Infinityglass (2 page)

It had rained most of the day and a fine mist hung in the air, but the endless party still went strong. I melted into the crowd, noting details for my escape route, since I’d be on foot.

I couldn’t always tell the bums from the tourists, and even though Mardi Gras was only one week a year, some glassy-eyed
coed was always ready to lift her shirt for a string of cheap plastic beads. Stories were ripe for the picking in the Quarter, and most were written all over their authors’ faces. The same creepy-ass clown stood outside Oz, juggling shot glasses tonight. I skirted my way past him without making eye contact.

I hated clowns.

I hooked a right down a side street. More warning than beacon, Skeevy’s neon sign shone red off the wet payment. I straightened my shoulders and headed for the front door. Heavy metal bars covered the bulletproof windows. An electronic ding sounded my entry as I pushed open the door. Easy to get in, harder to leave, especially if you held something in your hands.

Good thing Poe would be taking a shortcut.

The register was the old-fashioned kind with ticker tape and a little bell that rang when the drawer opened. Cash only at Skeevy’s. Checks bounced and credit cards left records, and no one on either side of the counter wanted that.

Danny Launoux was my target.

Thanks to my rock star surveillance skills, I knew he liked comics, vodka, and girls. That last part was crucial to my role in this little drama.

He wore 1970s, tinted glasses that didn’t hide his eyes but did make him look like a pimp. The heels of his boots hung on the rungs of the stool where he sat hunched over, reading a
Batman
comic. A set of keys dangled from a chain on his belt. His hair was out of control, frizzy, curly, and more tall than wide. I forced fifty
product suggestions to stay on the tip of my tongue and crossed the dirty, tan carpet. Danny didn’t look up until I reached him. I waited for a reaction. I didn’t get one.

“I’m looking for a ring,” I said. It had been one of my mother’s. I’d sold it earlier in the week as a blonde with thin lips, all Broke College Student Who Needed Tuition. I’d even managed tears. He hadn’t been impressed then, either.

“Prices are on the tags. No bargaining. What you see is what you pay.”

I browsed. Poe was already supposed to be in the back, but I couldn’t be sure until I got confirmation. I checked my phone as I slinked toward the jewelry cases. No texts.

I made a big show of bending over, and then arched my back and stretched. I’d at least expected curiosity from Danny, but he’d gone back to reading. I dropped my arms to my sides with a sigh and tried the direct approach.

“Is that the latest
Batman
issue from the New 52 series?” My Internet research had told me all I needed to know about the 2011 relaunch of DC Comics. It had also lured me into placing an order of my own.

He blinked, lowered the comic, looked at me, looked at the cover, and then at me again. “That’s what it says.”

“I feel sorry for Batman. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have to hide your identity. Never to be truly close to a woman. I like to get close. Don’t you?”

“I don’t care how hot you are. I’m not going to lower my prices
because you’re coming on to me,” Danny said in a monotone. Definitely not distracted. More like bored.

Damn. I’d hoped my fierce comics knowledge would work in my favor in case my flirting didn’t. “I’m not coming—”

“I know how women are,” he said in a Cajun drawl. “And I could smell you angling for a deal when you walked in the door.”

He could
smell
me? Jackass. I hated to use my sexuality for evil, and here he was, trivializing my effort.

“I happen to like
Batman
, and I told you, I want a ring. Show me the blue one.”

He dropped his reading material with a sigh and slammed the side of his fist into the register drawer. It popped open, and he fished a set of keys from underneath a stack of twenties. If he could open the register with nothing less than a punch and wasn’t afraid to let a customer know it, he wasn’t worried about what was in the cash drawer. This confirmed his main concern was for whatever lurked behind the vaulted door on the far wall.

It was certainly mine.

“Is that a blue topaz?” I asked.

He squinted at the ring in question. “Aquamarine.”

I checked my phone again as Danny leaned over to open the case. Nothing from Poe. An uneasy feeling stirred in the pit of my stomach.

Danny cleared his throat, and I realized he was holding
out the ring for me. I dropped my phone into my bag. “How much?”

“Three hundred and fifty.”

