Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [72]
“Ah, yes. There is that. Good night, Max. I’ll see you tomorrow, I suppose?”
He nodded, wished me good night, and left.
I locked the door and latched the chain. Then, remembering that the keys to my home were in the clutches of the baka, I pushed a heavy chair in front of the door.
I stripped off my clothes and dropped them on the floor. I knew I should make a list of all the things I needed to do in the morning before returning to the Livingston Foundation (such as call a locksmith and cancel my credit cards), but I was just too exhausted to think about it right now.
I headed for the shower, and I stood under the running water, soaping, scrubbing, and shampooing until I finally felt clean. By then, I was starting to run out of warm water. I emerged from the shower, wrapped my hair in a towel, dried myself, and put on my bathrobe.
I was plodding toward the bedroom, planning to go straight to sleep, when I noticed the flashing light on my answering machine.
“Oh, right.” I hadn’t answered calls on my cell phone since it was stolen last night, so anyone trying to reach me would probably wind up calling here and leaving me a message. I pressed the playback button and listened to my calls.
There was one from my mother. This was inevitable. She always managed to call when I was having a rotten day. It was some sort of psychic gift. There was little chance, realistically, that she would fail to call on a day when I’d been arrested for prostitution, mugged by gargoyles, and spooked by a big snake. And since my mother wasn’t precisely a person who focused on the sunny side of things, I was glad I had missed her call.
There were a couple of calls from the D30 production office. One had been made before I’d called them from Jeff’s cell phone. The other call reminded me that I was scheduled to visit Nolan that afternoon.
“Whatever,” I muttered.
There was also a call from Thack, my agent, who’d heard about the confusion on the location shoot last night and wanted to make sure I was okay.
And then there was one from Lopez. My heart gave a little skip. Maybe seeing me last night had made him reconsider . . . Maybe calling him for help hadn’t been such a bad idea, after all.
He had made the call shortly before I arrived home. I smiled when I heard his familiar voice say, “It’s me.”
Then I stopped smiling.
“The Two-Five called me. They just found your purse. Nothing seems to be missing. I don’t know where you are, so I’ll pick it up tonight and hold onto it until I hear from you.” A pause. “I know about the Livingston Center, Esther. You and I need to talk.”
13
The following morning, feeling much more human now that I was clean and rested, I called my bank and reported that my credit card was missing. I doubted that the drooling gargoyles who had taken my purse had used its contents for a spending spree, but better safe than sorry. Apart from that, since Lopez’s message said that nothing seemed to be missing, I decided not to worry about the rest of the bag’s contents until I got it back and could check for myself. Meanwhile, at least I knew it was in safe hands.
I phoned Thack, my agent, to let him know I was all right and to nag him about getting me some auditions. Once I finished the D30 shoot, my professional life would consist entirely of waiting tables and teaching some summer acting workshops until the kids went back to school.
Perhaps this was a petty personal concern, what with zombies rising from the grave and Max predicting that some sort of apocalyptic event was imminent. But I had bills to pay and a struggling career to think about, and these problems weren’t going to go away just because a bokor was on the loose.
Thack answered my call with exclamations of surprise and concern. “Esther! A whole day without answering your cell! My God, I thought you must by lying dead or unconscious somewhere in Harlem!”
“No, I just misplaced the phone.” Given Thack’s tendency to react dramatically to things, I decided to leave it at that.
He asked, “Did you get lost wandering in the dark