Hiram looked surprised, then relented. "Well, of course, if you say so, Doctor." He turned to Trips. "Please accept my apologies. We get a great many would-be gatecrashers and, ah, ace groupies, often wearing outlandish costumes, so when someone cannot demonstrate an ace talent, we… I'm sure you understand."
"Yeah, sure, man," Trips said. "It's cool. Thanks, Doc." He put on his hat and entered the restaurant.
"Just because you're wearing a mask doesn't mean you can just waltz in, lady," the big man wearing a tuxedo in the foyer of Aces High told Jennifer.
She smiled at him, ghosted her arm, and put it through the wall. She wanted to do something more box-office, like sink through the floor, but didn't want to have to dress again in front of all the people waiting to enter the restaurant.
"Yeah, okay." The man in the tuxedo waved her in, looking faintly bored.
Aces High was a dream. Jennifer felt small, insignificant, and decidedly underdressed. She wished that Brennan had brought her an evening gown rather than jeans, but realized with a sigh that that would have required supernatural foresight on Brennan's part.
There were over a hundred people in the main dining area, drinking cocktails, nibbling on delicious-looking hors d'oeuvres, and talking in small groups and large parties. Jennifer headed for the buffet table, her stomach rumbling at the sight of so much food. There was pate de foie gras, caviar, slices of Danish ham, twelve kinds of cheese, and a half-dozen varieties of bread and crackers. She spread pate on a cracker and looked around the room, feeling like a celebrity hound as she watched scores of famous people pass by her.
Hiram Worchester, Fatman, looked harried. Probably the strain of orchestrating the dinner, Jennifer thought. She recognized Fortunato, even though he was an ace who had never sought publicity. He was talking to Peregrine. He looked earnest, she looked amused. She felt the playing card that she'd tucked into her back pocket, but was hesitant to go up to him and present it. It looked like he had his own worries, and besides, she could take care of herself.
She snagged a glass of champagne from a tray of a waiter circulating around the room, and drained it, washing down pate de foie gras and cracker.
"I knew it, I just knew it." The voice was masculine and drawling, with an undercurrent of excitement in it. "I just knew she'd show up here."
Jennifer turned, champagne glass in one hand and half a cracker smeared with pate in the other. Hiram was standing behind her. With him was the man she had seen get out of the cab, the man in the white battle suit.
"Are you talking to me?"
"You bet your sweet butt, honey," the man in white said. There was something wrong with his face. He looked her over with an annoying intentness that made Jennifer feel naked, but that was only part of what made Jennifer feel uncomfortable. His features, individually, were all right, perhaps even handsome, but taken together were utterly unmatched. His nose was too long, his chin too small. One of his intense green eyes was higher than the other. His jaw was canted, as if it had been broken and then healed crookedly. He licked his lips in an agitated, excited manner.
Hiram sighed. "Are you sure, Mr. Ray?"
"She's the one, I know she is. I knew she couldn't stay away from this goddamn party. Damn if I wasn't right."
"Very well then. Do your duty." He sighed again and made wringing motions with his hands, as if he were washing them of the matter. The man he called Ray nodded, then turned to Jennifer.
"My name's Billy Ray. I'm a federal agent and I'd like to see some
ID."
"Why'?" Jennifer asked with a sinking feeling.
"You look like someone who robbed the home of a prominent citizen this morning."
Jennifer looked at the fragment of cracker she still held in her hand. She hadn't even begun to take the edge off her appetite.
"Damn," she said, and the cracker and champagne glass slipped through her hands as she ghosted through the floor. Ray moved like a cat on speed. He leaped upon her, but only grasped her shirt which was crumpling to the floor. "Ah, Jesus, Worchester," Jennifer heard him say before she slipped entirely through the floor, "you should've let me coldcock the bitch."
Tachyon's small form had vanished into the milling aces in search of alcohol. Alcohol she badly needed. The rumble of voices, the tinkle of ice in crystal glasses, and the energetic efforts of a small combo all combined to form a drill that was digging ever deeper into her head.
Ice sculptures of various of the more prominent aces dotted the room. Peregrine had taken up a position near her statue, and her beautiful wings threatened to overset the frozen replica.
Captain Trips, a glass of fruit juice clutched in a bony hand, tried to negotiate the room, but his amazing stovepipe hat kept tumbling to the floor. The Harlem Hammer, looking decidedly uncomfortable in his best suit,. retrieved the hat. The contrast between the immensely powerful black ace, his bald pate shining under the lights, and the weedy Captain was startling.
The Professor and Ice-Blue Sibyl lounged near the bar. Sibyl with her blue, sexless naked body could have doubled for one of the ice sculptures. She even gave up a faint chill to those standing near her. Her companion created a stir by his own peculiar sense of style. With his whiskers, balding head, wirerimmed spectacles, and belching pipe, he looked like someone's kindly old uncle. But no uncle of Roulette's would ever have worn a sky-blue tux with scuffed sandals.
Fantasy, the ABT's prima ballerina and one of New York's more public aces, waved a rose before Pit Boss's nose while Trump Card looked on indulgently.
So many, and which of you will survive this night? Not many, I think, with my master seeking you.
The problem with being a genial host was the necessity to be polite to boors. Hiram sipped at a champagne glass full of Vernors ginger ale (he liked to have a drink in hand, to promote the atmosphere of conviviality, but he had too many responsibilities to allow himself to get tipsy) and tried to feign a great interest in what Cap'n Trips was saving.
"I mean, its like elitist, man, this whole dinner, on a day like this it ought to be aces and jokers all getting together, like for brotherhood," the gangling hippie with the long blond hair and weedy goatee told him.
The Aces High staff' had barred a dozen groupies and pretenders, including the fishwoman with her bowl of telepathic goldfish, an elderly gentleman in a cape who time-traveled in his sleep, and a two-hundred-pound teenaged girl who wore only pasties and a G-string and claimed to he immortal. That one was tough to disprove, admittedly, but Hiram had turned her away nonetheless. He found himself wishing he'd been similarly resolute with Trips, whose powers seemed equally elusive, if in fact he had any at all. If only Dr. Tachyon had not arrived just when he did.-..
Hiram sighed. It was spilt milk now. He'd admitted the Captain, and a few minutes later, while making his rounds of the party, mingling and smiling, he'd made a second mistake and asked Trips how he was enjoying himself. Since then he'd been trapped by the ice sculpture of Peregrine, while the tall man in the purple Uncle Sam suit explained earnestly that, like alcohol was poison, man, and he really ought to be serving some tofu and sprouts because the body is like a temple, you know, and wasn't the whole idea of the Wild Card Dinner like, uh, politically incorrect.
It was no wonder Dr. Tachyon had vouched for him, Hiram thought, gazing at Trips's prominent Adam's apple and purple top hat: they obviously shopped at the same boutique.
Hiram's smile was so frozen he hoped that frost wasn't forming in his beard. His attention wandered across the room and he noticed a number of diners taking their drinks out onto the balcony, where the sun was sinking behind New Jersey, turning the sky a deep, robust red. That gave Hiram an inspiration. "It looks to be a magnificent sunset tonight, Captain," he said. "That's a sight you really shouldn't miss, since you don't get to visit us too often. Sunset from Aces High is quite special, I'm sure you'll agree. Quite, ah… quite far out."