.

“Tell you what you already know?” he said.

“Yes,” said Kim. “I want you to confess the sins of the Weir family to me. Right now.”

“I….can’t we agree that I’m going to bid on you at the auction and that my family will support you all the way to--”

“No! We can do no such thing, and you’d better watch your tone with me starting right now or so help me I won’t simply kill you after I’m immortal, I’ll make you into my fucking slave for a year first, and I’ll make sure everyone in our class comes to my mansion and sees you with the rest of the slaves. I’ll put you in a white shirt and black pants and make you serve them drinks and clean up after them and bow before them and scrub the mother fucking toilet, Vince. That’s the future that awaits you if you don’t watch yourself. So let’s start again, I want you to tell me all the Weir family’s dirtiest secrets and I want you to do it now.”

Vince was frozen, competing voices in his mind giving contradictory advice. One voice told him that Kim was full of it, that even if she won she couldn’t just enslave him, that this was beyond uncool, that nobody talked to him this way, that he was Vince Weir and he didn’t stand for this and he should get up now and tell Kim to go fuck herself.

But another voice told him that he was about to make the same mistake he made at the Masquerade. That voice spoke in his father’s deep, gravelly tones. It said,
Time to cut your losses, Vince
. Yes, Kim was making him furious, but she held all the cards. She was going to win the contest. It was a pipedream to think otherwise. She was going to win and the first thing she would do after she won was go after her enemies.

And even if she didn’t win, she knew. She was Galen Renwick’s daughter and
the Renwicks always knew
.

It was time to give her what she wanted. Time to confess.

Vince took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

A long second of silence passed.

“I think my dad is embezzling from Palace Immortalis,” he said.

Kim reached across the table and put her hand on Vince’s arm. It was a soft, unnerving touch.

“Go on,” she said quietly.

“We don’t own Palace Immortalis,” Vince said.

“Of course you don’t. That’s Daciana’s casino,” said Kim.

“My dad manages that casino for her, and he sees that it’s more profitable than all of his,” Vince said. “It’s so profitable that my dad can skim some off the top and the immortals never notice.”

“Tell me how you know this,” said Kim.

“I guess I don’t know for sure,” said Vince, “but I can tell something’s up by the way my dad’s acting. When I’m home for the summer, my dad meets with Sammy a couple times a week. They meet early in the morning before anyone else is up. Sammy’s got a new car every time I come home.”

“Tell me who Sammy is.”

“He’s the operations manager for my dad’s company. He’s the….”

Vince’s jaw dropped as bits and pieces of a larger story took shape in his brain. Scenes from his childhood were running together…a tour his family took of the underground facilities beneath the Strip. His dad yelling on the phone about inefficiency and who was going to pay for all the employees if he couldn’t have his own vault. Vince saw long tunnels, a bank of cameras, glass doors, and Sammy…always at his father’s side.

“He’s the what, Vince?”

“He’s the first sign-off on the cash deposits.”

“Keep going,” Kim said.

“All the cash from my dad’s casinos and from Palace Immortalis goes into a single vault with automated storage,” Vince said. “Cash goes in, gets stored, and gets transported to the bank automatically. There are only two people who have the authority to open the vault and step inside.”

“Your father is one of those people,” Kim said.

“Right, and Sammy is the other.”

Kim looked in Vince’s eyes. “What you’re telling me is Sammy is your dad’s partner in crime,” she said.