A huge redwood desk sat under a chandelier of milk-glass moons, the wood grain gleaming like watered silk under the overhead lights.
A man walked from the room's shadows to sit in the thorny embrace of a deer-antler chair behind the slab of desk. He wasn’t very tall, but he was barrel-chested and pewter-haired, wearing a gray sharkskin suit that gleamed like a hematite gemstone. His mouth was wide, his eyes were Jack Daniel's-gold, and his nose was long and sharp, as were his ears. Both sported tufts of black hair.
Oh, Grandpa, what big eyes, ears, nose, and teeth you have! Can I sell you this Ronco rotating hair-removal device…?
Quicksilver leaned his shoulder against my hip as we stood side by side, his own long canine nose pushing into the palm of my hand. It was dry and hot, and I could feel him panting slightly.
"Sit," Mr. Cicero said. So I sank into the black leather club chair in front of the desk, pulling Quick against its side. "Lights out," he ordered his staff.
Behind the casino boss, in the impenetrable dark, a screen lit up. I watched silent footage of myself at the Inferno, with Snow and Nick Charles.
"You have impressive resources," I said when the screen went blank and the many-mooned chandelier lit up again. How had he stolen security tapes from the Inferno?
"And you have an impressive fan base, Miss Maggie."
I didn't bother to correct him. I didn't want my real name issuing from those thin lips and through those sharp white teeth.
"I'm looking to raise the gate on my headlining show," he added. "Your presence could accomplish that."
"Show? I'm not an actress."
"Your appearance on CSI V makes that clear. However, you have unwittingly become a major media personality."
"Dead!"
"Exactly. I propose to add you to my headlining magic show."
"As what? A corpse?"
"Why not? It would be a huge draw and we can certainly play off of that, but I propose a climactic resurrection. Everybody loves a comeback. It would pay very well. I can make you a star."
You and Howard "Yellow Fang" Hughes! Irma hissed inside my brain.
"I'm not a professional performer," I pointed out.
"What about your classy performance as a CinSymbiant at the Inferno? And you weren't even paid for it. Obviously, Christophe is negotiating for your services. I have simply one-upped him, my rival hotel owner. You have the look of the moment, my dear Miss…Street, is it? That last name must go."
"Christophe? You think he wants me for his stage show? He was just hitting on me."
Cicero snickered and his flunkies, especially Flamingo Pink and Watermelon Green, snuffled and snickered too, in their cowed, canine way.
"Christophe doesn’t 'hit on' humans, sweet cheeks," Cicero said.
Then what had he been doing? Or…what was I, really?
"I can double whatever he offered," Cicero added. "And, I can let you live. That's worth a bundle, don't you think?"
I was having a hard time thinking. "Christophe has his Seven Deadly Sins onstage. Why would he want to hire me? I can't think of an eighth sin I could be."
"Annoyance?"
"Surely that's not…deadly."
"I'm beginning to think so," Cicero said. "You will be my Maggie, a CSI body extraordinaire. I'll put your name up in neon."
"Hector Nightwine owns the Maggie franchise."
That ought to kill that idea, Irma cheered me on.
"You will be called Margie, then." Mr. Cicereau said. "Or Magpie. Something close, but not too close. The lawyers will be debating that intellectual property issue until the Second Coming, if you believe in such things."
I certainly didn't believe that there was anything "intellectual" about the property he was appropriating, but I only said, "The Millennium was certainly predictable, but we didn't get a Second Coming out of it."
Meanwhile, I'd been reading the papers on his desk upside down. Investigative reporters get good at that fast.
I was surprised to see his name spelled out on a letter. It sounded ancient Roman or Italian, but it was spelled "Cicereau." Of course! England had never had a big werewolf issue, because it was an island and the wolves never got there. The werewolf was a creature of the forests in what became Germany and France. I'd done an online search on werewolves after my first time at Los Lobos.
All the medieval werewolf trials had been held in France, where maidens and murderers were sacrificed to the river Seine to placate a dragon-gargoyle. Right now I felt much more like a sacrificial maiden than a murderer, but who said you couldn't be both, especially in your own defense?
"I have a first-rate magician," Cicereau was saying. "You will be an additional assistant in a special, headline cameo. Sexy costumes, some of usual tricks- vanishing, sawn-up, then, presto, no costume-a tasteful nude profile in the mist, perhaps as a sacrificial victim, then a dramatic death and resurrection."
"I know nothing about magic." But I marveled at how Cicereau had read my mind about the sacrificial part.
"Fortunately, my house magician does. Perhaps a bit too much."
Cicereau flashed emerald cufflinks set in drug-lord chunky gold as he shuffled papers on his desk, hiding the letter, reminding me of Ric's way smoother fashion sense. "You need only provide your very recognizable physical presence and follow his commands. A couple days' rehearsal should do it."
"I don't play well with others."
"Neither do I. This is not an option, Miss Street. Either play nicely with me, or I'll have you torn apart and tossed to Detective Haskell."
Quicksilver stood, legs braced, growling.
"There is wolf in that dog," the boss man said, careful not to move.
"I know."
"He makes a dangerous pet for a human."
"That's why he's a partner."
Cicereau's yellow eyes flashed with both approval and unleashed hunger. "Perhaps Madrigal can find a place for him in the act. If not, I expect you to control him."
"As much as you control me."
"And I will, because the life of everything you value…this dog, that man"-he didn't say who, but I saw he had learned about my doings here in Las Vegas, inside out-"will depend upon you becoming a prime attraction at my hotel. Don't forget all the roaming Maggie freaks out there. I can give you top-level protection."
I took a deep breath. And here I thought Snow was controlling! Even now I felt his chill bracelet coiling up my arm like a platinum snake, growing fangs that sank lightly into my forearm. A warning, or a sign of solidarity?
That was the trouble with unhuman allies; they were so damned hard to read.
And who, or what, was this Madrigal, besides sure to be seriously unhappy about having an unwilling rank amateur thrust into his headlining stage show?
Chapter Thirty-Six
The really bad part about becoming part of Team Gehenna (an ancient name for Hell, don't you know?) was that once inside the massive structure, like Dorothy in Oz I wasn’t sure of ever going home again.
One of Cicereau's lieutenants took Quick and me into custody. For a flying monkey he was pretty chunky-hunky. I'd noticed him blending into the black pine of the office walls. He had a pronounced widow's peak in a thicket of dark hair streaked with silver. He wore a black suit, gray shirt, and red tie like a gout of designer-silk blood. He was young despite the silver streaks, but easy to sum up. Hard body, hard mind, hard heart. Cicereau had called him Sansouci. In French the phrase meant "without care."
It didn't fit him. Everything about him screamed extreme control, including his icy manner as he escorted Quicksilver and me a few floors down in the silver bullet elevator. I smelled an astringent cologne in the elevator's austere close quarters. Aquavit on ice. Essence du hit man.
With all the warmth of a vampire undertaker, Sansouci showed Quicksilver and me to our new home, suite, home.