by Kat Cotton
“Hey, Mayor, cake shop.” I pointed the shop selling authentic Prague cakes.
“Yes, I see it,” he said.
“So?”
“So, if you want cakes, you buy your own. And don’t give me any poor orphan stories or any of that malarkey. You run your own business, Clementine. You want to be an independent woman. Buy your own cakes.”
Damn the mayor and his rational arguments. I turned to Kisho, but he looked away.
The second museum was so much better than the first. We got sent up a tower to see more labs. At the top of the stairs, there was no guide, just a laminated information sheet in English. I grabbed the sheet so I’d look like the smart one this time.
“This is the cabinet where the alchemist kept his valuable chemicals and stuff locked up,” I said with a flourish of my hand toward the cabinet. “Unfortunately, there is no philosopher’s stone in this cabinet, because dodgy tourists would try to steal it. Also, the Stone is a metaphor.”
I looked down at my sheet as we wandered around the dusty room. The uneven boards below our feet were difficult to walk on and covered in years of dust, and the walkway was crisscrossed with dangerously low ceiling beams.
“Watch your head, Kisho,” I said.
Mostly, in this room, there were specimen jars with weird creatures floating in brightly colored liquid. There were a few fake people hanging out, and lots of weird alchemy equipment.
“Shakespeare? I didn’t know he came to Prague,” Kisho said.
“True facts. It says it right here on the fact sheet.” I waved the laminated sheet at him.
“I’m not sure if that’s accurate,” the mayor said.
“It’s called a fact sheet. That makes it facts.”
“It doesn’t make it true facts, though,” he replied.
We walked through to the other side of the museum.
“Tiny little people!” I exclaimed. “They’re called homunculi. Alchemists tried to make them. I can’t really see the point of them. They’re way too small to do useful things, like running to the shop to buy you snack foods. Why not make full-sized people, not fun-sized?”
“Those things freak me out,” Kisho said. “It’s just wrong.”
“They’re cool but ultimately useless,” I said.
I was pretty sure the undead alchemist wasn’t making tiny people. At least I hoped he wasn’t. Kisho wasn’t wrong about them being freaky.
“I don’t know,” said the mayor. “I think creating human life would be awesome.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t need mad alchemy skills to do that,” I said. “Three girls from my orphanage created human life before they even finished high school. All you need is to be careless about using condoms.”
The mayor just sighed.
“Anyway, I like this place better,” I said. “It has more pizazz.”
“We’re not here for the pizazz,” the mayor said.
“Yeah, but it helps. Look at this display. The dude was making a philosopher’s stone and blew the shit out of his lab. Now, that has pizazz!”
We stopped in front of a display with glass fragments flying everywhere. Well, they were suspended on strings but you got the idea.
“Do you have to do that jazz hands thing every time you say ‘pizazz’?” the mayor asked.
“Yeah, it kinda goes with the territory,” I replied. “Pizazz!”
I waved my jazz hands in front of the mayor’s face.
“This place has nothing to add to our research at all,” he said.
“There are interesting stories about alchemy. Some of these dudes were crazy.”
“I wouldn’t put much faith in those stories. I don’t think they contain much truth.”
I waved my jazz hands in his face again, just for kicks.
“What exactly is truth, though?” I said. “I mean, we’re talking about dudes who want to make little people or want eternal life without figuring how to stay eternally young. That’s not just a little whack, it’s also flawed. Who wants to live to be a zillion years old if they look their age? Anyway, Mayor, I think this alchemist has a lot of pizazz himself, so we need to think on his level.”
The mayor looked at his watch. “I think we need to get back to the hotel so you can get ready for the ghost tour. And, Clementine, make sure your outfit has plenty of pizazz.”
Chapter 13 Ghost Tour
WHEN I GOT TO THE MEETING spot, I couldn’t find the red umbrella that marked the tour’s starting point. Great. I double-checked the email. Yep. This was the right place. Where was the tour guide?
