He chuckled. “You warned me, and I did not believe. I apologize, cherie. It is—most remarkable.”
“Hmm. Exercise that vampiric hearing of yours, and you’ll get an ear-full,” she said, watching the car-lights crawl by, twenty stories below. “When they aren’t slaughtering each other and playing little power-trip games, they’re picking apart their agents and their editors. If you’ve ever wondered why I’ve never bothered going after the big money, it’s because to get it I’d have to play by those rules.”
“Then I devoutly urge you to remain with modest ambitions, cherie,” he said, fervently. “I—”
“Excuse me?” said a masculine voice from the balcony door. It had a distinct note of desperation in it. “Are you Diana Tregarde?”
Di turned. Behind her, peering around the edge of the doorway, was a harried-looking fellow in a baggy, tweedy sweater and slacks—not a costume—with a shock of prematurely graying, sandy-brown hair, glasses and a moustache. And a look of absolute misery.
“Robert Harrison, I presume?” she said, archly. “Come, join us in the sanctuary. It’s too cold out here for chiffon.”
“Thank God.” Harrison ducked onto the balcony with the agility of a man evading Iraqi border-guards, and threw himself down in an aluminum patio chair out of sight of the windows. “I think the password is, ‘Morrie sent me.’ ”
“Recognized; pass, friend. Give the man credit; he gave you an ally and an escape-route,” Di chuckled. “Don’t tell me; she showed up as the Sacred Priestess Askenazy.”
“In a nine-foot chiffon train and see-through harem pants, yes,” Harrison groaned. “And let me know I was Out of the Royal Favor for not dressing as What’s-His-Name.”
“Watirion,” Di said helpfully. “Do you realize you can pronounce that as ‘what-tire-iron’? I encourage the notion.”
“But that wasn’t the worst of it!” Harrison shook his head, distractedly, as if he was somewhat in a daze. “The worst was the monologue in the cab on the way over here. Every other word was Crystal this and Vibration that, Past Life Regression, and Mystic Rituals. The woman’s a whoopie witch!”
Di blinked. That was a new one on her. “A what?”
Harrison looked up, and for the first time, seemed to see her. “Uh—” he hesitated. “Uh, some of what Morrie said—uh, he seemed to think you—well, you’ve seen things—uh, he said you know things—”
She fished the pentagram out from under the neck of her jumpsuit and flashed it briefly. “My religion is non-traditional, yes, and there are more things in heaven and earth, etcetera. Now what in Tophet is a whoopie witch?”
“It’s—uh—a term some friends of mine use. It’s kind of hard to explain.” Harrison’s brow furrowed. “Look, let me give you examples. Real witches have grimorie, sometimes handed down through their families for centuries. Whoopie witches have books they picked up at the supermarket. Usually right at the check-out counter.”
“Real witches have carefully researched spells—” Di prompted.
“Whoopie witches draw a baseball diamond in chalk on the living room floor and recite random passages from the Satanic Bible.”
“When real witches make substitutions, they do so knowing the exact difference the substitute will make—”
“Whoopie witches slop taco sauce in their pentagram because it looks like blood.”
“Real witches gather their ingredients by hand—” Di was beginning to enjoy this game.
“Whoopie witches have a credit card, and lots of catalogues.” Harrison was grinning, and so was Andre.
“Real witches spend hours in meditation—”
“Whoopie witches sit under a pyramid they ordered from a catalogue and watch Knot’s Landing.”
“Real witches cast spells knowing that any change they make in someone’s life will come back at them three-fold, for good or ill—”
“Whoopie witches call up the Hideous Slime from Yosotha to eat their neighbor’s poodle because the bitch got the last carton of Haagen-Daaz double-chocolate at the Seven-Eleven.”
“I think I’ve got the picture. So dear Val decided to take the so-called research she did for the Great Fantasy Novel seriously?” Di leaned back into the railing and laughed. “Oh, Robert, I pity you! Did she try to tell you that the two of you just must have been priestly lovers in a past life in Atlantis?”
“Lemuria,” Harrison said, gloomily. “My God, she must be supporting half the crystal miners in Arkansas.”
“Don’t feel too sorry for her, Robert,” Di warned him. “With her advances, she can afford it. And I know some perfectly nice people in Arkansas who should only soak her for every penny they can get. Change the subject; you’re safe with us—and if she decides to hit the punch-bowl hard enough, you can send her back to her hotel in a cab and she’ll never know the difference. What brings you to New York?”
“Morrie wants me to meet the new editors at Berkley; he thinks I’ve got a shot at selling them that near-space series I’ve been dying to do. And I had some people here in the City I really needed to see.” He sighed. “And, I’ll admit it, I’d been thinking about writing bodice-rippers under a pseudonym. When you know they’re getting ten times what I am—”
Di shrugged. “I don’t think you’d be happy doing it, unless you’ve written strictly to spec before. There’s a lot of things you have to conform to that you might not feel comfortable doing. Listen, Harrison, you seem to know quite a bit about hot-and-cold-running esoterica—how did you—”
Someone in one of the other rooms screamed. Not the angry scream of a woman who has been insulted, but the soul-chilling shriek of pure terror that brands itself on the air and stops all conversation dead.
“What in—” Harrison was on his feet, staring in the direction of the scream. Di ignored him and launched herself at the patio door, pulling the Glock 19 from the holster on her hip, and thankful she’d loaded the silver-tipped bullets in the first clip.
Funny how everybody thought it couldn’t be real because it was plastic. . . .
“Andre—the next balcony!” she called over her shoulder, knowing the vampire could easily scramble over the concrete divider and come in through the next patio door, giving them a two-pronged angle of attack.
The scream hadn’t been what alerted her—simultaneous with the scream had been the wrenching feeling in her gut that was the signal that someone had breached the fabric of the Otherworld in her presence. She didn’t know who, or what—but from the stream of panicked chiffon billowing towards the door at supersonic speed, it probably wasn’t nice, and it probably had a great deal to do with one of the party-goers.
Three amply-endowed females (one Belle, one Ravished and one Harem) had reached the door to the next room at the same moment, and jammed it, and rather than one of them pulling free, they all three kept shoving harder, shrieking at the tops of their lungs in tones their agents surely recognized.
You’d think their advances failed to pay out! Di kept the Glock in her hand, but sprinted for the door. She grabbed the nearest flailing arm (Harem), planted her foot in the midsection of her neighbor (Belle) and shoved and pulled at the same time. The clot of feminine hysteria came loose with a sound of ripping cloth; a crinoline parted company with its wearer. The three women tumbled through the door, giving Di a clear launching path into the next room. She took it, diving for the shelter of a huge wooden coffee table, rolling, and aiming for the door of the last room with the Glock. And her elbow hit someone.