Darius Vex could smell the ammonia reek of the janitor’s closet before he saw the fake vent cover, but at least it masked whatever crawlspace musk was growing in there. The hyena ancestor spirit that lived in the back of his head seemed to like the musk better. He gave the hallway a quick sweep, then slipped the coin-thin multitool from his cufflink slot, popped the four screws in a practiced blur, and levered off the grate.

  He ducked inside, knees grinding against the concrete lip. The unused space under the stairs wasn't very spacious, but if it was, the original construction would've used it for something. He snapped on his pocket-LED, found the knapsack wedged between two pipes, and yanked it loose. The bag was exactly where he’d left it, which meant either the world was less cruel than advertised, or his enemies were more polite.

  Darius unzipped the bag, fished out a plain grey dress shirt and peeled off his uniform top. He carefully pulled on the new one, careful not to disturb the extra zipper sewn inside the collar. A little spray of cologne and he felt a tad better. He flexed his shoulders, enjoying the moment of cleanliness, and started rooting through the rest of the bag.

  A holo-mask, some basic credchips and crypto sticks, a little black notebook where he kept his not-so-little blackmails. The last was the only thing he cared about. He flipped it open, checked a few scribbled passcodes, and memorized the new page. Then he closed it and tucked it into his inside breast pocket. He was about to finish rebuttoning when he heard the faintest tick. He froze. Listened. Waited.

  Tick. Tick, tick, tick.

  He reached for the multitool, but something thumped against his shoe. He looked down.

  A six-inch grimp in jeans and a tank top stood on the instep of his dress shoe, arms crossed, grinning up with a row of dagger teeth.

  “Hello, darling,” Thorn said, voice like a mis-calibrated toy.

  “Well, look at you, sir. How are you this fine evening?” Darius was always polite to demons. It was just good survival sense.

  Thorn gave a courtly little bow. “Finally someone with proper manners. Apologies for the intrusion, but we're on a schedule. Elara needs you to come with me, fast.”

  Darius blinked. “You’re with Elara?”

  “Obviously,” Thorn smiled. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind—” He leapt, landed on Darius’s shoulder, and dug in like a parrot with opinions. “Let’s move.”

  Darius, not for the first time, reconsidered all his life choices. But he zipped the bag, tucked it under his arm, and crawled out of the negative space, careful to let Thorn ride along. The hallway was empty, still. He replaced the vent and started walking, eyes peeled for any sign of trouble.

  Thorn’s voice piped in his ear. “East side wall of the kitchen. Near the walk-in. That’s your exit. Don’t stop for anyone. If you see guards, just act like you’re late for a bachelorette party.”

  “You ever been to a bachelorette party?” Darius asked, genuinely curious.

  “No,” Thorn snipped, “but if they challenge you, I hope you have something provocative under that suit.”

  Darius kept walking. The casino floor was a migraine of light and sound, but the bulk of the night’s crowd had drifted to the dance stage and the slots bank, leaving the main bar’s east side all but deserted.

  Another two troll bouncers flanked the door to the hall that accessed other staff only areas, including the kitchen. They looked bored but still twice as alert as the average rent-a-golem.

  He slowed, scanned for weak points. Thorn was invisible now, thank every minor deity in the codex, but Darius could feel the little bastard’s claws through the fabric of his tuxedo. He straightened his cowl, adjusted the collar, and strode toward the kitchen as if he were the only person in the world who belonged there.

  The bouncers eyed him, but only one shifted a little, like he was prepping to block. The other half of him stirred—aggression rising at the troll’s shift in posture.

  One raised a meaty hand. “Hold up—pit boss says we’re screening staff now.” The creature fumbled in its vest pocket, producing a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles that looked comically delicate between its thick fingers.

  "Those glasses reveal illusions," Thorn's breath tickled Darius's ear. "I can smell the enchantment from here. Be ready to bolt."

  Beneath his casual facade, Darius's mind raced. His muscles coiled tight.

  A shattering of glass erupted from the nearest bar. Both trolls jerked toward the noise and lumbered away, leaving Darius momentarily forgotten.

  “There's our chance, go now!” Thorn ordered.

