by Bill Fawcett
“I was gonna catch up.”
“When? The show’s about to start.” Megs narrowed her eyes, and Cam could almost feel the gaze drilling into the center of her forehead. Even with the magic in her right eye, Cam couldn’t see auras. But every now and then she caught a glimpse of a glistening, soap-bubble thin layer over a person’s skin. She could see one of those layers hovering around Megs, but instead of hugging her skin, it flared and danced like flames around the sun.
Megs paled. “What’s wrong, Cam? C’mon, talk to me.”
“It’s complicated. At first, I wasn’t sure if anything was going on. Then I wasn’t sure if I should talk about it.”
“Oh,” Megs said slowly, like the word was a mile long. “Yeah. Talking about it is how you get in trouble. Look at me.”
“You look fine. Really.”
“Really? Why do I get the feeling those words have a whole new meaning for you now?” Megs held up her hand like a stop sign. “No, don’t answer that. Just tell me you’ll dish when you can.”
“Promise,” Cam said, crooking her little finger.
They shook pinkies, and Megs sighed. “I know you didn’t want to drag it around all day, but I really wish you’d had your sword with you in the Dealers’ Room this afternoon.”
“Why?” Cam asked.
“The blade’s solid steel,” Megs said. Cam stared at her blankly.
“Hel-Io,” Megs yodeled. “Earth to Cam. Magic can’t stand the touch of iron.”
Cam thought about the black spars of the big parasol and all the metal used in the elevators, and wasn’t so sure.
* * *
The storm that had threatened all afternoon blew in sometime during the Dawn Masquerade. Back in their room in the International Tower, Cam pressed her nose against the glass door to the balcony and stared into the squalling night. Rain sloshed over the railing and spattered against the glass in spite of the concrete slab overhead and the sheltering walls jutting past the balcony’s edge. Lightning cracked like gunshots. If she angled her head right, she could see low-hanging clouds painted gray and yellow by the reflected flashes.
There was nothing supernatural about it, but it was still intimidating. Only a few months before, the Westin Hotel down the street lost hundreds of windows to a tornado. People staying in the top floors were almost sucked out the holes. The winds—just the winds—shifted the whole building on its foundation. So tornadoes weren’t exactly common in Atlanta; there was nothing to say it couldn’t happen again. Cam pulled the heavy drapes closed as if that would shut the storm out of her thoughts.
Fat chance. The wind seemed to get louder when they turned out the lights. Cam didn’t know how anyone could fall asleep through the thunder and the swooshing rain. On the other side of the bed, Isobel lay as stiff as a board. She must’ve been more scared than she let on. She was covered to the chin, but her deodorant and perfume and the fragrance of her foundation were so thick Cam could smell them all the way down the back of her throat.
Wait, when did Isobel ever go to bed with make-up on? She considered zits a bigger disaster than global warming.
Cam thought back to what Isobel wore to bed: Baby Phat shorts and her favorite knit cami, the one with the lace and the inset bra. Oh shit. How did Isobel expect to get away with sneaking out of the room with everyone wide awake from the storm?
Only everyone wasn’t wide awake from the storm. Mrs. Owens was already snoring. She dropped like a rock last night too. That must’ve been what Isobel was banking on. The idiot.
She’s going to screw up everything! Mrs. O would have to kick her out of the room. The weekend would be shot. Mrs. O would spend half the time fuming at Isobel and the other half wondering if there was some way she could’ve stopped her. Megs would be angry because her mom was upset. Cam didn’t want to think about how her parents would react. Every time Isobel pulled some stupid stunt—and she pulled a lot of them—Cam had to work twice as hard to get her parents to trust her. Cam had to stop her, or at least get her back to the room before Mrs. O took her 3 a.m. pee.
Perversely, once she made the decision, she started to drift off. Mrs. O’s quiet whuffling was strangely restful. If the springs hadn’t creaked when Isobel eased off the bed, Cam would’ve been a goner.
