"Fortunato?" Water Lily said.
"Hang on," Fortunato said. "Just another couple of minutes." He could see Peregrine across the room. He turned back to Hiram and said, "Would you show Cordelia around for me? There's something I need to take care of."
"I'd be delighted."
The knot of men around Peregrine saw him coming and drifted away. By the time he got to her it was just the two of them.
She wore long gloves with her gown, which left plenty of room for her broad, muscular shoulders and the big brownand-white wings that came out of her back. It was cut so low that she must have glued it on.
In her spiked heels she was just over six feet tall. Her brown hair had been styled with a deliberate artlessness that took up several cubic feet around her head. Her nose and cheekbones were so sharply cut they looked like the product of sculpture rather than genetics.
Her eyes were such a vivid shade of blue that Fortunato suspected contact lenses. But the expression in them took him a little by surprise. The eyes glittered like they were about to squint shut with laughter, and one side of her mouth twisted up in an ironic smile.
"My name is Fortunato," he said.
"So I hear." She looked him up and down, slowly. Miranda had left him with a lingering taste of musk and a clearly visible erection. Peregrine's smile grew wider. "Hiram said you've been looking for me?"
"I think you could be in very serious danger."
"Well, not at the moment, maybe, but I could see it as a distinct possibility."
"I'm afraid I'm serious. The Howler and Kid Dinosaur are already dead. The Astronomer killed them both this morning. Not to mention about ten or fifteen of his former associates. The Turtle is missing and probably dead. You and Tachyon and Water Lily are the next most obvious targets."
"Wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm getting the picture. You're the only one that can save me, right? So after dinner you should come back to the penthouse with me and guard my body, right? As in all night long?"
"I promise you-"
"I'm a little disappointed, Fortunato. After everything I've heard, I'd hoped for something, well, a bit more romantic. Not this kind of lame approach. Original, mind you." She reached out and patted his cheek. "But very lame."
She walked away smiling.
Fortunato let her go. At least she was here now, where she would be safe.
He looked for Cordelia and spotted her talking to an Arab in a circus costume. The Arab was trying, with some success, to see down the front of her dress.
She had talent, Fortunato thought. She could play a man like a fish, seemed smart and funny and not prohibitively fussy. If he took her on, it would be up to him to. break her in. It was the kind of job he normally looked forward to, but in this case he had doubts. She seemed so goddamn innocent.
There was a commotion at the door. Hiram was pumping Tachyon's arm, overdoing the genial host bit. Next to Tachyon was the woman Fortunato had seen him with at Jetboy's Tomb.
The woman glanced his way for a second and Fortunato recognized her. She did freelance outcall, and she was very expensive. Expensive the way blowfish was expensive in Japan, because every man who went with her risked his life. Everv so often, supposedly at random, she secreted a deadly poison when she climaxed. Her nickname on the street was Russian Roulette.
Tachyon would be okay, Fortunato thought. He didn't see much chance the little alien fruitcake would be able to make a woman like that come.
"Are you certain you wish to be here?"
Silk slithered as her leg thrust through the slit in her skirt, and she stepped from the limousine, Tachyon's hand a steady prop.
"Are you sure you want to be here? You're the one who got his face danced on."
A dismissing gesture with one small hand. "It's nothing. And I would not like to disappoint Hiram after he was so obliging as to rescue us."
"Okay."
"But you've had a very terrifying experience, and I wouldn't want-"
"Doctor, we're here now, and I really don't see what's to be gained by continuing to discuss the matter on the sidewalk in front of several hundred gawking tourists."
She swept through the front doors of the Empire State Building, thoroughly bored, and thoroughly irritated by his harping. Tachyon had been concerned while he dressed for dinner, attentive when they'd returned to her apartment so she could change from her neat slacks into the white silk evening gown she now wore, solicitous as they drove, and she was ready to kill him. And the irony was not lost on her. For even as he had fussed and cosseted, all her thoughts were obsessed with the fact that he yet lived. She had spent eight hours in his company, helped rescue him from kidnappers, and still hadn't killed him.
Later, there is still time.
The lobby was crowded with reporters. They lay like a seething lake before the elevators, and when Tachyon entered they become a tsunami rushing forward to accost him. Microphones thrust rapier-like into their faces, a babble of overlapping questions-"Any comment on the death of Kid Dinosaur, and the Howler?"
"Are you working with the authorities on this case?"
"What's this about you being kidnapped?" -blended with the whine of high-powered cameras. Tachyon, looking thunderous, waved them away, and when that failed, shouldered through them toward the express elevator.
A handsome man in a rumpled gray suit pushed up close to Roulette, and she shied back.
"Hey, Tachy, givin' our eyes a rest or what, or just trying to match your lady love?" The reporter's eyes swept ironically across the white breeches, tunic, and cloak, and white boots, the heels inset with moonstones, and ended on the small white velvet hat with a moonstone and silver brooch pinned to its upturned brim.
"Digger, step aside."
"Who's the new ace? Hey, babe, what's your power?"
"I'm not an ace, let me be." Agitation made her breath ragged, and she looked away from those too-piercing eyes. "Tachyon," Digger said, tone suddenly very serious. "May I speak with you?"
"Not now, Digger."
"It's important."
"Tachyon, please get me out of this crowd." Her fingers plucked at his sleeve, and he pulled his attention from the journalist.
"See me at my office."
The elevator doors sighed closed behind them, and her heart began to slow. "I've never known Digger to be wrong. Are you quite sure-"
"I am not an ace!" She jerked his hand from her bare shoulder. "How many times do I have to tell you!"
"I'm sorry." His tone was low, the hurt evident in his lilac eyes.
"Don't! Don't be sorry, don't be solicitous, don't care!" He moved to the far side of the elevator, and they completed the ride in silence. The elevator deposited them in the large outer lobby of Aces High. Roulette glanced about, curiosity submerging agitation. She had never been to the restaurant. Josiah had considered the entire ace/joker phenomenon vulgar and more than a little frightening (witness his response when he discovered that he too carried the alien virus), and had avoided this ace mecca.
Celebrity photographs lined the walls, and in the center of the room stood Hiram, smiling, urbane, polite, but implacable in his refusal to allow the tall scarecrow figure in the purple Uncle Sam suit to enter his restaurant.
"But I'm, like, a friend of Starshine's," the gangling blond hippie was protesting, "and Jumpin' Jack Flash too, man."
"I'm sure you are," Hiram said. He went on to gently explain that well-known aces had a great many friends, far more than the restaurants seating capacity, and while Aces High would be delighted to have the Captain's patronage on any other night of the year, tonight was a private party; he was sure that the Captain would understand.
Tachyon grasped the situation in an instant, and put a hand on Hiram's broad shoulder. "I know what it looks like," he said, "but Captain Trips really is an ace, and a good man too. I'll vouch for him, Hiram."