“Your figure looks pretty good from where I’m sitting,” he said, running his fingers along the beads on my shoulder strap.
I smiled up at him and then glanced around as I noticed something. “Why aren’t we moving?”
The driver gestured irritably at his windshield. “Typical this time of night. Everyone’s going somewhere. You kids aren’t trying to get to a chapel appointment are you?”
“Already been,” said Adrian.
“Good thing,” said the driver as we inched forward. I saw his eyes look up to the rearview mirror. “Because you may be waiting here a little bit. Only way to get around all this is on a motorcycle, like those nuts.”
Adrian and I peered behind us. All I could see at first was a sea of headlights on the crowded road, but then a ways back, I spotted four individual headlights moving and weaving in and around the stopped and idling cars. Adrian, his vision superior to mine at night, grimaced. “Sydney, I’ve got a bad feeling about that.”
“We need to get out,” I said decisively. “Now.”
Adrian didn’t question me and simply handed over money to cover our current fare, much to the driver’s astonishment. “Are you crazy? You’re in the middle of a million cars!”
That became obvious when we got out and tried to cross to the nearest side of the road. Horns blared at us as we darted across Las Vegas Boulevard, but at least most of them were stopped, so we weren’t posing too much of a risk. In fact, the only vehicles that seemed to be getting anywhere were the four motorcycles. They kept moving on their earlier trajectory, simply trying to get farther down the road, and I thought maybe we’d eluded them. But then, just as we reached the curb and stepped up on the sidewalk, I saw one of the motorcycles turn sharply in our direction. The others soon followed suit.
The sidewalk was packed with people, and like the road, no one seemed to be moving. “They won’t mow down a bunch of pedestrians with their bikes, will they?” asked Adrian as we hurried through the crowd as fast as they could.
“Not likely,” I said, “but they’ll probably gain on us pretty fast once they get on foot. And they won’t have qualms about just abandoning the motorcycles.” We halted as a knot of camera-snapping tourists refused to part, forcing us to make a wide circle around them. “Why is everyone just standing around?”
“Because we’re in front of the Bellagio,” said Adrian, staring up at a sprawling hotel. “Their fountains are probably about to come on. Pretty sure there’s a tram or monorail here that’ll get us up the Strip if we can get to it.”
“Beats running,” I said. I was fully aware that not only my dress but also my shoes were slowing our pace. I’d at least had the sense to decline the five-inch-heeled “to die for” shoes that the consultant had initially recommended, but even these little kitten-heeled ones were starting to pinch and take their toll.
Adrian and I made the Bellagio’s main door our goal, a journey complicated by the excited crowds growing thicker as we neared the fountains. We had to go considerably around them to make any sort of progress, which also took us away from the most direct route to the door. We’d just made it to the far side of the fountains from the road when I glanced back and saw the foursome running toward us, much more uncaring of whom they pushed aside than we had been.
“I didn’t know the Alchemists had such buff recruits,” remarked Adrian.
“Sometimes they outsource extra security forces for—”
My words were cut off by exclamations of delight as the fountains suddenly sprang to life. Streams of water shot hundreds of feet in the air, and the opening bars of “Viva Las Vegas” sounded. Adrian started to run again, but I held him back. “Hang on,” I said.
The Alchemists had pushed their way as close to the fountains as possible, much to the outrage of those who’d been waiting for a while. The foursome scanned around, using the somewhat clear vantage point to search for us. I made eye contact with one, and he gestured his colleagues toward me. I summoned my magic, drawing on long hours of practice with channeling the elements to call upon the essence of the water near us. The Alchemists only managed to take a few steps in our direction when I made one of the streams from the fountain bend down, almost like an arm, toward them. My extensive elemental practice made reaching out to a pure element easier than it might once have been, but I was no Moroi water user. My control of the stream was sloppy, inadvertently spraying most of the people within twenty feet of the Alchemists. I gritted my teeth and poured all my magic and energy into giving the stream as much solidity as I could as it swept toward the Alchemists. It wrapped around the four of them and lifted them into the air, eliciting cries of astonishment and a lot of camera flashes. At this point, the feat was too much for my powers, but it achieved as much of my goal as I needed. I had the Alchemists over the fountain’s lake by this point, and I released the magic—which in turn released them from their suspension. They dropped into the water with a splash.
“Wow,” someone near me said. “They didn’t have that in the show the last time I was here!”
As Adrian and I continued our run to the hotel, the ex-Alchemist in me couldn’t help but wince at the public display of the supernatural I’d just made—especially with so many recording devices on hand. It went against every principle I’d been taught about hiding the paranormal world from ordinary people, and I tried to console myself with the knowledge that at least no one would be able to pinpoint how exactly the fountain had done what it did. And if the Alchemists were truly concerned with the public reaction, I had no doubt they’d find a way to spin it in the news.
We made it into the Bellagio unchallenged, and I had only a moment to admire the lobby’s beautiful glass flowers as Adrian asked a worker for directions to the tram station. The way was straightforward, but it required leaving the hotel again. We didn’t dare slow down and made the journey at a half jog, which was itself conspicuous. All the Alchemists would have to do when they eventually made their way out of the water was ask if anyone had seen a bride and groom running through there. I could only hope security would detain them and that there’d be a tram right at the station when we arrived.
There wasn’t, but we only had a five-minute wait, and no one showed up in that time. We got on board and sank into a couple of seats, both of us exhausted. “Catch your breath,” said Adrian. “We’re going to the end of the line.”