I blinked at him, wondering how I could possibly process everything that had happened in the last minute. My sister the neurosurgeon would have known how. Or my brother. Colin had been in situations like this, and worse, in Iraq. And yet he’d gone on.
But I wasn’t Colin, and didn’t know how to handle myself in an emergency-wait.
I had never faced sudden death before, but I did know how to handle myself in a crisis. In fact, I was the epitome of calm in the madhouse that was City Hall. I could fall apart later. Nikos was right. I didn’t need to process everything now. In fact, it was too big-I couldn’t process it now. I’d simply pack it away until I could.
Right now I had a job to do. I sucked up my competence and applied myself to the problem at hand. Jones had sabotaged the Ball. Discovering how needed to be our first priority. “What about the man Jones was holding hostage? Maybe he can tell us something.”
“That’s my soldier.” Nikos’s eyes waxed even more eloquent in his relief, pride and…love?
Well. Deal with that emergency later too.
The man in the Giants hat lay a few feet from us, his hands bound behind him with a zip tie. As Nikos sliced it off with one razor claw I checked the time. Eleven fifty. The whole drama had taken less than five minutes. It still didn’t leave us a lot of time.
Released, the man chafed his wrists. “I can’t believe I’m free.”
I took the man’s hands in mine. They were freezing from exposure and lack of circulation. “What happened?”
“That guy…he had clearance. He was one of us.” The man shook his head. His cap was askew. “No, I knew something was wrong about him…yeah, I knew all along. Well, about eleven he pulls a gun. Makes us all tie each other’s wrists. Carted us down one floor then picked me as a hostage and brought me back up-shit, nearly forgot. There’s another guy down there, crusted blood on his pants.”
“We’ll take care of that,” Nikos said. “But first, is something wrong with the Ball?”
“The Ball? Not that I know. But I’m only doing the fireworks. Security, fireworks…the guy was doing the Ball, I think. Maybe that was a cover, though. This guy was bad, you know? He took us all out-even the security.”
I patted the man’s hands soothingly. There was some warmth coming back, and some color to his face. I shifted my eyes to Nikos, telling him that I thought we could leave the man safely on his own for a while. Nikos nodded, stood.
Then I realized what I had done. Was I getting as taciturn as my Spartan? Channeling Queen Gorgo? Were we becoming alike, like two old married people?
It was cute, it was scary, and it would have to get stuffed away in the burgeoning pack of later. I rose next to Nikos. “I know some kinds of flickering light can cause seizures in people. And the color red makes them hungry. But could light or color hypnotize vampires, like Jones said?”
“Our senses are heightened. We may actually be more vulnerable than humans.”
I frowned. “Speaking of Jones, how did you know his name? Or were you guessing?”
Nikos’s nose wrinkled. “He smelled of cigarettes, like the door across from your cousin’s in the brownstone. And I smelled faint traces in Aylmer ’s apartment, recent. When I rang doorbells to get in I noticed 7A was labeled Jones. A guess, but logical.”
“Jones was Aylmer ’s neighbor? He could have found out about vampires the same way Aylmer did.”
“Yes. That might have also triggered their association.”
“Speaking of vampires-” I nodded toward the fireworks man. He was watching us with wide eyes, and his color had drained again.
“I will deal with his memories later. Now we must discover what Jones has done and stop it. We have only…damn.” Nikos had pulled out his cell phone and was staring at the readout. “It’s eleven fifty-one.”
Nine minutes. Only nine minutes to figure out what Jones had done to the Ball. “Okay. We know Jones was the Jones I got in as the American rep for Bujný a Zvuk Magie. Specifically, he worked with Steale Programové. He could have directed the Ball’s programming, saying certain things would appeal to American audiences. Maybe he even did some final adjustments here, if he was a coder.”
“We also we know he would target the sixty seconds while the Ball is descending.”
“And everybody’s riveted on it, yes. But I have no idea what kind of visual might rile vampires. Do you?”
“No.” Nikos did not look happy. “This is beyond the reach of my sword, Twyla.”
“I don’t know enough either. We need a lifeline.”
“A what?”
I smiled. Spartan generals must not watch too many game shows. “You’d say time to gather information and allies.” I pulled out my cell phone, hit my own Emerson speed dial. “Nixie, I need to know what kind of colors or lights might make vampires go on the rampage.”
A flash of numbers caught my attention-the time, thrown up on the side of the huge building next to us. Eleven fifty-two and five seconds. Six. Seven. “And please hurry. The clock is ticking.”
“On it.”
While I waited for Nixie, I watched the seconds change. Nikos’s sable eyes followed my gaze. He frowned.
“Twyla. Will everyone be riveted on the Ball? Or is there a countdown?”
“Damn, you’re right. There’s a billboard too, with numbers flashing, and-” I swung around, seeing again the glaring color and light that was Times Square at night. “Everything’s lit up for miles around. It’s not just the Ball. It’s the whole damn canyon.”
Except Jones couldn’t have screwed with every building in Times Square. He’d only had access to the Ball, and maybe some connected mechanisms. Still, I waited impatiently for Nixie to get back on the line. My internal clock clicked off each second like a notch on my gut. Sixty seconds passed, and then another.
We’d never fix it in time. Another thirty seconds carved into me as I gazed at the crowds below, seeing a Google-Earth-sized Where’s Waldo. Only in this case the vampires would be only too easy to find.
“Twyla. Power-tie colors. Red and yellow.”
I blinked. Focused on the clock, which read eleven fifty-five. Five minutes left. “Red and yellow?” I pictured the old Windows color scheme called Hot Dog. Thought of Monty Python and the Holy Grail-the introductory credits with the llamas. Winced. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”
“Huh, Julian? Twyla, there’s a problem. Julian says the Ball isn’t set up to do all red and yellow.”
“What? You know that how?”
“He’s on the line with a computer guru in Iowa. Mr. Goo Roo hacked into the Ball through some sort of SyFy interwebz.”
“You mean the Ball is doing a normal show?”
There was a long pause. “Goo says it’s not normal either. But it ain’t pus and blood. He’s not sure what it is. Huh, Julian? Oh yeah. One more prob. Even if the Ball were screaming chartreuse, it’s not big enough to send v-guys into spasming conniptions.”
“Chartreuse is green.”
“Yeah, okay. Thing is, the Ball is too small and too far away to do more than make a vamp a little sickly carmine.”
“Carmine is red.”
“Fine. Puke-y green. Up-gechucken green. Vomity-”
“I get it.” The clock flashed across from me, eleven fifty-six a full story high. “What about the countdown clock? It’s on a screen, and flashes with the Ball. Maybe they’re coordinated.”
“Hey Julian. Ask Mr. Goo if the Ball of Damocles is tied to the ticking crock.”
Sometimes Nixie’s cultural polyglot is confusing, but this time I got it. I laughed. “Ticking Crock. Like the crocodile that swallowed the clock in Peter Pan.”