All Your Jewels

Gimme Yo Money

To name a few. More notable than the radical honesty of their marketing was the lack of people—or goblins. I stood at the far end of what looked to be a long stretch ending in what could only be a massive set of front doors. A ridiculously tall platform stood in front of them. I dug around in my bag and pulled out the binoculars Sarge had given me earlier.

Alan spilled out because I wasn’t quick enough to stop him this time.

“Bree—”

I snapped my fingers at him to shut his face.

Putting the binoculars to my eyes, I scanned the platform.

A big throne had been set up, its back to me, and several goblins stood next to it, one wrapped in thick ropes.

“That’s got to be Grimm,” I muttered, feeling very 007 as I swept my gaze across to the other side of the throne.

When I saw the tall and very human figure that stood there, I wanted to clamp my hands around his neck and squeeze until his eyeballs popped out. But it was the Silver Lady next to him who really had my attention. She’d been with him this whole time, dragging the stuffing out of him, which was awesome.

It also meant she might know where my friends were being kept here in Goblin Town.

I put my hand up to her, hoping she’d see me.

Nothing.

I lowered the binoculars, trying to think my way through our problem. My gran had always said no problem was impossible to solve—you just had to consider the tools at hand. Robert was invisible to most people, but could goblins see him? I realized I hadn’t outright asked Bridgette.

Which reminded me of another potential problem: she wasn’t even supposed to be here. “Will they hurt you if they see you?” I asked her.

“They might kick me back out, but they won’t hurt me,” she said.

And then I looked at Alan.

He glared at me. “What?”

He could talk to the Silver Lady, and he could probably get there without anyone seeing him. “I need your help.”

He burst out laughing. “Tough shit. I’m not doing anything for you.”

I shrugged, grabbed him by the ear and started to stuff him back into the bag. He pawed at my hands, fighting me, but I had him all the way in except for his head in a matter of seconds.

“Wait. Stop. What if I make a deal with you?” Alan whined. “Don’t put me in the bag anymore, and I’ll do what I can to help you.”

I grimaced and shook my head. “Yeah, you’ll have to do better than that. Robert is my backup plan, and he is far more trustworthy. And you’re a pain in my ass even as a dead man.”

“Friend,” Robert whispered.

Alan wormed a hand out of the bag, holding it out to me. “Okay, okay. What if I help you with this . . . whatever this is, and you . . . you help find out what happened to me.”

I pursed my lips. “But if you get in the way or start yapping, I’ll stuff you back into the bag.”

“Okay, okay, deal.” He held his hand out and I took it, yanking him from my bag. Confusion stole over his face as he glanced around. “What do you need to do in Vegas?”

I pointed to the front gates, not bothering to point out that this wasn’t exactly Vegas as he knew it. “There’s a woman next to Davin the dick. She’s a ghost like you. I need you to get her and bring her to me.”

“I hate him.”

“Yeah, that makes two of us,” I said, and Alan gave me a quick nod.

And just like that, my ex-husband was in on a job with me. The four of us made our way to the back of the podium, ducking and dodging between doors and alleys, staying hidden as best we could. Sure, I could have sent Alan up by himself, but I didn’t exactly trust him to do the job. I wanted to be on the scene to make sure nothing went wrong. Or, more realistically, to help turn things around when they inevitably did go wrong.

The clothing that Gerry had made for me made me all but disappear. There was definitely a 007 feel to the moment.

It was only once we got closer that I could see the herd of goblins gathered between the podium and the massive doors. All of them had their backs to us. I ducked under the raised platform and motioned for Alan to go up.

He climbed the wooden structure and disappeared from view.

“Yes, hello,” he said. “My name is Alan, and my miserable ex-wife says you need to come see her.” A pause. “Ah, no, don’t do that. I said don’t! Woman, get off me. Ouch, damn it!”

I tipped my head to one side and looked at Robert. He shrugged and lifted both skeletal hands. Bridgette motioned to me. “I’m going to get around the front, see if I can see what’s happening.”

I moved to stop her, to tell her to stay with us, but she was gone before I could grab her. Damn it, splitting up was not a good idea.

“Stop it, stop touching me, you damn woman and your grabby hands!” Alan screeched, and then he was tumbling off the back of the platform. The Silver Lady followed him, albeit far more gracefully.

Her eyes locked on mine, and I motioned for her to come closer. I knew goblins could hear well, but I was hoping their senses weren’t as sharp as Sarge’s.

