“Hey, can I help it that I find radioactive guys sexy?”
We both gazed at Lewis, who despite not having shaved, showered, combed his hair, or changed his clothes in an appallingly long time was undeniably hot, in a lanky, outdoorsy, glowy kind of way. He gave us both an exasperated look and stalked off to organize the Wardens on his own. The glow stayed on him for several seconds as he went out into the lashing rain.
“I’m surprised you didn’t jump all over that,” I said.
“Moi?” Cherise pressed a small, perfect hand against her breast and did a silent-movie face of astonishment. “I’d never.”
“Since when?”
“I’ve got a sense of self-preservation. Okay, granted, it’s still in the original shrink-wrap, but I’ve got one if I ever want to use it. Besides. Dude is scary serious right now.” Cherise waggled her clipboard. “Want to go with me? Terrify some mundanes? C’mon, it’ll be fun! And I might need you to, you know, throw a lightning bolt or something.”
Well, I wasn’t doing anything useful standing here worrying. I could follow Lewis out into the storm, but that didn’t really have much appeal, his tension level being where it was. He was more than capable of scaring the Warden stragglers into line all by himself. I would only be collateral damage.
Cherise shed her rain slicker, revealing a tight baby-doll T-shirt with, weirdly, a cartoon drawing of a toaster on it, complete with toast. The toaster had some kind of bar on the side with a red glow that looked like an eye.
“Let me guess,” I said, and struggled out of my slicker as well. “Star Trek?”
She rolled her eyes. “Do you not own a television? No. Not any flavor of Trek, and oh my God, what are you wearing? Oh honey. No.”
“Shut up. It’s borrowed.”
“From who, a homeless person?”
“No, from the Jean Paul Gaultier fall collection.”
She accepted that with a straight face. “Oh, that explains it. Homeless color-blind skank is so hot right now.”
We were jabbering because we were afraid. Because the world was coming to an end, again, and sometimes whistling past the graveyard is literally the only thing that gets you safely through the experience.
And I’m just talking about Fashion Week.
I looked down at my outfit, though, and acknowledged that Cherise did have a point. The white miniskirt was too tight and too short, even by incredibly lax South Beach standards. The top would have been rejected by Frederick’s of Hollywood as too trampy, and by Wal-Mart as too cheap. The shoes were plain battered deck shoes, which at least were a safe choice, if not styling.
“They have shops on board,” Cherise assured me, and patted me kindly on the back.
“Cherise, do you really think they’ll be opening the mall when we’re running for our lives?”
“Why not? People got to shop. It’s like breathing.” It was to Cherise, anyway. “Okay, fine. I’ll tell myself that it’s a costume party and you came as a drowned rat.”
I smacked her. She pretended it hurt. “Cher,” I said, and put an arm around her shoulders. “I really love you, you know. I don’t know what I’d be right now if I didn’t have you around to keep me sane.”
We weren’t in the serious-talk business, me and Cher, but it seemed like this might be a good moment to make an attempt. She could have laughed it off; I wouldn’t have been upset if she did, because I just needed to say it.
Instead, she fixed those deep blue eyes on me and said, “I don’t know what I’d be without you, either. Probably nothing half as good as I am.” She smiled faintly, and for just a moment, the storm lessened. Her smile was just that powerful. “Love you, too, you skanky, no-style tramp.”
I smacked her again. Moment over.
We went to try to solve the first-class problem.
Chapter Two
The very rich are like everyone else, provided you classify “everyone else” as “spoiled rotten brats with vast incomes and little sense of responsibility.” There are exceptions, of course, but money gets you excused from all kinds of social constraints, just as fame does, and that never does a body good.
We had a whole cadre of spoiled rotten brats holed up, refusing to leave their stash of gold bars, drugs, or folding money—whatever they had stored in the ship’s hold and safe. I wondered how they’d feel using it as life preservers.
The harassed Chief Steward pointed me toward the first-class lounge area, where apparently a lot of our troublemakers had forsaken their magnificently opulent cabins and gathered to jointly declare their displeasure at being inconvenienced. You’d think that anyone could see it wasn’t a good idea to be riding out a storm on a boat, but then again, people do dumb crap all the time, and they always seem astonished that it turns out to be dangerous. Seriously. Look at YouTube.
My first brush with the Richie Riches came in the form of a very famous singer, with aspirations of being an equally famous starlet. She was actually obeying orders, believe it or not, and she was on her way out, practically clawing the expensively paneled walls with frustration. She was surrounded by a milling entourage who scrambled to juggle her coffee, BlackBerry, bags, appointment diaries, and small yappy dogs. She was scowling as much as Botox would allow, and had her Swarovski crystal- encrusted cell phone at her ear.
“I’m telling you, it’s outrageous!” she was saying. “I want a lawsuit in place before I hit the limo, do you hear me? I want to own this stupid ship, and then I want to use it for target practice. Just do it, Steve. And make sure that wherever I’m going, it’s five star. I am not going to some shelter with cots!—What? I don’t care what category the storm is, you find me a suite! What do I pay you for, idiot?”
I suddenly had a great deal more sympathy for the business-suited corporate drones who had no choice but to smile and take it for the paycheck. Once the flood of minions was past, I approached an immaculately white-uniformed steward who stood helplessly at the entrance to the first-class lounge, looking in.
“Joanne Baldwin,” I said, and presented ID. “I’ll be taking the room that Botox Diva just cleared.”
He looked at me wearily. “Ma’am? Why that room in particular?”
“Because she probably left Godiva chocolates and chilled Dom Perignon, not to mention random stacks of cash in the couch cushions,” I said, straight-faced. “I’ll guard it with my life.”
That broke the ice a bit. He even managed to produce an anxious second cousin to a smile. “You’re one of them, right?” Them presumably being the Wardens. I nodded. “I hear you guys have some kind of, uh, magic. Would you mind . . . ?”
“What, working some on these idiots? Not sure you really want me to do that. It tends to not be so great at crowd control, unless you’re trying to kill people or put them in comas. Better let me try the persuasion route first.”
“Be my guest. I hope you brought horse tranquilizers.” He gave me a bow and handed me the room. Cherise and I exchanged glances and stepped inside.
We stepped in it, all right. The place was complete chaos, which was odd, because it really was a room with all kinds of calm built right in. The designers had envisioned the space as a Victorian-style reading room, complete with expensively bound leather volumes and comfy couches and chairs. Nobody was enjoying the decor now, though. Middle-aged society matrons rubbed shoulders, however unwillingly, with young, vapid starlets (I might have recognized one or two of those, but truthfully, they’d all been sculpted and styled into the same person, so it didn’t much matter). A thick cluster of black-clad people who I assumed were New York literary types clumped together like a dour flock of crows toward the outer edge. West Coast bling glittered in a group on the opposite side of the room. It was like a map of the wealth of America, from coast to coast—all arguing at the same time.