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The man on the balcony looked up at her, and his eyes got very large.
Uncertain what was appropriate in this social situation, she waved at the man and gave him her best attempt at a friendly smile.
He waved back, so that was probably the right thing to do.
The spider-kin resumed climbing. At the top floor of the hotel waited a restaurant. She hadn’t known that until she pulled herself up and swung a leg over the railing.
A single, very large balcony covered half the area of the building’s roof. About a dozen of the pretty glass-topped tables with their accompanying wrought iron chairs sat on the rooftop. The weather was much more pleasant than yesterday, warm and dry with a soft breeze. It looked like a very nice place to have dinner. But she was not hungry, and she needed to figure out how to save Pete and Sergeant Giovanni.
In between a young couple at one table and a man in a business suit sitting by himself at another, Liliana swung her other leg over the railing. Discreetly, she detached her safety line from her wrist behind her back as her ballet slippers settled on the terra-cotta tile.
She waved and smiled. Apparently, it was the polite thing to do. The young couple looked at each other, then waved back. The man in the business suit never looked up from his wrist phone. Liliana shrugged and went on. She wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to behave in certain social situations.
Wide, wooden-framed glass French doors, propped open to take advantage of the evening breeze, led her into a large room with more of the same type of tables and chairs and terra-cotta tile floor. The room was filled with people chatting and eating, and servers bringing food and clearing away dishes.
Noise and the pleasant spicy scents of garlic, oregano, and rich coffee washed over her as she entered. A lot of people glanced up at her, making her acutely uncomfortable. She looked down at her feet and smoothed her scarlet skirt with the black waistband and ruffle at the bottom. It matched the scarlet scarf wrapped around her forehead and braided into her hair and her black, short-sleeved top with the red roses embroidered on it.
A server looked at her oddly as he set a drink down on one of the tables.
His forehead wrinkled, then he went back toward a door at the rear of the restaurant. He passed a woman who came through the other side of the swinging door from the other direction carrying a huge tray laden with steaming plates of food. That must be the kitchen.
Liliana only had a few seconds to decide what to do before the server fetched whoever was in authority and sent them over to question her. There were three other doors on the back wall, labeled “Men,” “Women,” and “Ungendered.” The only door on the right wall had a small podium with a stack of menus in front of it. A big sign saying “Please wait to be seated” was tilted so it would be visible to people coming in from that door, and a small sign saying “EXIT” in red letters hung above it.
Since she did not need to use the bathroom or go into the kitchen, she chose the door marked EXIT, even though she did not wish to leave the building she’d just gone to so much trouble to enter.
The spider-kin stepped out into a little foyer. Two elevator doors faced her. Getting into a tiny, enclosed room with strangers and no place to run or hide was not a good option. Liliana’s nose wrinkled at the thought. She looked around for an alternative.
Another door had a picture of stairs on it and another red EXIT sign. She ducked through quickly.
As she closed the stairwell door behind her, she heard someone open the restaurant door. Liliana opened her fourth eyes for a quick peek behind to see who followed her. She saw the waiter who had wrinkled his forehead at her and an imposing chubby tower of a woman. She had shiny black hair in a bob just under her chin. She wore an apron dusty with white flour and a pinched look of annoyance. They looked around the empty foyer Liliana had just left, a puzzled frown on the server’s face. He started toward the door to the stairwell.
Liliana climbed over the railing, attached a quick safety line to the concrete stairs, and grabbed the edge with her fingertips. She swung her feet up to hook her toes under a stair edge.
The waiter opened the stairwell door just as she snugged her body up flush with the underside of the staircase. The big woman in the apron peered into the stairwell, saw empty stairs, and cocked her head to listen for footsteps.
The spider-kin held her breath.
The elevator dinged. Six people stepped out, laughing and chatting loudly, obviously a bit intoxicated. Instead of pursuing Liliana further, the waiter welcomed the new guests to the restaurant, and the large woman went back to the kitchen.
Liliana sighed in relief.
Okay. She was in the building. Now what?
For want of any better ideas, Liliana followed the stairs down. Several floors were hotel rooms. Those floors required a card key to enter. As she reached ground level, she passed two floors with loud music vibrating through the walls. No card key was needed on these floors but she still could not bring herself to enter that pandemonium.
The sound insulation between floors was impressive. The pounding music would be unlikely to disturb the hotel guests in their rooms.
She kept going clear to the basement where the stairs stopped, then hesitated, unsure where to go from there.
A door led out of the stairwell and into the basement proper, which was completely quiet compared to the noise of the two floors above.
While she wondered what to do next, a door opened two floors above her. Thumping, cacophonous music flooded the stairwell for a moment. Light footsteps started down, the quick tap, tap, tap of high heels.
Liliana looked around for a place to hide. The stairwell was bare concrete, and she didn’t know what waited in the basement.
As the footsteps came closer, the spider-kin ducked into the tiny, unused nook under the bottom of the concrete and steel stairs. She crouched in the dark corner and hoped she wouldn’t be seen.
A petite young woman with long blonde hair tapped her high heels down the concrete stairs over Liliana’s head. The short skirt of her cerulean-blue dress with the open back swirled around her thighs as she hurried down the stairs.
