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The girl worked as a chambermaid in one of the hotels. Mimi scanned the last three months of her life. Saw her making the beds and clearing out the trash, vacuuming rugs and pocketing the small tips the guests left on the bedside tables. Saw her waiting for her boyfriend, a bike messenger, after work at a small caf¨¦. Work, boyfriend, work, boyfriend. What's this? The hotel manager was forcing the girl into his office and making her take off her clothes. Interesting. But was it real?
Venator training meant Mimi had learned how to distinguish fiction from reality, expectation from realization. Was the girl really being abused by her boss or was she just fearful that it would happen? It looked like a fear dream. Mimi placed a compulsion: she imagined the girl pushing her boss away, kicking him right where it hurt. There. If it ever happened, the girl would know what to do now.
"Call it. Lennox One?" Kingsley's voice echoed through the darkness.
"Clear."
"Two?"
"Clear."
"Force?"
Mimi sighed. There was no sign of the Watcher in any of the girl's thoughts. "Clear." She blinked her eyes open. She was standing over the girl, who was sleeping soundly under the covers. Mimi thought she had a small smile on her lips. There is no need to be afraid, Mimi sent. A girl can do anything she wants to do.
"Right. Move out." Kingsley led them into the night, through the unpaved roads and rickety steps leading farther into the tumbledown, jigsaw row of makeshift houses and apartment buildings cut into the mountains. She followed the team up the hill, walking by overflowing garbage cans and piles of rotten junk.
Not all that different from certain parts of Manhattan, Mimi thought, although it was amazing to see how closely people lived and how twisted their priorities were. She had seen homes, hovels, really, with no running water or toilets, but whose living rooms boasted forty-two-inch flatscreen televisions and satellite dishes. There were shiny German cars in the makeshift garages while the children went without shoes.
Speaking of children: she heard them before she saw them. The merry little band of brats who had been following them around all week. Their dirty faces streaked with tar, their ragged clothes bearing faded American sports team insignias, their hands outstretched, palms facing upward, empty. It reminded her of a public-service announcement that used to run in the evenings: "It's ten p.m. Do you know where your children are?"
"Senhora Bonita, Senhora Bonita," they chanted, their bare feet slapping on the wet path.
"Shoo?" Mimi hissed, batting them away like pesky flies. "I have nothing for you today. Nada para voce. Deixe-me sozinho?" Leave me alone. Their begging gave her a headache. She wasn't responsible for these people, for these children.... She was a Venator on official business, not some celebrity on a public relations campaign. Besides, this was Brazil, a developing country. There were places around the globe that were far more desperate. Really, the little urchins didn't know how lucky they were.
"Senhora, senhora." The little one, a cherub in a stained undershirt, dark curls bobbing, had grabbed the back of her shirt. Like the other Venators, Mimi was wearing a black polyver coat and waterproof nylon pants, standard-issue wear. She'd refused to wear the clunky boots (they made her feet look fat), and was wearing the high-heeled pony-hair boots again. "Oh, all right," Mimi said. It was her fault the kids were around them.
For as much as she tried to harden her heart, to remain impassive and stoic and indifferent in the face of truly appalling poverty, mimi considered her standard room back at the hotel (not even a suite!) deprivation enough, 'she found that whenever the children crowded around her, she always had something to give them.
A piece of candy. A dollar. (Yesterday ten dollars each.) A chocolate bar. Something. The children called her The Beautiful Lady, Senhora Bonita.
"Nothing for you today! Really! I'm out!" she protested.
"They'll never believe you. Not since you caved the first day," Kingsley said, looking amused.
"As if you're any better," Mimi grumbled, reaching into her backpack. The four of them were a soft touch. The silent twins gave out bubble gum while Kingsley could always be counted on to pay for deep-fried kibe snacks from the street carts.
The little girl with the curls waited patiently as Mimi brought out a stuffed toy dog she'd bought from the gift shop that morning especially for her. The stuffed animal had a face that reminded her of her own dog. She wished the gentle chow were with her, but need for the canine familiar's protection lessened in the later years of the transformation. "Here. And this is for all of you to share," she said, handing over a huge box of bonbons. "Now go?"
"Obrigado! Obrigado, Senhora!" they yelled as they ran away with their booty.
"You like them," Kingsley said with a twisted half smile that Mimi found infuriating because it made him even more handsome than he needed to be.
"No way." She shook her head, not meeting his eyes. Maybe she'd been drinking too much of the super-sweet Mexican Coca-Cola they had down here. Or maybe she was just tired, alone, and far from home. Because somewhere in the brittle, concrete center of Azrael's dark heart, something was melting.
Missing
"You must ask Charles. You must ask him about the gates... about the Van Alen legacy and the paths of the dead."
Those were her grandfather's last words.
But Charles Force was gone when Schuyler returned to New York. Oliver had found out through his contacts at the Repository that Charles had embarked on his usual amble across the park one afternoon but had never come home. That was a week ago. The former Regis had left no note, no explanation. Apparently, he had left everything a mess.
The Force corporation had lost half its value in the stock market crash, and the board was up in arms: their company was sinking and there was no captain steering the ship.
But somebody must know where he was, Schuyler thought, and one morning she waylaid Trinity Force at the salon where she had her hair highlighted. The leading social doyenne of New York was wrapped in a silk robe, sitting under a heat lamp.
"I take it you've heard the news," Trinity said dryly, putting down her magazine as Schuyler took the seat next to her. "Charles must have good reasons for his actions. I only wish he would have shared them with me."
