“My honor and pleasure,” I said. “It is nice to meet you, Tala.”
“And you.”
Myra turned and strode out of the shop, scanning the hallway beyond the door. Like she needed to be somewhere immediately. Now.
I got to my feet. If Myra was moving fast, that meant there was trouble going down.
“Sorry for the rush,” I said, tucking the envelope under my arm. “I hope to see you soon.”
Tala gave me an understanding nod as I swigged my coffee, two, three mouthfuls, getting as much of it down as I could before I hurried after Myra.
A loud crash filled the casino, something big falling over, like a machine or a table or a display case. I tossed the coffee in the trash and sprinted down the hall, right on Myra’s heels.
“What happened?” I asked, just as we cleared the corner of the hall and rushed into the main room.
Xtelle—still a pony-sized unicorn, still wearing those ridiculous sunglasses—trotted out in front of us and waved a hoof, sending glitter through the air.
“Delaney, is that you?” she asked. “Oh. And I see Myra is with you.” The way she said Myra’s name made it sound like a particularly contagious disease.
“You see her, right?” Myra asked.
“Yep.”
“She sees us?”
“Yep.”
“But no one else sees her?”
“Nope.”
I took the measure of the room. A craps table lay toppled on its side, a crowd circling it from a safe distance. No one had been hurt—not that I could see—but it was clear they were shaken.
I itched to spring into crowd control mode, but the casino staff were already doing a great job ushering people back and away, and making sure everyone was okay.
Three craps dealers stood, shocked, eyes wide, glancing at the table, then at the crowd, then back at the table.
“You,” I ordered Xtelle, “stay.”
“I’ve got her.” Myra stuck her hand in her pocket to access whatever she had there. I was confident it’d be just the thing to stop a demon in her tracks. “Stay right there, Xtelle.”
“I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” Xtelle said. “Delaney, yoo-hoo, Delaney! Are you paying attention to me now?”
No. I stopped next to the huddle of dealers. “Your table?”
The two women and a man nodded, not looking at me. “I don’t know what happened,” said the woman whose hair was pulled back in a fashionable twist to show off strong cheekbones. “I was just starting my shift and the whole thing just…” She pushed her palms forward.
“No one was near it?”
She shook her head.
“An earthquake?” The other woman was spindly and barely looked legal. “Do you think it was an earthquake? It had to be an earthquake, right?”
“Delaney! Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo! Pay attention to me!”
“It might have been an earthquake,” I lied. This hadn’t been an accident and this hadn’t been an earthquake.
“It wasn’t an earthquake,” Xtelle shouted. “Delaney? Delaney!”
