Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

Nicky's voice had become a baritone vibrato of excitement. He could have sold pickled herring to a vegetarian with that face, that voice, that air of eager certitude. Temple admired the effect, as did a riveted Van across the desk, but she knew too much to fall for sizzle when steak could be had.

"Houdini was a great escape artist, yes," Temple conceded to Nicky's salesmanship, "but that doesn't give him any special qualifications for surviving death. Escaping is an art, a technique that requires practice, showmanship, physical agility and an audience willing to believe. I'd worry more about somebody nobody wanted to come back actually doing it, someone spiritually spooky like ... oh, Rasputin, say."

"Rasputin doesn't sell in Las Vegas," Nicky said quickly. "Houdini does. Besides, if you know there's not a ghost of a chance that the dead dude would actually show up, all the better, huh?

Just go along for the ride, take mental notes, watch the weird effects and let us know what you think of the people who put it together. You said you wanted the Jersey Joe Jackson Mine attraction to be a little scary. Here's a little scary in our own backyard. It should be a scream.

Hey, I wish I could do it, but I've got to escort some bigwigs around here before the shindig tonight."

Temple nodded. The Crystal Ball had been her idea. Las Vegas always loved a chance to out-glitz itself, and she had always felt Halloween lacked a certain elan as a holiday. Great costumes and effects, but no places really elegant to show them off except everybody's front porch.

She had designed the Crystal Ball as an adult Halloween fantasy, combining the elegant decadence of Mardi gras with the homespun dress-up of Halloween. The hotel's Crystal ballrooms---the Lalique, Baccarat, Orrefors, Steuben and Hawkes--had been draped in a diamond dazzle of cellophane cob-webbing and spinning crystal balls, of wands and weirdery, until the rooms were a bright, interconnecting Wonderland of the fantastic and ghostly. White Witch' craft, Van had called it on first viewing the interconnected suitescape earlier that day.

Temple considered ensnaring the notoriously superstitious hotel manager with a supernaturally themed event one of her biggest PR triumphs.

She was beginning to love planning events on a P. T. Barnum scale (especially with the Crystal Phoenix's money). So how could she refuse Nicky and Van's wanting her to sit in on some publicity-mongering stance that was likely to be as genuine as a sawed-in-half lady?

"All right. I usually need my beauty sleep, so participating in something that doesn't start until midnight isn't terribly thrilling, but at least I'll be awake for the big ball right after."

"Good." Van sounded relieved. "By the way, the Glory Hole boys are working as consultants at the haunted house, since their ghost-town attraction gives them a certain expertise. So you won't be friendless at the haunted house. Oh, and will your new Midnight Louie shoes arrive in time for the ball?"

"Yes, godmother."

Van smiled, not at all mechanically this time. "I'm so eager to see them! I can't imagine how anyone could get all of Louie on a size-five high heel."

"It isn't really Midnight Louie," Nicky explained, unnecessarily. "Just a generic black cat."

"Perfect for a Crystal Ball." Van smiled conspiratorially at Temple as she rose from her desk.

"I can't wait to see what you're wearing to go with them."

"Or who's going with you , " Nicky muttered to his Armani tie as he bent to pull Temple's heavy chair away from the desktop's thick blue crystal edge.

Temple flashed him a stern look while trying not to flush as red as her hair. More people in Las Vegas were speculating on her love life these days than played the dollar slots at the Goliath.

**********

The Storm cleared its throat for a moment when she turned the ignition key in the Phoenix parking lot. Though the sun was baking down at a steady sixty-five degrees, night temperatures were growing considerably colder and Temple's bright-aqua car was getting a tad paler and a lot older. She patted the dashboard encouragingly as the engine revved, then wove through the parking-lot aisles onto the moving sheet-metal lava flow of the Las Vegas Strip.

Visions of sugar pumpkins danced in her head. Hell-o-ween Haunted Homestead. That wasn't her idea. Still, the haunted house had been a particularly well-run Las Vegas staple in recent years. Adding a hokey midnight seance to the attraction didn't seem like such a hot idea to her, but if Nicky and Van wanted her to play along, play along she would. Yawn. She would have had to stay up for the Crystal Ball, anyway, but now what she wore would be a concern.

She couldn't wear party clothes to a seance in a house streaked with fake blood.

Nicky hadn't thought of that; men never did. And Van so disliked the seance topic that she hadn't tumbled that asking Temple to be on duty, like Cinderella, up until the very hour of the big ball ("from one to whenever A.M." was her own line in the promotion), meant she'd need more than a fairy godmother to get in ball gown gear. Maybe she could wear something over her ball outfit at the stance, like a pup tent. Except she'd probably be suspected of transporting concealed apparitions across haunted thresholds.

Temple shook her head as she drove. The situations public relations people got into! But a seance might be intriguing . . . and what was she going to wear to her very own Crystal Ball, anyway? Something that wouldn't obscure the Midnight Louie shoes yet would look a little like Good Witch Glinda. . . .

Temple was almost at the Circle Ritz when the UFO appeared in her rearview mirror at three o'clock low. Big and silver, it hovered behind her as if planning to land.

Yikes! A vampire already, and still three days to Halloween. She'd never seen the Hesketh Vampire from the front like this. The motorcycle was streamlined Mercury on wheels, its windscreen swept sharply back, its helmeted driver--rider, get with it! she admonished herself--an anonymous face behind a curve of smoked acrylic.

Max.

Max was back. Why wouldn't he take his favorite 'cycle for a spin? Spin that I'm in ... Where did that line come from? "That Ol' Black Magic." Well, she was getting into the Halloween spirit anyway. Was silver magic as potent as black?

Keeping her eyes more on the rearview mirror than the familiar street, Temple steered the Storm into its regular parking spot. She let her key ring clank deep into her tote bag and wriggled out of the front seat.

, The classic motorcycle had paused nearby, purring like a brushed-aluminum tiger, kept upright only by the ball of its rider's foot on the ground. Riding motorcycles was a balancing act that always made Temple uneasy, like watching a wirewalker.

The rider, who wore a navy nylon windbreaker and chinos, pushed the smoked visor upward. Temple braced herself for having words with Max.

But it wasn't Max, and for a moment that fact so disoriented her that she couldn't tell who it was, especially with the shiny pumpkin of silver helmet reducing the face to a wedge of obscured features. Not Electra's, of course, but she'd already deduced that.

The men who had attacked her in the parking garage sprang to mind with the sudden palpitation of her heartbeat. Maybe they knew Max was back and wanted to pound out another message ...

"What's the matter?" the rider asked.

"Matt! You scared me."

"Sorry. I guess this helmet looks a little sinister."

"What are you doing on that thing?"

The helmeted head shook. "That's what I wanted to know, but Electra insisted on dragging me over to the Our Lady of Guadalupe playground for lessons. Says I need wheels and she hardly uses these." He eyed her for a moment. "You thought I was him."