With all he had going on, juggling his various personae and infiltrating the Synth and the Millennium heist turned boobytrap, the last thing he needed was another of Molina’s pathetic games distracting him.
The music paused, then revved into the overblown intro for the Phantom Mage.
No time to dwell on loss or anger, on what he had unwillingly given up and what interfering others had taken from him.
Max leaped off the tiny platform like a diver into darkness. Showers of sparklers sprayed from his figure as the cloak spread out like wings, revealing a lining of leaping flames.
The pale faces gazing up at him drew nearer, grew features . . . O’s of open mouths and wide eyes. For a moment, he was stronger and more enrapturing than anything they could drink or smoke or sniff or inject, a dark angel falling to earth, spewing gaudy fire.
He knew the instant the bungee cord failed to tauten for the fast flight back up, knew at once it had failed completely. Hadn’t he run the entire length through his hands? While his mind had gnawed at the irritation of phantom fingerprints, maybe his hands had missed a weakness in the line.
Was this a mere snag, or a fatal flaw?
Below him the awe-stricken holes in people’s faces enlarged into horror. He saw them scattering and did a full body twist to send him away from landing dead-on-down to the floor, away toward the side wall where no one could be hurt. No one but . . .
The bungee cord snapped like a rubber band. He had a split second to—
He hit with astounding force and then had nothing more to worry about at all.
After Max
“Look!” Miss Louise cries softly, but no less urgently. Sometimes she can mew like a Miss Muffet, although most often she screams like a Wicked Witch of the West.
So I look up. And there is the dark glittering figure, falling. Like a bird. I am almost tempted to leap up, to meet it and bring it down. But I understand this is a giant bird-man, and I am not the size of predator that could contain it, much less kill it.
Besides, I have retired from the predator biz. Now, I track them.
“Oooh,” breathe the people above us and all around us.
“Aaaah,” they sigh.
And then the flying man plunges to the ground, the invisible leash not tightening and jerking him back into the upper air.
Louise howls. People scream and scatter. Rafi Nadir’s motorcycle boots crack hard across black Plexiglas, which shatters as if he wore seven-league boots made of lead.
And the Phantom Mage swings full-frontal-first into a wall of concrete sheathed in mirrors and neon.
Rafi Nadir is defending the perimeter. He sometimes works security here.
He has already dialed 911 with his cell phone. Now he fights to keep hysterical people from rushing the fallen form with a mad conjoined instinct of horror, compassion, and curiosity.
That leaves room for Miss Midnight Louise and me to slink in close.
“Bast!” Louise breathes in my ear. “Is he dead? Let me smell.”
“Back, kit. I know his scent better than you.” I push my nostrils toward the hidden neck, searching not only for scent, but for the telltale mouse-like flutter of a pulse. I pick up a trace of Brut, sweat, sulphur, and rosin. And my Miss Temple’s perfume, called “Delicious.” I sense no movement at all.
My heart sinks but I cannot let Louise see that.
Her vibrissae mingle with mine despite my holding her back. “Is it he?” she asks with laudable grammar.
“Maybe.”
“Is he . . . dead?
“Maybe.”
By now, Mr. Rafi Nadir is turning back to the . . . body.
We retreat into our color-coordinated darkness. No one notices us, then or later.
In three minutes, the emergency techs come, lean over the Phantom Mage, shout orders, load the body on a gurney and roll it out over the sleek black floor.
Suddenly, the canned music starts up but people crowd the bar, not the dance floor. A long black cord hangs down limp, like a string from a bare lightbulb, but there is no light at the top of the pyramid, only darkness. The cord swings a bit in the air-conditioning blowers, its ragged end just missing the floor.
Louise and I hunker down again at the end of the bar. I could use a hit of nip myself.
“What will we do?” she asks with a shiver I can feel.
I look up. “The police will be all over this place all too soon. I intend to claw my way up there and scour the place before they mess it up with their fingerprint powders and such.”
“This whole place is as shiny as a chrome scratching post. How will we get up?”
I do not correct her on that “we.” I could really use Nose E., but we cannot spare the time to fetch the little bomb-sniffing Maltese, and we can climb better than any canine on the planet, even if the surface is plastic.
“We will just have to use our built-in pitons,” I tell her, glad of company on this sad detail. “It will have to be you and me, kit.”
“If Mr. Max got up there, we can do it.”
“Right. And if Mr. Max got up there and someone messed with his rigging, they could get up there too. We may only have feline noses, but they will have to do. If there has been sabotage afoot, Midnight Inc. Investigations will find out and track the perpetrators to whatever hole they have to hide in.”
“And lock them in and call in the dogs.”
“You know any dog packs?”
“The Thirteenth Street Bonepickers.”
“They will do. Bast grant me the power to console my Miss Temple.”
Miss Midnight Louise is already trotting along the sidelines of the dance floor, ignoring any who might spot her. I rush to catch up.
“You console. I am going to kick major butt.”
Midnight Louie Mourns
the Status Quo Vadis
The decent thing would have been to warn me that the human misbehavior in this book would erupt to such an extent that it would threaten my happy home.
My Miss Temple and I have had a mutually agreeable working and living arrangement: I was the alpha male on her premises, but would allow her SO, Mr. Max Kinsella, visiting privileges if he did not hog too much of the California king size. I would tolerate off-campus activities with Mr. Matt Devine if my Miss Temple could ever get him off the celibacy shtick.
But I would remain first and foremost in her domestic sphere, i.e., our shared digs at the Circle Ritz.
I cannot honestly say I enjoyed Mr. Max’s midnight visits. They disturbed my beauty sleep, but I did recognize that he was here first, even though he blew his residency by going AWOL before I ever came on the scene.
Nor did I mind my Miss Temple consoling herself for Mr. Max’s growing absence and distance with the far more reliable and nearby Mr. Matt.
But now I have heard this Awful Word bandied about: marriage. What is wrong with unofficial cohabitation? It has served my species well for thousands of years. This official monogamy that humans keep trying has all sorts of evil offshoots.
It causes the couple to contemplate shared quarters. Will it be his? Hers? A new place entirely?
Do you see a comfy niche for Midnight Louie, Esq., in this rush to unification? I thought not. Oh, I am sure I would be accorded some ratty old pillow in a corner of some other bedroom somewhere.
But what if Mr. Matt, being the late-blooming sort, objects to witnesses in the bedroom, even if they are the silent type? I do not cede territory to any male without a fight.
What am I to do at this late date? Move in with dear old dad on Lake Mead? Go begging like a homeless old duffer for quarters back at the Crystal Phoenix from my apparent daughter, Midnight Louise? I would rather be fish bait! Koi, come and get me!
I am not about to throw myself on the mercy of my collaborator either. If she cared a fig or a flying flamingo about me she would not have let these unruly characters mess up my life (not to mention theirs) so much.