Dancing With Werewolves (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-Six

The really bad part about becoming part of Team Gehenna (an ancient name for Hell, don’t you know?) was that once inside the massive structure, like Dorothy in Oz I wasn’t sure of ever going home again.

One of Cicereau’s lieutenants took Quick and me into custody. For a flying monkey he was pretty chunky-hunky. I’d noticed him blending into the black pine of the office walls. He had a pronounced widow’s peak in a thicket of dark hair streaked with silver. He wore a black suit, gray shirt, and red tie like a gout of designer-silk blood. He was young despite the silver streaks, but easy to sum up. Hard body, hard mind, hard heart. Cicereau had called him Sansouci. In French the phrase meant “without care.”

It didn’t fit him. Everything about him screamed extreme control, including his icy manner as he escorted Quicksilver and me a few floors down in the silver bullet elevator. I smelled an astringent cologne in the elevator’s austere close quarters. Aquavit on ice
. Essence
du
hit man.

With all the warmth of a vampire undertaker, Sansouci showed Quicksilver and me to our new home, suite, home.

It was ultra luxurious: two huge bedrooms and several living areas. We were given a pass card to the hotel running track, gym, spa, and exercise rooms. We would be under constant surveillance, Sansouci informed us, even when I walked the dog on the rooftop swath of grass. And, by the way, the drop to the Strip below was forty stories and traffic was always heavy.

I didn’t mind slamming the door shut on his straight, impervious back, which stayed there, facing out into the hall like a guard.

Exploring the suite, I found a refrigerator stuffed with rabbit food veggies and fish. Message sent. This was
me
. I doubted the Gehenna gang went much for broccoli or even rabbits when on their monthly wolfish runs through the desert. That was
them
.

My bedroom closet held a tracksuit, running shoes, pajamas, slippers and nothing else. Meanwhile, my heart and brain were revving on hyper drive, worrying about Godfrey and Nightwine missing us, worrying about where I’d allowed Quicksilver and me to be taken . . . and taken prisoner.

The reporter in me realized that I had a unique undercover position to exploit until I learned what I needed to know. Like all undercover assignments, this one was uncertain and scary. I had been ordered, immediately, to visit the magician called Madrigal’s far more palatial suite two floors above. Of course Quicksilver would accompany me.

Mr. Big may have been my assigned boss, but I was curious to see how his headliner would like being saddled with a
CSI V
corpse and a gigantic wolfhound.

Clad in my same Sunset Park terrycloth shorts and top, Quicksilver and I passed the suite door and the waiting Sansouci to return to the elevator. Once inside, we all three faced forward and stared mutely at the floor indicator.

Oddly, Sansouci remained inside when the elevator doors opened. Quick and I were on our own with the magician. His suite was dead ahead, the door surface crossed with glittering gold wands.

I rang the doorbell. Yeah, penthouse suites at the Gehenna had doorbells. Hell didn’t let just anybody in.

I wasn’t sure if “Madrigal” or “Mad Max” answered.

Whichever, he was tall, broad, and bronze-skinned, with sea-green eyes and golden-brown dreadlocks. He wore a sleeveless tee that showed off elaborate bicep tattoos and martial arts pants. I couldn’t help noticing that his pecs were so developed that his nipples stood at permanent and distracting attention. I felt small and pale and stupid and very unwanted, which wasn’t a new feeling for me since kidhood, even though I’d outgrown the small part.

“What is this?” Madrigal’s deep basso held the charmed singsong accent of the Caribbean islands, soft and welcoming where his physical appearance, however melting pot hot, was rigid and off-putting. “Little Orphan Annie and her dog, Sandy?”

“Mr. Cicereau wants me to use the name Margie.”

“Yeah. I got my marching orders, and I saw that particular
CSI V
episode. What do you do besides sneeze maggots?”

I couldn’t help wincing on behalf of my maybe-baby sister, Lilith. “It was a job. Apparently I made a good impression in it.”

“Nudity and gore work rating wonders. A magician’s assistant, on the other hand, works hard. She has to be smart, strong, and supple.”

“I can do that.”

“And the dog?”

“Smart, strong, and fanged.”

