Authors: Scott V. Duff
“Thanks, Jimmy, I will,” I said. The smile I gave him was probably too sad to be convincing, but he let it slide, kicking his shoes off and continuing to disrobe. He didn’t have the same discomfort with nudity that I did, having dealt with locker rooms at school and extended family and such. He piled his dirty clothes on top of his shoes and disappeared into the stall while I continued fussing in front of the mirror.
A drop from one green vial on my wrist was enough to effuse the cologne over me completely. An exotic smell, it definitely hit on the subconscious sexuality and said “I’m over here” in a tremendously seductive way. A smirk crossed my face as I put the little bottle away. It was spiteful of me and would be more fun if Peter was here to watch, but this would make Dillon sit up and take notice again. Jimmy was at the sinks a moment later.
“You can reach your closet from over here when you’re ready,” I said walking around him and tossing one towel over the rod as I went to the closet down the short hall. He leaned back to watch where I went, scrubbing his teeth with his finger as I had. Remembering Peter’s “business casual” dress code, I opened the closet door and shifted the aspect immediately to ‘hot as hell’ section then toned it down from there. I may have wanted to be a little vindictive, but I didn’t want to be a target. Selecting a pair of form-fitting black slacks and a black silk shirt of lightning strikes of muted crimson, yellow, and blue across the chest, I dressed my reflection in the mirror while I pulled on a pair of snug boxers. As Jimmy stepped up to the door, I walked through my reflection, dressing myself and taking a knee-length, black leather duster off of a hanger, walking out with it.
“Cool! Can I do that?” Jimmy asked me, staring into my closet and grinning.
“I… don’t know,” I answered, thinking about it. It was getting more difficult to separate ‘my magic’ from ‘Daybreak magic’ and from the beginning this trick wasn’t clearly one or the other. “Try it and see.”
“What’ll I do?” he asked.
“First, call up your closet,” I said, dropping the overcoat on the bench and picking up my towel from the floor. Jimmy’s clothes were gone; he must’ve sent them home while I was dressing.
“Oh,” he muttered, figuring out how to make his closet come to him. As I stepped back to him he glanced over at me quickly and grinned again. “It’s like space just folded over right in front of me, like a bed sheet or something. I wish school had been like this. I would have paid more attention.”
“All right, now, pick out what you want to wear and dress your reflection with that,” I told him, looking at the image of towel-wrapped Jimmy in front of us. He was a little taller and more muscular, but we weren’t that far apart, I thought.
“Where are we going exactly? What you’re wearing doesn’t quite fit ‘business casual,’ more like ‘chicks beware’,” he said, grinning at me as he shifted the image of his closet effortlessly.
“The ‘Mineshaft’ is a high-energy dance bar in London,” I said. “We’ll be getting there are sometime between two and four in the morning. I forget what time it is at the moment, but Dillon, the owner, is taking delivery of the food for us.”
“So it’ll be closed when we get there,” he said, sounding dejected.
“Not likely. It’s London,” I said, laughing. “I doubt the place even slows down until five or six on weekends. I’m surprised Dillon even agreed to it. Peter must’ve promised something pretty big.”
“I can’t seem to get this,” he mumbled, staring at the mirror hard.
“Can you see what you want?” I asked, sending out a strand of thought to Jimmy, feeling for where he was reaching. When I found his power, adjunct to mine, streaming through the mirror and holding around what he wanted, it stopped at the other side of the mirror in his closet. This was something I did, my magic, in combination with Daybreak’s magic. I dressed his reflection for him. “Maybe with time, Jimmy, but this looks like something only I can do. Grab an overcoat while you’re in there and let’s get going.”
He walked through the mirror, shaking his head and expecting to hit the glass. “Too cool!” he yelled from inside his closet, appearing a second later with a black leather coat hanging on one arm and enough teeth showing in his smile to satisfy any dentist.
“Is dressing really that difficult?” I asked, grinning, transferring my wallet and phone from my dirty clothes. “You got your ID?”
“When I got the coat. I’m still not legal, though,” he said, reminding me.
