“H…cute?” Shaking her head, Claire brushed past him.
Mouth partly open, Austin whipped his tail from side to side. “I don’t like the way this smells.”
“Then since it’d take a sledgehammer to air it out, let’s go.” Claire could feel a perfectly logical reason for the design hovering just beyond the edge of conscious thought, but when she reached for it, it danced away and taunted her from a safe distance. Later, she promised and added aloud, “What did you say?”
Dean paused at the top of the stairs. “I said, do you think we should search the rest of Mr. Smythe’s old rooms, then?”
“He wouldn’t have been living with it,” she snapped dismissively. Then feeling like she’d just kicked a puppy, a large and well-muscled puppy, she added a strained, “Sorry. Where Augustus Smythe is concerned, I shouldn’t take anything for granted.”
The sitting room violated a number of rules concerning how many objects could simultaneously occupy the same space, but the only accident it contained involved the head-on collision of good taste with an apparent inability to throw anything away. The bedroom wasn’t quite as bad. Dominated by a brass bed, it also held an obviously antique dressing table, a wardrobe, and two windows. One of them framed into an inside wall.
“Probably the window missing from the room upstairs.” Jumping up onto the bed, Austin began kneading the mattress. “This isn’t bad. I could sleep here.”
Before Claire could stop him, Dean tugged the burgundy brocade curtain to one side and closed it again almost instantly, setting six inches of fringe swaying back and forth.
“Are you okay?” she asked warily. If it was the accident site and he’d been exposed, there was no telling what he might have picked up.
Cheeks flushed, he nodded. “Fine. I’m fine.”
“What did you see?”
“It was, uh, a bar.” He cleared his throat and reluctantly continued. “With, uh, dancers.”
“Were they table dancing?” The cat snickered. “Upon admittedly short acquaintance, that seems like the sort of scene old Augustus would go for.”
“Not exactly table, no.” Shaking his head, Dean lifted the curtain again. “It was dark but…” His voice trailed off.
Claire peered around his shoulder and almost went limp with relief. “That doesn’t sound like a bar to me. Looks like Times Square. And over there, in front of the hookers, isn’t that a drug deal going down?” Leaning forward, she rapped on the glass and nodded in satisfaction. “That put the fear of God into them.”
The curtain fell closed again. Dean’s voice threatened to crack as he asked, “What was it?”
“We call it a postcard.”
“We?” He waved an overly nonchalant hand toward the cat. That smacked-with-a-cod feeling had returned. “You and Austin?”
“Among others.” She glared at the curtain. “Smythe couldn’t have managed this on his own; he had to have been pulling from the site.”
“Is that bad?”
“Well it isn’t good. I’ll know more when we find the hole.”
“Wherever it is,” Austin agreed.
“Since we know it’s not in the dining room, what’s left?”
The basement held, besides the mechanicals, the laundry room, Dean’s sparsely furnished and absolutely spotless apartment, several storage cupboards holding sheets, towels, and still more cleaning supplies, and, across from the laundry room, a large metal door. Painted a brilliant turquoise, it boasted not one but two padlocked chains securing it closed.
“Dean, did you know this was down here?”
He frowned, confused by the question. Since he obviously spent a lot of time in the basement…“Sure.”
“Why didn’t you mention it earlier?”
“It’s just the furnace room.”
“The furnace room.” Claire exchanged a speaking glance with the cat. “Have you ever been in this alleged furnace room?”
“No. Mr. Smythe did all the furnace work himself.”
“I’ll bet.” The keys were hanging beside the door. The security arrangements were clearly not intended to keep people out but to keep something in. “What was he heating this place with,” she muttered, dragging the first chain free. “A dragon?”
Dean took the chain, removed the second length, and hung them both neatly on the hooks provided. “Are you kidding?”
“Mostly. Any virgins reported missing from the neighborhood?”
“Pardon?”
“Forget it.” Claire pulled the door open about six inches and leaned away from the blast of heat. “Do you mind?” she asked as Austin slipped in ahead of her. “Try to remember what curiosity killed.” Moving forward, she felt remarkably calm. At first she thought she was just numb—it had, after all, been a busy morning—but when she stepped over the threshold, she realized that the entire furnace room had been wrapped in a dampening field.
Much more powerful than a mere shield, it not only deflected the curious but was quite probably the only thing allowing people to remain in the building.
Down nine steps, inscribed into the rough surface of a bedrock floor, was a complicated, multicolored, multilayered pentagram. The center of the pentagram was an open hole. A dull red light, shining up from the depths, painted lurid highlights on the copper hood hanging from the ceiling. Ductwork directed the rising heat up into the hotel.
Must have a helluva filter system, Claire thought, wrinkling her nose at the stink of fire and brimstone.
And then it sank in. Unfortunately, the dampening field had no effect inside the furnace room.
Heart pounding, hot sweat rolling down her sides, she bent and scooped up Austin, who’d flattened himself to the floor. With the cat held tightly against her chest, she forced herself down the first three steps.
“Where are you going?” he hissed, claws digging into her shoulder.
“To check the seal.”
“Why?”
“Because Augustus Smythe couldn’t have held this.”
“Then obviously someone else is. And there’s only one someone else in this building.”
“She’s holding it, it’s holding her.” Claire went down another three steps and nodded toward the pentagram. “There’s her
