Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

“It is probably just a janitors’ closet,” I tell her.

“A tad jealous that / have found my way around this maze when you have not?”

“Nonsense, Louise. I always appreciate the efforts of underlings. Ouch!”

That girl spends hours honing her nails to saber-sharpness, not to mention a spit polish.

In the meantime, she has leaped up to trigger a pressure-opening door, like you see on some TV cabinets. We tumble on through as it bounces shut behind us, leaving us in total darkness.

Darkness is never total for the feline nation.

My trusty, long, supersensitive vibrissae (you thought I was referring to something else?) fan out on either side of my noble nose, feeling the air currents, searching for boundaries. Only Santa has whiskers as famed, and mine are white as snow, just like his.

“Forget the white-cane act,” Louise hisses at me. “I know the way.”

As we mush along my eyes adapt to the almost nonexistent light.

We now spot the whisker-thin vertical and horizontal presence of light leaking from door frames that are not quite tight. I even hear the distant murmur of human voices.

Alas, I do not recognize the deep, dark timbre of Mr. Max’s baritone among them. But I do hear his name mentioned! Both of them.

Louise and I pause outside the pale outline of a door, ears and noses twitching our vibrissae.

We hear the name “Kinsella.” We hear the name “Phantom Mage.” The people within do not appear to think that they are one and the same, at the moment, or in group discussion. We need to get into that room!

But we are stuck on the outside looking in. Okay. That is not quite as accurately stated as the experienced shamus should put it. We are stuck on the secret inside of Neon Nightmarelooking into the even-more-secret inner sanctum of Neon Nightmare. There is obviously no way that a couple of hip black cats are going to bust into a room filled with light and humans and not attract unwelcome attention.

Sure, we will be underestimated, as usual, but we will also be worthy of note, as always.

“I am dying,” Louise says, “to find out what they are saying.” Hey! That might be a way. People do not expect dead cats to eavesdrop.

Uh, no. Ma Barker would not want Miss Midnight Louise to sacrifice herself just so I could get an earful. Ma Barker does not have many known maybe-grandkits.

The narrow beam from one of those tiny, high-intensity toy flashlights comes roaming down the hallway. Louise and I flatten and play dead, or background.

The flashlight does not illuminate much, but it does reflect off the satin folds of a full-length black cloak lining.

Eureka! It is an excellent thing that I have kept my coat licked to shiny perfection. Midnight Inc. Investigations sweeps through the now-open door swathed in cloak folds. We melt separately under the nearest chairs and take a deep breath.

“Cosimo!” our savior is hailed. “We were just talking about our current conundrum.”

“Conundrum” is a funny old-time word that means “puzzle.” If you are talking “conundrum” in this town, you are talking Mr. Max Kinsella, the most enigmatic magician and counterspy guy on the planet. If he still is on the planet, which is what Miss Midnight Louise and I have risked our mutual extremities to find out.

“Where are the odds leaning today?” Cosimo asks, throwing his cloak over his chair back and smacking me in the kisser with several woolen folds sharp enough to eviscerate an eel.

“I think our scintillating Max has offed the Phantom Mage and is lying low until the caper with the Czar’s Scepter is history.” The voice offering this opinion is darkly female, spoken by a real devil-dame from the heyday of Noir.

I must admit that voice makes my most adaptable member sit up and take notice. Hubba Hubba Hussy! Louise’s foreclaws in my shoulder remind me to keep a low profile. Is not that always like a female?

“Why would he kill the Phantom Mage?” another voice asks.

“The guy ripped off his act. Kinsella acted like he was indifferent to that, but he was an alpha magician in this town not too long ago, and we alpha magicians do not forget, or forgive.”

“It would have been a splendid parting gesture,” the woman says. She is a Cleopatra-style temptress lounging into a red leather chair like it used to be the skin of her favorite lover before he disappointed her.

“Maybe you are right, Serena,” says an old dude in plain civvies, “but he also turned the tables on us, my friends, by undoing the criminal act we required him to perform as a membership ritual. I agree that he is a first-rank magician, but he also has a first-rank ego.”

“And you do not?” Serena asks.

“Touché. Still, I find the man too mercurial to be entirely trustworthy. No one knows where he has gone now, for instance. Or why he both did our bidding, rather spectacularly, and undid it. Or if he has indeed murdered this lesser magician-acrobat called the Phantom Mage, or if that demise was an accident. Max Kinsella strikes me as a man ever-ready to take credit for accidents.”

“We thought at one time that he might be the Phantom Mage,” suggested an older, heavier woman than Serena, but one no less dramatic. “Perhaps he is missing because he is dead.”

The first woman stirs on her chair like a cobra easing into a striking posture. “I doubt it, Czarina. He left me a note.”

“A note? What did it say? Let us see it.”

“I am sorry, Czarina.” Serena preens on her sofa like a purebred with a velvet catnip mouse. “It was rather personal.”

“Personal?” The man called Cosimo sounds sharp. “We are all Synth members here, and that dominates such minor matters as concupiscence.““Concupiscence,” Serena derides. “Leave that Latin beatingaround-the-bush word to the bishops. Lust is not alien to our gathering. Max wrote that he finds it useful to drop out of sight–a rather cheeky turn of phrase after recent developments–for a while. But that … the rest is personal.”

It is a gathering of magicians. The white note in her fingers wafts into the man’s hand next to her.

“Hmm.” Cosimo reads the message with rolling diction. “In his self-imposed exile he will fondly recall your satin skin, the … the tattoo of a bat on your–’?”

“Enough, Cosimo.” Serena had risen and struck, snatching the paper from his hands. “You see that he is alive and definitely kicking.”

“I did not know you had found the time to test our new recruit with your charms.”

“It was a hasty but memorable encounter. I can assure you that he was interested. Of course, I didn’t allow him any real liberties. Not until we were certain of him.”

“And now you think we should be.”

“Certainly.” She settles back into her chair, circling the palms of her scarlet-nailed hands on the arms. “Unless he is really dead, which would be a shame now that I am authorized to screw him.”

“He will return, Serena,” Czarina assures her. “He is not a fool and I doubt that Death has claimed him. And any normal heterosexual man would return to do obeisance at your thighs, Goddess of the Nile since days of old.”

Serena purrs like a Persian of my acquaintance in heat. Too bad I have never been around this Persian of my acquaintance when she was in heat.

While I am being enthralled by all this sexy talk, I have let down my guard.

My neck ruff is collared by four shivs.

“This conversation has degenerated,” Miss Midnight Louise hisses in my ear. “We are outta here.”

And, yes, before I can stutter a fond farewell to the magicians of the Synth who are so busy congratulating themselves, I am whisked out into the corridor by Louise, who has taken a dislike to sexy talk on many other occasions.