"Maddie? Fish? You two still–? Ah." Pan stood in the doorway, trying not to look too highly entertained. "Sorry. Just came to say we’re heading up, and the centre elevator’s unlocked. Night."
"Lee."
Pan paused, offering Madeleine a look of polite enquiry which passed over the fact that Fisher had managed to unzip her dress and slide the straps over her shoulders to the point where it was necessary to use him as a screen.
"Noi likes you, you know."
A puzzled partial shrug in response.
"Really likes you."
His smile faded and he looked disbelieving. "You sure?"
"Very."
He blinked twice, then looked down and away, face completely blank. Lee Rickard, lost for words. Then the tiniest involuntary curling of the corners of his mouth, a smile trying to happen despite any attempt at control, twitching back whenever he tried to erase it. He looked up at them, eyes very wide, drew a deep breath, then let it out, and simply said: "Anyway, g’night," before leaving.
"Matchmaking?" Fisher asked.
"I wondered if perhaps it had simply never occurred to him that she would consider him."
"Because Lee Rickard is not, beneath it all, the eternally cocksure Pan?"
"Exactly. I hope it wasn’t a mistake. I’d hate to make this harder for either of them."
Out on the Mezzanine balcony a stage-trained voice lifted, strong enough to be clearly heard over the music. "Cock-a-DOOdle-doo!"
Fisher laughed. "Don’t worry too hard."
She smiled, and tightened her arms around him. "I’ve never really been part of a group. Not even before I had trouble at school. The teachers were always telling my parents I need to be taken out of myself. They thought I was hiding in my drawing."
"Too busy doing important things, no time for people. All very familiar." He stroked a loose curl away from her eyes. "I think I’m a good deal more like you than like Noi. And I’m enjoying all the complications of people far more than I could ever have expected. Tonight – tonight makes it easier to face tomorrow."
Madeleine couldn’t help but agree. Birthday parties, charades, and slow-dancing with someone whose eyes turned bright when he looked at her. Things which, like her painting, could give her the strength to run or to fight or to just keep going.
A climb to any height almost seems to invite calamity, and it was with a sense of the inevitable that Madeleine woke to oscillating song.
So close! She heaved out of the bed, an immediate, instinctive reaction, then stumbled in scant dawn light at the absence of Fisher. There was no time for guessing. Madeleine snatched at clothes, shoved feet into shoes. A glance showed the en suite was empty. Grabbing her bag, with only a fraction of thought spare to regret how little she’d kept packed, she bolted from the room.
"Maddie! Thank God."
Noi snatched Madeleine’s hand and reversed direction, pulling her into the next suite.
"I can’t find Fisher," Madeleine said, struggling to keep the words low, searching the thin shadows.
"He knows the plan."
Moth song again, sounding like it was right outside the door of the room, and Madeleine gulped and hoped a plan would be enough, racing with Noi through the series of interconnected suites. The others had already collected in the furthest, poised by the entry door.
"Did you and Fish leave the elevator unlocked?" Pan asked.
"No!" Madeleine was absolutely certain of that.
"Questions later." Noi pushed them toward the door. "Go."
The floors of the hotel tower were shaped like a segment of rainbow, with the suites all along the outside, accessed via a single corridor which bracketed the smaller inner curve containing the lifts and service areas. Fire escapes were located at either end, and the plan for escape was to run to the fire escape furthest from any intruding Moths and go down two levels to one of the lifts which had deliberately been parked away from their sleeping floor. Of course, it was a plan based on the assumption that the Moths would have to approach their floor by climbing and punching their way out of one of the fire escapes, that they would be guessing as to which floor the Musketeers were on, and would have tripped one of the alarms getting into the building in the first place. Instead of five steps ahead, the Musketeers were four behind, and all they could do was scramble.
They barrelled through the door into unfurling wings.
Momentum carrying her forward, crowded on all sides, Madeleine didn’t dare shield-punch, and dived left, trying to avoid the Moth while still heading in the direction of the fire escape. She lost her footing, found Emily on her knees beside her and grabbed her hand.
"Go! Don’t wait!" Noi urged, catching up Emily’s other hand as the boys hesitated a step down the corridor.
Madeleine staggered to her feet. Emily’s hand tightened in hers, and the girl let out a startled little sound. And stopped still. Nearly falling again, Madeleine stared back at Emily’s calm face, and tried to let go of a hand which suddenly held firm to hers.
"No." Noi, caught on Emily’s other side, pulled her hand free, but did not run. "Millie…"
"Noi." A mocking tone, accompanied by a thin smile which did not fit Emily’s young face. "Just wait there."
"For pity’s sake, look up!" Min grabbed Noi’s arm and swung her aside, then ducked himself, but not quick enough. A second Moth settled around his shoulders, and sank beneath his skin.
With a wordless, sobbing cry Noi snatched at Madeleine’s hand and pulled her free, and they ran with Nash and Pan as another ball of light drifted into view, and behind them two boys, one strawberry blonde and the other sandy-haired.
"Fish!"
At Pan’s exclamation Madeleine looked ahead. They’d rounded enough of the corridor’s curve to see the fire exit door, and Fisher waiting beside it, and the relief was so strong she stumbled, but then found the strength for a burst of speed, catching up with Nash as Fisher took a step or two in their direction.
Their speed undid them. The quiet determination of Fisher’s expression, the way he moved away from the fire exit instead of opening the door, stopping to rest a hand against the wall and lift the other, it was all clearly wrong, but they processed this too late to not run straight into the shield he raised.
Madeleine’s own shield reacted automatically, saving her from paralysis while bouncing her violently backward. She had barely wit enough to create a shield to protect her head from smashing into the ceiling, but this had the effect of slam-dunking her to the carpeted corridor floor.
Wind knocked out of her, sight hazed with wriggling grey, she lay stunned for vital seconds, struggling to breathe. Time enough for the strawberry blonde boy who had once been Gavin to take hold of her arm and pull back the sleeve, for the prick of a needle to add to her confusion. She tried to pull away, managing to catch a glimpse of Pan floundering to his feet above a paralysed Nash, trying to shield against the Moth which danced around him.
Noi, least-impaired, punched at Gavin, but the sandy-haired boy was between them, planting his feet, shield shimmering to visibility as it absorbed the energy.
"Not bad," he said, and then collapsed.
The sandy-haired boy’s body landed beside Madeleine, as a deeply blue-veined Moth lifted out of him. She gasped and tried to make heavy limbs move, staring into the boy’s green eyes, glazed and empty. It was so hard to lift her head. She heard Noi cry out, a shout of rage and despair, and then, nothing.
Chapter Twenty
Cotton-headed, mouth dry, driven to consciousness by a Blue’s hunger, Madeleine cracked eyelids and winced at the assault of unrelenting sunlight. Then the full unpleasantness of memory intruded, and she bolted upright.