The bastard had probably seen her car in the driveway, left and watched for Mariah to leave school, made sure the kid was heading for home, then just beat her here.
Molina resisted glancing over her shoulder. She heard herself shouting at her own child, “Freeze!”
The schoolgirl scuffles came on. Molina had to risk a direct look, a direct order. “Stop. Drop. Stay back!”
And in that split second, the magician . . . split.
Leaving her hands trembling on the brink of firing. They lowered the gun.
He hadn’t needed a weapon.
Molina swarmed her prone daughter, who hadn’t even had time to notice that anyone else was on the premises. “Good girl. It’s okay. I thought someone was in the house. You did right, chica. We’re okay.”
Unless Kinsella hadn’t been her stalker.
Impossible! It was him. She couldn’t shoot a man in front of her daughter, but she could sure wish that she had. Maybe a kneecap, then he’d be the one cowering on the floor, not Mariah.
Someone else was stalking her? Ridiculous! No one had been in that parking lot but rows of empty cars and pickups and vans. Not a human moving among them. Not even a drifting palm frond blown by the wind.
No one.
So why had Max, aka the “Invisible Man” Kinsella, risked coming here to suggest otherwise?
A huckster unwilling to give up a last con?
A player leaving the stage with everyone hoodwinked?
A deceptive magician taking one last bow?
An innocent man?
Come on!
Foreplay
“So,” Miss Midnight Louise asks in her most scathing tone, “is there a reason we are out clubbing at Neon Nightmare when everything that can go wrong has gone wrong at the New Millennium?”
“Say what?” I growl as loudly as I can over the pounding, thumping sound system. I would not dignify this noxious noise with the term “music.”
“You understood me, Pop. You just did not want to answer because you do not really know why we are here.”
“Here,” is under the end of the long black Plexiglas bar. Above us the cadre of bartenders are slamming piña colada martinis down with lightning speed. Below us, the reflective black floor makes our usual ebony coats blend in with the decor. Those of our kind are generally considered inappropriate customers at such establishments, but most of the people here are too dazed in a pharmaceutical sense to notice our presence. We could come in white rabbit suits and still be ignored. Actually, we might be hit on for illegal substances in that guise.
“Not everything has gone wrong. I checked the New Millennium out earlier. The Czar Alexander scepter is back in place.”
“Yeah, and what kind of thief would do that?” she asks.
“I have my suspicions,” I say. I do not rat out a born second-story dude like myself, ever. Besides, that is the kind of ambiguous statement that usually shuts up all but the female of the species.
“Your suspicions? Such as—?”
Miss Louise is always a stickler for embarrassing specifics, like how much one weighs or what one thinks one is thinking.
I could tell her “none of your business,” but unfortunately these days her business is our business, i.e., Midnight Inc. Investigations, so I figure it is time to let her in on my brilliant deduction.
“You know about this Phantom Mage guy?”
“Appears twice nightly, yeah. That is better than your Miss Temple has been getting from Mr. Max Kinsella lately.”
“Exactly my point, Louise.”
She does not miss a beat now that I have given her a big, fat clue.
“You think this Phantom Mage is Mr. Max in disguise?”
Before I can repeat my “I have my suspicions” mantra she hopscotches right over me. If we were playing a game of checkers, she would be King.
“Oh. And you think he is the one who stole the Czar Alexander scepter. I admit it smacks of a Mr. Max operation. But why? He is ordinarily a law-abiding dude.”
“There has been nothing ordinary about this White Russian exhibition. It has had my Miss Temple’s brain in a bow tie since she started working on it. Nothing but trouble.”
“Rather like Mr. Max himself.”
“That is not fair, Louise. Much as I do not want him encroaching on my quilt time, he has only tried to help Miss Temple in her various enterprises and escapades. He has saved her life almost as often as I have.”
She snorts. That is not a very ladylike reaction, but I forbear to tell her. Louise does not take direction well. I do not either but that is different.
“That is what you get,” she says, “for entering into a mixed relationship. You will always be a third wheel when it comes to nocturnal territory.”
She is, alas, right. Humans do not abide by the simplest rules of territory: what smells like me is mine; where I sleep I am king; where I eat I am emperor; who I adopt is my loyal subject forever.
Maybe that should be “whom” I adopt. I am sure glad I did not say that aloud, for Miss Midnight Louise is also a fierce grammarian, as well as a dedicated carnivore and feminist of the first water, which means that she will mark any territory she can ahead of me. I am lucky that she regards Miss Temple’s digs as out of bounds or we would be knee-deep in trouble. Even without murderers and thieves around.
Speaking of adopting, Miss Midnight Louise would do well to consider that I have informally done her the honor. Granted it took a little prodding of a needle-sharp shiv on her part.
She has moved on, however, to consider my brilliant deduction, and is staring up hard at the dark apex of the internal pyramid that is the Neon Nightmare nightclub, as if searching for prey.
“I,” she points out (literally, by tapping me on the shoulder with a four-flush of extended shivs), “have no territorial disputes with Mr. Max. If he is the scepter thief, he must have more reason then mere material gain.”
“You think so? They do not call it ‘filthy lucre’ for nothing. Our kind has a hard time comprehending the sin of Greed.”
“Unless it involves food,” she says with a sly sideways glance at me.
“Then it is called Gluttony. And do not deny that you lap up every gourmet tidbit that Chef Song puts in your rice bowl at the Crystal Phoenix.”
Miss Louise remains fixated on the ceiling, from which the Phantom Mage is soon scheduled to descend in a sizzling display of pyrotechnics and acrobatic daring. Of course it is Mr. Max! But why?
“He must be undercover,” Louise hums softly to herself. “But why?”
“Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina is making things too hot for him?”
“She has been for ages. There must be another motive.”
“Maybe he just misses his regular job.”
Louise’s gold eyes shine like twin suns. I bask in her approval. “You are so right. One cannot discount that with humans, especially performers. But he has always had two jobs, from what you have told me: as entertainer and as secret agent. He fought international terrorists even before this new breed entered the scene.”
“Right,” I say. “The IRA. I must admit I do not get it, this endless enmity between the orange and the green. Our kind has no trouble with those colors in both coat and eyes. Though you and I survive only by a miracle, given the human weakness for superstition and ignorance. Witches’ familiars indeed. Black is beautiful! That is why we are so prevalent. One wishes people had been born color-blind, as we are.”
“I do not know about you but I see some colors, although faintly. Humans have an aura, have you not noticed that?”
“Uh, this is getting very Karma, Louise. I thought you scorned that New Age stuff.”
“I scorn nothing that makes sense, and I can tell you that Mr. Max’s aura is green. Miss Temple’s is red. Mr. Matt’s is gold. And Miss Lieutenant Carmen Molina’s is blue.”
“Speaking of auras,” I say, “I have just spotted a gray one.”