“Can you help me find my friends?” I barely whispered the words, but a scuffle immediately started on stage. I looked up to see a face shoved against the floor, an eye peering at me.

Well, shit.

I stared back, but the eye didn’t move.

“Get his face off the floor!” roared someone from above. “Keep him facing forward. I want her to see his slimy face!”

Grimm.

He was pulled off the boards, and the Silver Lady motioned again for Alan to hold out his hand.

“I don’t want to touch her,” he grumbled. I pointed a finger at him and then to her, using my best angry eyes.

Reluctantly, he held out his hand. “You’d better hold up to your part of the deal.”

His eyes widened as he touched the Silver Lady’s hand, and then he gasped and pulled back. “She showed me where they are. Under the Tits and Bits.”

Of course he’d noticed that place. I motioned for him to come with me, gave a slight bow at the waist to the Silver Lady, and then took off. Not exactly running, but hurrying as quickly as I could. Tits and Bits was about halfway down the Strip with a big neon sign featuring a naked goblin lady. The typos were the worst; I could only imagine the fun Jinx would have with her red pen in this town. The image above the sign seemed as anatomically incorrect as their typos were grammatically incorrect. Her bits didn’t look anything like mine—there was too much here, and not enough there, and pieces that I’m sure were toothlike. I’ll say that much and leave the rest to the imagination. But if everyone’s undercarriage looked like that, I could understand why some men might think they bite.

As we reached the building, the creak of wood and metal groaned through the air. I twisted around, twinging my back hard, which only made me gasp for the wrong reason. The right reason would have been the fact that the massive doors were opening, which meant we were closing in on midnight. Sarge and Jinx would be out front, hopefully, but they’d only be able to distract the goblin crowd for so long, and I didn’t want them getting hurt either if the king lost patience. Our time was running out.

“Hurry.” I pushed Alan ahead of me, and he went straight through the door. I tried the handle, but it was locked. I knocked, hoping for a guard we could bonk over the head, preferably one with a massive key ring, but no one came to answer the door. Apparently the goblin king thought the prisoners didn’t need a guard.

I stepped back and took a deep breath. “I can do this. I can kick the door down.” I swung forward with my foot as hard as I could—and the door bit back.

In other words, it didn’t move so much as an inch. My foot hit the door and all that force was pushed back into me. I bounced backward hard, landing on the ground with an expulsion of air from both ends.

Alan stuck his head through the door to laugh at me. “You’re an idiot.”

I rolled to the side, my butt and ego bruised. “Shut your trap.”

I pulled one knife free and used it to cut through the deadbolt. That’s how sharp they were, these knives Crash had made for me. Cut through steel, cut through magic, cut through bad guys.

I kept the knife in hand and pushed the door open into what was clearly a goblin strip joint. The room I stepped into was dim; only a few candle-filled chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and most of the candles had guttered out.

A series of stripper poles circled the room, each one in front of a large table covered with black cloth, with a main stage that had three poles set up.

Alan stood in the middle of the room. “Where is everyone?”

What he really wanted to know was where the strippers had gone. I didn’t even give him the time it would take to roll my eyes. I hurried through the room, avoiding touching anything. I had friends who danced for a living, and they were honestly some of the coolest people I knew. But given what I’d seen and smelled in Grimm’s hotel room, I didn’t want to rely on the cleanliness of goblin strippers and, worse, their clients.

“You need to lead the way,” I reminded him.

“They’re in the back, past the main stage, in the last room on the left,” he said as he slipped ahead of us, almost strutting.

I kept moving, Robert a half step behind me.

The door behind the long bar was locked so I headed up to the main stage, passing by the poles, saying nothing as I approached the back to check the door. Alan and Robert could probably get away with speaking since so few people could see them, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.

“What, you don’t want to give it a go?” Alan laughed as he stepped out to the side of me, grabbing a pole and pretending to swing around it. “Remember when you did pole fitness? God, what a joke. Such an embarrassment. You really shouldn’t have been shocked that I didn’t want to see you quote, dance, unquote, for me.”

My chest constricted with that old pain, from a time when I still cared what he thought about me. When I still cared what his friends thought about me. When I wanted him to love me and had yet to realize that no one who loved you would treat you like that. How could that hurt now, in the middle of everything that was happening? I turned away from him, unwilling to let him see the pain on my face. Because I wasn’t good at pretending. I just wasn’t, and he knew it.