Isobel froze at the noise, a darker shadow against the dimness of the room. Mrs. Owens grunted and rolled to the center of her bed, away from the door. Isobel snatched her con pass and room key from the nightstand, grabbed her sandals and scooted out of the room.
Cam expected the momentary glow from the hallway to give her away. But Mrs. O didn’t react. Her snores settled into their old rhythm before Cam found her flip-flops and the shorts she’d worn earlier.
Cam tip-toed over the carpet. Backed against the door to muffle the sound of the latch, she waited for a thunderclap to cover her exit. Then Megs lifted her head off her pillow. Cam almost died. Megs waved as if she didn’t already have Cam’s complete attention. She pointed to the corner where Cam’s katana leaned against the wall.
Cam hesitated. Megs jabbed her finger at the sword. Cam gave in. It was either that or risk all the arm flapping waking up Mrs. O. Satisfied, Megs nodded and eased back under the covers. Her mom snored through the whole thing.
Cam sniffed. What was she supposed to do with a twenty dollar katana? Threaten her sister at sword point? Like that would work. Isobel would laugh at her—if Con Security didn’t confiscate it first.
Assuming she could find Isobel. The elevator lobby was empty by the time she got there. There was no way of telling where Isobel was headed. Movie elevators might come with handy-dandy indicator dials. The elevators in the International Tower sure didn’t.
Down was a safe bet. Werewolf was noisy. They wouldn’t be playing on the sleeping floors. It would have to be one of the conference levels. But which one?
Isobel said something about filking. Yeah, the filking was going on right next door. Automatically, Cam groped for the pocket program in her back pack. Aw man, why hadn’t Megs pointed at her program instead of her sword? Maybe the concierge would have one?
Something snorted, hot and wet, against her right knee. Cam froze. Biting the inside of her cheek to keep from making any noise, she lowered her eyes without moving her head.
The love child of Dumbo and Winnie the Pooh fluttered its eyelashes at her. The creature was about the size of a fat beagle with small perky ears, a short trunk, and black button eyes. White stripes and dots painted its tarnished gray hide. It was cute and funny, like a guy wearing spats in an old black-and-white movie—if you ignored the wicked big nails on all four paws.
Oh shit, was it here to take her eye?
Get a grip, she told herself. You’re the one with the big sharp pointy thing. Besides, the creature wasn’t making any threatening moves. All four paws were firmly planted on the carpet. All she had to do was keep them that way.
The critter butted a lightly-furred forehead against her calf. She choked back a shriek. The elevator at the end of the line pinged. She threw herself against the half-opened doors and fell inside. Frantically, she mashed the button to close the doors. Nothing happened. None of the floor buttons were lit. She whimpered.
Shaking its head and muttering, the critter waddled into the cab. Using the elevator wall for support, it propped itself on its hind legs and stretched toward the buttons, but it proved too short to reach the bottom row. It turned and wheezed at her again.
“Going down?” she squeaked.
The critter snuffled. Cam swore it looked disgusted.
“What floor ...” Cam smacked her forehead. “Duh! Forget I said that. What if I run my finger over the buttons and you let me know when to stop?”
The critter snorted excitedly and patted the wall with its forelegs when she reached the very bottom floor. After she pushed the button, it settled back on all fours beside her right leg, swayin
g a little, like it was grooving to elevator music. By the time the elevator slowed to pick up a pair of very human vampire wannabes on the sixth floor, her heart had stopped trying to pound its way out of her chest and her breathing was almost back to normal. It didn’t hurt they were all going to the same place.
The lowest floor of the International Tower was two floors below the lobby, too far down for Cam to hear the storm or feel the pressure of the wind. But the magical light she’d seen in the atrium had no problem going the distance. Brightly colored lines crisscrossed the open area between the elevators and a suite of conference rooms. Pixie dust spangled the costumes of the Goth-lolli chorus girls rehearsing their kick line in the corner. A burst of cheering from one of the rooms in the suite suggested it might be a good place to search for Isobel. The critter had other ideas. As soon as they exited the elevator it scooted around behind her and started butting her left leg with its fuzzy forehead.