“Won’t be a problem,” I said, heading back down the hall.
Jimmy pulled up even with me when we came out into the open, looking around. “Where are we? Is this your bedroom?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered, dispassionately, slipping the duster on. I was used to the “Palace” and “big” being synonymous. “Now I’ve only been there once and it’s kind of a freaky place. Stay close and don’t show any signs of submission, but don’t threaten unless somebody threatens first.”
“Okay,” he said as I shifted us to the streets of London, a few blocks north of the Mineshaft.
My awareness of my surroundings kicked into high gear on the first step, the foundation Stone in my cavern humming to life and wrapping me in a light but powerful shield of protection. Both the Day and the Night searched around us constantly for incoming threats but found nothing of concern, while the Crossbow and Quiver searched the distances and found… three things. Three not terribly alarming things, either, since two of the three were the Metro police and they were watching the third, men in cars watching the club from blocks away. I’d keep tabs on them when we were in the open, just to be sure.
We turned the corner on the street the bar was on. No line at the door this time of night, but the road was littered with small clusters of men in various states of dress in various… activities. A pair of large, burly men in black shirts with day-glo orange “Security” turned the corner away from us and I caught a glimpse of another pair in the car park across the street. Dillon must’ve hired extra men since last week’s events, not that I could blame him for that.
“Well, you conveniently left
that
part out, didn’t you?” Jimmy complained, smacking me in the shoulder pretty damn hard.
“Hey! Watch it!” I cried. “What I do?” I glared imperiously at him while he just stared back, grinning.
“You left out the part about it being a queer bar,” he said, shaking his head. “Now I have all this sexy and no place to put it.”
“Watch your language. Some people find that offensive,” I snapped.
“’S’Peter’s word,” he said defensively, pouting.
“And it just didn’t occur to me to tell you,” I said more evenly as we approached the entrance. “’All this sexy’?” Now I laughed. The music was a low rumble from half a block away, but closer it was a morass of discordant tones and counter-tempo bass beats. It set me on edge. The doorman stepped forward, raising a hand to stop us.
“Seth McClure to see Dillon Monroe, please,” I said clearly and loudly before he could speak, stopping directly in front of the man.
“No’ wi’out oy-dee, mate,” he grunted in the worst cockney I’ve heard, which admittedly is limited. He held out his hand, waving his fingers for me to hand my ID to him. I just stood there with my hands in my pockets, staring up at him. He was quite the bruiser, physically. Jimmy fidgeted nervously. “Ya don’ get in wit’out it, boys,” he growled at me. Jimmy groaned, expecting me to go ballistic on the doorman, but I just stood there, staring at him.
The door slammed open, hitting the outside wall hard as a drunken trio stumbled out of the bar. The first two men ran into the backside of the doorman and fell into a raucous tumble of giggles and laughs. The third man wasn’t so happy. “Sid! What the hell are you standing in the middle of the door for?” he said loudly while trying in vain to push Sid the doorman out of his way.
One of the drunken men on the ground looked around Sid’s leg while he was trying to stand and looked up at me. “Ah, shit,” he muttered, and started scrambling faster, but changed direction. He went back into the bar, shoving the third man bouncing off the side wall and on top of the second. The music blasted again while the door swung shut and he slipped inside. Ten seconds later, we heard the echoes of running footsteps on the sidewalks behind us.
“Jus’ gimme your eye-dee, mates. We don’ wan’ any trouble, now,” Sid the wall of meat growled as the footsteps rang louder.
“Just tell Mr. Monroe that I’m here and you won’t have any trouble,” I said calmly. Jimmy turned around with his back to me, tense but not panicking. The entrance door pushed and a large man stepped through slowly, holding the door open at the center with one hand. The third man of the previous trio slipped out quickly and helped his friends to their feet, hurrying them back into the bar and shushing them constantly.
“Sid? Is there a problem?” the man asked in a light baritone, full of condescending power. He was tall at six foot two and wore black pants and a black tee shirt that looked like it would tear away from his chest at each breath he took it was so tight. And he had the face of a pit bull, rounded and dark and beady-eyed.
