The only exit left was a spiral staircase—human engineering, not Alien—that twisted down below the floor and into a sea of churning gray fog. The notes of an old-fashioned ballroom dance floated up from the depths. Alice recognized the piece—“The Underworld Waltz.” It had been written shortly after the end of the Era of Discord and had been composed to celebrate the triumph of the Guild forces over Vincent Lee Vance and his crazed followers. It was invariably played with stirring spirit and a sweeping sense of optimism.
But the music emanating up out of the gray fog was the opposite of spirited and optimistic. This version of “The Underworld Waltz” was an ominous dirge that sent chills across her senses.
“The game has begun,”a disembodied voice said.“There are three lockedrooms. Each has a doorway to the next chamber. If you succeed in escaping all three rooms before dawn, the hotel will let you live. You have one minute to accept the invitation tothe first game—the Midnight Ball. If you decline, the hotel will assume that you refuse to play the game.”
A hellish shriek infused with undiluted horror echoed up the basement stairs. Alice froze.
“That was Twitchell,” she whispered.
A second scream reverberated.
“Kelbrook,” Owen said. “I’m guessing the hole-in-the-wall was blocked or booby-trapped.” He slipped the mag-rez into the pocket of his jacket and took her hand. “That means we play the escape game.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The ghostly fog glowed withparanormal energy, but as far as Owen could tell, it was background psi—the kind of radiation that occurred naturally in soil and rocks and was especially strong underground in high-energy locations like the coast.
The scene at the bottom of the spiral staircase was surreal.
“Bizarre,” Alice said. “I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this isn’t it.”
“The voice did say that we had been invited to a ball,” he reminded her.
The ballroom was a heavily mirrored chamber drenched in shadows. A large circular mirrored platform covered most of the floor. Eight couples dressed in gowns and tuxedoes stood, motionless, on the dance floor.
The large trapdoor overhead closed with a violent clang. Bolts slid home. Owen saw Alice flinch and reach up to touch Sebastian. The dust bunny was sleeked out, all four eyes wide open. Searching for the enemy.
So am I,Owen thought. But there was no single, obvious threat. Instead, the entire chamber reeked of the vibe.
“The game has begun,”the disembodied voice said.“Your objective is the door on the other side of the room. To get there you must cross the dance floor.”
“I can see the door,” Alice said. “It doesn’t look like it would be hard to get across the dance floor, but I’m guessing that would be too easy.”
He studied the shadows on the far side of the room.
“Yes,” he said. “This is the work of a madman who did not intend for any of his victims to survive.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
He gave her a quick, assessing glance. She was back in what he had come to think of as her professional Ballantine Method mode—back in control. Amazing. He knew there had to be a lot going on under the surface. A few minutes ago, she had attacked her mother’s killer and forced him to travel into a nightmare. He knew she’d had to make the journey with him. No one could survive such an experience without some PTSD.
Now they were facing a life-and-death escape game designed by a serial killer whose goal had been to watch his victims suffer before they died.
But there was no time for a therapeutic debriefing. They had to focus on surviving the lethal game. He could see that she knew that. There was a lot of shit to worry about in that moment, but the one thing he knew he did not need to add to the list was the possibility that she would fall apart on him.
“Partners,” he said softly.
She looked at him, distracted. “What?”
“We’re partners. We’ll get through this together.”
“Absolutely,” she said. Sebastian chortled. She smiled briefly, then reached up and touched him. “You, too, pal.”
Owen gave Sebastian a quick pat. “A team. All right, let’s see what we’ve got here.”
He considered the circular platform. It stretched wall to wall, leavingno way to skirt the edge and walk around it. The only route was across the no-doubt-slippery mirrored surface. He switched his attention to the features of the motionless couples. They were disconcertingly realistic but only the male mannequins were smiling. The female figures appeared frozen with dread.
“Are they waxworks?” Alice asked.
