The scent of flowers was stronger when her eyes were shut. She felt the warmth of his raised hand pressing the air. Mallory stepped back, and his heat followed with her.
„Very good,“ he said, moving toward her again as she retreated to keep the distance between them. He moved to the right and she with him, not following his lead this time, but moving in anticipation. A clarinet was melding into the velvet saxophone.
They turned in a circle, revolving to the music, never touching flesh to flesh. One tune blended into another with a faster tempo. She felt lighter as the music speeded up. The trumpet was rippling. Quick notes ran round and round in the dark to the heartbeat of drums. Mallory’s face was suddenly warm with a rush of blood beneath her skin. The music was zooming. And then it slowed, swaying her body with mirror movements to the partner she could not see or touch. Downy hairs at the nape of her neck were standing out and away.
She was turning and turning, eyes closed, blindly chasing the tease of heat. The music mellowed into a luscious basso, sweet and thick, notes dripping like slow honey. There was a sensuous rhythm in the strings of the bass, endlessly drawing out this prelude, this thrumming expectation of bodies not yet meeting. It was close to pain as they moved nearer to one another. The music was slowing, so soft now.
Whispers of reeds.
A sigh.
In the last sweet extended notes of the horns, Malakhai’s left arm was warm and solid against her back. Her right hand was folded into his. She had not yet opened her eyes. The sweet scent of flowers mingled with wine and smoke. His hand lightly touched her hair, and Mallory’s head tilted back. Eyes shut, stone blind, she was staring into the blue eyes of a boy’s un-lined face. The large spread hand at the small of her back pressed her body close to his. Closer still. The saxophone moaned in the thrall of sex at the peak, at the top of the act, warm and liquid. It was 1942 – it was Paris.
Mallory had made an error in timing and distance.
She stepped back quickly, one hand rising, as if she meant to ward off an arrow. Malakhai stared at her with a boy’s blue eyes – so cold now that their dance was done.
He turned around and walked away.
She had not expected that.
Suddenly absent the guidance of heat and music, Mallory stood alone at the center of the floor, not knowing whether to move right or left. She looked down at the white satin tuxedo – inspecting it for what? Blood?
Chapter 17
Mallory stood by the dragon screen and nodded at something Charles Butler had said, keeping up the pretense that she was paying attention to his words.
It was his clothing that made her suspicious.
For the third time in a week, Charles was wearing blue jeans, though he had been raised to wear formal attire. She had sometimes envisioned him as a toddler going off to a dress-code nursery school in a tiny suit and tie.
And why was he still working on the platform?
„I’ll put security cameras on every floor.“ Charles came down the stairs of the platform, two steps at a time. „And I’ll ask Malakhai to ring the bell, instead of finessing the locks. How’s that?“
He was so happy this morning. Encountering her in the basement had been unexpected – for both of them. He must assume that she had dropped by to explain her disaffection from the upstairs office.
„It’s not just Malakhai’s lock-picking.“ Mallory stared past him, focusing on the platform, the unsolved riddle.
Charles sat on the floor and opened the toolbox. Mallory hunkered down beside him. „Emile St. John is doing a routine with a hangman’s noose. Did Max use the platform for that one too?“
„Yes,“ said Charles, „but Emile is doing the early version. Max created that illusion long before the platform was built. I hope you don’t want to see the original gallows. It would take all day to – “
„Just tell me what it looks like.“
„It’s a cliche of every cowboy movie you’ve ever seen. Very narrow and maybe ten or eleven feet high. And it’s got a rickety look to it – that’s deliberate. It increases the visual tension.“ He turned around to look at the platform. „You know, this one looks a bit like a gallows. Maybe that’s why Max built thirteen steps – tradition.“
Mallory walked over to the platform door. The room was lit and she could see the gleaming brass of new cogs and chains for the mechanisms. So Charles was overhauling the entire apparatus. „You’re trying to work it out?“
Charles looked up from the toolbox. „The Lost Illusion? Yes, but Malakhai doesn’t think much of my chances. He promised to leave me the solution in his will.“
She sat on the edge of a packing crate full of red capes. „I can’t wait that long.“ One weapon lay on the floor, the same crossbow that had misfired and ripped her jeans. Its empty pedestal was stripped down to the gears of inner wheels and springs. „So the pedestal was broken.“
„One of the springs snapped.“ Charles searched through the tiers of toolbox shelves, then lifted out a length of chain. „Malakhai took it to a repair shop. He thinks he can match it up to a new one.“
And that would explain the ashtray on the floor by the toolbox, though none of the cigarette stubs were marked by lipstick.
The carnival mirror was propped against the side of a wooden crate. She found Charles’s reflection in the wavy glass, but no matter how she moved her head, she could not make his features flow into the image of Max Candle. She was never going to see that trick again.
He met her eyes in the reflection. „So it’s just a temporary thing, right? When this is over, you’ll move your computers back upstairs?“ Charles had such a ridiculous smile, and he seemed to understand this, always appearing to apologize for sudden happiness with the lift of one shoulder. Even now he was trying to tuck his smile back in before she could take him for a fool.
She looked for some easy way to put him off again. „You don’t have any clients right now. We’ll talk about it when the case is wrapped.“ Perhaps she would come back when her erstwhile business associate was no longer consorting with the enemy, greeting Malakhai with that tell-all face that betrayed every secret. If she did not come back, she would miss that face.
„How well do you know Franny Futura?“
„Before Thanksgiving? I only knew him by reputation.“ Charles stood up and carried the chain to the door in the platform wall. „If I ever met him as a child, I’ve forgotten.“
„You never forget anything.“
„Eidetic memory is imperfect.“ He entered the small room, and his voice carried back. „I’ve managed to block out every boring church sermon from my childhood.“
She stood in the open doorway. „So what’s the man’s reputation?“
„Tired magic.“ Charles replaced the chain for a trapdoor. „Franny was a headliner in London, but that was in his younger days – late forties, I think. All his tricks are from the first half of the century. Even before the high-tech illusions and the laser shows, he was getting left behind. But he never gave up. I like him for that. Franny’s the only one in the pack who still makes his living with magic.“
She watched him work the chain into the gear teeth. „Futura is still missing. He’s not staying with you, is he? Or maybe he called?“
„No, sorry.“
„Thanksgiving Day at your house – Futura said he staged that crossbow stunt with Oliver’s nephew. But he’s not the type to get in the path of a live arrow. What about a fake? Rubber, something like that?“
„No, I saw the arrow after Franny pulled it out of the float. It was just like Max’s set. Simple metal shaft – quite deadly.“ He emerged from the room and walked around to the platform staircase. „But the arrow wasn’t actually loaded into the crossbow. Franny probably hid it under his cape, then jammed it into the float. The crown of the top hat was only papier-mache on an iron frame.“