Broke College Me had let it go for a hundred.

I took the ring and held it up to the light. “Do you have an appraisal?”

He snorted. “Hello. You’re in a pawnshop.”

“Who sold it to you?” I asked.

“We have a privacy policy.”

I didn’t budge.

He looked from me to the ring and back again. “Two hundred.”

“Is that how much you paid for it?”

“Two. That’s the price.”

“Fine.” I dug around in my bag under the pretense of looking for my wallet so I could check my phone again. My heart did a flip when I saw Poe’s name on my screen.

I opened the message.

Help.

You knew you were in deep when someone who could teleport needed an escape plan.

“Uh-oh.”

Danny raised his eyebrows.

“My … my date cancelled.” I fought to keep my voice from shaking.

I flipped through my mental catalog, and recalled the details
of the building schematic I’d stolen, trying to think of all the places Poe could be.

Danny took the ring out of my hand. “You were meeting your date at a pawnshop?”

“I have a busy schedule.”

I watched a red light flash in the reflection from Danny’s glasses. I knew it was from a surveillance camera that hung suspended from the ceiling, observing the happenings in the front of the shop. The blinking light was a sign that there was trouble in the back. What had Poe gotten himself into?

“I need to close up. Now.”

“But the ring.” I gestured toward it when he began to put it back in the case. “Your sign says, ‘Open twenty-four hours,’ and the ring—”

“We’ll be open again at ten
A.M.
” His voice was firm. “Come back then.”

I huffed. “Your customer service is terrible.”

“Complain to the management. There’s a suggestion box. Outside.”

My cell screen lit up the inside of my purse:

911 GET ME OUT 911

Poe was not an all-caps kind of guy.

Desperate now, I held up one finger and tossed my blue hair over my shoulders. “Does the NOLA PD know what you keep behind that big door?”

Danny looked at the flashing light on the camera once
more before he shoved the ring back into the case. “You don’t need to worry about what’s behind that door. You just need to leave. Now.” He came out from behind the counter and cupped my elbow in his hand, trying to steer me out of the store.

Nothing pissed me off more than being manhandled. Unless I’d asked to be.

“Let go of me.” I jerked away and clutched my arm. “That hurt.”

“Does a hundred-dollar ring really mean so much that you can’t come back to get it tomorrow?”

“You said two hundred!”

“You’re familiar, somehow. You haven’t been in here before, have you?” He squinted and lifted up his glasses like an old man. “I know your voice.… ”

The one thing I hadn’t figured out how to do was manipulate my vocal cords.

Shock and surprise broke through my concentration, and I could feel my disguise slip a little. Danny blinked in recognition. “Wait a second. You sold me the ring! What the hell is going on?”

A cell phone on the counter began to vibrate, and the accompanying ringtone was a repeating air horn. Danny turned around, and I did the only logical thing I could. I picked up the stool from behind the register and hit him over the head with it.

I didn’t put all my strength into the move, because unlike my father, I didn’t make murder a hobby. Danny still went down hard.
Once I knew he was out, I took his key ring off his belt. I navigated my fingers through his hair to get to his skull. Big knot, no blood, nothing concave.

He was probably fine.

I took the ring from the case, left a hundred-dollar bill in its place, and then dropped it into my bag. Once I found the right key, I opened the vault door and pulled it closed behind me. A corridor stretched thirty feet before taking a sharp right turn. Strobe lights near the ceiling signaled a silent alarm.

If any cameras existed, they were well hidden. I let my face and body go back to their natural state. When I reached the turn, I took a quick listen before peeking around the corner. I’d expected some sort of chaos, or at least a guard. All I saw was more tunnel.

I went farther and farther as the strobe lights continued to pulse. The lack of windows made the walls close in and tripped off a rare bout of claustrophobia. By the time I reached the next open space, my chest was tight. Even though I was freezing, sweat trickled down my back. Once again, I listened before turning the corner. Good thing.

Voices echoed against the slick surfaces of the walls and floors. One was Poe’s; I could tell by the lilt of his English accent. The other was male and cocky.

“I won’t tell anyone what you have here,” Poe said. “You can just let me go.”

