"Can't you just sneak us out through the hotel's public areas?"
"Of course I can," Madrigal said, "My tricks of legerdemain could even keep you out of plain view most of the time. But Las Vegas hotel-casinos have the most advanced, pervasive surveillance system in the world. Your passage will look strange enough to betray me if Cicereau's technicians should happen to spot it in a random check.
"You will not appear to be gone, thanks to your mirror-silver substitute. Your furred familiar has always kept out of their sight. If they ask later, I can always say that the dog ran away. They never liked his presence anyway."
Quicksilver growled at this, whether from contemplating the hatch we were clearly about to vanish into, or recognizing Madrigal's slight.
"Okay," I said. On second thought, I wanted Quick with me when my life was in Phasia's and Sylphia's tiny cross-species hands.
Madrigal pounded the rusted-in handle open. Phasia and Sylphia were glow-worms slithering into the opening's black vacant mouth. I wriggled in next, regretting that my warm-weather jogging clothes left my knees and elbows exposed to scrape metal.
Quicksilver took a last deep inhalation of my scent (embarrassing!) and we disappeared, head and tail, from the stage area and Madrigal's little world.
The mechanical ducts were surprisingly spacious, perfectly suited to hands and knees work. I suppose the extensive air-conditioning systems such huge buildings required needed frequent tending.
Great. So now I could fret about crawling right into the face of some workman. I could hear mechanical groans, wheezes, and pings all around us, as if we were in a haunted house.
Phasia and Sylphia stopped frequently as the hidden network of ducts intersected. It was truly freaky to see Phasia extend her long thin tongue to "sniff the air for human traces. She could have had a fine future in X-rated movies. Not that Sylphia was any slouch.
She spit out web and dropped over black edges on a viscous thread, returning to nod and lead us forward again.
Of course, Quick's long curved nails made a constant rat-scratching sound, which echoed until our party sounded like an advancing army of rodents the size of Godzilla. Luckily, as we progressed, the clack and clatter and groan and sputter of so many mechanical systems functioning overpowered any sound one of us could make.
Our progress stopped when I ran into Phasia and Quick into me because Sylphia had frozen. With our silence, we heard a strident cacophony like eighteen million machines being tortured by ghosts.
Phasia's snaky tendrils twined around my neck and head and her sickeningly supple tongue tasted my ear. I heard hissing vibrations rather than speech. "The central chamber for all the operating systems. Your last stage of the journey will bypass this, but you must go on alone."
Red working lights illuminated the area and my eyes slowly adjusted enough to see the door to another hatch.
"You can take this route to the outside," Sylphia said.
"Is it safe?" I asked.
"Safe enough for your breeds."
And if we went tumbling down into the maw of a furnace, say, or a garbage compactor, who would ever know what had happened to us?
I eyed the round metal hatch uneasily. "How do I get it open?"
Phasia's Victorian doll's face registered contempt. Then her flowing curls became writhing serpents that fanned out around the round door, fastened on, and twisted.
There yawned another black hole to nothing, but I was growing pretty tired of our escort service.
I shrugged and eyed Quick. He looked like a dog that was more than ready for "walkies."
I put my legs through the hole and pushed off with my hands, Alice down the rabbit hole. There was no lost kitten ahead of me but a big, bruising dog was hard behind me. We whirled away, riders on a water-park slide that wasn’t wet or in a water park.
Curiouser and curiouser.
We landed together in a cloud, a cloud that smelled of powder, and detergent, and perfume, and sweat, and precious bodily fluids. If I smelled all this, I could imagine what a wall of pungent and confusing scents was hitting Quick's super-sensitive nose.
I actually stifled a squeal as we plummeted to a stop. It had been rather fun. Then I blinked at the artificial daylight that was pressing down on me like a migraine headache.
It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust and determine where we were.
We were in a giant Dumpster-sized bin at the back of the Gehenna, surrounded by towels and bed linens. We'd left the sinister hotel that had held us prisoner by…a laundry chute.
Actually, struggling out of all that smothering fabric and heaving ourselves over the giant bin's edge onto the inner service courtyard's asphalt surface was the hardest part of our journey out of the hotel.
Quicksilver and I finally stood on the Strip sidewalk, buffeted by packs of tourists pushing trails up and down the famous street.
Against the horizon of neon lights, the Gehenna's signage stood out. Live and in person! it trumpeted. Margie, as You've Only Glimpsed Her: Nude and Dead. Again.
And here I'd taken Nightwine for a necrophiliac creep. That was before I'd met Cesar Cicereau, mob boss and hotelier…and father of one of the dead bodies in Sunset Park.
So who was the guy whose grave sweet Jean from my cottage mirror had shared? Who was the man to whom she had given her girlish heart and body? I kinda wondered that about myself too.
Who had made her own father want her dead?
And who had made it possible for werewolves to live on like vampires, eternally?
Ric knew a lot about werewolves and maybe vampires, and maybe more about me than I felt comfortable with. That could be because I wanted someone to know it for the first time in my life. Even though there was a lot about Ric I didn't know, and might never know.
Oh, well. Hell! Yeah, literally.
Chapter Forty-Three
Quicksilver and I hoofed it back to our Sunset Road home, footsore but happy to be together and free. I patted his head as I punched in the code that would open the gates to our cottage.
"They didn't much like you at the Gehenna, but I sure was glad you were there."
He made excited whining sounds that meant: let me in and at my food bowl, Mama!
Inside I found the cottage rooms neat, cool, empty, and peaceful.
Only the blinking red light on the cottage's non-vintage answering machine intruded on the homecoming mood.
First I filled Quick's water and food bowls.
Then I gobbled some cherries and grapes from the refrigerator and poured myself a gleaming goblet of Merlot. I've never been a wine snob and Hannibal Lector can keep his "nice Chianti" for the liver-eating among us, which were unfortunately too populous lately, post Millennium Revelation.
Then, ever the reporter, I skimmed the Las Vegas papers that had piled up and found a second front-section story that made me raise my eyebrows and then some.
Last…I listened to my messages.
First.
"My God! Del! Where are you? I'm frantic. Your cell is on voice mail. All I get here is an answering machine…"
Ric's voice. I replayed the message. Would I like to be a spider-sylph with him in my web! Truthfully, the sound of his voice snapped me the last bit out of a very bad dream.
I redialed instantly and got his cell phone.
"Del! You're back. What the hell happened? I've been frantic-"
Hey, I liked somebody being frantic about me, especially twice.
"I'm okay. It's been…surreal. Can we meet? Talk about it? I've drummed up some good leads."
"Leads? Do you have any idea? I need to see you."
"Right. I have lots of new info."
"Screw the info. I need to see you. See that you're all right."
"Where? When?"
"Now. Um, I don't know. Where do you want to be seen?"