She glanced at her watch as they went. “Nearly nine thirty . . .”
Nine twenty-eight. We’re close.
Maybe sixty yards ahead of her, Dairine could see the street where she needed to turn. She passed ten or fifteen more storefronts, some shining and modern and some unbelievably ramshackle, bizarrely standing side by side. It was as if the place had history that it was both trying to hang on to and eager to get rid of. Up near the corner where the crazy-busy street met a crazier-busier boulevard, Dairine pressed herself briefly into a doorway out of the relentless flow of people and stood there for a moment to get her breath, shaking her head at the shouting, blazing multilingual cacophony of it all.
Straight ahead on your right, Spot said.
Got it. Let’s be uninvisible for a few moments. Not being seen here has its uses, but crossing the street that way strikes me as kind of death wish-y. In particular, a very few moments watching the intersection from here had suggested to Dairine that traffic lights in Mumbai were considered more of a hint or guideline than an actual requirement that anyone stop.
Fading in now. Find a spot to be less conspicuous on the other side and I’ll fade us out again.
Dairine waited a few seconds for the fade to be complete before shouldering herself out into the crowd of people waiting at the corner for the lights to change. In a matter of seconds she was surrounded by more people coming up on her from behind, and was about to tell herself Now, don’t get all paranoid when Spot observed, At five o’clock behind you, someone who wants the bag—
She felt a hand on the strap even as everyone started to move out in unison into the intersection. For that she had a wizardry ready, one which had come highly recommended in the manual for wizards on the go in public places when thieves were about. Smiling, Dairine whispered the last few words of the spell and kept walking. She couldn’t feel any difference, but to the person tugging fruitlessly on the strap of her bag, it now had a virtual weight of several hundred pounds.
Dairine then spun around to walk backwards for a pace or three, smiling what she hoped was a most evil and eldritch smile right into the shocked and uncomprehending face of the thin little woman who’d been attempting to relieve her of Spot’s bag. Then Dairine turned back again in the direction in which she’d been headed, pushing farther into the crowd as it crossed the street. As soon as she got up on the sidewalk on the far side she spotted another alleyway not too far ahead, and when she reached it turned into it, giving it just enough of a glimpse to make sure it was empty. Okay, fade . . .
A few moments later she peered out of the alley, waiting for a tiny gap in the crowd to slip into. The trick of it seemed to be to make sure you were always moving faster than the people who might bump into you from behind. Only a couple hundred more yards, right?
A hundred and fifty-three.
She kept going. This street, though it looked more upmarket and modern than the one she’d turned off of, still had something of that between-periods struggle going on. But it was hard to say which looked grander—the glossy new shops and apartments, all glass and chrome, or the older buildings, most of which were of carved stone and had a solider, more impressive look to them. That’s probably because they were built to let you know where the money and power were, Dairine thought. Though her world history unit last year had touched only briefly on India, she had a fairly clear sense of the complexity of the relationship between this country and the power that had once run everything here but now insisted that these days they were both absolutely the best of friends. Dairine made an amused face at the idea. If she knew anything about friendship at all, it was that even when it was true and deep, it was never uncomplicated.
A hundred yards, Spot said. On your left. There’s a sort of little driveway circle in front.
Dairine nodded: up ahead she saw something that might have been a taxi pull into it. She forged ahead, and as she did so an errant breeze—welcome enough in this heat—blew across in front of her and brought her a smell of something else frying. I don’t know what that is, she thought, but I really want some. It smelled like sauteed onions, and it was already talking her stomach out of the idea that it was bad for her to eat so late at night.
Scent analysis, Spot said. Onion bhaji.
Oh, God, Dairine said silently. Make a note of that! Whatever else we do, I’m going out for some of that later.
Noted. Fifty yards.
Dairine sighed at her growling stomach and kept on walking. And after a few more shiny shopfronts, Right there, Spot said. Across the street.
Dairine stared at the building. “But that’s a hotel!”
Only part of it, Spot said. There’s a private dwelling on the top floor. You’ll want to go around the side: there’s a private entrance under the archway that leads back toward the parking lot.
Dairine stared at the building, amazed. The whole front of it was faced in rose-colored marble, with a colonnade of paler marble pillars stretching across the facade. The place was huge, and rose up in about five stories more of carved pink marble, like something out of a film set.
Better move now or you’ll get run over, Spot said.
Dairine got bumped from behind, causing consternation among those who stumbled against and into someone who wasn’t there, and then against and into each other. A fistfight very nearly broke out behind her, and there was yelling and screaming in several languages, all of which she was able to understand in the Speech. “Wow, people, seriously, language,” she said under her breath, and snickered as she slipped out into the space between a couple of parked cars; then, when there was a break in the traffic, across the road.
Dairine’s career in wizardry had been eventful enough that a fair number of aliens and hostile others had tried at one time or another to kill her, but when she was safely up on the sidewalk again she found herself thinking that all of them could have taken lessons from the traffic in Mumbai. “Oh God, not even the Crossings at rush hour . . . !” She stood there and got her gasping under control.
That may be so, said Spot, but if you keep standing here you’re going to start another fistfight . . .
Dairine laughed softly and made her way down the side of the half-circle drive that served the front of the hotel, along to where an ornately carved arch in more pink marble sheltered a side entrance and the further drive down into the parking lot behind the building. She slipped behind one of several SUVs parked to one side of the driveway, ducked down, and said the words that would decommission the invisibility spell; then stood up again and headed for the door.
It was large and impressive, carved wood under its own small marble arch. There was a box with a button and an intercom grille set in the side of the arch, and Dairine pressed it.
But instead of a voice speaking, the door opened. Dairine found herself looking up and up at a gentleman in a business suit and a turban. “Yes?”
“I’m here to see Mehrnaz,” she said. “I’m Dairine Callahan.”
“You’re expected, miss,” the man said. “Please come in.”
He opened the door and Dairine went in past him into a vestibule done in both pink marble and white, with tables up against the walls on which sculptures and huge vases of flowers stood. The effect was still much like being in a hotel, and Dairine wondered if there was some mistake, but the man who now closed the door behind her nodded toward a stairway at the end of the vestibule. “Please go up, miss,” he said.