  Down the hall and a left later, kitchen doors swung open—Darius caught a blast of garlic and frying oil—and he ran straight through, past a line of prep cooks with more piercings than skin, and out the service corridor on the far side.

  The air back here was different. Not cleaner, but older. He glanced for cameras, didn’t see any, but that didn't mean anything fortuitous. Just a dented access panel, and a door that had probably never seen a real key. Thorn wriggled, then spoke inside his ear:

  “Seventeen seconds.”

  ***

  Ben whispered, “Darius needs a distraction. Now." to Karn, and before he could blink, the horned brute had launched him down the bar with surprising grace.

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  "Nobody... insults... my team!" Karn bellowed, his tongue tripping over the alcohol.

  Ben sailed past the bar's edge until gravity remembered its job. His face met the floor with a sticky smack.

  "Aaand I'd be dead if we were actually fighting," he groaned, fumbling for anything useful. His fingers found a beer bottle.

  He swung it onto a tabletop, hoping to create a menacing weapon, but it slipped from his hands, bounced, and arched over the bar to shatter the mirror in a spray of glass.

  The bartender bot flailed its chrome arms in synchronized panic. It wobbled precariously, the gyroscopic base emitting a high-pitched whine as it spun away. An error message in flickering red text scrolled down its screen-head.

  Ben grabbed a barstool and held it between them. "Whoa! Stay back! Yaw!" The flimsy barrier did nothing to deter Karn, who loomed overhead, swaying dangerously with clenched fists. His terrible acting aside, Ben silently begged the minotaur not to throw even a mock punch.

  The trolls who'd been giving Darius a hard time, abandoned their target, thundering over to end the disturbance.

  The first troll hit the bar floor like a siege engine with legs. He was nine feet of knotted grey muscle wrapped in a security vest that had clearly been custom-forged to contain liabilities. The second one followed, slightly shorter but broader, tusks capped in gold. Their batons crackled with crystal-tipped runes.

  “Casino policy violation,” the bigger one rumbled.

  “Yeah!” Ben blurted, pointing at Karn. “He started it!”

  Karn blinked at him, then leaned into the bit with a cringe-worthy overture . “You called my mother a sheep!”

  “I said she had a wool coat!” Ben countered.

  The first troll swung.

  Ben yelped and dove sideways. The baton clipped the edge of the bar and detonated with a ripple of kinetic force that turned bottles into shrapnel. Liquor geysered in a glittering spray. Somewhere behind them, the bartender bot let out a warbling, digital sob as three of its arms detached and began attempting to mop.

  “Um… Run,” Karn muttered.

  They ran.

  A crowd had formed to watch the ordeal, blocking their exit. Ben vaulted over a roulette table mid-game, scattering chips like metallic rain. A woman with very dark shades and snakes for hair, calmly scooped up her winnings while ducking under a flying chair. Karn barreled through the felt, sending it and the players cartwheeling in slow-motion chaos. One fortunate gambler kept hold of his drink the entire time, arm extended skyward in a heroic effort that deserved a medal.

  Security thundered after them, shooting blasts from the tips of their batons. They apparently didn't care about innocent bystanders.

  That was a legitimate concern because they missed. Alot.

  Karn commandeered a fallen chandelier they hit, still sparking and swung it like a flail. It smashed into the floor between the trolls in a burst of sparks and glass, igniting a spreading pool of spilled liquor. Fire rolled across the polished floor like it had been waiting its whole life for this moment.

  “Subtle!” Ben shouted.

  “You said distraction!” Karn bellowed.

  More security poured in—two cybernetic enforcers with retractable blades, a mage on a floating cloud chanting something extremely unpleasant, and yet another pair of trolls who looked deeply annoyed to be here.

  A bolt of frost streaked past Ben and flash-froze a little prize wheel mid-spin. He grabbed it instinctively as he ran, shield-style, and deflected a kinetic blast that would’ve rearranged his spine.

  “How is this useful?!” he yelled.

  “I don’t know!” Karn answered, “But it's getting difficult to stay non-lethal!”

  “They're just doing their jobs! Be careful!”