This was a shit meeting spot. Totally exposed to the wind, and no shelter. I pushed my hands deeper into my pockets. I should have double-layered my tights, and I’d kill a man for a warm scarf. I should not have listened to Nic when he told me to have my neck exposed.
“I want vampire bites, not frost bites,” I’d told him. He wasn’t amused.
I’d wait a few more minutes, and then, if the guide didn’t show, I’d go back to the hotel, where it was warm and cozy. It was almost snowing, and every sane person was curled up inside.
About five minutes later, a girl turned up with a red umbrella.
“Is this the ghost tour?” I asked her.
“Yeah, sure. Are you joining us? Welcome.”
She jumped around in a perky way. I hated her already.
“It said to be here twenty minutes before the tour started, but you weren’t here.”
She pulled a clipboard out of her bag. “What was your name?”
“My name is, ‘Why the hell are you late for your own tour?’”
The guide laughed. “Oops. Sorry about that.”
“Yeah, I should think so. I don’t have time to waste.”
“I’m Ivana,” she said, pointing to the name badge on her chest. “You can call me Iva. And now, I need your name.”
“Iva? As in, ‘Iva watch, but I’m still late turning up’?” I said.
She gave me an absent smile, then tapped her clipboard and asked my name again. My sharp-edged wit was obviously lost on her.
“Clem,” I said.
While she crossed me off her list, a British couple turned up. This tour was going to be the worst thing ever. Then a few more people gathered. Every single person knew not to turn up twenty minutes early but me. Well, it was my first time doing a ghost tour. Any kind of tour. This was actually one of the few times in my life that I’d intentionally done something that involved a group of people.
“Okay,” Ivana said, checking her watch. “There are a few more who haven’t arrived yet, so we’ll wait a few more minutes.”
“Or we could start without them,” I said, “since they’re rudely late. People die in cold like this, especially if they’re just standing around doing nothing. At least walking will warm us up.”
Ivana ignored me. See, this was why the vamp wanted to kill people in tour groups. I was surprised he didn’t go for tour group leaders.
One of the guys in our group introduced himself to me. “I’m Charlie.”
“That’s nice,” I said.
Jeez, I wasn’t here to make friends. Making friends went against all my principles. Charlie looked like he’d be the sort to tell you his life story if you gave him any encouragement.
“Crowd in together so you can hear me,” Ivana said. “Now, are any of you easily scared? Because you might be overwhelmed by what you see on this tour.”
I scoffed at that. I reckoned I’d seen things that would turn Ivana’s hair white. Ghosts were pretty much the nice guys of the paranormal world. You got a few mean poltergeists, but they could be easily defeated.
“Will we see vampires?” Charlie asked.
Ivana’s perky smile slipped. “I hope not. You might need to go to Romania for that. I hear Transylvania is the best place.” Then she got out a little flag for us to follow. “Rug up,” she said. “It’s cold tonight.”
She didn’t have to tell me that. It was cold every night in Prague, but
I hadn’t been able to wear enough layers. It wasn’t like I could slip a scarf around my delectable neck. The wind whipped my legs like a million pins being poked into me. All the warmth had been sucked out of the world.
Ivana gave a commentary as she walked. I lingered at the back, not bothering to listen, because I’d probably have to do this tour a hundred times. I didn’t want to peak too early on all the good tourist knowledge.
She told some ghost story about a nun.
“How long have you been in Prague?” Charlie asked, lingering behind with me.
“Long enough,” I said, quickening my pace so I didn’t have to talk to him.
He hurried along to catch up to me. “Great city. Are you traveling on your own?”
“No, I’m with my boyfriend. He’d be with me tonight, but he has to work on his kick-boxing.”
“Ah, okay.”
That shut Charlie up, dickwad that he was. I shouldn’t need to tell him I had a boyfriend for him to get the hint that I wasn’t interested.
I would not be doing this tour again without a thick scarf. Nic could say what he wanted. I’d be no use to anyone if I froze to death, unless the undead alchemist liked his victims like that. He could have a Clemsicle. Urgh.
