Deep Secret (Magids 1) - Page 49

Hangovers or not, both Tina Gianetti and Ted Mallory happened to be in the hotel foyer that afternoon when Will made his unintentionally dramatic entry.

Rupert Venables continued

I went down to the foyer to meet Will, still trying to digest my discoveries of the morning. I was not happy with myself. There was still no sign of Andrew and, as for Maree, I found I was actively avoiding her. I had seen her in the distance several times and had deliberately gone the other way. I checked the foyer anxiously as I came down the stairs, in case she was there. At first sight, the place seemed empty of anyone but the doll-like Finnish receptionist, Odile. Outside the big glass doors, the wide space of the market street was likewise empty. Will was to arrive immediately outside those doors. I put myself where I could be sure of seeing him the instant he came, ready to make a diversion in the unlikely event of Odile’s noticing something strange about his arrival, and then checked the mirrors in the ceiling for hidden observers.

And there they both were. Tina Gianetti was crouched in a chair behind a potted palm tree to one side of the foyer, undoubtedly hiding from her suited boyfriend. She seemed to be holding an icepack to her forehead. Ted Mallory was asleep behind a fern on the other side. I winced a bit, by association, at the sight of Mallory, but I didn’t think either of them was capable of noticing much. I strolled about, hands in pockets, waiting, unworried by anything but the oddness of Andrew and my trouble over Maree.

Almost at once, the long-suffering Maxim Hough bounded down the stairs into the foyer area, saying loudly, “OK, OK, we’ll have it out here, Wendy. I don’t want the whole con stirred up again.”

He was followed by a large lady, whining belligerently. “There’s nothing to have out, Maxim. I was clearly told I was running my women writers’ workshop now in Universe Three.”

She was followed by Mervin Thurless, who was yelling, “I don’t care what you decide! Just get this obese dyke out of my workshop!”

“I’m not standing here to be insulted, Maxim!” Wendy trumpeted.

Ted Mallory sat up and scowled. Tina Gianetti curled down further in her chair. Maxim ran his hands through his blond Egyptian curls and got himself between Thurless and the large Wendy. “It’s a clear case of double-booking,” he said, raising and lowering both hands in imploring chopping motions.

And there was an almighty squeal of tyres from outside the glass doors. Next second, something large and four-legged banged through those doors, crossed the foyer too fast for me to see it clearly and vanished up the stairs in a spatter of blood. The receptionist came to curiously robotic life. She swung round, pointing stiffly, and cried out, “No horses allowed in this hotel! No horses in the hotel!”

“My God!” said Thurless. “Someone just rode a horse through here!”

In the overhead mirror, I had a sight of Tina Gianetti, bolt upright and staring from dark-pouched eyes. At the same moment, I was s

eized, fiercely and tremulously, from behind. I spun round to find myself nose-to-nose with Ted Mallory, who was staring much like Gianetti.

“Tell me I haven’t got DTs, man!” he said chokingly. “Tell me I didn’t just see a centaur come through here!”

A centaur! I thought. Oh my God! Simultaneously, I realised that Wendy had fainted. She was in a rather large heap on the floor, with Maxim and Thurless crouching over her. In a moment of panic and inspiration, I remembered things I had not even known I had read in today’s convention programme. “It’s the masquerade tonight,” I told Ted Mallory. “Someone’s in costume already.”

“But it was pouring with blood! I thought I saw it pouring with blood!” he said.

“Tomato ketchup,” I told him soothingly. “Tomato ketchup.”

The glass doors clashed again behind him. Will staggered through them, white as a sheet, and stared at me beseechingly. Beyond the doors I could see his pseudo-Land Rover crookedly stopped halfway up the shallow steps outside. For a nasty instant I thought Will was injured too.

“It’s all right,” I said to Ted Mallory. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll look into it, I mean. You go and look after Gianetti and the receptionist.” I pushed him that way. Gianetti was now laughing in a way that sounded like oncoming hysterics and Odile was green.

He shambled off. I dashed over to Will. “A centaur!” Will said. “I hit a centaur, Rupert! We both came through at the same spot at the same moment and I hit him, Rupert!”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll go and find him, see how badly he’s hurt. You get that vehicle out of sight in the staff car park and then come to my room – number 555.”

Will nodded shakily and staggered for the doors again. I avoided the efforts of Maxim, Thurless and Ted Mallory to grab me and demand explanations I couldn’t give, and sprinted up the stairs.

It was not hard to track the centaur. He was bleeding quite badly. The carpet was printed with small neat crescents, widely spread in a panicked gallop, accompanied by a red trail to the left of them that glistened like Janine’s jumper. I raced along it, wishing more and more devoutly that I was any real good at healing, followed it as it veered sideways – the waiter who had been pushing the tall trolley that caused the veer was still there, and stared at me as piteously as Will had. “Masquerade. Tomato ketchup,” I told him as I swerved round him and his trolley – and found myself in the main function hall.

There had been a panel in progress here and this was now in total confusion. But at least, I thought as I sprinted amongst the milling audience, these people, as befitted fantasy fans, were reacting with amazement rather than panic. “Masquerade,” I told a large man with FANGS! on his T-shirt, who accosted me with questions. “Slight accident. Horse bolted.”

“What a marvellous costume!” cried a small lady with OOOK on her shirt. “This has made my day!”

Well that makes one of us! I thought. “Good. Great,” I gasped, zigzagging along the trail, giving out soothing cries of “Tomato ketchup! Masquerade!” as I went.

No one seemed to have tried to stop the centaur. Probably just as well. Someone could have been kicked. The trail swerved to the far doors, in a speckle of crimson and a smallish red handprint, and out into the corridor beyond. I raced round leftwards after it, among mirrors and round a right-angle turn, along again and round, and then round two more corners. Too many right-angles. I swore as I ran. Someone had been messing with the node again. Finally I whirled into the area above the foyer again where the lifts were. The nearer lift had smears of blood on the door. Its door was shut and the green arrow indicated the lift was in use, going up. The hurt centaur seemed to have gone to ground in the lift. It was hard to blame him, but someone losing blood like that had to be in urgent need of attention. I rammed my thumb on the call button and started hauling the lift back downwards, Magid-fashion.

It was seriously hard to haul. I was sweating with the effort and the lift was merely creeping down when Will panted up beside me, looking thoroughly distraught.

“The centaur’s in there?” he gasped. I nodded. “You’ve got to get him down then,” Will said. “They hide away to die when they’re hurt bad.”

“Then help me, damn you!” I snarled.

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Magids Fantasy
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