  Ben skidded under a collapsing neon sign as the letters of The Wishing Well Casino flickered and popped behind him. A second later, a concussive blast punched a shockwave through the hall. Flames licked up velvet drapes. Sprinklers activated with dramatic uselessness.

  They burst into a showroom gallery—a wide, marble-floored balcony overlooking the lower lobby. At its center sat a pristine display vehicle on a rotating pedestal: a sleek, low-slung grav-runner in midnight chrome, its chassis etched with glowing runic filigree. Wicked tail fins and even a spoiler that probably didn’t serve any purpose. A small plaque read: WIN THIS BEAUTY TONIGHT!

  “This is either a terrible idea,” he muttered, “or an extremely terrible idea.”

  Behind them, trolls roared. The mage began chanting something else scary as hell.

  Ben leapt onto the rotating platform, scrambled into the driver’s seat, and immediately pressed every green button he could see.

  The grav-runner hummed awake.

  “Beeeeeeen!” Karn barked, leaping in beside him as a stun bolt vaporized the pedestal where he’d just been standing.

  “I’m improvising!” Ben shouted, yanking a crystal lever. The engine flared with blue-white light. The vehicle lurched forward, smashed through the ornamental railing—

  —and sailed into the open air.

  For half a heartbeat, everything was quiet except the crackle of fire behind them, as they dropped the equivalent of three stories.

  Polished marble floor rushed up to greet them.

  “YOU KNOW HOW TO DRIVE THIS?!” Karn demanded.

  “Not really!”

  They hit.

  The inertia dampeners screamed, then caught. The impact blasted inertia fields across the lobby, scattering patrons like toy blocks. The vehicle skidded sideways, spinning in a graceful, absolutely unintentional drift that clipped a row of slot machines and turned them into a fireworks display.

  Ben somehow straightened the wheel.

  They blasted across the burning casino floor, dodging a variety of life forms, security bolts, and one very determined suited bugbear who attempted to leap onto the hood and bounced off into an ornate fountain they somehow managed not to destroy.

  Ahead—the exit doors.

  Ben floored it.

  “Look out!” Karn yelled. Pointing at what had to be a professional grandma with a bucket of small change. She didn't seem to care about anything that was happening.

  The grav-runner punched through a reinforced glass window—next to the opened doors—in a shower of glittering shards. They burst into the neon night beyond. Sirens wailed behind them. Smoke billowed skyward.

  They tore down the strip, wind howling through the shattered windshield.

  Karn looked back at the rising plume of flame and destruction. “Any distraction we made was supposed to be small.”

  Ben clutched the wheel, hair singed, grinning like a lunatic. “Define small.”

  Behind them, the casino burned.

  ***

  “Seventeen seconds.”

  “For what?”

  “For you to get to the far wall and not die.”

  Darius didn’t ask for clarification. He dashed. His shoes skidded on the tile, but he kept his balance. The wall in question was smooth, unbroken, except for a slight shimmer. He reached out, and his hand slid straight through. No pain, just cold, then nothing.

  He looked down at his arm, half-disappeared in the wall. He grinned.

  “Very nice, my good fellow.”

  “Thank Thimble. Now, off you go,”

  He stepped through and dropped, knees buckling as he hit the backseat of a roofless hover cab.

  Elara sat beside him, eyes rimmed red, smiling somewhere between relief and murder.

  Vaeris was at the wheel, silver braids pulled back and eyes fixed on the rearview as if she could stare the world into submission.

  Thimble sat shotgun, a device the size of a lunchbox in her lap, both hands gripping a dial. She twisted it and flicked a switch; the wall lost its shimmer.

  Elara punched Darius in the arm, hard enough to bruise. “Took you long enough.”

  He rolled his shoulder, grinning. “Miss me?”

  “Like a toothache,” she said, but she was already laughing.

  Darius looked back at the casino, shrinking as Vaeris punched the throttle. The city blurred by in streaks of neon and rain.

  He felt Thorn climb off his shoulder and vanish. Darius leaned to the side, head resting on Elara’s shoulder, and closed his eyes.

  Somewhere behind them, alarms howled. In the distance, orange light pulsed against the rain.

  He was free. For now.