Someone was definitely following us. They lurked in the shadows, but I was well aware of them. If Dickwad Charlie shut up, I’d have more chance of sensing them. Because I couldn’t get close, I wasn’t sure if they were human or not. They could be from the Council, they could be a cheapskate tourist wanting to eavesdrop on our tour, or they could be the alchemist.
Ivana kept talking about some haunted building. Then she said the word “alchemy” and my ears pricked up. This might be interesting.
“Of course, there are rumors that his ghost still haunts the place. Watch out for flashes of light.”
“The alchemist?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Is there any chance he isn’t a ghost but a vampire?”
“There’s no such thing as vampires,” she said.
Ha. Lies. She led a ghost tour—she was supposed to create a spooky atmosphere. But she’d apparently been told not to mention vampires. For all I knew, she might be a spy for the Council.
I had no idea why the mayor had picked this particular tour. Maybe the Council had suggested it. But it’d be stupid to send me on a tour with one of their own.
I edged to the other side of the group, hoping to get next to whoever was tracking us. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. That normally meant it was something paranormal, but tonight, it could just be from the cold.
“We’ll enter one of the tunnels used by the alchemist to move between his lab and the castle,” Ivana said. “Be very careful. The light isn’t good down there.”
She led us down some ancient stairs to a stone tunnel. At least we’d be out of the wind. And this looked like the perfect spot for a vampire attack.
Ivana instructed us, “When you get to the bottom of the stairs, gather around.”
It wasn’t pitch-black in the tunnel. Some lights had been strung along the walls. I guessed you couldn’t have tourist groups down there in the absolute dark. The lights flickered as Ivana told us more about the alchemist. Nothing I hadn’t learned the day before. Then we moved along the tunnel.
If there was going to be an attack, it’d be before we got to the end of the tunnel. I knew it—we were sitting ducks here. Ivana rambled on with more talk about something, but I lingered behind.
“Boo!”
“What the hell?”
Charlie, the dumb-ass tourist, jumped out at me as I turned a bend in the tunnel. Really funny. Well, he thought so. He couldn’t stop laughing, and I wanted to kill him. I’d be justified, I figured. Even worse, as his laughter died away, I realized that whoever had been shadowing us was gone.
We reached the end of the tunnel, and the tour finished. As much as I wanted to get inside and warm up, I was a little disappointed I hadn’t had more success.
“Want to go for drink?” Charlie asked.
“Want to die?” I said, then I flagged down a cab back to the hotel.
One tour down, hopefully not too many more to go.
Chapter 14 Pizza
“WILL YOU TWO STOP HAVING sex for a while?” Nic said as he came in the door the next night.
I had the night off from ghost touring. I wasn’t sure how many of them I could handle, anyway.
“We’re not even having sex, so there,” I said. “We’re waiting for our pizza to arrive since we can’t exactly go out for a meal, not without inviting the mayor. Anyway, how could Kisho open the door if we were having sex?”
“You ordered pizza, and you didn’t ask me if I wanted any? I’m really hurt by that.”
If that pout was meant to make me feel sorry for him, he didn’t know me very well.
I sprawled on the bed, lying on my stomach, trying to watch Czech TV, but Nic made that difficult with his interrupting.
After letting Nic in, Kisho buzzed around, tidying up the room. Considering I had only a tiny backpack of clothes, I’d made one helluva mess.
“Sorry, Nic,” Kisho said. “That was really selfish of us.”
“Yeah, so selfish. I don’t know how I’m going to live with myself.” I picked up the pizza menu off the desk. “But you can order your own.”
“Or I can have some of yours.”
“Ha, good joke. We only ordered enough for two. Sorry.” I didn’t want him wolfing down all our pizza. But I didn’t want to say that “two” actually meant just me, either. “I have plans for that pizza and my belly. Plans that don’t include you.”
“I have a plan,” he said. “A real plan for getting you free. So, share your pizza, or I won’t tell you.”
