I told myself to focus on the problem at hand. Wyatt’s problem. Which was not, in fact, my problem. “Still, if Silvio is your cardinal vampire, can’t you go to him about the skinners and the missing vampires?”

Wyatt snorted. “I tried. His people told me to come back on the first Sunday of the month, when he’ll be ‘holding court.’ I’ll have to wait my turn in line, of course,” he added sarcastically.

I just had to ask. “Did they really use the phrase ‘holding court’?” Most of the vampires I knew didn’t bother with vainglorious speaking patterns. They needed to blend in with humans, not sound like a reenactment from a special on the History Channel.

“Yep.” Wyatt rubbed his face again. “I don’t know if the man is just an imbecile, or if he doesn’t want to look into these disappearances because he promised the Holmwoods not to make any big moves. Could be both, I reckon.”

Ugh. I couldn’t really blame Wyatt for being upset, or for wanting to find Ellen’s killer some other way. The Holmwoods had come to Las Vegas with their big, attention-grabbing act, and in the process they’d more or less undermined the power of their puppet cardinal vampire. The skinners could be using that gap in authority to come in and kill a bunch of vampires. It was actually a pretty slick idea, from their perspective.

“What can you tell me about the skinners?” I asked Wyatt. It was like the third time I had asked that question today.

“Nothing I can prove. There are rumors that they’re in town, that they’re here to kill as many vampires as they can. But no one has any descriptions or names, nothing like that.”

“Are they after the Holmwoods?”

He pursed his lips, his old-fashioned mustache pointing outward like bristles. “To kill them? I don’t know. But I suspect all the publicity drew them here.”

That was kind of what I was thinking, too, but Wyatt wasn’t finished. “Miss Scarlett, you have to understand, vampires flock to Las Vegas because of the easy pickings. The tourist population, the homeless, the sad sacks who have lost all their money and are half-suicidal anyway. It’s a goddamned buffet for us. Point is, there already were lots of vampires, and now that the Holmwoods are here, more and more will be coming to visit. Which makes us easy pickings for the skinners.”

Goose bumps broke out on my bare arms. Even Molly had talked about coming to see the Holmwoods, and she couldn’t be the only one. It certainly seemed possible that these skinners had followed the Holmwoods here, or been drawn by their extremely well-publicized vampire show. If your goal was to kill vampires, this was a great fish-in-a-barrel kind of setup.

“In that case, they’d want the Holmwoods to stay alive. As bait,” I said, mostly to myself. Wyatt nodded.

Then I got it. If you were a skinner and your goal in life was to kill vampires, what would be the best possible tool in your arsenal? A null. Jeez, no wonder Jameson had a bodyguard. And maybe that was why he’d said the Holmwoods would kill me if they saw me. Nulls are rare enough that they might assume any other null in Vegas had to be with the skinners. Dammit, this was getting too complicated. Not to mention way above my pay grade.

“I’m sorry about your wife, Wyatt,” I said, meaning it. I’ve never been a fan of the “all vampires are evil” mentality, mostly because around me, they were just people again. Often arrogant, out-of-touch people, but still. After meeting Wyatt, I had to agree with Laurel’s assessment that he was a decent guy. “And I’ll tell the cardinal vampire of Los Angeles everything I’ve learned, so he can decide on further action. You have my word on that.” I stood up, hoping he would take the hint.

But he didn’t move. “That’s not enough,” he said firmly. “I want you to find the skinners who killed Ellen. The Holmwoods won’t do it; they don’t give a shit as long as they’re making money. That means Silvio won’t waste resources on it either, and I’m guessing Minerva is as dead as the rest of ’em. We need you.”

Wait, what? “I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong idea,” I said, sinking back into my seat and crossing my arms. “I’m not actually investigating this. I’m only here for the weekend.”

“I made a few calls tonight, to friends in LA,” he said, with a new glint in his eye. “They all said that Scarlett Bernard has a tendency to make things move. And that you’ve gotten involved in this kind of business before.”

“In my town, on my turf, and with my own allies,” I countered. “This is a very different situation.”

But Wyatt went on like he hadn’t heard me. “You also do jobs for hire. Freelance jobs.”

I shook my head. This was getting away from me. “That’s not why I’m here.” Okay, it was exactly why I was here, but this guy didn’t need to know that.

Wyatt frowned at me, and then he reached into both his coat pockets. I felt my fingers automatically stray toward the knife in my pocket, but he just pulled out two flat stacks of cash, each one maybe an inch thick. He slammed the stacks on the coffee table between us, hard enough to make me jump.

“That’s a hundred thousand dollars,” he said flatly. “That’s our emergency money. I want you to use it to find Ellen’s killer.”

I sat there for several seconds with my mouth opening and closing like a hungry goldfish. Wyatt waited, looking resigned to my incredulity.

My head suddenly felt full of helium. The money on the table would pay off pretty much all of Jack and Juliet’s hospital debts. Of course, that was assuming I could figure out how to launder it, which I knew nothing about. And then I’d have to turn it into an anonymous donation to Logan. Or maybe I could tell Juliet and Jack I’d won big at poker? No, Jack knew how bad I was at cards. An inheritance from a dead client? Then they were going to think I’d done a lot more for him than clean the floors.

Slow down, I told myself. Yeah, daydreaming about sudden riches was fun, but at the end of the day, it was just money. And all the money in the world wouldn’t buy me any investigative competence in a city I didn’t know. I was just a twentysomething from LA who could barely dress herself. I was not the person to handle this disaster of a situation. I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. The money Dashiell was giving me for coming this far would clear up a chunk of Jack and Juliet’s debt, too, and I’d keep saving.

“I’m not looking for more work,” I said at last, tearing my eyes away from the cash. “But like I said, I will talk to Dashiell for you. He feels some responsibility for Las Vegas; I’m sure he’ll help.”

Wyatt sighed and added, “Look, I hear good things about this Dashiell, but he has his own interests, not to mention his own city to worry about, hundreds of miles away. He’s not going to be able to move around in the daytime like you can. Plus, he won’t be able to ask questions and poke around without risking a vampire war. You’re a third party; you’re not bound by our rules.”

I had to admit, that was sort of true. If I was here on a freelance job, then my actions wouldn’t reflect back on Dashiell or the LA Old World. At the same time, no one who knew about me would be anxious to hurt me, considering my day job was for the cardinal vampire of Los Angeles.

But that was assuming everyone would know my whole employment situation before they decided to try to kill me, which was a pretty big leap. And what about Juliet? If I gave up on the bachelorette party ruse, and someone learned that I had family in town, they could hurt her to get to me. It was an old, tired cliché, but only because it was so effective.

I shook my head. “Wyatt . . . I can’t. And, honestly, even if I could, that’s way too much money. I don’t . . . that’s way too much. I don’t know who gave you null freelance rates, but he and I do not play in the same league.”

Wyatt looked tired all of a sudden. He’d probably been in his early thirties when he was turned, but suddenly I could make out the cracks and fine lines in his face, a weariness born of too many years and too many unwanted experiences. He picked up his hat again, turning it over and over.

“This isn’t just a freelance rate,” he said, his voice catching a little. “Like I said, this was our emergency savings. After I kill whoever took Ellen away from me, I won’t need it anymore. If you think it’s too much, you can give it away, gamble it, save it, whatever. I don’t give two shits what you do with it after I find Ellen’s killer.”