While I stared at the happy black-and-white family photo on the computer screen, awash in puzzlement and naked envy, I heard a clunking sound somewhere out there.
Pipes maybe? The massive air conditioning system in these mega-hotels coughing? No! The private elevator doors opening.
I stood, clicking out of Cicereau’s Photo Album as fast as I could while checking the room for hiding places. I doubted I could manage any mirror tricks on such notice. I was too new at it. Besides, Madrigal had probably helped me out on the other end.
Here, I was on my own.
So, what’s new, Kansas pussycat?
I eyed the moony globes of the lighting fixtures. The last thing Cicereau and his staff needed to know was how I’d managed to break in here. I mustn’t get caught. I grabbed a stapler from the desk and rushed to the door.
I couldn’t hear any oncoming footsteps because of the thick carpets but I sure sensed incoming unfriendly fire. I dialed the light control to dark and with one whack the heavy metal stapler slammed the shattered plastic control to the carpeting.
The room went dark. Thudding feet were coming toward me at a dead run. One pair. One man. I had to knock him unconscious before he saw me.
I made sure to stand far enough back that the opening door wouldn’t nail me. I still clutched the stapler. In a locked-down position it made as good a blackjack as anything.
It was against my nature to sandbag some unsuspecting henchman who was just doing his job, but I’d have to steel myself to do it. And hit hard enough to knock him out. I put myself back in my self-defense class mode; first, scream like a girl; then, fight like a guy. Actually, the first scream needed to be the deepest, most manly voice I could manage, shouting “No!”
Mike Wu had insisted that we all have an inner toddler with a visceral tendency to obey that parental shout, even serial killers.
Trouble was, I didn’t want Cicereau and minions to even know my sex. The stapler across a skull was going to have to shout “no!” for me.
I waited, trying to keep my breathing from gushing like a geyser in the silent room.
Someone slammed the door flat against the wall and immediately shut it. Good thinking. He knew that one piece of wall was vacant and took it himself. And now he had me trapped.
I heard him move across the shut door, blocking it for good measure. And then I heard a lock snap. Just one of those cheesy set-into-the-doorknob switches, but it’d be hard to find and release quickly in the dark.
I had to take him down.
Right now his hand was brushing the wall on the right side of the closed door, looking for the light control dial.
The patting motions found the empty plate, and paused.
I couldn’t help nodding, although no one could see me in the dark. Right. No light.
Except I saw two faint gleams turn on. About two inches apart. Yellow-green. Funky chartreuse, actually.
Shoot!
This was some kind of super and he knew how to make those little lights of his shine. His eyes. Wow. Maybe six feet off the ground. I was five-eight in my magic show workout ballet flats. It was going to be tough to get high enough to hit his head.
On the positive side, those reflective irises told me whether he was facing fore or aft.
So . . . just how much did they see in the dark?
I crouched low, hearing him move toward the desk.
The computer chimed as he turned it on. The screen would add some ambient light to the room. Can’t have that. I stood and hurled the stapler at the sound.
The display screen slid across the desk and shattered to the floor.
There also went my only weapon.
I’d slid back to the door during the crash and turned the knob button sideways. That was the “open” position, wasn’t it? I’d seen these locks a thousand times on rest room doors.
The chartreuse eyes moved up from the level of bending over the laptop to full height again.
They came slamming toward the door just as I sidled away.
He thumped to a full stop against the wood. If I’d still been standing there, I’d have been caught, and semi-crushed too.
Maybe I should give up now, while I still had an intact skeleton. What would Cicereau do to me, really? I was his prize performer.
I’d only been snooping in his private office, digging up the dirt on his long-dead daughter. Maybe he’d thank me. Maybe he didn’t know what had happened to her. Maybe I could hallucinate in the dark. There weren’t any photos of her on his trophy wall. No, he himself had wanted her dead and buried for some reason. Ric and I had unearthed her, against all their hopes and plans, promising to make her loss and death into a cause célèbre again.
While I calculated this and that, the eerie green eyes lunged at exactly where I was standing.
I stepped one giant step away, soundlessly, the carpet muffling my movement.
Green Eyes cursed. It was a growled word, untranslatable, the werewolf equivalent of “fuck” probably.
I so wished for Quicksilver, but this had been a solo expedition. It would have to be a solo escape.
I fumbled behind me and found one of those vintage cigarette stands, the metal equivalent of a birdbath pedestal. I lifted it in both hands and swung it in a wide, blind swath.
It connected with flesh and bone, hard enough that even I winced.
I heard my victim, my stalker, hit the door and slide down it, half-dazed to go by the muffled growls.
I was blocked from the door. My only exit would have to be reflective.
The slab of mirror that reflected the bottles and glasses awaited me, but I needed a door out of darkness and into infinity and a light that would put the mirror into play.
Cigar aficionado Cicereau’s office was filled with tabletop lighters. It would be sweet to use the fat-cat werewolf’s affectations to escape his security guy.
I fumbled on the bar top until I felt a lighter embedded in a marble miniature of the Gehenna and cocked and depressed the mechanism. Dozens of tiny flames reflected in the glassware, the silver ice bucket, the mirror behind them all.
I saw myself, a crouched pale figure. I saw Green Eyes behind me, the hit man called Sansouci, rising dazed against the solid wood door. I embraced my own reflection and went oozing through the melting mirror-glass, Madrigal’s voice in my ears, calling. “Come back.”