“Fine, then. But thralling me again and thralling the mayor isn’t going to work.”
“Anyway, until we can determine whether or not those cuffs have a tracking device in them, we can’t risk that,” Kisho said.
I sighed. Hell, no. I didn’t want Kisho risking his life. But Nic—that might be okay.
Kisho and I had discussed this to death. Nic and Kisho could head off in one direction while I headed for the Swiss Alps. The Swiss Alps bit was Kisho’s contribution. I figured he’d been watching too much Sound of Music. The whole tracking device thing made it impossible, even without all the other shit.
Nic sat down. He’d better have a plan worthy of half a pizza.
“The mayor knows how to get those cuffs off you,” he said.
“You know this how?” I asked.
“I tricked him into telling me. The guy isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
Maybe not, but he wasn’t exactly blunt, either. Nic should learn not to underestimate the mayor.
“That may be so, but he’s not exactly going to let me go free,” I said. “I mean, we could threaten to kill him, but we’d have to be prepared to actually go through with it. Even if he’s been a dick at times, I’d have qualms about killing him.”
“Yeah, and if he refused, and we killed him, you’d be no better off,” Nic replied. “I’d have no qualms. After all, he’s tried to kill me on numerous occasions, so it’d be only fair. But if we did, you can bet the Council would know within an instant. We’d be on the run with them chasing us. That wouldn’t make for a pleasant life. Let’s leave that plan for a worst-case scenario. So, I vote not killing the mayor, too. I’m sure we can get out of this fix without going that far. Hence my brilliant plan. By the way, are you seriously going to hunt this alchemist?”
Nic reached over and pulled my skirt down.
“I want to catch this guy, but not for the mayor,” I said. “I want all that lovely gold for me. If I thought he was on the square about building a place for those homeless kids, I’d be fine with sharing the loot, but I bet most of the gold will end up in the Manchellis’ pockets. Their property development company will be doing most of the rebuilding, and I’m so angry with Portia Manchelli right now. A
nyway, there’s that two-week limit, remember? After that, we’re all screwed.”
Nic nodded.
“Hey, Nic,” I said. “Do you think the mayor actually wanted you and Kisho to come here? Were you at the lair when he picked up my stuff? He got my clothes and my passport.”
Nic shook his head. “We’d left by then, but Luis said he’d come by. I told you, Francine told us.”
I rolled onto my side to face Nic. There was no point even trying to watch TV with him here. “So, what’s the plan?”
“The mayor won’t let you free when he’s sober…”
I laughed. What a stupid plan. “Your super-smart plan is to get the mayor drunk? That sounds like a rookie move to me. You know what happens: you think you’re getting the mark blotto, but you end up vomiting in a gutter yourself. It’s a shit plan.”
Nic rolled his eyes. “Vampires don’t get drunk.”
“Well, I do.”
Nic hitched my skirt down again. Like he hadn’t seen my knickers before.
“Yeah, and what’ll happen then?” he asked. “You’ll be loud and obnoxious and say really inappropriate things. I doubt we’d even be able to tell the difference from when you’re sober.”
I hated that vampire sometimes.
“What makes you think the mayor will even agree with your plan?” I asked.
“He loves me. If I suggest it, he’ll be in.”
“He tried to kill you. Twice. Also, I don’t know if we should be wandering around this city drunk when the Council wants to kill us. You might be under protection, but not every trigger-happy Council trooper is going to know that. Maybe we need disguises. Hey, you could dress up as a girl. That’d be a great disguise.”
Nic just snorted and walked out to go to the mayor’s room. While he was gone, the pizza arrived. Perfect timing. I’d scoff this thing before he got back.
“You sure you don’t want any?” I asked Kisho.
“Sure. You’re enough for me.”
That was kind of romantic until I realized he meant feeding on me.
“This pizza is so good,” I said. “Especially after living on prison gruel. Kisho, never let me go to prison again. I’m not cut out for it. It was just horrible.”