“Someone already knows what I have or you wouldn’t be
here.” A lighter flicked, and a shadow appeared on the wall across from me. “Paul Girard sent you.”

Cigarette smoke wafted toward me, and my body shook with the effort to stay still.

“We’ve discussed joining forces, but couldn’t reach agreeable terms. He leans too far toward greed for my comfort.”

Join forces, my ass. My dad didn’t play well with others.

The man’s shadow grew smaller, his voice louder. He had to be inches away. I reached into the side pocket of my bag. The timing needed to be perfect.

Heels clicked on the concrete floor. “If you came to work for me instead of him, I could make it worth your while.”

“I’m not interested in working for anyone,” Poe said. “I’m telling you—”

“Tell me this,” the man said. “Are you interested in being alive?”

I raised my stun gun and stepped around the corner. “Are you?”

The man’s eyes went wide when I tagged him in the chest. He hit the ground like a full sack of groceries, his limbs akimbo, still twitching. A wet spot spread across the front of his pants.

I looked up at Poe, who exhaled in relief. He had a fat lip and a trickle of blood coming from the corner of his mouth, and his left wrist was handcuffed to a doorknob.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I ported into the worst possible place. The guy was on me in
seconds. He’s the only one I saw, but I’m pretty sure he was waiting for backup.”

“I hit the backup in the head with a stool. He shouldn’t be a problem.”

“That’s my girl.” Poe used his bloody right hand to gesture to his left. “I’m going to need a little help. Our friend with the bladder control problem made damn sure I wasn’t going to get close enough to a veil to port out of here.”

I checked the guy for the key to the cuffs, found it, and set Poe free.

“Do I want to know how you know what a handcuff key looks like?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Let’s move.” Poe slipped his knife out of his boot and I followed him into a long, wide room with a chill factor worthy of iceberg storage. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling.

Poe scanned the room, muttering under his breath. “NT27. NT27. NT27—here.”

The labeled shelf held a clock made of solid glass, with no internal hardware, but wildly spinning hands. An astrological chart beside it displayed lit, moving stars. A flat jewelry box held rings in different sizes. Some of them glowed.

“There.” Poe pointed with the knife. “To the far left.”

A small wooden chest stood open, revealing a pocket watch nestled in black velvet. It was the size of a half-dollar, the metal shiny, but not reflective. I picked it up. It was warm rather than
cold. The gears on the back were exposed, but that was the only remarkable feature.

“I am not impressed. At all.”

“You don’t have to be.” Poe tilted his head toward the open door. “Let’s go.”

“What about the other stuff?” I pointed to the rings and moving star chart. “We can’t leave it here.”

“What you’re holding was handmade by Nikola Tesla. Thanks to his skills, it’s more than a pocket watch—”

“Obviously.”

“And,” Poe continued, “worth more than everything in this room combined. Take it, and hurry, or you’re going to end up fighting your way out of here.”

I tucked the watch into my purse, and then I froze. Footsteps. More than one set.

“Too late.” I looked at Poe and then handed him my bag. “Leave. Go while you can. I’ll find a way to get out.”

“Shut up.” He grabbed my hand, pulling me away from the door to the storage room. He stopped and seemed to weigh his options. Before I could ask him what he was considering, he wrapped his arms around my waist and took a step back.

Time stopped.

Aching pressure closed around my heart and tightened like a fist. My lungs couldn’t take in oxygen; blood didn’t circulate through my veins. I was colder than I’d ever been, and then hotter. Pressure built up in my ears, like I was traveling over a
high mountain or descending too fast while scuba diving.

Poe jerked me to one side and my feet were on solid ground again. All the pressure disappeared, but my head was still spinning.

I leaned over and retched.

“Hallie?” The timbre and tone of Poe’s voice resonated as if he were speaking inside my head. I opened my eyes and saw distinct variations of color in his irises. “Are you okay?”

“What … the hell … was that?”

If he answered, I didn’t hear him, because I was throwing up again.

Poe’s hand was on my back. “Tell me you’re okay.”

“If barfing in bushes equals okay, then I am
super
.”