He sighed hard enough to distract me, then stepped back from the door to let us in. “My act doesn’t need some T and A ratings upswing.”

T and A
meant tits and ass, and I sure didn’t like being reduced to that formula. “I haven’t seen it, but I don’t doubt it.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I wasn’t asked.”

His hands knotted in front of him. Then he looked at me for the first time and flicked his bronze eyelashes upward.

Observed, of course.

“Where do we rehearse? I asked, thinking that might be private.

He shook his head slightly. “On stage, during the day. We’ll have lots of time,” he said, bitterly.

I recognized what he really meant.
Later, we’ll have time to really talk
. He seemed to be as monitored as I was but maybe he’d learned a way around it. A magician would.

I didn’t want to believe that this he-man magician had been as easily corralled as I had, because, if so, then my particular goose was royally cooked and garlanded with cranberry sauce as runny and, like Snow White’s lips, as red as blood.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Rehearsals began that very day. A leotard and tights, rose pink, had appeared in my closet. From noon to 4 pm Madrigal and I worked out.

“You’re too tall, too heavy, too busty, too clumsy,” Madrigal said when he saw me clothed in neck-to-ankle Spandex that made me feel way too naked.

We weren’t alone during this embarrassing summation. A tiny doll of a girl in a white outfit like mine hung back in the wings, watching us.

“Syl,” Madrigal called with an extravagant bow and arm gesture. She came running onstage as lightly as a forever pre-pubescent ballerina. Her hair was Swedish white-blond and her skin had the sugary glow of a pastel gumdrop in blended Easter candy colors, lavender, white, yellow, pink. She was the born sugarplum fairy.

For the next hour I watched her curl into a box that seemed no more than a square foot in dimension and squeeze into six-inch false backs behind deceptive magical cabinets. Syl was triple-jointed, fairy-like, and astounding. She not only collapsed every joint in her body, she coiled into herself like a Slinky. She was also mute, I finally figured out. And her full name paid tribute to her physical plasticity: Sylphia. Emphasis on the
PHEE
as in a form of Sofia. Which meant wisdom in the ancient world. Or maybe the
phee
in her name was for
fey
.

Whatever, I watched them work together in awe and shame.

Lilith and I were an insulting replacement for Sylphia’s abilities and artistry, bit players who should have stayed on the bottom fifth of the Screen Actors Guild membership list. But here we were with our shiny cheap media magic and had to perform.

That first afternoon Madrigal taught me to curl into a fetal bundle as small as my stiff and medium-boned frame could manage, but when I had to do it in a lady-sawed-in half box, I freaked from the dark confinement.

Sylphia fluttered to my side, tiny hands soothing my shaking shoulders. Her face was a mime’s mask of heart-felt sympathy. I looked into her pale almond eyes and wondered, was she an enforced worker here too? Was Madrigal?

He unpeeled her from me with gentle fingers, then un-pretzeled me not quite so gently.

Madrigal seemed major upset. With me, with the situation. I couldn’t blame him. Nobody professional wanted an amateur for a partner. We split for the dressing rooms. I tried not to watch Syl shed her leotard and tights like a paper cocoon. Mine were sweaty and seemed glued to my tense, damp skin.

A knock on the door revealed Madrigal, already changed into thick green terrycloth, the house robe.

Syl’s thin eyelashes fluttered distress as he beckoned me out, silently.

He was our fearless leader. I followed.He walked me into his private dressing room and then the shower, turned on the water, and tested it on his wrist as if warming milk for a baby. Then he pulled the opaque glass door shut as water pattered inside. He stripped off my leotard and tights with one long gesture, not bothering to watch as I hopped, naked, to free my bare feet from the snarl of Spandex. He dropped his terrycloth robe, yanked open the door on a cloud of steam, and stepped in with me before I could register anything but a wall of caramel-colored skin. Luckily, the shower was so frothy neither of us could see much but hot mist. Nor could anybody else, even a spy camera.

“They can’t hear us in here,” Madrigal murmured in my ear, his hand on my elbow.

I flailed a bit, still freaked by our sudden nude tête-à-tête.

“This is the only way. The werewolves revere human mating rituals. They only mate once a month in furred form. Naked human lust 24/7 inspires them. They’ll assume our presumed union will guarantee your continuing cooperation.”