“Hey, stop that,” Cam hissed. The critter slobbered on her calf. “Eeew!”
She half-jumped, half-staggered to the right. The guys who’d ridden with her looked down their powdered noses at her like she was a total spaz before tromping away. She gave them the finger, hiding it behind her sword. She might be seeing striped mini-monsters, but she wasn’t that crazy.
The critter cut in front of her, glanced over its shoulder and snorted. It took a couple steps toward the escalator to the conference level and repeated the over-the-shoulder look, like it expected her to follow.
“I can’t,” she said, hoping anybody overhearing her would assume she was talking on an earbud. “I’ve got to look for my sister.”
The critter snorted again and bobbed its head toward the escalator. Cam chewed her bottom lip. Well, it wasn’t as if she had any better ideas.
Ribbons of light angled through the muggy hallways connecting the basement meeting rooms with the Motor Lobby leading to the Hyatt parking garage. The light lines crossed at several places in the lobby. Those seemed to be the most popular spots for the people (and others) in Renn Fair costumes tuning old instruments. Guitar music and a loud baritone voice echoed from a room at the end of a crowded passageway to the left of the garage doors. That must be the filking room.
But where were the gamers? The Motor Lobby boasted musicians and card players and a lot of people posing for pictures, even though it was after one o’clock in the morning. But no Isobel. Nothing that looked like a Werewolf ring, either.
The critter snorted, as disgusted as before. Belly swaying from side to side, it jogged through the doors to the garage.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, but nobody paid any attention, including her gray and white striped guide.
If she hadn’t seen the comforting threads of light bracing the pillars of the garage, Cam would’ve been tempted to cut and run, regardless of what might happen to Isobel or their weekend. Once they left the bright puddle of light and sound around the Motor Lobby doors, the garage was dead silent except for the slap of her feet, the click of the critter’s nails against the cement, the sizzle of fluorescent lights and the grinding yawn of twenty-plus stories of hotel settling over their heads.
The garage hadn’t been this spooky when Mrs. Owens parked there, but there had been lots of people around. Now the dim lighting and the shadows added a major creep factor to the unnerving sense of the whole building pressing down from above.
Cam checked the draw on her katana. What was she doing down here following a creature she didn’t even have a name for? Why did she decide it was leading her to Isobel?
She risked a right eye glimpse at her surroundings. Dark silhouettes jigged on the distant walls. Their movements had nothing to do with the lights or the cars.
The critter ignored the shadows. It trotted briskly down the yellow strip in the middle of the main traffic lane, where the lights were the brightest and the colored lines were the thickest.
Screwing up her courage, she asked, “You sure Isobel’s down here?”
The critter grunted something that sounded like an affirmative. Halfway down the next ramp, it stopped. It craned its neck forward as if to say, “You go on.”
When Cam pulled up beside it, she realized some of the noises she thought were echoes were voices. She hesitated. The critter screwed up its nose like it was preparing for another slobber.
“No, no, no! I get what I’m supposed to do. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say. You’re only solid in my right eye,” she said softly. “According to everything I’ve read, that makes the words really important.”
The critter bobbed its head and brushed its ear against her knee. The hairs framing its oval ears felt surprisingly silky. Uncertainly, she crouched down to give its head a one-handed scratch. The critter stretched its neck and rumbled contentedly.
“I’m glad you like it,” Cam whispered, deepening her massage of the stiff hair along the back of its neck. “You’ve been a lot better at leading than I’ve been at following.”
The critter grunted once and started gacking asthmatically. It sounded like laughter. Its lips stretched back from its nose in something resembling a grin. Then it imploded like a party balloon after somebody stuck a pin in it. A faint clatter drew Cam’s attention to the floor. A tiny silver version of the critter, a chain strung through a loop on its back, glittered against the stained concrete.
