Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Max, being a professional deceiver onstage, was almost impossible to deceive.

Yet he was gone, too suddenly. Had he finally been deceived? Or was he finally finishing the ugly business that had put his life in danger, and had contributed to their drawing apart despite themselves?

Temple didn’t know. With Max, one never could.

And one could never count him out. He knew how to breathe life back into dead relationships. She missed him. Wouldn’t count him among her dead and gone yet.

How could she? He was perfect. Immortal.

Wasn’t he?

Dead of Night

Max was having a great dream.

He was doing a trapeze act with a girl in a red velvet swing.

They must have been in the circus. The arena was high and surrounded by applauding throngs. He knew it was a dream because he couldn’t hear the roar of the crowd, could only see those wonder-struck, ravening, open mouths oohing and aahing at his daring swings back and forth.

He was perfect, immortal, his hands changing holds, swift and sure. He was dancing on air, hanging by a hair . . . and by a hand from his own lifeline.

The girl in the red velvet swing above him had dainty legs hidden by a froth of Victorian lace beyond the knee. She was winking at him, peeking over her full short velvet skirts, and she had red hair. It was a coppery, strawberry red, and it clashed with her valentine-red velvet swing ropes.

Which suddenly turned into DNA spirals of thick, coagulating blood.

A bronze-scaled snake was swiveling down those gory ropes, toward him, just as he thrust out his hand to catch the swing and spin off into the distance, safe.

The snake undulated toward his grasping, muscled forearm, suddenly naked, the arm, not the snake. The snake’s fangs dripped slowly. Like an IV.

The crowd now surrounded an operating table. Max was laid out on it in a skimpy white hospital gown. No, not an operating table, a morgue dissecting table, and the snake’s yawning fangs were turning saw-toothed to become the coroner’s cranial cutting saw . . .

His still-living limbs flailed, seeking a secure purchase, on the trapeze or the red velvet swing.

He heard metal clattering, felt the pain of being cut open without anesthetic, twisted away from the treacherous arena, tore the girl from her red velvet perch. They fell struggling into the abyss, sawdust and sequins sparkling like a reverse night sky at the bottom of the circus ring. One ring to rule them all. Three rings, including the Worm Orobouros. Opal. Unlucky. Emerald. Fragile.

“Wake up,” said a voice.

Hands shook his shoulders. Someone shook him hard enough that the back of his skull rapped a hard surface.

God!

Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, dormez-vous? Morning bells are ringing. Ton. Ton. Ton . Morning bells are ringing. Frère Jacques . Brother John. Auprès de ma blonde, je dèsire dormir. Auprès de ma blonde . . .

A tiny flashlight beam was drilling into his left eye.

“Wake up, Mike!”

That “Mike” did it. Woke him up to a lie. A fresh lie he recognized. He instantly knew where he was, who he was supposed to be, and that something bad had happened.

“Revienne?” he asked the dark behind the dentist’s drill of light into his brain.

“Mike.” Her voice, with that ambiguous, charming, accented English.

Are you sleeping, brother John?

“Mon Dieu , Mike! He was trying to kill you. Can you get up?”

He sighed. Not easily.

She hadn’t turned on the room’s general lighting.

“An assassin! Mon Dieu . The only explanation. Here, in such sanctuary. If I hadn’t been thinking about you, hadn’t had an insight on your therapy, I’d have never come by so late. Mike. Say something. Speak.”

“Was it an . . . injection?”

“Oui. Ja. Da. Yes! In your veins. We must find the needle. It fell to the floor when you struggled and he ran. We need it for testing.”

We.

Testing here? Not bloody likely. He felt the floor for a dropped hypo and found nothing. Time to move on. He pushed himself up using the strength of his arms, the ones so invincible in the dream. They were pretty stable. Good. His legs?

“The leg casts,” she said as if reading his mind. “Perhaps you can do without. But not here. Not yet.”

Her breaths came fast and frantic in the silent room, betraying the rapid search and reject of her brain cells. “Murder. Here! That is of all places supposed to be safe! Mon Dieu.”

He thought, irrelevantly, that a fervent “sacré bleu” would be a nice alternative.

“Nothing else to do,” she muttered to him, to herself. “We must leave. Gather forces. How do I move you? Mike! Is your brain clear now? Can you do as I say?”

Yes. Yes. Do I want to?

“An assassin has breached this . . . what is the word? . . . citadel of civilization. I can’t believe it yet. Who are you? Why? Who’d want to kill a helpless man?”

Not quite helpless .

“We must get you out of here.”

We again?

“I must . . . must . . . take you out. It’s the middle of the night. You have a seizure. I’m taking you to the laboratory for treatment.”

Laboratory? Ouch .

“No, not an emergency. Everything is fine. Just an . . . adjustment. I am, of course, authorized. Can you get yourself back up on the bed?”

So he was on the floor. Someone had wrestled him there.

She heaved. His arm muscles took hold and helped.

“Good. God . Good. It’s all right if you look drugged. They’re used to serious conditions here. They’re used to me, moving around. I will take you out. Just . . . let me do it. Say nothing. Do nothing. Mike, do you hear me?”

More than you know, sweetheart .

“Mein Gott! They will kill you if they can.”

He didn’t like hearing that, but he didn’t doubt it. Now. So she spoke fluent German as well as French. And what else? For now, her shock and stress rang true. He could let her lever and scam his hampered body out of here. He agreed. They had to leave.

After that, away from the drugs and control—and, unfortunately, his only contact, Garry Randolph—he would be stronger, his mind clearer. He could decide what to do next, and what to do about her.

For now, it only mattered what she could do about him.

A Fine Kettle

of Fish

It is hard to realize that I am best out of the way for the moment, and that the others are probably better off for it.

Perhaps Mr. Max Kinsella and I face the same quandary.

We are soul mates in several ways. (Now that he is not here to joust me for bedspread room I am finding more and more that we have in common.)

Like a master magician, I set my assistants about their appointed tasks. Some may not even know that I am pulling their strings. Or whiskers, in my case.

It is better I stay upstairs so that Miss Satin and Miss Midnight Louise, who are virtual twins (if not mother and . . . shudder . . . daughter) can roam the downstairs area like mobile bugs. Not the big, many-legged roach kind of bug, I hasten to explain, but as furry listening devices.

They are much larger than the real thing, but also as easily overlooked. If you are perceived to be “mute,” you are also considered “dumb.” This is where the phrase “dumb animal” originated. A big mistake, but your average Homo sapiens are experts at that kind of underestimation.

I also realize that the axiom Out of sight, out of mind pertains here.

While everyone downstairs hustles, tattles, lies, and dodges as my Miss Temple investigates their motives, means, and opportunities, the dead woman lies in a tawdry, disheveled state up here behind a guardian accoutered in Ermenegildo Zegna tailoring and Beretta and Rolex accessories, a high-end combo she had likely never seen in her brief life.