A voice came out of the crowd. “He said tell him something no one else knows!”
Lyle’s face burned red as Shawn turned to go. “Come on, I want you to read my mind,” he said, grabbing Shawn’s arm. “I’m not letting you go until you tell me something amazing.”
Shawn sighed and took a hard look at Lyle Wheelock. And he saw. Saw a fine white powder on his shoulders-powder that might have been dandruff, except that Lyle didn’t have any hair. Saw a film of yellow grease under his fingernails. Saw the small tear in his shirt that had been amateurishly stitched together. Saw the bare white band on his ring finger.
Shawn’s hands dropped away from his forehead. “I’m not seeing anything,” he said, then turned to Gus. “Let’s go.”
“Just tell him something so we can get out of here,” Gus hissed in Shawn’s ear.
Shawn sighed again. “If that’s what everyone wants…”
Shawn leaned close to Lyle and whispered into his ear. Gus couldn’t hear what Shawn said, but he could see the reaction. Lyle dropped Shawn’s arm, his face turning red.
“Let’s go,” Shawn said, turning toward the door. But before they could take a step, Lyle let out a howl.
“How dare you come to this party and tell everybody I’m sleeping with my best friend’s fiancee?” Lyle shouted.
Behind Lyle, Bud Flanek turned pale. The other members of the party looked like they’d been struck with hammers.
“I didn’t,” Shawn said. “You just did.”
Lyle leapt across the room and grabbed Shawn by the throat. “Shut up! Shut up!”
Shawn gasped for breath, but Lyle was squeezing too tight. Gus tried to pry his fingers off, but they were like steel bands. Shawn could feel himself beginning to lose consciousness, when a scream echoed from the front room.
“What was that?” Lyle said, releasing his grip on Shawn’s throat and letting him drop to the floor.
Every head in the bar swiveled toward the door, and for a moment, the entire crowd stood frozen. And then the scream came again.
“This way,” someone shouted, and the entire crowd drained out of the room.
“Can’t see why my father doesn’t like this place more,” Shawn said, rubbing his neck.
Chapter Five
The Fortress shook as if someone had slammed a wrecking ball into it.
“Earthquake!” Gus shouted as he followed Shawn into the main parlor.
“I don’t think earthquakes usually hit at two-second intervals,” Shawn said.
Shawn and Gus pressed into the room, but all they could see were the backs of the people who’d gotten there before them. The Fortress shook again.
“Then what’s going on?”
Shawn scanned the room. Then he pointed above the crowd toward the entrance. “I think it may have something to do with that.”
Gus craned his head around a tall man in a cheap tuxedo, looking to see what Shawn was talking about. And when he did, he wished he’d never opened his eyes. It wasn’t the fact that there was a head bobbing above the crowd that bothered Gus, even though its bald crown must have been more than seven feet off the ground.
It was the fact that the head was green.
The Fortress shook again. The head moved through the crowd like a shark’s fin cutting through the waves, and Gus realized what was rattling the building: It was the green creature’s footsteps.
“What is it?” Gus whispered to Shawn.
“A product of global warming, I’m thinking,” Shawn said.
“What?”
“Don’t you remember Frankenstein: The True Story?” Shawn said. “At the end, Victor Frankenstein is chasing the monster over the North Pole, and they both get buried by an avalanche. Clearly, global warming has melted the ice enough to set the monster free.”
“That was a movie, Shawn,” Gus said. “It didn’t really happen.”
“It’s the true story,” Shawn said. “It said so in the title.”
“That doesn’t make it real,” Gus said.
“Really?” Shawn said. “I thought there was a law.”
The room shook again as the creature took another step. Somewhere in the crowd, a woman screamed.
“What’s it doing?” Gus said, jumping up to see over the crowd.
“The last thing you want it to do,” Shawn said. “Coming this way.”
Shawn was right. The head had turned and was now moving directly toward them. Up ahead, Gus could see the crowd falling away to make room for the creature.
“Do you think it eats people?” Shawn said, edging back a little. “Because if so, I think Lyle would make a tasty treat.”
The crowds parted as the stomping footsteps got closer. The two men blocking Shawn’s view fell aside, and the creature stood directly in front of him.
Its enormous feet were encased in heavy black boots. On its bald head it wore a thick gold band as a crown. Its midsection was wrapped in a black loincloth. The rest was rippling muscles covered only by bare flesh.
Bare green flesh.
Gus stared up into the creature’s face. If he ignored the coloring and the razor-sharp teeth, he could imagine he was looking at a normal human. Of course, if he could ignore the coloring and the razor-sharp teeth, he could imagine a great white shark was a goldfish, but that wouldn’t keep him from being digested as a snack.
The creature stared down at Shawn and Gus, arms crossed over his mammoth chest. “Puny humans, tremble before P’tol P’kah,” his voice boomed down at them.
The creature pushed between Shawn and Gus as it stomped toward the back of the building. Before Gus could decide between following the green monster or collapsing into a dead faint, a thin, reedy voice came from behind him.
“Fellow magicians,” the voice said, “P’tol P’kah has come here to meet your challenge.”
Gus turned to see a tiny man following in the open aisle the creature had created. His salt-and-pepper hair was razor cut; his designer suit hugged his body. Aside from the fact that the top of his head didn’t quite skim the five-foot mark, he could have been Mitt Romney.
“Now, who here has dared call P’tol P’kah a fake?” the small man said.
There was a concerned murmur in the crowd before a heavyset man in a worn tuxedo pushed his way up to the speaker, his face twisted in scorn.
“I dared,” the man spat. Gus was certain he’d seen the angry man before, but couldn’t quite place him. “If I could build my own Vegas showroom and never let anyone backstage, I could perform miracles from beyond the wonders of space, too.”
“Of course you could, Balustrade,” the small man said patiently. “And all of America would flock to Vegas to see you practice your card tricks.”
Now Gus realized who the heavyset man was-the same magician who had slipped the five of hearts into his sock. But the cherubic look was completely gone, replaced by a visage of pure fury. He looked like a different person. He was, Gus realized, a much better performer than he had given him credit for.
The man in the red suit pushed his way to the front of the crowd. As he got closer, Gus could see that the suit wasn’t just shiny; it was made of vinyl.
“At least we perform our illusions honestly.” The red-suited man shouted his words over the other man’s head, which wasn’t hard to do.