Oh.

Madrigal pulled me more closely under the shower’s hot tropical rain. He also pulled me closer against him. I didn’t want to think how nice all this wet heat and slippery skin felt after the frigid uncertainty of being snatched from the Las Vegas streets and forced to turn myself into a human Windsor knot.

“I hear your name is Maggie,” he said.

“
Lilah,”
I corrected. I was starting to split personalities, not wanting to pass as my maybe-sister, not willing to be fully answerable as myself.

“You’re too solid for this profession,” he said, “but Cicereau only expects me to make a show of you, not a true performer. Neither of us deserves to be a pawn in the were-packs’ game.”

He was pretty, oh, solid himself.

Gad! I’d put myself in a position where my new sensual self was bereft and alone. Who wouldn’t welcome an ally in this situation? Who human? So what was Madrigal? Better question, who was I? Was it normal to be a little edgy yet excited when suddenly naked with an attractive stranger in a tropical steam bath of a shower? Pardon me for not knowing. They didn’t teach us anything about this at Our Lady of the Lake Convent School. In fact, I couldn’t remember much that they had taught us at OLLCS. While I was dithering, my trip back down Amnesia Lane pretty much killed any knee-jerk libido I had left.

What remained were the usual mysteries and insecurities, hints and allegations. Sure, my background was weird and isolated, but I’d managed to pass as a smart, savvy cookie since college. Trouble was, I had no idea what “normal” was. I did realize that I had pretty much shut down any sexual outreach or input after whatever bad had happened, whenever and wherever that was.

In the real, working world, I’d learned to look good for the camera and pass unmolested through all inter-sexual social situations. My aloofness only made me more attractive, more of a “challenge,” to the wrong guys. I’d never met any right guys until Ric. And now—hot dog!—every guy, except goons, hitmen, and werewolf CEOs, seemed sort of right if I didn’t get too picky or wigged out.

While I was doing all this useless navel-gazing, I suddenly saw that I really
was
seeing my own navel through the mists of steam. And a lot of naked and tattooed Madrigal standing behind me.

I put out my palm until it hit a barrier and married with its own image. The surface I touched was cool, smooth, and solid glass. Mirror. So why was it cold when the shower stall and steam were so overheated?

I had stepped close enough that there wasn’t much mist veiling me anymore. I ran my palm down over my reflected image in a hopeless gesture of self-defense.

A modesty veil of steam welled up like a geyser from the floor, obscuring me to my neck. The nuns would be as proud as if I’d publicly disavowed patent leather shoes.

“Did you do that?” Madrigal asked.

“Do it? No, I just thought—”

“Thought what?”

“That . . . that I was a little overexposed for conspiring under the guise of coed showering.”

He stepped closer, behind me.

Oh, no. I apparently was now sensitized to rear approaches.

His arms reached out of my shoulder-high mist to place both his palms on the mirror.

“Touch it again,” he said.

Well, um, “it” was one of those sneaky indefinite pronouns and my mind was no longer the lofty, pristine summit of rational thought it had been.

“The mirror,” he added more softly, his voice thrumming at the top of my head. There was just enough purr in it to tell me that he grasped, and was male enough to enjoy, my confusion.

Damn! I would become the coolest chick this world had ever seen someday. Meanwhile . . . I did as he suggested.

And then I saw what he had seen, which wasn’t just me naked, but which was the mirror,
softening, blurring
under my hands. As if I could sink into it.

My palms were tingling way more than any other part of me, which was an improvement, in my estimation. I felt icy electrical static nips at the very heart of them, where headline and heartline and lifeline met and crossed. This was the hollow center of my hands, which I could never flatten to any surface. This was . . . the navel of my hands, as I had one at the center of my body.

I’d never felt anything in these zones before, but now they were almost alive. My hands pushed into the silver graven image of themselves and it was as if I were touching a second self lurking just beyond my sight.

Madrigal’s hands commandeered my shoulders.

“Lilah. Come back.”

I didn’t want to. I was enthralled by Mirrorland. I could sense others moving out there, even picture myself out there.

