The Night Shifters (15 page)

It turned out to be
an alcove. It featured a table with another figurine of the Masked
Man on it, that could have been a twin to the one in Sir John’s
den. Its eyes twinkled at me, and I tingled all the way down to my
toes.

Definitely a love god
.
I left it reluctantly, probably blushing, and started toward the
next door on the left side of the hall– just in time to see someone
disappearing through a door on the right side, five doors down. I
barely glimpsed movement and perhaps a little color – grey? Like
the material of a smoking jacket, or a suit?

“Sir John!” I ran
after the figure. I rounded the corner and peered through the open
doorway, into what looked like a tomb or a ruined temple.

The ceiling
soared a hundred feet high, and a stone altar (or sarcophagus?)
stood under some tall, narrow windows through which actual
sunlight
streamed. Day had dawned! The
sunlight looked warm and inviting, but I hesitated.

“
Sir John?” A
large portion of the room hid out of sight around a corner. Perhaps
he was back there. I waited for him to poke his head around the
corner, but nothing happened.
There’s no one there,
I told myself.
You imagined the whole thing.

I almost turned
away – or maybe I was going to go in, I’m not sure – when I saw the
pink envelope on the altar.

Uh
oh
. Now my curiosity
consumed me. What could she possibly have to say to me, after all
that had happened? I had ignored most of her messages, and I had
slept with the most gorgeous hunk in town. Plus now I knew
something about her I hadn’t known before. Her jealousy made her
anything but objective.

But I couldn’t
stand it. I walked into the temple/tomb and picked up the letter.
The sunlight that fell on me from the windows didn’t feel as warm
as I had thought it would, but I didn’t think much about that as I
tore open the envelope. The handwriting on the front looked
especially neat and lovely again, maybe she had decided to bury the
hatchet.

“Dear Sucker,” said
the letter. “I’m sick of playing nice with you! You’ve made another
mistake, you dumb bitch!”

Behind me, the door
slammed shut. I dropped the letter and ran to open it again. But
the door had turned into a limestone slab, with iron handles. When
I finally managed to pry it open a few inches, I found a niche on
the other side, with manacles bolted to the wall. So I left it ajar
and went back to finish reading the note.

“
Do you
believe you’ve triumphed over me just because you’ve slept with the
Masked Man?” Her letters swooped aggressively across the page.
“
I’ve
slept with a thousand
daemons
, that’s
nothing to me! I learned something from every single one of them,
and that puts me way ahead of you.

“This is the last
letter you’ll get from me. You’d better take some time to think up
a good apology, because if I have to talk to you in person, you’re
going to be sorry.”

Bury the hatchet
indeed – right in my forehead. She didn’t even sign it this time. I
glanced overhead, just to make sure another vat of boiling oil
wasn’t about to fall on me. But apparently this tomb wasn’t
equipped with Medieval conveniences.

I dropped the
letter on the altar and surveyed my surroundings. The place was
huge, more like a cavern than a tomb, except that everything was
cut square. The grayish white stone might have been some kind of
limestone or marble. It smelled a little damp. I climbed some
tumbled stone near one of the windows and peered out, hoping at
least to be able to climb through to the daylight world. Maybe the
City of Night would fetch me back again, once I escaped from
Serena’s trap.

But no sun greeted
me as I poked my head through the window. Instead, I came face to
face with a large, round lamp, like the kind they used on old movie
sets. It flared when I looked at it, blinding me.

“All right, all
right.” I stumbled back down to the floor. “I get the message. You
fooled me with the fake sunlight. Are you happy now?”

As I blinked away
spots, the light in the windows dimmed, ever so slowly, as if she
were enjoying her power over me. But I refused to be discouraged. I
had been locked in a room once before and managed to escape.
Besides, I still hadn’t seen the whole place. I looked around some
more, with an eye open for possibilities.

In another alcove I
found a small statue of a beautiful girl. She was carved from pale
stone and had jewels strategically placed in the necessary spots,
somehow seeming more naked for all of that. Once again, I detected
goddess-class sluttiness in her demeanor, and guessed this must be
another statue of the Celestial Whore. Her face looked like it had
been worn away by centuries of running water, or wind, but it still
hinted at her beauty. Looking at her made me feel uncomfortable,
jealous even. Why did the Masked Man have her in his house? Was she
his female counterpart?

One thing though –
her breasts weren’t any bigger than mine. Apparently you don’t need
giant bazooms to be a sex goddess. This should be encouraging news
to aspiring tarts everywhere. Then it occurred to be – maybe Serena
put her there.

I’ve slept with a thousand daemons.
I wasn’t sure what a
daemon
was, but sleeping with one sounded like something the
Celestial Whore would do. Maybe she was Serena’s Patron goddess. I
turned my back on her and inspected another window. It turned out
to be a large alcove, not an opening to the outside. This one had a
lamp in it, just like the other. It had dimmed, I could look right
into it.

My time was running
out.

I went all
the way around the tomb, searching every nook and cranny, looking
into every alcove and out every false window, but no exit presented
itself. The light was so dim now, I knew I would be in absolute
darkness within a few heartbeats. But something nagged at me.
I
knew
there must be a way out. And not
only that, but it was right under my nose.

I went back to the
letter and looked at it again. It was too dark to see if the
writing on it had changed. I tossed it away and leaned against the
altar.

It gave slightly.
Or rather, its lid did. Maybe it was a sarcophagus after all. I
pushed the lid aside, wondering whose mummy lay inside. While I
pushed, the last of the light died, but a pale blue glow fell on my
face from within the sarcophagus. I leaned over the brink and saw
stairs descending into the twilight of a narrow hall. Music drifted
up the stairs, and it sounded vaguely familiar.

