He placed a hand on my shoulder. “I believe in you, Charlie. You weren’t ready for this when you went to Paris, but you’ve progressed in our training sessions since then. The fact that you came to me for my opinion beforehand shows that you’re ready. I want you to pull off this job, and you have the perfect team to do it. Show me what you’ve learned from everything I’ve taught you.”
“I will,” I promised. “I’m going to get the vampire key. You won’t be disappointed.”
I meant it with every fiber of my being. We’d lost the vampire key in Paris, and I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I would become everything my grandfather wanted me to be.
My friends and I gathered around the conference table in the Elvish Associates’ meeting room later that day. I stood at the head of the table, facing the others. Ava sat by my side, and Oberi dutifully stood in husky form beside her. Marcus, Kallie, Chancey, and Ivy were there, along with Eddie and the Elvish Associates.
“Everyone’s here,” I said. “Let’s begin.”
“What about Alistair and Danny?” Marcus asked.
“They’re sitting this one out,” I replied.
Truth was, Alistair was a loose cannon who’d go off script at any chance he got, and we needed everything to go according to plan. Danny couldn’t be trusted, either. He was shit at following directions, and he’d run off to do his own thing like he did when we time traveled. I wasn’t going to bother telling either of them what we were up to.
“Here’s what we learned from the circus,” I started. “Marcus discovered that the vampire key is located inside The Devil’s City.”
“I don’t know what that means, though,” Marcus mused. “We’re headed to Vegas again?”
“That’sSin City, dummy,” Kallie said.
“According to Ivy, The Devil’s City is the name for a casino in Chicago,” I explained. “It’s the worst kind of place— a hub for vampires and considered exclusively supernatural territory. The building towers over sixty stories high in downtown Chicago and acts as its own independent city, filled with bars, restaurants, shops, gambling dens, spas— you name it. The vampires don’t leave, because they don’t have to. It’s ripe with illegal activity, like drug trafficking and worse. It comes as no surprise that the vampires are holding the key there, because The Devil’s City is owned by Salvatore Bianchi.”
Marcus tapped his fingers against the table. “Hold on… Ivy, didn’t you grow up in Chicago?”
Ivy cleared their throat. “I was born in Hawaii and lived with my mother and her merfolk pod for a while, until I left to live with my dad in Chicago. More specifically, I lived in The Devil’s City— spent my whole teen years there. I named The Devil’s Playground after it, actually, because that was all I ever knew. The Devil’s City was like my own personal playground. I never thought my father would keep the vampire key so close to himself, in such an obvious spot where so many people could stumble upon it. I thought for certain he’d hide it away in some remote location. My father continues to find ways to surprise me.”
“This is a good thing, because it means Ivy has intel we wouldn’t be able to obtain otherwise,” I said. “I’ve asked Ivy to put together everything they can remember about The Devil’s City.”
Ivy stood, and pages rustled as they spread large sheets of paper over the table. “I know this place like the back of my hand— every nook and cranny, every ventilation shaft. It’s all in my head.”
“This is a big place, but luckily, Marcus was able to obtain additional information about the key’s location,” I continued. “One of Salvatore’s men from the circus revealed that the key is located on the second from the top level, which puts it just below Salvatore’s office.”
“There’s only one room it could be in on that level,” Ivy said, stabbing their finger to one of the pages. “It’s in this roomhere. It’s always heavily guarded by security, and it’s got a pin pad on the door.”
“That room is our target,” I said. “We already have the code to the pin pad, as revealed by another one of Salvatore’s men. Another vampire’s thoughts indicated that the key is kept inside a home safe with a dial lock. This is going to be easier to crack than the vault at the bank, because it uses a simpler locking mechanism.”
“So we get to the safe, then what?” Ava asked. “You crush the metal door open with your Earth magic?”
“It isn’t enough to rely on my Earth magic, because Salvatore wouldn’t hide this key in any average safe,” I said. “Salvatore knows demigods want the key, and he’ll have thought ahead— either with a fail-safe like the bank, or even with inferichite if he’s managed to get his hands on it. We don’t know what safeguards he might have in place, so our best option is inputting the combination, so we don’t trigger any magical alarm systems.”
“Do we know the combination?” Kallie asked.
Marcus cleared his throat nervously. “Unfortunately, the vamp we captured last night had that information and he… uh… didn’t crack.”
I heard it in Marcus’ tone. He thought I’d gone too far.
I did what I had to do. That fucker was never going to talk.
“We’ll have to move forward without that information,” I said coldly. “You can crack the safe, can’t you, Kallie?”
“Yes,” she stated confidently. “If it’s a combination lock, I can break it.”
“The last bit of information we obtained from Salvatore’s vamps was the security measures in place around the target room,” I continued. “There are two guards stationed in front of the room at all times, as well as one guard at the corner of each hall. This level is crawling with security, but I’m confident we can make it past them— or if we have to, take them out.”
“How do we do that without getting caught?” Ava asked.
“Everyone will have their respective jobs to help us get in and out of The Devil’s City clean,” I began. “Our best time to strike will be two days from now.”
