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TWENTY-THREE

INSIDE THE REAR DOORS OF THE HOTEL LAY WHAT ht have been a secondary lobby illuap in the plywood barrier

My shadow before s to its neck Its head becah it were cast by a decapitated ht and swept the walls The fire itself had not raged here, but s

At first the presence of furniture--sofas, armchairs--surprised ed Then I realized that their grungy condition resulted not simply from s been saturated by fire hoses, which had left their stuffing sodden and their fraedy, the air smelled of char, of scorchedthat ent but also less pleasing, which perhaps were best left unanalyzed

Footprints patterned the carpet of soot, ashes, dust, and sand Danny’s unique tracks were not a them

On closer inspection, I saw that none of the tread patterns of the shoes appeared crisp They had been ss of ashes and dust

These prints had been o My quarry had not entered by this route

A set or perhaps two sets of paw prints looked fresh Maybe the Panao--close to nature and unfamiliar with the roulette wheel--could have read these i of the tracker inapplicable to the probleination to summon a creature to fit those tracks My er, though that species had been extinct over ten thousand years

In the unlikely event that a single immortal saber-tooth had survived millennia beyond all others of his species, I supposed I could escape intact from a confrontation After all, I had thus far survived Terrible Chester

To the left of this lobby had been a coffee shop with a view of the hotel pool A partial collapse of the ceiling, just beyond the entrance to the restaurant, presented extreht, a wide hallway led into darkness that a flashlight could not entirely relieve, into silence Bronze letters fixed to the wall above the entrance to that passage promised rest rooms, CONFERENCE ROOMS, LADY LUCK BALLROOM

Luckless people had died in the ballroom A massive chandelier, suspended not fros had required, but fro and skewering those under it, when the initial shock of the quake had cracked soh they were balsa wood

I crossed the littered lobby, weaving through the sagging sofas and the overturned armchairs, and departed by a third route, another wide hall that evidently led toward the front of the hotel The tracks of the saber-tooth also proceeded in that direction

Belatedly, I thought of the satellite phone I took it froer, and set it to vibrate instead If the seeker of ain, and if I happened to be close to her position in the hotel, I didn’t want the phone to revealthe years that it had been a thriving enterprise When it is withinno demands on me, I seek serenity, not excitement The turn of the cards and the roll of the dice offer ift imposes upon me

My unfaht by the earthquake and the fire, presented er always clearly defined due to the collapse of partitions, a es and spaces, here barren and bleak, here chaotic and threatening, revealed only in wedges defined by the flashlight beam

By a route that I could not have retraced, I entered the burned-out casino

Casinos have no s, no clocks The e of time, to lay down just one er than a football field, the rooht to find the farther end

One corner of the casino had suffered partial collapse Otherwise, the immense chamber remained structurally intact

Hundreds of broken slotrows, as they had before the quake, half-melted but at attention, like ranks of war machines, robot soldiers halted in their march when a blast of radiation had fried their circuits

Most of the games and pit-boss stations had been reduced to charred debris A couple of scorched craps tables remained, filled with blackened chunks of plaster orna

Aed blackjack gaa when the fire broke out, had wished not to be distracted fro respect froin the dark until ht found him His arms rested on the padded ri for a dealer to shuffle the deck

This did not appear to be the kind of man ould collaborate inFiftyish, pale, with a full ht have been a librarian or a small-town pharmacist

As I approached and he looked up, I could not be certain of his status I knew that he was a spirit only when I saw hiister surprise as he realized that I could see him

On the day of the disaster, perhaps he had been brained by falling debris Or burned alive

He did not reveal to me the true condition of his corpse at the tirateful

Peripheral movement in the shadows snareddead

TWENTY-FOUR

STEPPING INTO THE LIGHT BEFORE ME, A PRETTY YOUNG blonde in a blue-and-yellow cocktail dress revealed ie She sht ca face, eyes vacant of hope She reached out to me, then frowned at her hand, withdrew it, lowered her head, as if she thought, for whatever reason, that I would find her repellent

Fro uished eyes belied his aht A cocktail waitress in her Indian-princess uniforun on his hip