Prokofiev
, I
remembered.
The
Cinderella ballet
. A whole
orchestra was playing, and periodically it would break off and
start again, as if rehearsing. I climbed over the brink and went
down the stairs, until I came to a long, level hall. The music got
louder.

A door flew
open and a man came storming out, bumping into me and knocking me
into the wall. He gave me a furious look, as if I had been the one
to bump
him
. He was thin,
handsome, and dark-haired. “One!” I said.

“You’re damned
right I’m number one around here!” he snarled. “Where the hell have
you been? We’re ten minutes to show time!”

He gave no
sign that he recognized me from Camilla’s tree. But he certainly
seemed to recognize me from
somewhere
. He
was wearing tights and a ruffled blouse, open at the
neck.

“You’re the damned
prima ballerina around here,” he said, “and the least you could do
is show up on time!”

“Gee, I’m sorry.” I
blushed furiously.

“
You’re
sorry
,” he said
mockingly. “‘Oh, Nikita, I’m sooooo sorry.’ You think that just
because you’re screwing the boss you can screw with everyone else,
too!”

I almost
said
I am
not!
but then wondered if he
was talking about the Masked Man. Because in that case, he was
absolutely right. He looked me up and down, his painted eyes full
of contempt.

“I see we’re
dressed to kill tonight. He’ll like that, I’m sure. Come on.” He
grabbed my elbow and dragged me down the hall. I went along, too
curious to resist.

We came out into a
large area full of props, ropes, curtains, and people in ballet
outfits. The people were stretching and looking very serious.

“I hope you at
least had the sense to warm up tonight,” said One.

“Uh –”

He gave me a sharp
look. “What’s wrong?”

I didn’t have the
guts to lie to him when he had an expression like that on his face.
“Just what is it you expect me to do here?”

He stared at me
with disbelief.

“
I mean, I
know these shoes kind of
look
like
ballet slippers –”

He seized me by the
arm and pulled me right into his face. “Now get this. I expect you
to dance this ballet, and I expect you to dance it like you’ve
never danced before. If you shame us tonight, I promise you I will
kill you with my bare hands. I will wrap them around that pretty
throat of yours and strangle the life out of you. I have diplomatic
immunity, my dear. I can get away with it. I mean it.”

And he thrust me
away. I fell right on my butt. He gave me one last threatening look
and marched over to a group of men who had been watching us from
the corners of their eyes. He began to stretch with them as if
nothing had happened.

I didn’t get up
right away. Neither did I attempt to explain to him that ballet
dancers don’t actually qualify for diplomatic immunity. Instead, I
looked inward, wondering if I could really dance. I tried to
imagine what I would do when the music started. Nothing came to
mind.

So I stood and
tried to imitate the dancers around me, tried to stretch and stand
on my toes. I almost sprained an ankle.

Maybe it will all come together when I’m on stage,
I hoped, but I didn’t really
believe it. So I began to look around for an exit.

Then the
music swelled, the curtains opened, and several pairs of hands
shoved me out onto the stage. A spotlight blinded me, and applause
thundered. I bowed.
Okay, Night Magic,
I
prayed.
Time to
do your thing
.

Dancers began to
move around me. I just stood there like an idiot, hoping the Night
might inspire my limbs. When that didn’t happen, I decided to try
to imitate the ballerinas again, but a hippo in a tutu would have
been more graceful. I galloped back and forth like a kid playing
pony, hoping that ol’ Night Magic might still kick in once it saw
how badly I was doing. When it failed to do so, I resorted to a
really bad soft shoe. The other dancers cast horrified glances in
my direction, but did the best they could with the situation,
dancing in front of me whenever possible, to hide me from the
audience. But finally they had to exit – and I was left there
alone, desperately improvising.

Suddenly a couple
of familiar figures came galloping across the stage toward me:
Nostradamus and Camilla. He looked a lot thinner, and his wardrobe
had improved, but he danced even worse than me – though Camilla
managed to look good. They joined me center stage and we did
another bad soft shoe, together.

“
This is not
a dream!” Nostradamus said in a stage whisper. “This is
real
. You’re humiliating yourself in front of a
real audience.”

I hadn’t really
looked at the audience until that moment, but sure enough, there
they sat, looking amused, bemused, and annoyed.

Camilla did a nice
pirouette. “Would you like to be a real ballet dancer? We could
make you one in our world. The greatest dancer in all of Night! You
could do things these mortals never dreamed of. How about it?”

“No thanks.” I
shuffled away.

One danced onto the
stage and seized me with a painful grip. He tried to force me
through the proper steps without much success. “Tonight you die!”
he promised, and when I skipped away he pursued me, turning his
dance into a comic chase. The audience laughed, making him even
more furious, and he left the stage before he could create any more
accidental comedy.

Camilla leaped to
my side. “One was a great ballet dancer. That’s what attracted me
to him. This night is a night from his past. When he sees you
again, he’ll remember how clumsy you were, and he won’t like you as
much.”

I would have told
her I didn’t care, but a big hook yanked me off the stage before I
could say anything. A real ballerina waited in the wings. She gave
me one haughty glance from her lovely (and somehow familiar) eyes,
then glided onto stage like an angel. I watched her for a moment,
feeling embarrassed but also relieved, then turned my back and went
in search of an exit. I found one not ten feet away, with a big
neon sign over it.

I slipped outside –
happy to see the City of Night, with its odd houses and curling
streets – and I started down a flight of stairs. But Camilla and
Nostradamus waited at the bottom.

“You don’t know
what you’re turning down,” said Nostradamus. “You could spend
eternity as a beautiful, talented, ageless woman!”

I almost
asked him how come
he
wasn’t beautiful or
talented if he was so powerful, but that seemed cruel. I glanced at
Camilla, and she gave me a half smile, as if she were reading my
thoughts.