Because if one of the lords was controlling Rhonda and the Martinez brothers, with magic hypnotism or whatever, then the real point of taking Vic prisoner was to get me out of the poker game. Which meant they wouldn’t let her go even after they got paid. They’d just keep using her against me.
A picture flashed into my mind. I walked into the nightly buffet, and this time, it was Vic lying in pieces on Wotan’s long silver tray, with her face still untouched so I could recognize her.
I needed to go to Rhonda’s store and see what was happening. But even desperate as I felt, I realized it would be a bad idea just to head for the front door and my car. Timon might have told his flunkies to stop me if I tried to leave, and it was possible that one of the other lords had agents waiting right outside to jump me.
I asked one of the Tuxedo Team where A’marie was. I found her on the fourth floor, brushing at the carpet in the hall with a broom and a kind of dustpan on a long handle. I guessed that was how everybody had to sweep a rug before Edison and Tesla gave us electricity.
Her face lit up when she saw me coming, and even with everything else I had on my mind, I winced when I realized I was about to disappoint her all over again. “I need your help,” I said, and then filled her in on what had happened and what I needed.
By the time I finished, she was frowning. “And if I do this,” she said, “are you going to give me what I want in return?”
“No,” I admitted. What else could I say? I felt more obligated to Timon than ever, now that I’d actually taken his money. “Look, you said it yourself. I’m a stranger in your world. I don’t know anything about anything. I’m not the guy you should be looking at to win the revolution.”
“Then why would I help you?” she replied.
“Well, I saved Rufino. I even got knifed doing it, or near enough. Didn’t I score any points for that?”
She looked at me for what felt like a long time. Her silver eyes reflected the light of the candle burning nearby. Finally she asked, “Do you really love Victoria?”
I shrugged. “I used to.”
“Wait for me in your room,” she said. She leaned the broom and pan against the wall and hurried away.
It took her a while to come back. I’d figured it would. But I was so impatient that I was about to say screw it and just make a dash for the T-bird when the lock clicked and she opened the door.
As I hurried over to her, she reached inside her black coat with its white carnation and shiny lapels, brought out a Smith and Wesson Model 439, and offered it grip first. “Is it all right?” she asked.
I wasn’t a big handgun guy. I would have felt a lot more at home with a rifle. But the automatic would put a hole in somebody, and it’s tough to tuck an M16 into the back of your jeans and hide it under the tail of your shirt.
“It’s fine,” I said, ejecting the magazine, then shoving it back in. “Where’d you get it?”
“It belongs to one of Timon’s guards. He won’t miss it for a while.”
So Timon let his people keep loaded pistols? I wondered again why they didn’t just kill him. Were they just that scared of him, or was he bulletproof? Was that possible, considering what the brownwings had-
I shoved that line of questions out of my mind. Timon wasn’t the problem, not right now.
“Are you ready to go?” asked A’marie.
I tucked the pistol into the back of my jeans. “Yeah,” I said.
This time we had to grope our way down the service stairs without a candle. I understood why. She didn’t want anybody to spot a light moving through the dark.
We had light for just a few seconds when we got to the ground floor, because one of the hurricane lamps was still burning. She took my hand and led me on, back into blackness and around a couple turns. Past the storeroom where we’d met the finheads, probably, although I wasn’t sure. Voices echoed, too soft and distorted for me to make out the words. The sound gnawed at my nerves. I told myself it was just the kitchen workers talking, not ghosts. Although for all I knew, ghosts were real, too.
I didn’t realize we’d reached a door until she cracked it open. The strip of bright sunlight dazzled me. Squinting, I made out a beat-up old Miata with faded paint and the top down. A’marie had parked it in a sort of rectangular niche that connected to an alley.
“I don’t see anybody,” she whispered.
“Me, either,” I replied.
“Then come on!”
We scrambled to the car. A Miata’s not made for a guy with long legs, but I wedged myself into the passenger side as best I could. I was still groping under my ass to find my seat belt when A’marie threw the convertible into reverse, backed out into the alley, then headed for the street. While she waited for a break in the traffic, I spotted my T-bird sitting safe and sound, without even a ticket on the windshield. Then she turned right and sped away from the hotel.
It would be bullshit to say that all the things that had happened since I met Timon suddenly seemed like a dream. How could they? I was riding shotgun beside a goat girl and on my way to deal with a problem that other strange creatures had caused. But it did feel weird to be suddenly back in the middle of normal life. All around us, human beings were doing ordinary human things. Drivers drove. Pedestrians scurried along. A woman dressed all in black set a panting on an easel in the window of an art gallery. A fat guy in a business suit fed a credit card into an ATM.
A’marie drove fast and changed lanes often, but she was good at it. I was about as comfortable as I ever was when it wasn’t me behind the wheel. I wondered if she had any trouble working the pedals with her hooves.
“‘How did he do those terrific stunts with such little feet?’” I quoted. Or misquoted, probably.
She shot me a smile. “
“Right. One of my dad’s favorite movies.”
“Well, they aren’t all that little. And they aren’t numb, or clumsy, or anything like that.”
“I didn’t really think they were.” I hesitated. “Look, I’m really grateful to you for helping me in spite of… well, you know.”
“I know,” she answered, and then we were quiet for a while. Until I realized we were going the wrong direction.
There are a couple good ways to get from downtown to Ybor City. So I didn’t think anything about it until A’marie shot past the last of the turnoffs. Then I said, “Hey!”
“If you’re going to walk right into a trap one of the lords has set for you,” A’marie answered, “you’ll need help, and I know where to get it. I promise it won’t take long.”
I hadn’t necessarily planned ‘to walk right into’ anything, but still, maybe she had a point. So I let her drive on to the northwest corner of Woodlawn Cemetery. To the part called Showmen’s Rest.
It’s the part of the cemetery reserved for circus and carnival workers. A little bit famous, at least to us Tampa natives, although it didn’t look any different than the rest of the graveyard. It was just a field with a low sandstone wall around it, and the markers were just little rectangular slabs. They weren’t shaped like tilt-a-whirls or elephants or anything like that.
As we got out of the car, A’marie fluffed up her tousled black curls, maybe to make sure they hid her horns. I didn’t think she needed to. There was nobody else around.
Which wasn’t all that encouraging, really. Where was the help she’d promised? I’d relaxed a little on the way over, probably because I felt that at least I was on my way to rescue Vic, but now worry and impatience sank their teeth into me again.
“Well?” I asked.
“This way,” said A’marie. She headed toward the garden mausoleum at the south end of the graveyard. As I followed, I wondered if she was going to introduce me to another walking dead man like the Pharaoh, or if she had some useful gadget like Frodo’s ring stashed inside the crypt.
When we were most of the way across the field, somebody whistled.
I turned around. I didn’t see anybody, but the shrill sound came again. I pulled the pistol out of the back of my jeans and said, “A’marie! We’re not alone.”
And I guess she answered me. But not with words.
Soft piping started up behind me. It sounded like Zamfir. But the few snatches of his music I’d heard on late-night TV commercials had never started my feet skipping and hopping to the beat like I was dancing some kind
