This time, Clementine smiled. The expression reminded me of a fox baring its teeth at a fat hen. “Good. Then let’s get the show started. We wouldn’t want to keep our guests waiting.”
Turning her back on her underling, Clementine set off down the hallway.
Dixon stared at Jillian’s body for a moment, his lips curled with disgust. Finally, sighing, he holstered his gun and attached the walkie-talkie to his belt again. He reached down, grabbed Jillian’s leg, and hurried after his boss. His inherent giant strength and the smooth marble floor made it easy for him to drag the body, like a kid pulling a wagon behind him. In seconds, the two of them had rounded a corner and disappeared from sight.
I got out of the chair, went back into the bathroom, and grabbed my shoes. Then, knife still in my hand, I opened the exterior door and eased out into the hallway, looking left and right. Not seeing anyone else or hearing any footsteps clattering in my direction, I hurried down the hallway after them, my shoes clutched in one hand and my knife in the other. The marble floor felt as cold and slick as an ice rink against my bare feet, but I didn’t dare take the time to stop and put my heels back on. They’d make too much noise cracking against the floor, anyway.
Guilt surged through me once more. I should have realized something was wrong the second Clementine had sidled up to me in the rotunda, and especially when she’d done the same thing again in the bathroom. Clementine had been making sure I was inside so Dixon could shoot me. But somehow, while they’d been off plotting my demise, the two of them had missed Jillian entering the bathroom. And since he’d shot Jillian so many times in the face, destroying her features, they both assumed he’d killed the right woman in the red dress.
I didn’t know anything about Jillian Delancey. Didn’t know if she was good or bad, kind or indifferent, sweet or cynical. If she had a family, if she was a loner, if she had a couple of cats at home. If she gave money to charity, if she saved every penny, if she was a ruthless businesswoman who crushed everyone who stood in her way. All I did know was that Jillian had been in the wrong place at the wrong time—and wearing the wrong damn dress.
The giants were going to pay for that—in blood.
The determination to end Clementine and Dixon burned through me, but I made myself rein in my anger and focus on the pertinent questions.
As for why the giants might want me dead, it could be any number of reasons. But I kept wondering. Why would the giants consider me such a threat? There were lots of bad people here tonight. So why target me and not someone else?
This had the feel of a hasty hit, something arranged and executed on the spur of the moment. If all they’d wanted to do was murder me, then Clementine and Dixon had already succeeded—or at least thought they had. With their mission accomplished, they should be hightailing it out of Briartop and off the island, not dragging Jillian’s body off to parts unknown. Even more telling was the fact that they hadn’t bothered to hide or clean up the mess they’d left behind. Jillian’s blood was sprayed all over the bathroom door and the floor in front of it for all the world to see. Then there were the other teams they’d checked in with—and why they needed so many other people in the first place. No, something else was going on here besides killing me. That alone made me curious enough to figure out what Clementine and her pals were up to and do whatever it took to derail their scheme.
I reached the end of the hallway. I eased up the corner and peered around it, expecting to see the two giants heading toward the doors that led outside at the far end of the corridor.
But the hallway was empty, completely empty.
I looked behind me, then up ahead again, but no one else appeared. This particular hallway branched off in two directions. If Clementine and Dixon hadn’t gone for the exit, that left only one other destination: the rotunda.
I frowned. Why would they go back there? Especially since Dixon was dragging Jillian’s body around like a rag doll. What good would that do—
The harsh, stinging retort of gunfire exploded in the museum, followed by the even louder, sharper sounds of people screaming. Crashes, bangs, breaking glass—all that and more reverberated through the hallways, echoing back on one another until it sounded like someone had detonated a series of bombs inside the marble walls. Maybe they had.
I cursed. I should have taken care of Clementine and Dixon outside the bathroom, not let them get so far ahead of me that they’d been able to put their plan into action . . . whatever it was. I’d wanted to be quiet and cautious about things, and now it was coming back to bite me in the ass.
Even as I hurried down the hallway toward the rotunda, I realized that I was already too late. An iron gate barred my way, stretching from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, just like a portcullis in a real castle. I reached out and rattled the metal—or at least tried to—but it was no use. There was a lock on the other side of the gate, and even if I’d managed to open it with a couple of elemental Ice picks, I simply wasn’t strong enough to lift the heavy sheet of metal.
More gunshots and more screams rang out as the violence continued inside the exhibit space—where my friends, my family, were.
I cursed again and backtracked, hurrying down hallway after hallway around the rotunda, but all of the entrances were similarly blocked by gates. That must have been what at least some of Clementine’s teams had been standing by for, her signal to lower the gates and trap all the partygoers like fish in a barrel.
Well, if I couldn’t go through or around the gates, I’d go up instead. I backtracked yet again until I reached a set of stairs to the second-floor balcony overlooking the rotunda. Unlike the ones that led to the museum’s upper levels, the stairs here hadn’t been blocked off for the gala, I supposed so folks could get a bird’s-eye view of the exhibit if they were so inclined.
I crept up the staircase and paused at the top. A gate was hanging up here too, but it hadn’t been lowered like the ones on the first floor. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy of the giants not to have secured
I put my shoes down on the top step, then dropped to my stomach. Knife still in hand, I slithered across the floor and peered over the edge of the balcony at the scene below.
When I’d been in the rotunda earlier, folks had been snacking on hors d’oeuvres, sipping champagne, and admiring Mab’s many treasures beneath the glow of the soft white lights strung up all around them. But now all of that beauty had been destroyed. Glass cases full of miniature carvings had been smashed and overturned, stone sculptures had toppled over and broken into chunks, paintings had fallen off the walls and been trampled. Black scorch marks marred some of the columns where bullets had bounced off them, while bits of marble littered the floor where the flying projectiles had chipped away at the stone.
Then there were the bodies.
Three men and two women sprawled across the floor, their arms and legs bent at impossible angles, their eyes dull and sightless, their expensive clothes red and mottled with blood. The bodies were clustered right in front of the main entrance to the rotunda. It looked like the bad guys had come in with guns blazing, not caring who they mowed down with that first initial blast. The people in front never even knew what hit them.
But everyone else did.
All of the surviving guests had been herded into the center of the room so that they were standing on the enormous mosaic star embedded in the floor. Giants holding guns surrounded them on all sides. Some in the crowd were crying, a few were clutching the wounds they’d gotten from the bullets flying around, but most were staring at the giants, their eyes wide, wondering what was going to happen next.
My gaze went from one face to another, looking for my friends, my family—Finn, Eva, Phillip, Roslyn, and Owen.
Finally, I found them, huddled together near the back of the crowd of hostages. I carefully examined each one of them in turn, but they all looked fine, if a little shaken up. Owen had his arm wrapped around Eva, while Roslyn stood on her other side. Meanwhile, Finn and Phillip were staring at the giants with narrowed eyes, obviously hoping for an opening so they could try to take them out. I would have told them not to bother. Even if
