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Dixie
!"
"Dixie!" I jumped to my feet then froze when Alice growled and crouched like
she intended to spring for me. "Is that Dixie?"
As the screaming continued, Clarisse helped Dolly try to rise. Sarah shuddered
and tears filled her eyes.
Alice gazed at me, her tail swishing back and forth in a way that made me long
for a rifle. I like animals, but not as much as I like staying alive and
unmaimed.
"Dixie?" Samson repeated. "Yes, that's the name Dolly started screaming when
the new girl appeared here. Just a few minutes before you arrived."
"
God
, I hope that girl's had sex," Golly said.
I blinked. "What?"
Clarisse said, "Dolly tried to protect the girl from him. He knocked Dolly
down, and that's when she hit her head and passed out."
Dixie screamed again. Dolly moaned, trying to pull herself together and go to
the girl, but was obviously disoriented. I
tried to move toward the chamber where the screams were coming from but I
stopped when Alice flinched reflexively in my direction, as if about to pounce
on me.
"Control your tiger!" I ordered Sarah.
"I can't! Goudini and her trainer are the only ones who have authority over
her!"
"
Take some authority, damn it!"
"Have you ever tried to take authority over a cat?"
"Oh good God!" I said.
"It's no use, er& I didn't get your name," Samson said.
"Esther." I took off my shoe.
"It's no use, Esther."
"What choice do we have? I'm not going to be hampered in this battle by one of
the hostages, for God's sake!"
"No, I mean "
"Don't anyone move." Holding Alice's gaze, I assumed the role of a lion tamer
in no mood for pranks and walked toward her, staring her down. Alice's tail
twitched harder and she growled at me. She looked about five feet long, if you
didn't count the tail, and I estimated she weighed about three hundred pounds.
"Alice," I said firmly, "go to your corner and stay there."
"She doesn't have a corner," Golly said.
"Alice," I repeated, "go to your corner. Now."
The tiger glared at me. Praying I would live through this, I whacked her
sharply on the nose with my shoe. Alice flinched and ran to a corner, where
she crouched and growled, tail still twitching, now doing her best not to look
at me.
"I'll be damned," Golly said.
"All right," I said loudly, shaking like a leaf, "let's go get Dixie from that
scheming twerp!"
"But, Esther "
I crossed the floor and walked through the archway to enter the chamber whence
the screams came. Or
I tried. When I got to the arch, I bounced so hard off an unseen obstacle that
I fell to the floor. Alice's growls mingled with Dixie's screams as Samson
helped me off the floor.
"I tried to tell you," he said. "We can't go into that chamber. I think these
symbols he's written all over the doorway give him power over who can enter
and who he can keep out."
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"Dixie!" I shouted through the archway. "Hang on! I'm here! Hang on! And kick
that little creep in the balls!"
"
Esther
?" she cried. "Esther, is that you?"
"Yes! Are you all right? Dixie? Dixie, answer me! Who's frightening you? Is
that Hiero Oh, my God, it
is you!" I exclaimed as Max's skinny, sullen, young assistant suddenly
appeared before me in the normal sense: he walked round the corner that hid
most of the other chamber from view. Dragging Dixie with him, he stopped when
he reached the archway, just on the other side of the invisible barrier. She
was struggling against his white-knuckled grip on her arm. He gave her a hard
shake to make her hold still.
Glaring at me as if / were somehow to blame for all his problems, Hieronymus
snarled, "She'th not one, eitheh!"
"Sheathe what
?" I said.
"She's not one, either," Samson translated.
"Not one what?" I asked in confusion.
"A virgin," Samson said.
"She's not?" Dolly cried. "Oh, darlin', thank
God
!"
Dixie's face was tear-streaked. She looked disheveled and terrified. "Dolly!
Are you okay?"
I glanced at Dolly as she staggered toward us, gradually regaining full
control of her limbs. "Oh, honey! I
was so scared! I'm so glad! Thank
God you're not a& Er& " She frowned. "Oh my goodness! I
thought sure you still were!"
"You won't tell Daddy, will you?"
"No, of course not, sugar. Women gotta keep each other's secrets. But, honey,
just reassure me. You weren't, you know& I mean, no nasty young man forced "
"Oh, no, no! He's a very nice young man, Dolly! Very sweet! You'll like him!
Daddy likes him. But, of course, Daddy doesn't know about& "
"And he won't ever find out," Dolly promised her. Then her face fell when she
realized just how true that statement seemed likely to be.
"Shut up!" Hieronymus shouted. "Shut up
, shut up, shut up
! I'm tho thick of you! Tho thick of all of you!"
He glared at me. "Ethpecially you!"
"Gosh, and I just got here," I said.
"I won't even botheh with you. I think we can thafely thay you awen't a
vi'gin." His face screwed up with distaste as he added, "An actweth
."
"Excuse me, I didn't catch that final word?" When his face darkened with rage,
I added, "Hiewonymuth."
"Maybe I can't thacwifithe you to Avolapek," he said furiously, "but I
can kill you."
"So you are sacrificing the victims!" I paused, confused for a moment, and
then it hit me. "Oh good grief!
You're sacrificing virgins
?"
"Twying to," he said sulkily.
"You can't be serious!" I said.
Glowering, he replied, "Do you have any idea how hawd it ith to find a vi'gin
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in thith thity? Juth one
? One little vi'gin! That'th all I want! That'th all I need! One vi'gin! One!
But noooo
!"
"You had sex with Barclay?" I blurted, looking at Dixie.
"You won't tell Daddy?"
"When did you and Barclay have time to Oh! Of course. The night you went out
for a nightcap.
Barclay took you back to your hotel after Duke was already asleep in his own
room?"
Dixie nodded, blushing.
"And none of us is a virgin, of course," Samson said to me.
Golly Gee snorted. "Not for a long time."
"And Alice has had cubs!" I said, remembering.
"Even the goddamn tigeh ith not a vi'gin!" Hieronymus shrieked, little flecks
of spittle flying out of his mouth.
"So you're trying to sacrifice a virgin? Oh, Phil, Phil, Phil." I shook my
head while Hieronymus gasped at my use of his alias. "Oh, of all the pathetic,
misogynistic, cliche-ridden, phallocentric, stereotypical, B-movie bullshit!"
He sulked as I continued, "Hieronymus, don't you see how sad this is? How
absurd?
How bourgeois?"
"It ith not bouwgeois! I'm going to wule Manhattan! Wule New Yo'k! Become mo'e
powe'ful than
Twump, biggeh than Bloombe'g!"
"You? Who are you kidding?" I shot back. "In one of the biggest population
centers on the planet, you can't even find a virgin!"
"I am thtwanded in Thodom and Gomowah!"
"What?"
"He's stranded in Sodom and Gomorrah," Samson said. "We've heard this rant
before."
"Dare I ask what you need a virgin/or?" I said.
Samson said, "To summon Avolapek."
"Who's Avolapek?"
"Some demon that he thinks will make him bigger than Trump, more powerful than
Bloomberg," said
Clarisse.
"And once you summon this demon and become all-powerful throughout the five
boroughs," I said to
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