Cam looped the chain around her wrist. “Okay,” she said. She thought she heard a soft snort in reply but told herself it was the voices rising from the next level down.
The pillars framing the next bend in the traffic lane formed a rough pentagram. Thick ribbons of colored light outlined the shape and drew a star on the floor inside it. Cam guessed the star was almost directly under the metal parasol in the atrium lobby.
Isobel and four other people hunkered down inside the pentagram. The three guys ran the gamut from a chubby middle school nerd to a skinny ninth grader with superthick glasses, to a fit guy wearing a faded Florida Gators t-shirt. The guy from University of Florida looked like a Justin Timberlake clone with all the brains sucked out. Just Isobel’s type. Apparently, he was the other girl’s type too. Her gaze kept darting to him as she talked.
“Then the accidents started.” The girl’s drawl reminded Cam of the ones she heard around Fort Stewart, only a little faster on the turns. The girl paused for effect, looking at the guys, then Isobel. Cam guessed she didn’t like what she saw. The girl had the kind of pretty that takes a lot of work, but her legs weren’t that hot, especially compared to Isobel’s.
“What kind of accidents, Laurel?” her sister asked breathlessly.
“The bad kind, of course. The kind where people lose legs and arms and eyes. The kind where whatever you build up falls down and drags your equipment down into the hole with it.”
The two younger guys hugged their arms to their sides. If they were trying to keep their fear from showing, they were doing it wrong. Gator Guy nodded, eyes bright and wide. He was totally into it, which was probably the real reason they were all here. Cam bet he was some kind of urban legend freak, and Laurel thought she could use that to get ahead in the boyfriend stakes. Isobel was too dumb to realize she was helping.
“The architect was at his wits’ end. This hotel was supposed to be the crownin’ jewel of his career. His reputation, his firm and everythin’ he owned was on the line. Then one day, when he was in his office wonderin’ if it might be simpler to swallow a bullet and get it over with, he heard someone knock on the door. Once.” Laurel rapped her knuckles against the nearest pillar. “Twice.” She rapped again. “Three times.
“When he opened it, there was no one there. But when he turned around, there was an old, old Geechee woman standin’ in front of his desk, her head all wrapped in rags, and beads and bones hanging from her neck. Her eyes were white blind, and her voice crackled like dead leaves.
“She told him he was build
in’ his hotel on the very heart of the Georgia slave trade, the very site of the Atlanta slave market ...”
The guy with the glasses raised his hand like he was in class. “But according to our carriage driver, this part of town—”
Laurel dropped him with the mother of all glares. “Do you want me to finish this story or not?”
“Forget about him,” Gator Guy said. “Go on!”
“Yeah,” Cam chimed in, “get to the good part. You know, the part where they brick up one of the construction workers in the foundation or pour him into the concrete.”
Everybody in the pentagram jumped, including the JT clone. Cam sauntered down the ramp, channeling Buffy for all she was worth. The Slayer would never be caught dead in flip-flops hauling around a sword she didn’t know how to use. But from the way everybody was looking her, Cam figured they didn’t know that. She grinned at the thought. The chubby kid flinched. Even her sister gulped.
Laurel recovered first. “So you know the legend?”
Cam shrugged, Slayer cool. “Maybe not the details, but it’s the same old story they feed you at every castle and cathedral in Europe.”
“And you’ve been to so many,” Laurel sneered.
“Actually, yeah. Army brat. Her, too.” Cam tilted her sword hilt at Isobel.
Her sister squared her shoulders. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to find out why it was so important for you to get down here tonight. You don’t really believe this crap, do you?”
The JT clone put his arms around Isobel. “Of course, she does,” he said.
They exchanged goofy smiles. Isobel cooed, “Oh, Dean.”
Laurel’s mouth thinned. The energy hugging her skin bucked and roiled. That couldn’t be good.
“So what’s the deal?” Cam asked. “You’re going to taunt the spirit or call him up to do what, exactly?”
“Cam!” her sister objected.