“No, Mr. Statham,” Sid said, his cockney accent suddenly finding another part of London to exist. “These gents were just trying to get in without proper ID. I was just suggesting they find somewhere else to be.”
“No, Sid, not true,” I said, calmly. “You made no such suggestion and neither have you informed Mr. Monroe of my presence and I grow tired of this.”
“Mr. Monroe is with a client at the moment,” Statham said, letting the door shut and the music die down some. “And he’s not expecting another this evening. Further, I don’t know you, so you either show some identification or I bounce you off the sidewalk now.”
“Now that was just rude, Mr. Statham. Come on, Jimmy, let’s go,” I said, then wrapped us both in portals, moving us to the lobby of Dillon’s office and making us disappear in front of Statham’s eyes. “Dillon?” I yelled through the apartment.
Jimmy burst into laughter, realizing we’d just left at least eight hulking bruisers, all itching for a fight, on the sidewalk gawking at the spot where we’d just vanished from sight. The lobby had changed since I’d been here last. Dillon had decorators in already, moving from sterile post-Industrial chic to a more friendly, woodsy atmosphere. Plants abounded and the furniture was heavier, more Earth tones. I don’t think it fit Dillon well.
I turned left and headed for his office. There, tapping on the desktop brought the computer system up and I figured out how to bring the surveillance cameras on-line. Jimmy watched until the screens on the wall lit up, then he watched the screens.
“Ewww, what are they doing in there?” he just about squealed in disgust as he bent over and looked carefully at one screen in the bottom row.
“Um, the back rooms, I think,” I answered, looking at the display readout on the desktop. “Peter made Dillon blank those out while I was here. Probably for that exact reason.”
“Okay,
that
is not sex!” he declared turning away from the wall. “That’s just plain ol’ disgusting.”
The door on the elevator opened and a single man stepped out. Too big to be Dillon, the man had to be Statham.
“It takes all kinds to make the world go round,” I said philosophically. “They didn’t invent any of that, ya’know.” I watched the screens for signs of Dillon as the system cycled from camera to camera. Jimmy turned to the door and faced Statham as he stomped in.
“Neat trick,” he growled over Jimmy, trying to intimidate him out of the doorway. Though hopelessly out massed, Jimmy didn’t budge from his place.
“What trick would that be, Mr. Statham?” I asked from Dillon’s desk, not bothering to look at him. If he wanted dominance games, I could play much more adeptly.
“Disappearing like that. Freaked my guys out sumpin awful,” Statham said. “Don’t like my guys freaked. Now, I’m gonna ask ya one more time to leave before I get violent on your asses.” I glanced up to see him flexing his fists and arms near Jimmy, trying hard to scare him off. Then I caught sight of Dillon on the wall and hurriedly tracked the camera and location on the desktop.
“Back dock, I don’t know that. We’ll have to walk,” I said, standing up. Then I added pleasantly, “Jimmy, Mr. Statham is in our way. Would you care to remove him?”
“Yes, thank you, Seth,” Jimmy responded kindly. Well, to me he was pleasant. To Statham, not so much. He wasn’t out to kill him, so he didn’t swing with all his strength, but he hauled off and hit the man in the chest. Statham flew back, losing every bit of air in his chest and likely skipping a few heartbeats, especially when he slammed into the glass brick wall behind him. He never lost consciousness, a testament to his build and strength. “You should be more polite to Mr. Monroe’s clients in the future,” Jimmy told him as he fought for breath on the floor as we walked past him.
In the elevator, I put up shields in front of the door and sent out feelers along the hall on the bottom floor before we got there. I remembered my last trip down this elevator and that was spooky enough. There was no magic in the building that I could sense with a quick pass, but the Night Sword would be a far more adept instrument than I, at least right now. We turned down the hall toward unfamiliar territory for me, places I’d only seen in Dillon’s floor plan a week ago. We passed a large, silver walk-in refrigerator door, through a large set of plastic strips leading outside and onto the back loading dock.