And All the Stars (28 page)

"Unbelievably. And I refuse to be guilty about it. Tonight we live!"

He grabbed her hands and, head tipped back in abandoned
laughter, spun her into a child's whirl across the marble, then fumbled for
more formal movements. Fisher, in crisp
shirtsleeves, offered Emily his hand, and stepped her carefully through the
basic movements of the waltz until Min, with a James Bond air in a suit a
little too long for him, dryly recommended they fool around somewhere other
than in full sight of the glass entry doors.

Furnished with coats to protect their finery, they made a
quick detour to the kitchen, heating and bringing down the last of the dishes
to where most of the feast was already laid out in a small room off the dance
floor on the Mezzanine level. Nash opened
and poured champagne, which was Fisher's suggestion to resolve Noi and Min's
positions on cutting loose during alien invasions. They would start their meal with a glass of
champagne, close the evening with a single cocktail, and otherwise stick strictly
to juice and soft drink. Fisher had
volunteered to be 'designated driver', steering them away from any sudden
impulses to play chicken with Moths.

The meal was despatched with Blue gusto, Madeleine sampling
parmesan-dusted gnocchi, handmade personal pizza, and sweet potato frittata
before sitting back with a sigh and deciding she was glad they'd planned a gap
before any desserts.

"Gift-giving time?" Nash suggested.

"Wait, you guys went shopping?" Pan pretended amazement. "Or have the Moths started a home delivery service?"

"If you'd shut up for more than five seconds at a time
you might find out," Min said, swiping casually at Pan's head. Pan ducked, but they didn't launch into their
usual mock-fight since Emily was stepping up with the first present.

"This is from me and Min," she said, presenting a
stuffed pillow case serving as wrapping paper.

"Thank you,
Tink
," Pan
said, twinkling at her. "I'd say
you shouldn't have, but really, a daily shower of gifts would be
most..." He paused as a mass of folded
black cloth spilled out of the case. "Sheet set? Caftan?" His eyes widened as
he held it up, then with a delighted grin he swept it around him, a black cloak
with an ornate golden fastening, and leaped up to stand on his chair. He preened and posed until Nash threw a bread
roll at him, then leaped down to hug Emily.

"Totally awesome,
Tink
. Where the hell did you find it?"

"It really is sheets. We made it. Min did most of the
work."

"Really?" Pan held out a hand, and shook Min's firmly. "Thanks, man. Appreciated."

The departure from teasing imp obviously startled Min, but he
recovered and shrugged. "Something
to do while sitting up on watch."

Madeleine, after careful questioning of Nash, had drawn Pan
in a fictional rehearsal scene of
Henry V
, and offered it up to earn
herself an appreciative hug.

"Someone's been spilling all my ambitions," he
said, with a muted grin in Nash's direction. "You guys are too much."

Nash simply produced another pillowcase and watched with
characteristic quiet enjoyment as Pan drew a slim stack of paper out and
frowned down at lines of type fresh from the hotel's office printer.

"This is...?" Pan flushed bright pink, turned pages and looked up at Nash in
disbelief, his cocksure edge lost to wonder. "You wrote this?"

"With a great deal of input from Fisher. It's only the first act, but something to go
on with."

"
The
Blue Musketeers: A Play by Avinash Sharma
."

Pan's voice was reverent, and it was only with difficulty
that he could be distracted from an immediate read-through. Nash had inserted a Moth invasion into the
plot of Dumas' adventure, tailoring the role of
D'Artagnan
for Pan. He admitted that he couldn't
face writing anything set in the modern day.

During the chatter Noi disappeared and returned wheeling a
sweet-laden trolley topped by a two-tier candlelit cake.

"I haven't anything so impressive as a play," she
said, "but it's as chocolate as you asked for."

Noi was underselling herself: she'd worked on the cake in the
Mezzanine floor kitchen, and produced a glossy triumph of confectionary. Pan immediately put down the script and gave
the cake its due, declaring his need for an urgent injection of chocolate,
bowing and flourishing his cloak as they sung to him, and lustily bellowing '
Happy Birthday to ME
' before blowing out
the candles.

