Last Call (Last Call 1)

The carved and painted female body he had touched was the figurehead of the big, mechanically rocking boat by the steps up to Cleopatra's Barge, one of the bars in Caesars Palace.

"Sure," he said with a weary smile to Diana and Dinh, "you girls go ahead and blow some chips. I've got to medicate my beer deficiency, and I'll be fine with Cleo here."

Diana took Nardie's elbow, and the two of them walked back down the carpeted hallway toward the playing floor. Diana's purse, bulky with the folded-up old baby blanket, swung between them.

"I gather," said Nardie, a little stiffly, "that he didn't sell the King the senile hand, and that you two are planning to get married on Saturday."

Diana glanced at her, concealing her surprise. "Right both ways. Okay with you, I hope."

"Failing with the King—no, that's not okay with me. I don't want to have hitched my cart to a horse that's a loser. My half-brother is a pretty good candidate, too, you know. I could have put my money on him. As to who you marry—that's none of my business."

"It is your business," said Diana, "if you're with us. I know you tried to seduce Scott yourself a week ago."

Nardie grimaced and seemed about to spit. "Seduce him? I ran from him. I told him he should go kill himself." She yanked her arm free from Diana's grasp. "I don't need you people, you know; I'm still a contender. Just because you—"

"Are you very tempted to go back to him? To your brother?"

Nardie's lips pulled back from her teeth, and she inhaled—and then her narrow shoulders slumped, and she just sighed. "Hell, yes. If I was with him, I wouldn't have to think all the time, be alert. Every time I'm near a pay phone that rings, I think it might be him, and I want to pick it up. Wouldn't you?"

They were among the banks of chugging and clanging slot machines; young men in the armor and helmets and skirts of Roman soldiers stood as still as statues on raised stone altars behind the slot machines, and a man dressed as Julius Caesar and a woman dressed as Cleopatra moved through the crowd, graciously welcoming everyone to Caesars Palace and urging people to have a good time. Doric pillars, and marble, and heavy purple curtains framed all the electrically flashing action, and Diana wondered what a genuine classical Roman, time-traveled to now and dropped here, would think of the place.

"Arky should have come with us," whispered Nardie, nudging Diana and tangling her hand in her purse strap. "I think we're about to get an audience with Cleopatra."

Sure enough, the woman in the gold-belted white skirt and Nefertiti hat was striding across the figured carpet toward them.

"She's going to ask us how come we're not playing," said Diana.

They both were touching the baby blanket that was stuffed into the purse, and it was warm, even hot.

Then Diana felt something shift, in the space around her and in the depths of her mind.

All at once most of the lights were snuffed out, and the laughter and ringing bells stopped, and the floor was tilted. Diana gasped and took a balance-catching step backward, and she could feel that she had stepped onto springy grass.

The cool breeze smelled of trees and the sea instead of paper money and new shoes, and the woman walking toward them was taller, incalculably tall, and wore a crown with a silver crescent moon over her high, pale forehead. Her eyes glowed in the shifting white light.

Nardie was still standing beside Diana and had tightly grasped her hand; but when the goddess stepped closer, she let go and hurried back, into the shadows under the tossing moonlit trees.

Diana strained her eyes, trying to keep the approaching woman in focus. The cold and inhumanly beautiful face was above Diana now, and seemed to be a feature of the night sky. Dogs or perhaps wolves were howling somewhere, and surf crashed on rocks. Fine salt spray dewed Diana's parted lips.

Her knees were suddenly cold, and she realized she had knelt on the wet grass.

When the goddess spoke, her voice was literally musical—like notes stroked from inorganic strings and ringing silver. This is my daughter, spoke the voice, who pleases me.

But Diana heard suddenly the rapid-fire clank-clank-clank of coins spat into the payout well of a slot machine, and for a moment it was the sound of spent shells, ejected from the hot, fast-jacking slide of a semi-automatic pistol, hitting the sidewalk pavement as a woman fell away with three holes punched through her head, and Diana turned and began frantically crawling across the dewy grass toward the trees in whose shadows Dinh was already hiding.

This is my death, Diana thought. I'm being invited to die.

Sometimes one risks death, spoke the goddess behind her, to save one's children.

Still facing the trees, Diana stopped; and she thought about the night when her mother had been killed, and she herself had survived and been found by Ozzie and Scott.