After the vows were exchanged, the groom kissed the bride long enough for his obviously restive brothers to indulge in boyish banter.
The assembly adjourned to the hotel’s pool area for the champagne reception and dinner, and a spectacular display of fireworks that outshone the Strip’s neon glory and outroared the Mirage Hotel’s celebrated exploding volcano for half an hour.
Wedding and hotel guests alike acclaimed the affair as the Wedding of the Century. So far. Mr. and Mrs. Fontana will honeymoon in Paris and London, then return to maintain residences in Manhattan and at the Crystal Phoenix’s new European-style multimillion-dollar condominium building, the Crystal Palace.
Oh, yes, you will be wondering: Miss Temple Barr caught the bridal bouquet, despite the fevered attempts of seven attractive young women who occupied first-row seats for the ceremony. It struck this observer that the bride “threw” her throw.
Is the toothsome Mr. Matt Devine the next candidate for a Crystal Phoenix wedding?
Resurrection
“My poor boy,” Garry Randolph murmured, lowering the week-old edition of the Review-Journal his Las Vegas contact had sent.
The social scene reporter, although a bit gushy, had written vividly enough to paint him into the entire scene, especially since he’d glimpsed some of the players. Well, her especially, Temple Barr. Max’s Temple Barr.
He slapped the paper against the small glass-topped table on his hotel balcony. The vast ripples of Alpine meadows beyond it were too magnificent and generous to absorb a fit of pique.
Still, Max was a son to him. He wanted to witness his wedding, a happy ending to all those unhappy years since Max’s cousin Sean had exploded from an IRA pub bomb.
Even if Max had been here now, Garry wasn’t sure whether he’d show him this news from what had been his most recent home. The boy’s body was compromised from the attempt to kill him even as he attempted to fake his death. His mind was . . . able, still quick and brilliant, but emptied of all its personal data, even the guilt of Sean’s death. That, at least, was a blessing. And his spirit was intact.
Garry grinned. And he could still disappear, like any good magician, as he’d learned from his mentor for both stage and spying purposes.
Damn! The magician once known as Gandolph the Great again slapped the folded paper to the glass tabletop as if trying to flatten a fly. Why had Max vanished, and that sleek lady psychiatrist with him?
Another attempt on his life in the Swiss clinic? Most likely. Why leave with her? Had she made the attempt and he’d taken her as hostage? But a man with his legs in casts was hardly able to take a hostage, even a female one. Even Max. Had she and her henchmen abducted Max? More likely.
Who would be her henchmen? Members of the rumored group of worldwide magicians, the Synth? Synthesis was an important concept in the kabbalah and ancient systems of magic and alchemy. Las Vegas had hosted a small, secret nest of Synth members, but—from what Max said when he infiltrated them in his own persona—they were petty plotters, more disgruntled unemployed magicians playing at conspiracy than any real force.
Or so Max had concluded. Had he miscalculated? Certainly someone had arranged for him to hit a wall at high speed at the nightclub called Neon Nightmare, the very pyramid-shaped building in which the Las Vegas chapter of the Synth met.
Pyramid. Another link to ancient magic systems. Perhaps he, Gandolph, should take these theatrical villains much more seriously. He was tired of returning to his old European spy grounds as Garry Randolph, calling in debts and trying to lay to rest Max’s ghosts, Sean and their personal femme fatale, the psychotic IRA operative Kathleen O’Connor, now finally at rest in an unmarked grave in Las Vegas.
What was happening now could create new ghosts, perhaps for Garry Randolph himself.
So far he’d followed the tried-and-true paths. In Switzerland, Ireland, and Las Vegas. But with Max missing, Gandolph the Great was coming out of retirement, albeit secretly.
It would need more than spy work to quickly find and save Max this time.
It would require a bit of that old black magic that Gandolph knew so well.
Au Revoir, Max
Somehow, during the night, he’d managed to turn himself over from sleeping on his stomach to his back.
Pretty impressive for an invalid.
The morning sun was slanting through the drawn sheer curtains, slashing light across the golden birchwood floor, on the pristine white comforter.
His stomach rumbled, craving more food.
He stretched out an arm. He’d never sensed her again in the night, not after the massage that had put him out cold. No, out warm. No dreams. No nightmares.
His hand sunk into a foot of airy feathers, nothing more.
He pushed up on his elbows, giving his leaden legs a bit more rest.
Nothing there. He was alone in the room.
Alarm racing down his limbs.
Wait. It was morning. She was waiting her turn at the bathroom, or already in it. In fact, his bladder was burning. He’d slept too hard to use the chamber pot under the bed. But he sure needed relief now.
He’d have to—unnh—spin and get his feet to the floor. There was the cane. Put his weight on it, stand. Shake a little. He’d go to the hall bath in his shorts. If he met anyone, tough. No point shrugging into the jeans again until he was ready to go out in them. His legs were stiff from being unused all night. He walked like Frankenstein’s monster, as if the casts were still on them.
But his joints were loosening by the time he got to the door.
Peeking out into the hall, he saw it was deserted. She must be in the bath then.
His steps and the clunk of the cane sounded like The Return of the Mummy. He swung his legs stiffly ahead one by one. The knees would take a while relearning to bend.
There was no splashing sound beyond the old wooden door, so he exercised his knuckles and knocked. Maybe he could talk her into a morning massage. It had really helped him sleep.
No answer.
He tried the knob, which gave. The bathroom was empty. He pushed himself inside, looked it over hard. Not even one vagrant blond hair in the sink from washing her hair last night. Some Swiss neat freak had freshened up the place for the day already.
Whoever he was had been a sensible guy. He took a leak while here, hand-brushed his dark hair, then clumped down the hall, pushed his tender legs into the jeans. He noted that her backpack was gone, packed his own, took a look around to make sure nothing was left behind, and went downstairs to the “expanded Continental” breakfast room. That would mean muesli as well as bread, fruit, coffee, and tea.
A German couple with a teenage daughter were chewing their cuds at one table. The buffet offerings looked picked over. Max finally thought to glance at the cheap watch with a cuckoo clock on the dial he’d bought on their first nicked credit card spree last night.
Eleven! In the morning?
Where the hell was she? Out on the town? It boasted a square the size of King Kong’s handkerchief, a fountain, some quaint shops, and that was it.
His heart was pounding. He lurched through the pocket lobby and into the streets. Still narrow, hilly, mostly empty, leading to the square where the tourist buses stopped on their overland way from Italy to France. This village was a remote way station between twelve-thousand-foot peaks.
Why would she leave? Now? She was just softening him up, damn it.
Or . . . she had been taken.
His crutch.
Someone had caught up with them, wanted him on his own, more vulnerable.