want to be asking Karael rookie questions over our shared breakfast. The very thought of his handsome mouth curling in a little Clint Eastwood smirk of contempt at my helplessness made my scrotum climb to higher ground. Once Alice finished complaining about me (which took several minutes) I got what I needed, plus some information that surprised me a bit and which I put aside to chew over later. Then I called Fatback and left a message on his answering machine (since at this time of day he would still be on the Last Train To Porksville) asking for whatever he could find about the Ralston Hotel, emphasis on escape routes, and also for some info about a few other things that had been troubling me. Since I’d finished the vodka and didn’t want to wait for room service, I took two tiny bottles of Bacardi out of the minibar and began working on them. I still had some orange juice, after all, and any sailor knows that when the weather ahead looks foul, it’s time to break out the rum.
I had been brooding and flipping channels for hours, letting bits of images and sound wash over me-half an inning of a baseball game, some incomprehensible cop drama featuring corpses and forensic labs staffed by improbably good-looking scientists, a local weatherman doing his best to seem responsibly worried as he reported a tiny bit of incoming rain that might force a few folks to roll up their car windows, plus old movies, infomercials, children’s cartoons that seemed to consist mainly of primary colors and loud shrieking-anything that would hold my attention for a few seconds. I finally found a program about soldier ants and even settled into it a little. I confess I might have dozed, or been about to; either way, the knock on the door startled me badly.
One of Prince Sitri’s Easter Island statues blocked the space beyond the chain. For an instant I could only wonder if the modest metal links would keep him out during the second or two it would take me to get to my coat where it hung over the chair and the automatic full of silver bullets in the pocket, but he only made a grunting noise and pushed something through the space between door and jamb-an envelope. When I took it, he turned and walked away, surprisingly quietly for a man (or at least a male human body) big enough to have his own zip code.
The envelope contained a note written on impossibly dainty, almost transparent paper in a finicky little hand that it was hard to feature as the product of Sitri’s immense, pudgy paws.
I wondered why he hadn’t just invited me to the Roosevelt Suite. It didn’t seem likely that Prince Jabba the Hutt and I would be able to have a surreptitious meeting in the crowded lobby, even after midnight, but on the other hand there’d be enough people around that it didn’t seem likely he was going to bump me off, either. I was already in the game and had pretty much bet my house, so I couldn’t afford to ignore the summons. I pulled on my coat, but not before putting on my shoulder holster and making sure that I had a round chambered in my new FN automatic. Nobody wants to be the guy they say, “He forgot to load his gun,” about while shaking their heads grimly.
I didn’t encounter anything in the halls, but I heard enough weird sounds from behind doors to make me hope some local channel was showing slasher movies. The elevator was empty too, although I swear somebody had cranked up the air conditioning way beyond what was reasonable, and I had to suffer what felt like cold breath on the back of my neck all the way down to “L.” Signs and portents. Unfortunately, when you live in my world they’re as ubiquitous as advertising and even harder to sort through for truth.
The lobby was still a busy place, with all kinds of folks from my side and not-my-side going in and out, grouped in chatty little bunches. Looking at a troop of obvious Hellspawn laughing and smoking outside the front door, I wondered how many crimes under investigation by Interpol could have been solved merely by listening in on their cheerful conversation.
The bar was full but not crazy full. I stood for a moment in the doorway looking around for either Sitri or his bodyguards, but even with all the weird looking people in the room I didn’t see any as weird as the prince. Then, at the corner of my eye, something bright caught my attention.
She was sitting at the bar by herself with her back to me, but even without the fall of pale gold hair down her shoulders and back, I would have known that slender shape anywhere, anytime. She wore a black skirt that showed her fine, pale legs and a red cashmere sweater that clung to her like a second skin, displaying the delicate bumps of her spine like a topo map in scarlet. Before I could get a chance to tell myself it might be someone else, fruitlessly denying the knowledge that was throbbing in every nerve of my Earthly body, she turned to the bartender, and I saw her face in silhouette. It was indeed the Countess of Cold Hands, her very own self, just as I had known from the first moment I spotted her. It was Caz, and she was all alone as if waiting for someone. As if waiting for me.
thirty-two
That was an intense couple of seconds, let me tell you. There she sat, staring at the mirror behind the bar, and it was like one of those movies where the single spotlight comes on and everything else goes dark: I couldn’t see anything but her. I had been smothering my feelings so strenuously for the last forty-eight hours or so that the intense wave of longing that rolled through me almost made my knees buckle. She was so beautiful. Her face was perfect.
No, not quite, I realized; that kind of perfection only exists after someone’s used an airbrush on a photo, but Caz came very close. Her only flaw-and it didn’t seem like a flaw to me-was that her high-bridged, slender nose and her fine bones gave her a look of fragility, of something fierce that had known a cage, that knew it could be broken and feared that beyond all else.
She looked young, but also like she might not age well. She looked like she could be damaged and probably would be. But still, my God, she was beautiful.
And in fact she would
As I moved toward her she seemed to sense my presence, or at least that she was being watched. I wasn’t surprised-it seemed like I’d never stared at anything so intently in my short angelic life. I was so surprised to see her in the Ralston that for a moment I literally couldn’t think of what to say.
She turned and her eyes went wide.
“Hello, Caz,” I managed to say. Clever, huh? I’d like to see you have come up with something better under the circumstances.
The look on her face seemed close to panic. “Bobby, what are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? What are you doing here?” I suddenly felt conspicuous, but if anyone in the bar was watching us they were being cagey about it. “Why didn’t you call me back?” Now that I stood in front of her I was more than a little angry, but that was only part of the storm that was blowing my emotions this way and that. For those who don’t know anything else, let me just tell you, it’s really weird to live in a human body. You can feel the hormones pumping, feel the hide bristling, skin stretching and shrinking, feel yourself being tugged by fight-or-flight impulses like the animal that you are. Or were. I wanted to grab her, kiss her, drag her to my room, but just as powerfully I wanted to shake her until tears came to those robin’s-egg-blue eyes, make her feel how much I was hurting. Yet another part of me was terrified that one of Eligor’s minions would spot her, and I’d have to decide between some kind of fatal standoff or else stand helplessly and watch them drag her back to the beast she had cheated, a creature that I already knew did not take losing well.
“You can’t be here, Bobby!” She grabbed her drink and downed it and began fumbling in her purse for money to leave on the bar. “He’ll kill you!”
“Who, Eligor?” I was confused. Why was she worried about me instead of herself? Everything seemed to have gone topsy-turvy. “No, this is a summit conference, there’s an official truce. I’ve been ordered to be here and the place is packed with angels. I’m in no danger at all.” Okay, not completely true, but I had bigger worries at the moment. Just seeing her again had me terrified that something might happen to her. Even if she’d lied to me, tricked me. Even if she didn’t care about me at all. “You’re the one who shouldn’t be here, Caz. Your ex owns this