"Thimbles all round!" he cried, and gave Noi
theatrical air-kisses on each cheek, then worked his way through everyone
else. He was as much Puck as Pan that
evening, a breath short of wild, repaying their gift of a birthday with
indefatigable high spirits, insisting on charades after cake and, when those
had collapsed into helpless laughter, coaxing them all onto the dance floor to
attempt the Charleston. They began to
wind down after that, and moved to the restaurant so Min could create drinks
with names like Tom Collins, Mint Julep and El
Presidente
. Emily was given a Fuzzy Navel, which Min
promised had barely enough peach schnapps to taste. Madeleine sampled each, an experiment which
left her pleasantly detached as they conscientiously returned to clear away the
remains of their meal.

"I'll turn off the music," she said as the others
pushed away laden serving trolleys, but a song she liked shuffled into play as
she approached the control screen, so she turned it up instead, and revolved to
slow, mournful words on the part-lit dance floor, watching for glimpses of her
stars in mirrored sections of wall.

"Enjoying yourself?"

Holding out her hands to Fisher, she drew him close so they
could turn together. "Yes. Though I think I'll stick to the mostly fruit
juice drinks in future. I don't think I
could shoot straight right now. Let
alone avoid shield-paralysis."

Fisher smiled, though his eyes were grave and serious. "What about the third power? Do you think you could use that at the
moment?"

A bubble of laughter escaped her. "Science Boy," she said, full of a
boundless affection for him. Snuggled
against his chest she made a valiant attempt, but it was like building a tower
of mud. "Results of experiment:
negative."

His arms tightened, then he tried himself, a fine thread of
Fisher which made her gasp and stumble, so intense was the flood of warmth,
desire, and tender concern. Underlying
it were darker emotions: an ever-present note of anger and dread.

Letting the thread of connection die away, he kissed the side
of her throat, voice a breathy sigh as he said: "I wish I could do more to
protect you."

"I get to protect you, remember? Or try to. Super-strong."

When he didn't say anything she drew back and saw his mood wasn't
one which was going to respond to spirit-fuelled quips.

"I know we're slow-dancing in the eye of the
storm," she told him. "I'll
remember my promise. But I'm...very
happy right now Fisher."

His expression fractured, glad of her, yet somehow wounded. "I didn't want to waste a moment of this
day on gloom," he said huskily.

"Then don't waste any more." She kissed him, and this time summoned fire,
a response so strongly passionate she felt lucky he was holding her up.

"
Maddie
? Fish? You two still–? Ah." Pan stood in the doorway, trying not to look
too highly entertained. "Sorry. Just came to say
we're heading up, and the centre elevator's unlocked. Night."

"Lee."

Pan paused, offering Madeleine a look of polite enquiry which
passed over the fact that Fisher had managed to unzip her dress and slide the
straps over her shoulders to the point where it was necessary to use him as a
screen.

"Noi likes you, you know."

A puzzled partial shrug in response.

"
Really
likes you."

His smile faded and he looked disbelieving. "You sure?"

"Very."

He blinked twice, then looked down and away, face completely
blank. Lee Rickard, lost for words. Then the tiniest involuntary curling of the
corners of his mouth, a smile trying to happen despite any attempt at control,
twitching back whenever he tried to erase it. He looked up at them, eyes very wide, drew a deep breath, then let it
out, and simply said: "Anyway,
g'night
,"
before leaving.

"Matchmaking?" Fisher asked.

"I wondered if perhaps it had simply never occurred to
him that she would consider him."

"Because Lee Rickard is not, beneath it all, the
eternally cocksure Pan?"

"Exactly. I hope
it wasn't a mistake. I'd hate to make
this harder for either of them."

Out on the Mezzanine balcony a stage-trained voice lifted,
strong enough to be clearly heard over the music. "
Cock-a-DOOdle-doo
!"

Fisher laughed. "Don't worry too hard."

She smiled, and tightened her arms around him. "I've never really been part of a
group. Not even before I had trouble at
school. The teachers were always telling
my parents I need to be taken out of myself. They thought I was hiding in my drawing."

