Macy had discovered Blanchard Hotel had more secrets than she had previously given it credit for, and all of them happened to be positively strange and amusing.
In fact, immediately realized something ridiculous was going on behind the round, steel vault door after the villain had taken her hand in his after they'd existed the restaurant and started to enter a combination of numbers onto the elevator buttons.
If she hadn't known any better she would think that he wanted to play the cursed elevator game with her, where one got on the elevator and tapped on different floors to enter another world. Then again, he was Gerard Blanchard, and she doubted he would know about that. Besides, he had been tapping on different numbers pretty quickly instead of one each time. So, she had had no choice but to think he was utterly confused about what floor they were supposed to go on and even consoled him about it:
"It's okay," She made a face, "You always go to the top floor. I wasn't even aware that you knew the other floors existed."
He cocked an eyebrow down at her in dry amusement, tapping on the last digit that made the elevator go down, "Now, we are going to the opposite of the top floor."
"The basement?" She inquired after a second of processing what that riddle meant and earned herself a nod from him, "Casino isn't at the –"
"This one is," He murmured, and Macy wasn't sure if she believed him or not because of that tiny smirk playing on the corner of his lips.
Oh, he was lucky that she had no mood for the elevator game, they would be stuck in another alternate universe forever because of his stupidity.
She hadn't questioned why one needed to enter an odd combination of numbers just to go to the basement, however, it had all become clearer when the doors opened to an underground bar, where waitresses walked around in shimmering flapper dresses and carried a tray of colorful cocktails to the smooth black octagon tables that were occupied by men in suits and woman in glittering dresses that seemed to time traveled from roaring twenties.
Despite the bold geometric and clean shapes that took over the space and emerged from every corner the name of art deco, the dominant colors stayed black and gold with the choices of furniture and the spotlights falling across the sleek, elegant bar and tables. That color palette alone brought an edge to the glimmering atmosphere of the jazz age and gave it a hint of forties instead, where the detective would pretend to read a newspaper and look for the right moment to interrogate the Mrs. I-Swear-I-Did-Not-Kill-My-Wealthy-Old-Husband, whose left eye was covered with a sweep of her hair and who lit too many cigarettes through the intense conversation.
It was so bizarre and stupid, perfectly explaining why the villain offered this feathery dress to her. It went with the theme.
However, the absurd atmosphere only got stupider when the villain laced his fingers with hers and led her to a narrow corridor at the corner, where Mr. Oh-I-Am-So-Scary and Mr. I-Have-A-List-In-My-Hands-For-VIP-People were standing before a massive, round, steel vault at the end of it.
In Macy's case, those men didn't even dare to question their names, and one of them turned around to push the door open. All of those were clues enough for Macy to understand that the villain hadn't brought her to the ordinary casino, where the guests hung out. Nope. He took her to a vast, exclusive area for the actual high-rollers, where the sound of shuffling decks, whistles of slot machines, murmurs, the soft rolling of the dice, and the clicks of the roulette wheel mashed together and defied the odds by making the most irregular rhythm.
Macy scanned the area under the candle-lit chandelier carefully with a lopsided smirk slowly blooming on her lips as she took in the antique background. The slot machines shone like gold and were mechanical instead of the regular electronic ones. There were a few elegant-clad time-travelers from the fifties around the antique roulette wheels, and from their laughing state, she could guess their predictions were correct in contrast to the scowling man at one of the large, poker tables that were separated by smoked glass partitions as he leaned forward and made a huge mistake by driving more chips onto the center.
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Call It Business ( Book 3 of 'Call It' Series )
Random| Book Three of 'Call it' Series | The full-time witch, part-time conspiracy theorist, Macy Wallace called it luck when she found herself working as the assistant of her destined enemy, villain, the notorious playboy Gerard Blanchard. She called it...
