Dancing With Werewolves (21 page)

I was strangely out of it, dreamy. His fingers teased my skirt up over my bare hip, and then caressed my uppermost breast under the camisole. Again I was lulled by that easy, fringes sort of lovemaking, what pleased him as he steered the car and trifled with my body swaying to the drone of the engine, the motion, the fondling.

We made the same dreamy approach to my cottage door; only Ric stopped us at the bottom of the shallow steps to the front door.

“I hate to say this, believe me, but I’ve got to leave town again.”

I didn’t will it, but my fingers curled hard into his jacket lapels.

“Just a quick trip to D.C. to report on the Juarez situation. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

“What’ll I do for a couple of days?”

“Keep checking out the Sunset Park killings. That ought to keep you in the libraries and out of trouble. Besides, you’ll be tender.”

“So you want me on the shelf while you’re gone?”

“I want you somewhere safe, Del, and thinking about when I come back.”

“You got it,” I said. Promised. I ran my hands along the smooth, silken edges of his lapels.

I was so besotted at that instant that I wanted to make love to his clothes, but I stopped myself from asking that he leave me the jacket. Now I understood why the public high school girls had coveted and worn their boyfriends’ letter jackets. Or leather jackets, depending on what crowd they ran with. I had been so retarded! But Ric was catching me up fast. Hickeys. Letter jackets. Lust.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Quicksilver had given me the doggie third degree when I returned from my rendezvous with Ric. He’d not only sniffed my crotch and growled, but he sniffed my discarded clothes and growled even more. Then he curled up in the corner of my bedroom and regarded me accusingly while I began preparing for bed. At least I was home alone. Sort of.

That intent pale-blue gaze was enough to make me take my underwear off behind the closed bathroom door.
Jeez!
I escape having overprotective parents to answer to by being born an orphan and then I get a dog that thinks he’s a
duenna,
which means
c
haperone in Spanish.

All I, or anybody reasonable, would say about a twenty-four-year-old fallen woman was . . .
high time
,
honey!
as Irma put it.

The shower water reminded me of the many fountains in Ric’s house. I adjusted the temperature until it fell like flowing warm satin on my body. I really wouldn’t have felt comfortable sleeping in Ric’s bed yet. One stage at a time. I donned my long granny nightgown and slunk back into the bedroom in the dark, easing under the covers.

I heard a long, disappointed, canine sigh from the corner. I’d call Quicksilver a bluestocking, except that he didn’t wear any.

                                                                                          * * * *

Morning was the usual bright and sunny. I decided to take Quick for a nice long run in the park to make up for my absence last night, and the absence of my supposed innocence, which his wolfhound nose could apparently detect.

Halfway through it, I let Quick off the leash to run far and wide, and sat out the rest of the marathon on a bench.

“Tender?” Irma asked me. “¡Ai, carumba, chica!”

Ric had warned me, but tender was a way too nice word for it. I was as sore as hell. On the other hand, the abiding discomfort reminded me of the excellent adventure we’d shared last night. I couldn’t wait to do it again, probably much sooner than advisable, like today.

I must have been giving off super-satisfied pheromones because two strange guys immediately plopped down on the bench on either side of me.

They wore those bright-colored knit golf shirts with the itty-bitty alligator embroidered on the chest, one pink, one green, and plaid pants to match. Serious muscles filled out the Florida duds on all fronts. Their faces were hawk-nosed and bleak-eyed.

“Our employer wants to see you,” Mr. Flamingo Pink said.

“Here I am.”

“On his turf.”

Oops. “Turf” was not a respectable corporate byword unless it was part of a Surf and Turf lobster and rib eye dinner at the local Stake and Ale.

“I can’t right now. I’m walking my dog.”

“You’re not walking and I don’t see a dog,” Mr. Chartreuse answered. “Let’s go, doll.”

Each had taken me politely but firmly by the elbow. Together they lifted me almost off the ground. I spotted a white van idling by the curb.

Elbows, as I may have mentioned before, are the

strongest offensive part of the human body. I was about

to smash mine into colorful kidneys on either side and

sprint to freedom.

Then the name on the side of the van registered.

Who sends a
labeled
van to kidnap an unwilling woman? The Magnus-Gehenna-Megalith Hotel and Casino Consortium, that’s who.

“It’s to your advantage,” Flamingo Pink growled. “The head man is interested in you. You know how rare that is?”

Yeah, very rare, which was probably just the way he wanted me cooked, the freaking werewolf.

“He wishes to talk to you about a job,” Mr. Chartreuse chimed in.

