It was hard not to bump into tourists who stopped unexpectedly to coo about the "cute" animated birds in the faux foliage. Right, cute. Those eye-in-the-sky birds had probably X-rayed their clothes down to the skivvies and recorded their credit card and driver's license numbers and their retinas.
The weight of my police duty belt and its array of defensive weapons had taught me the law enforcement swagger. That walk kept the tourists respectfully out of my path and the real security guards subtly nodding to me as I moved deeper into the behemoth of a building.
Illuminated signs guided me through a couple blocks of casino. Near an arcade of pricey shops, the theater entrance beckoned with a marquee framed in the usual round light bulbs. The house would be "dark" yet, until the 7:00 and 10:00 p.m. shows. I pushed through the blank door.
"Hey," said a voice behind me. "It's closed."
I turned to face a security guard dressed like a Robin Hood merry man.
"I know. I'm on an errand for the boss. He left his Blackberry here."
The guard was a young guy, jumpy. Not good. So I blathered on.
"I'm just saving Sansouci the bother, but if you want to bother him to check, it's okay by me." I hit the word "bother" twice, ominously.
"Ah… no. That's fine. We don't need to bother Mr. Sansouci. You go get it."
"Thanks, bro." I waved him toodleloo and ducked into the absolute dark inside, grinning. As I'd guessed, the staff knew Sansouci was no one to trifle with. Not that I hadn't tried, the last time I was here, with middling success.
Now, the magician Madrigal I could handle, if I could only find the guy.
I walked down a raked aisle between rows of seats, finally doffing the sunglasses and letting my eyes acclimate until they could focus on the "ghost light" to the left of the stage far below. It's an old theater tradition to leave one light on so anyone coming in doesn't trip over all the technical equipment in the wings.
Given that Madrigal was something of a real magician, I didn't trust that one small burning bulb a bit.
The stage seemed deserted, but I walked slowly up the access stairs at the side of the house. Madrigal had an exclusive contract with the Gehenna, perhaps for eternity. None but he used this stage, none but he set it up.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the ghost light soften, then flare. At the same instant, a gossamer steel net fell over my shoulders. Before I could pull any weapons from my hip-slung belt, I was jerked off my feet, swinging upside down and being drawn up into the high flies above like a wriggling fish on a line.
I kicked hard to grab the super-strong filament and twist semi-upright before all my belt trinkets fell to the floor and my wig hairpins pulled out.
Meanwhile, I felt a narrow ribbon of cold metal climb my torso under my clothes. It emerged out my short sleeve, twining my arm down to the wrist. Presto-change-o! I had a charm-bracelet chain dangling the cutest miniature wire cutter you ever saw. A Break-in Barbie accessory. There should be such a doll!
Pulling the implement into my hand, I began snipping links of the net that was forming around me. The fibers- stringy, gelatinous, yet strong-snapped. More formed to replace the broken lines as soon as I severed them.
My so-called wondrous opposable thumb was aching from my desperate, machine-gun fast motions. I knew I was up against Mother Nature. Well, a perversion of Mother Nature. Madrigal wouldn't hurt me, much less kill me, but I knew nothing of the sort about his fanatically attached pair of magician's assistants, Sylphia and Phasia.
A doll-small, gorgeously girly face penetrated the broken links to rub cheeks with mine. Her iridescent skin was colder than the side of an ice bucket.
"We don't want you back," she whispered, her voice like wind, or rushing water, or the pass of a dagger near your neck.
"I'm not back," I said. "Just visiting."
Phasia's supple serpent muscles tightened around me inside the entrapping mesh her spider-sister Sylphia had woven around me. Phasia was the serpent-sister of the two.
By now I was hiked so high above the dark stage floor below that snipping net fibers would be suicidal.
"Phasia!" My cry came out a whisper. The serpent-familiar was tightening her coils on my chest and lungs and heart.
I could feel the wire cutters lengthening and growing like a sterling silver vine toward Phasia's iridescent-scaled neck…
"Let her go," a voice thundered from below, its deep tolling power vibrating through all of us, felt by all three.
I was released so quickly that my lungs burned from a massive inhalation. I plummeted down fifty feet to the black floor below and the figure of a man making a small vertical island on it.
I wanted to shut my eyes, but resisted, seeing that it was a race to the finish. The lengthening silver rope tied around my wrist flung upward to loop around a pipe high above and shortened fast to stop my fall…just as my body landed, cradled in the muscular arms of the man bracing his legs below.
The metal rope released above and fell coiling into a delicate chain around my neck.
Madrigal lowered me to the floor, still glaring up into the darkened flies.
"Behave yourselves, spawn of Darkness. Dead humans on our doorstep will inconvenience Cicereau."
He eyed my blond wig and black leather, then let my boots touch the floor.
"You're trespassing," he said. "You have no business here. Leave and count yourself lucky."
"But I do."
Perhaps my voice sounded familiar. He paused in turning away.
"I do have business here," I explained.
Madrigal turned back to me. He was built and dressed more like a World Wrestling Federation champion than a magician. The Gehenna Hotel billboards advertising the magic act depicted him as a strongman and the homicidal assistants twin Tinker Bells.
Competition-level muscles made his tawny skin look sculpted in age-darkened bronze. His thick dreadlocks gleamed like beaten metal. Magicians came in three major stereotypes. The long-haired lean and elderly Gandalf type with flowing gown and beard was one. The short and muscular athlete type like escapologist Harry Houdini was another. The modern model was lean, limber, and dressed to kill, either in formal tails or spandex Las Vegas glitz. Madrigal was in a class all by himself with his unique shtick: power lifter with demonically delicate assistants.
While I reacquainted myself with his hunky persona, he stared at me, clearly annoyed. Any visiting female threatened his spooky and possessive familiars; I wasn't doing as I was told and leaving.
"I need to know more about your front-surface mirror," I said.
And then he got it. A fingertip flipped my blond wig off-center.
"Delilah? You were lucky to get out of here the last time. Cicereau is so angry that he's destroyed all surviving film of your image, despite its commercial value, even on security tapes. He calls you 'Lodge-leveler'. He lost twenty-three prime werewolf soldiers at Starlight Lodge last full moon night."