Last Call (Last Call 1)

And she thought once again about Oliver and Scat.

She forced herself to breathe deeply and stop panting. "Did you do that?" she asked quietly. "Could you have … got away from that death, if you hadn't paused to put me somewhere safe, where I'd be found by strangers?"

There was no answer, and finally Diana turned around, still kneeling, and looked up.

She was shaking but didn't look away from the goddess's gaze.

Stand up, daughter, said the voice, and take my blessing.

Diana got to her feet, leaning a little against the strengthening offshore wind. Owls swept past overhead.

"My … friend," Diana ventured to say. "Can she be blessed too, Mother?"

I see no friend.

Diana pulled her attention from the face that was bending down over her in the sky and blinked into the waving shadows under the trees behind her.

"Nardie," she called. "Come out."

"I'll die."

Diana smiled tiredly. "Not right away."

"I'm not," sobbed Nardie from among the shadows, "in any way … dressed for this!"

"Nobody is. She'll overlook it. Come out—if you're not too afraid. I'll understand, if you are."

Nardie stepped hesitantly out onto the moonlit grass and then with visible effort walked up to stand beside Diana.

"I am too afraid," she said, looking down. "But I'm more afraid of what I'll be if I don't do this." She took a deep breath. "Okay?"

"Look up," said Diana.

Nardie obeyed, and in the moment before she, too, raised her eyes to the inhuman gaze overhead, Diana saw her friend's face glow with reflected light.

Be a true friend to my daughter, Bernardette Dinh.

"Yes," whispered Nardie. "I will."

An idea was conveyed then, something like bathe or cleanse or be baptized, and in Diana's head appeared a clear picture of a vast lake behind an enormous man-made dam.

The face leaned down closer and breathed on them, and the warm wind of it swept them off the ground. The dark island was gone, and they spun through vast golden halls whose pillars resonated to a triumphant chorus of deep, inhuman chords, as if the sea and all the mountains of the world had found voices to raise in a song that was older than mankind.

And the two of them were noticed, and remotely greeted.

Then they were ascending through darkness, and Diana's only anchor was Nardie's hand clasped tightly in her own. Lights began to wink at some indeterminate distance, and a choppy murmur grew in volume.

A whiff of cigarette smoke tickled Diana's nostrils—and a moment later the racket of chattering human voices and clicking chips crashed in on her ears, and she could see again.

She and Nardie were sitting on stools at another of the dim bars in Caesars Palace, and they released their hands and blinked dazedly at each other.

"How are you girls doing?" asked the bartender.

Diana picked up the glass in front of her and sniffed the inch of clear liquid in it; she could detect no smell at all. She cleared her throat. "Uh—what are we drinking?"

The bartender didn't quite roll his eyes. "Quinine water."

"Yeah, give us another round."

Diana's heart was still pounding, and she had no peripheral vision; to meet Nardie's gaze again, she had to look directly at her. The ashes in a nearby ashtray weren't shifting at all, but Diana thought she could still feel the hot wind of her mother's breath in her hair.

Nardie was clutching the edge of the bar. "Are we," she whispered, "going to stay here, do you think?"

"Yeah," said Diana, "I think we're in a landing pattern."

Somehow a live turtle, its shell as big as a dinner plate, was walking along the top of the bar toward them, pushing glasses out of its way with stumpy, leathery feet.

In its beak-like mouth was a Poker chip. Perhaps because of the artificial light, the turtle's shell and skin appeared to be gilded. Nobody else seemed to see the creature.

Diana forced herself not to close her eyes. "Um—turtle," she said levelly. "Coming up behind you."

Nardie pursed her lips and nodded, then sighed and turned to look.

The turtle was beside her drink now. It lowered its head and opened its jaws, and the chip clicked to the polished surface of the bar. Nardie slowly reached out and picked up the chip, and the turtle bowed again and—was gone.

Both women jumped at the abrupt, noiseless disappearance, and the bartender, stepping up with their drinks, spilled a splash of quinine water out of one of the glasses. "What?" he demanded irritably, looking around.

"Nothing," said Nardie. "Sorry."

When he turned away, shaking his head, she held the chip out toward Diana on her open palm.

The center of the clay disk was a grinning harlequin face, like that of the Joker in a deck of cards. Around the rim were imprinted the words "MOULIN ROUGE, LAS VEGAS."

"I thought that was in Paris," said Nardie.