"Too busy doing important things, no time for
people. All very familiar." He stroked a loose curl away from her
eyes. "I think I'm a good deal more
like you than like Noi. And I'm enjoying
all the complications of people far more than I could ever have expected. Tonight – tonight makes it easier to face
tomorrow."

Madeleine couldn't help but agree. Birthday parties, charades, and slow-dancing
with someone whose eyes turned bright when he looked at her. Things which, like her painting, could give
her the strength to run or to fight or to just keep going.

ooOoo

A climb to any height almost seems to invite calamity, and it
was with a sense of the inevitable that Madeleine woke to oscillating song.

So close! She heaved
out of the bed, an immediate, instinctive reaction, then stumbled in scant dawn
light at the absence of Fisher. There
was no time for guessing. Madeleine
snatched at clothes, shoved feet into shoes. A glance showed the en suite was empty. Grabbing her bag, with only a fraction of thought spare to regret how
little she'd kept packed, she bolted from the room.

"
Maddie
! Thank God."

Noi snatched Madeleine's hand and reversed direction, pulling
her into the next suite.

"I can't find Fisher," Madeleine said, struggling
to keep the words low, searching the thin shadows.

"He knows the plan."

Moth song again, sounding like it was right outside the door
of the room, and Madeleine gulped and hoped a plan would be enough, racing with
Noi through the series of interconnected suites. The others had already collected in the
furthest, poised by the entry door.

"Did you and Fish leave the elevator unlocked?" Pan
asked.

"No!" Madeleine was absolutely certain of that.

"Questions later." Noi pushed them toward the door. "Go."

The floors of the hotel tower were shaped like a segment of
rainbow, with the suites all along the outside, accessed via a single corridor
which bracketed the smaller inner curve containing the lifts and service
areas. Fire escapes were located at
either end, and the plan for escape was to run to the fire escape furthest from
any intruding Moths and go down two levels to one of the lifts which had
deliberately been parked away from their sleeping floor. Of course, it was a plan based on the
assumption that the Moths would have to approach their floor by climbing and
punching their way out of one of the fire escapes, that they would be guessing
as to which floor the Musketeers were on, and would have tripped one of the
alarms getting into the building in the first place. Instead of five steps ahead, the Musketeers
were four behind, and all they could do was scramble.

They barrelled through the door into unfurling wings.

Momentum carrying her forward, crowded on all sides,
Madeleine didn't dare shield-punch, and dived left, trying to avoid the Moth
while still heading in the direction of the fire escape. She lost her footing, found Emily on her
knees beside her and grabbed her hand.

"Go! Don't
wait!" Noi urged, catching up Emily's other hand as the boys hesitated a
step down the corridor.

Madeleine staggered to her feet. Emily's hand tightened in hers, and the girl
let out a startled little sound. And
stopped still. Nearly falling again,
Madeleine stared back at Emily's calm face, and tried to let go of a hand which
suddenly held firm to hers.

"
No
." Noi, caught on Emily's other side, pulled her
hand free, but did not run. "Millie..."

"Noi." A
mocking tone, accompanied by a thin smile which did not fit Emily's young
face. "Just wait there."

"For pity's sake, look up!" Min grabbed
Noi's
arm and swung her aside, then ducked himself, but not quick enough. A second Moth settled around his shoulders,
and sank beneath his skin.

With a wordless, sobbing cry Noi snatched at Madeleine's hand
and pulled her free, and they ran with Nash and Pan as another ball of light
drifted into view, and behind them two boys, one strawberry blonde and the
other sandy-haired.

"Fish!"

At Pan's exclamation Madeleine looked ahead. They'd rounded enough of the corridor's curve
to see the fire exit door, and Fisher waiting beside it, and the relief was so
strong she stumbled, but then found the strength for a burst of speed, catching
up with Nash as Fisher took a step or two in their direction.

Their speed undid them. The quiet determination of Fisher's expression, the way he moved away
from the fire exit instead of opening the door, stopping to rest a hand against
the wall and lift the other, it was all clearly wrong, but they processed this
too late to not run straight into the shield he raised.