Hex Appeal (P.N. Elrod) (Kitty Norville 4.60)

“Just look there.” The contents of Nicky’s martini glass almost overran one rim as he pointed.

“All the groupies are going nuts. So?”

“Exactly my opinion of ‘groupies,’” Nick declared. “We didn’t have them in my day. They sound like a variety of aquarium fish,” he said carefully, “fish” being a difficult word to enunciate in his perpetual but charming sloshed condition.

The ace detective tattled on. “I saw our mutual friend, Mr. Snow.”

“Friend? Speak for yourself.”

“I am trying to, Miss Street, if you will deign to listen. At the end of the earlier show, I saw Mr. Snow bend down to present the groping groupies with handsome white silk neck scarves of the type that go so well with my tux.”

I didn’t need more CinSim wardrobe notes, or to know about Snow’s throwaways to his fans now that he no longer bestowed the notorious Brimstone Kiss for some mysterious reason.

“I saw,” Nick Charles went on, “less than an hour ago, the entire mosh pit and our mutual sponsor, dressed all in white like a bride, as usual. I saw the whole k-k-kit and ka-Boodles disappear in a f-f-flash of fire.

“I swear.” He held his bare right palm upright like a witness in court.

I held up a hand for Nicky’s martini glass. How weird to see the clear glass and the liquid inside take on subtle colors as the object left CinSim possession for my custody. I sipped.

Still just water. Flat, dull water. Nick Charles’s vision of mosh-pit hell had not been the Boodles talking.

But if the “real” Snow and his closest fans had been kidnapped, where were they? And how would I get there? Things were so truly topsy-turvy here at the Inferno that it gave me a bold new idea.

“Nora, will you watch Quicksilver while I take ‘Asta’ for a walk?” I held my hand out for the dog leash.

She seemed startled by the idea, but the writhing tiger cub actually rubbed its furry sides back and forth on my calves as I took custody of its lead.

Luckily, my body suit prevented any touchy-feely contact between me and Snow’s shape-shifting security chief now stuck in baby white-tiger form. Grizelle and I would only touch each other if it was hand-to-claw combat, and once, recently, it had been.

“Asta is chipped to stay here at the bar,” Nick warned me.

Grizelle sure wasn’t. From the loud purr that ended in a squall like a human infant’s, I knew she badly wanted out of here and onto the real Snow’s trail, too.

I nodded at Quicksilver to tell him he was the Asta substitute for now. Since he and Grizelle had tangled, too, I knew he’d enjoy supplanting her. He adored CinSims.

Just then, a drunken tourist wearing a Michael Vick T-shirt hurtled toward Nora, reaching for her veil.

“Let’s see the famous face, pretty lady.”

Uh-oh. Wrong logo. The tipsy tourist saw the whites of Quick’s fangs instead. Quicksilver had far more guardian chops than the missing Asta.

Meanwhile, I had a case of hotel haunting to solve.

On the huge screen, the camera panned across the jumping, squealing groupies. One wasn’t moving, so I focused on the still center of the mayhem. Oh. I was targeting my exact image—Lilith, my double-trouble sister from mirror-world. I spun to face the mirror behind the bar that reflected the exact same scene. For only this split-second moment, I could use it.

“I don’t know if shapeshifters can survive breaking the mirror barrier,” I muttered as I leapt toward the image of myself, my hand curled tight around the tiger cub’s leash.

Grizelle answered with a fierce growl. She bounded through the mirror, turning into liquid quicksilver ahead of me, a circus tiger breaking through a paper drum-skin.

I hated to perform my disappearing act in public, but most tourists were eyeing the HD screen, and the CinSims would never betray my trade secrets.

How does a quantum leap through a quicksilver mirror backing feel? Imagine passing through oily dark lightning. Then four paws and two feet landed hard on the black floor of what seemed an empty soundstage.

* * *

Not quite empty.

In the farthest darkness, a disturbing spotlit tableau boiled with motion three hundred feet away. If you’ve ever seen a close-up of maggots infesting a corpse on a crime forensics TV show, which I can guarantee you have, that’s what the brilliantly lit postage-stamp-size scene recalled.