Madrigal pulled my shoulders back until I was pressed against his hot, wet body, so physical, so crude compared to the call of Mirrorland, of those insubstantial, shifting things in the mist.

He wrenched himself and me away from the mirror to face the mechanics of the shower, the steamed-over glass door, barely visible and a poor excuse for the magical looking-glass door I’d just opened in the mirror, and the glitzy, gleaming overdone gold shower head and controls.

He’d wrenched me away from all that by pressing me against all of him. Was that my choice? The power of magic and the mind? Or the power of desire and the body?

If so, I never wanted to make that choice.

“Relax, I won’t crowd you, here or onstage.”

Madrigal’s grip loosened. I sensed his mind backing off slightly, the usual singsong sensuality in the words, yet our closeness had turned comrade-like. Even as I breathed a sigh of relief, I wondered what he really wanted. I wondered what I really wanted of him and if I could betray him if I had to.

“I have friends who’ll be looking for me,” I warned.

“So did I.”

Not good.

“We’ll have to work up a routine for them,” he said.

“I want out. Can’t you tell? I’m claustrophobic and I have major issues about being bound in that damn horizontal corpse position from
CSI
.”

“That industrial-strength familiar of yours might be a key.”

I tried to feel the silver upon my body: the thin, hip-slung chain I wore under everything, a talisman of Ric and his . . . I guess it was love. I wanted to believe it was love. And where was Snow’s hair shirt, as he had called it? I couldn’t feel it, hadn’t thought of it, felt it, since being abducted.

“My familiar?” I asked, playing for time to think. He surprised me.

“The were-hunter. Don’t think they don’t know what he really is. They must know they can’t have you without suffering its presence. They must want you very badly.”

Oh. Quicksilver.
Were-hunter
. Sounds serious.
Good dog!

“Not as badly as I want them,” I answered.

“You think you’re a hunter too?

“I am. A hunter of the truth.”

He laughed, hard. Okay, that was a pretentious line but we crusading journalists get a little over-intense at times. I told him what I had used to be, not that long ago.

“Investigative reporter? I wish you could do an exposé on this operation.”

“Sylphia. You two can’t leave?” I asked.

“It’s not that simple. We could maybe. Each in our own way, but we’d have to forsake the other. She’s not the only one to consider.”

I nodded, although he couldn’t see the gesture. “You’re lucky to have such solidarity.”

“And cursed.”

“I’m neither lucky nor cursed. Help me get out of here when I need to go, and I’ll do my best to come back for you and Sylphia.”

“All you have going for you is that were-hunter.”

And I didn’t know what the hell a were-hunter was, except the obvious. I had a deep-down feeling that Quicksilver was way more than anyone might take him for, even the werewolf mob. Even me.

“What are we working on tomorrow?” I asked.

“The mirrors.”

“Mirrors?”

“Everything magic is mirrors.”

“That’s where you could really teach me something. I may be too tall, too heavy, too busty, too clumsy, but I think you’re right. I might have a way with mirrors.”

I felt his large hard hands on my ribcage, his thumbs softly brushing the roots of my breasts until I shivered.

“I was speaking of the attributes of a stage magician’s assistant. I wasn’t speaking of my own personal preferences.”

Okay. His unbreakable bond to Sylphia wasn’t sexual or romantic. That realization made me uneasy but I liked him even the better for it. And what had he meant by a “stage magician” as opposed to . . . some other kind? Like the real thing?

“We have to let them believe we have mated.” He Frenched me in the shower, tasting fluoridation and my fear long enough so that I knew he liked it. Liked what? The water, the fear, the sweet sensuality, the danger of our hidden alliance? Who knew?

“Use my robe when you leave. Cicereau and his were-goons don’t deserve a thrill.”

He left me there, wet and steamy. I grabbed the fallen terrycloth robe as soon as I stuck a toe out of that shower. Then I checked for the silver familiar.

It was again a charm bracelet—did that mean that it would work like a literal charm? This time it was a jangling collection of sterling silver keys, with one lock among them all: a wolf’s head, its open fangs the aperture that all or any of those keys would slam home to.

Snow had spoken. Or I liked to think he had. The keys to everything I sought were here. Okay. That gave me an agenda. An investigative reporter always liked that.