With these guys, “a job” was probably dangerous, illegal, and maybe even fattening. But I’d been itching to get on the inside of the M-G-M operation.
Voilà!
as Christophe might say, if he was really French.

“Okay. But I, ah, I can’t just leave my dog alone here in the park.”

“God,” Flamingo said to Chartreuse. “These dames today and their little purse pooches. Who do they think they all are, Paris Hilton?”

“All right,” Chartreuse said, “but it had better be house-broken.”

Quicksilver chose that minute to come barreling back toward me, fangs bared.

The men jumped back, leaving me free.

“We can’t take that thing.” Flamingo sounded afraid of more than Quicksilver.

“It’s Team Malamute or nothing,” I said.

Their brows wrinkled until their hairlines lowered a full inch. I think I got their problem. The M-G-M was a were-run operation and Quicksilver was half wolfhound.

“Sit,” I told Quick, who promptly obeyed. “He’s really well-behaved.”

“Yeah, right.”

“It’s both of us, or I do my tae kwan do routine and he eats you.”

My introduction to werewolves at Los Lobos had made me regard them, perhaps foolishly, as just another breed of dog with alpha and beta modes bred into the bone. If they had the upper fang, they’d bite. If they were the slightest bit conflicted, they’d cave and wait for their master’s voice.

“Well, we could always use him out at Starlight Lodge,” Chartreuse said, snickering uneasily.

“At the lodge, right. Can always use an extra canine there.”

With a mutual, rather mysterious shrug, Flamingo and Chartreuse caved.

They weren’t in full werewolf power and the boss wanted to see me. Presumably he could stomach seeing Quicksilver too. At least for a while.

Chapter Thirty-Five

A panel van has a way of feeling like a jailhouse wagon. I felt a lot of regretful heebie-jeebies as Quicksilver and I were carted off as willing passengers. We could take these guys, I was sure of it, but once we were in the hotel-casino, the odds would tip decidedly in the goons’ favor. And there were people who would miss us, pronto, but not Ric, who was out of town again. Better not to waste a minute.

“Who is the boss?” I asked.

The watermelon pair snorted in tandem, rather doglike.

“Mister Cicero is the boss of bosses. His consortium controls six top Las Vegas venues.” Flamingo lit up a stogie. Its foul smoke floated back into the second tier of seats and nearly choked me.

Six. Then he was a silent partner in three no one knew about.

“It’s a big compliment Mister Cicero has even noticed the likes of you,” Chartreuse said, snapping the rubber band on his wrist. Apparently he was trying to stop smoking, which was futile with a partner who was a walking pink chimney.

I coughed discreetly. “I just want to know how to properly address him.”

“‘Mister Cicero, sir’ should do it.” Chartreuse was sounding choked now too.

“You should be better dressed,” Flamingo said. “Mister

Cicero likes his people to look sharp.”

If the golfing outfits were part of that corporate directive, I’d prefer to remain a Raggedy Ann in workout clothes.

The van sped toward the huge, lurking bulk of the Gehenna, which had a fiery moat filled with holograms of mythological monsters (at least I hoped they were holograms), then buzzed around the impressive entry lanes and porte cochère to the rear.

Quicksilver and I were ushered inside into a locked, solid stainless steel, private elevator and shot upward a zillion floors. Flamingo and Chartreuse stared blankly at the floor indicator, their hands folded discreetly over their colorful crotches. Perhaps that was where they carried their hidden artillery.

The elevator doors opened on a corridor carpeted in black plush. Everything here was hushed, muting even Quicksilver’s clicking claws. We reached a door of embossed metal, which opened when our escorts hummed a certain melody into a voice-pad. Actually, it was more of an
a capella
howl.

The hair, such scanty stuff as it was, stood up on the back of my neck. Quicksilver’s thick-furred hackles went haystack high, but he managed to quiet his built-in urge to bay and bark warning. What had I gotten us into? Whatever it was, I hoped it proved useful as well as scary.

I wouldn’t find out a damn thing about the powers that be, and were, in Las Vegas sitting in Sunset Park nursing my newfound sexual itch. This was where I wanted to be. At the center of the hidden action, learning things, no matter the cost.

The office beyond the door was palatial, carpeted in mossy, dark emerald-green shag and paneled in black-stained pine. It felt like being in a night-time forest glade and was lit by etched globe lamps that mimicked dozens of full moons.

Quicksilver whimpered, feeling the ancient spell of dark forest and moonlight. I felt it too. Something Druid-like.

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 the 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?