Carole Douglas - Dancing with Werewolves

I coughed discreetly. "I just want to know how to properly address him."

"’Mister Cicero, sir' should do it." Chartreuse was sounding choked now too. "You should be better dressed," Flamingo said. "Mister Cicero likes his people to look sharp."

If the golfing outfits were part of that corporate directive, I'd prefer to remain a Raggedy Ann in workout clothes.

The van sped toward the huge, lurking bulk of the Gehenna, which had a fiery moat filled with holograms of mythological monsters (at least I hoped they were holograms), then buzzed around the impressive entry lanes and porte cochere to the rear.

Quicksilver and I were ushered inside into a locked, solid stainless steel, private elevator and shot upward a zillion floors. Flamingo and Chartreuse stared blankly at the floor indicator, their hands folded discreetly over their colorful crotches. Perhaps that was where they carried their hidden artillery.

The elevator doors opened on a corridor carpeted in black plush. Everything here was hushed, muting even Quicksilver's clicking claws. We reached a door of embossed metal, which opened when our escorts hummed a certain melody into a voice-pad. Actually, it was more of an a capella howl.

The hair, such scanty stuff as it was, stood up on the back of my neck. Quicksilver's thick-furred hackles went haystack high, but he managed to quiet his built-in urge to bay and bark warning. What had I gotten us into? Whatever it was, I hoped it proved useful as well as scary.

I wouldn’t find out a damn thing about the powers that be, and were, in Las Vegas sitting in Sunset Park nursing my newfound sexual itch. This was where I wanted to be. At the center of the hidden action, learning things, no matter the cost.

The office beyond the door was palatial, carpeted in mossy, dark emerald-green shag and paneled in black-stained pine. It felt like being in a night-time forest glade and was lit by etched globe lamps that mimicked dozens of full moons.

Quicksilver whimpered, feeling the ancient spell of dark forest and moonlight. I felt it too. Something Druid-like.

A huge redwood desk sat under a chandelier of milk-glass moons, the wood grain gleaming like watered silk under the overhead lights.

A man walked from the room's shadows to sit in the thorny embrace of a deer-antler chair behind the slab of desk. He wasn’t very tall, but he was barrel-chested and pewter-haired, wearing a gray sharkskin suit that gleamed like a hematite gemstone. His mouth was wide, his eyes were Jack Daniel's-gold, and his nose was long and sharp, as were his ears. Both sported tufts of black hair.

Oh, Grandpa, what big eyes, ears, nose, and teeth you have! Can I sell you this Ronco rotating hair-removal device…?

Quicksilver leaned his shoulder against my hip as we stood side by side, his own long canine nose pushing into the palm of my hand. It was dry and hot, and I could feel him panting slightly.

"Sit," Mr. Cicero said. So I sank into the black leather club chair in front of the desk, pulling Quick against its side. "Lights out," he ordered his staff.

Behind the casino boss, in the impenetrable dark, a screen lit up. I watched silent footage of myself at the Inferno, with Snow and Nick Charles.

"You have impressive resources," I said when the screen went blank and the many-mooned chandelier lit up again. How had he stolen security tapes from the Inferno?

"And you have an impressive fan base, Miss Maggie."

I didn't bother to correct him. I didn't want my real name issuing from those thin lips and through those sharp white teeth.

"I'm looking to raise the gate on my headlining show," he added. "Your presence could accomplish that."

"Show? I'm not an actress."

"Your appearance on CSI V makes that clear. However, you have unwittingly become a major media personality."

"Dead!"

"Exactly. I propose to add you to my headlining magic show."

"As what? A corpse?"

"Why not? It would be a huge draw and we can certainly play off of that, but I propose a climactic resurrection. Everybody loves a comeback. It would pay very well. I can make you a star."

You and Howard "Yellow Fang" Hughes! Irma hissed inside my brain.

"I'm not a professional performer," I pointed out.

"What about your classy performance as a CinSymbiant at the Inferno? And you weren't even paid for it. Obviously, Christophe is negotiating for your services. I have simply one-upped him, my rival hotel owner. You have the look of the moment, my dear Miss…Street, is it? That last name must go."

"Christophe? You think he wants me for his stage show? He was just hitting on me."

Cicero snickered and his flunkies, especially Flamingo Pink and Watermelon Green, snuffled and snickered too, in their cowed, canine way.

"Christophe doesn’t 'hit on' humans, sweet cheeks," Cicero said.

Then what had he been doing? Or…what was I, really?

"I can double whatever he offered," Cicero added. "And, I can let you live. That's worth a bundle, don't you think?"

I was having a hard time thinking. "Christophe has his Seven Deadly Sins onstage. Why would he want to hire me? I can't think of an eighth sin I could be."

"Annoyance?"

"Surely that's not…deadly."

"I'm beginning to think so," Cicero said. "You will be my Maggie, a CSI body extraordinaire. I'll put your name up in neon."

"Hector Nightwine owns the Maggie franchise."

That ought to kill that idea, Irma cheered me on.

"You will be called Margie, then." Mr. Cicereau said. "Or Magpie. Something close, but not too close. The lawyers will be debating that intellectual property issue until the Second Coming, if you believe in such things."

I certainly didn't believe that there was anything "intellectual" about the property he was appropriating, but I only said, "The Millennium was certainly predictable, but we didn't get a Second Coming out of it."

Meanwhile, I'd been reading the papers on his desk upside down. Investigative reporters get good at that fast.

I was surprised to see his name spelled out on a letter. It sounded ancient Roman or Italian, but it was spelled "Cicereau." Of course! England had never had a big werewolf issue, because it was an island and the wolves never got there. The werewolf was a creature of the forests in what became Germany and France. I'd done an online search on werewolves after my first time at Los Lobos.

All the medieval werewolf trials had been held in France, where maidens and murderers were sacrificed to the river Seine to placate a dragon-gargoyle. Right now I felt much more like a sacrificial maiden than a murderer, but who said you couldn't be both, especially in your own defense?

"I have a first-rate magician," Cicereau was saying. "You will be an additional assistant in a special, headline cameo. Sexy costumes, some of usual tricks- vanishing, sawn-up, then, presto, no costume-a tasteful nude profile in the mist, perhaps as a sacrificial victim, then a dramatic death and resurrection."

"I know nothing about magic." But I marveled at how Cicereau had read my mind about the sacrificial part.

"Fortunately, my house magician does. Perhaps a bit too much."

Cicereau flashed emerald cufflinks set in drug-lord chunky gold as he shuffled papers on his desk, hiding the letter, reminding me of Ric's way smoother fashion sense. "You need only provide your very recognizable physical presence and follow his commands. A couple days' rehearsal should do it."

"I don't play well with others."

"Neither do I. This is not an option, Miss Street. Either play nicely with me, or I'll have you torn apart and tossed to Detective Haskell."

Quicksilver stood, legs braced, growling.

"There is wolf in that dog," the boss man said, careful not to move.