The Tower of Nero

“I—” His voice cracked. “I didn’t want…” His hands trembling, he pulled off Meg’s rings and offered them to me. “Please…”

He looked past me. Clearly, he just wanted to leave, to get out of this tower.

I’ll admit I felt a surge of anger. This child had cut off Luguselwa’s hands with Meg’s own blades. But he was so small and so terrified. He looked like he expected me to turn into the Beast, as Nero would have done, and punish him for what Nero had made him do.

My anger dissolved. I let him drop Meg’s rings into my palm. “Go.”

Austin cleared his throat. “Yeah, but first…how about that key card?” He pointed to a laminated square hanging from a lanyard around Cassius’s neck. It looked so much like a school ID that any kid might wear, I hadn’t even registered it.

Cassius fumbled to remove it. He handed it to Austin. Then he ran.

Austin tried to read my expression. “I take it you’ve met that kid before?”

“Long, bad story,” I said. “Will it be safe for us to use his elevator pass?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Austin said. “Let’s find out.”

THE WONDERS NEVER CEASED.

The key card worked. The elevator did not incinerate us or drop us to our deaths. Unlike the previous elevator I’d taken, however, this one did have background music. We rose smoothly and slowly, as if Nero wanted to give us plenty of time to enjoy it.

I’ve always thought you can judge the quality of a villain by his elevator music. Easy listening? Pedestrian villainy with no imagination. Smooth jazz? Devious villainy with an inferiority complex. Pop hits? Aging villainy trying desperately to be hip.

Nero had chosen soft classical, as in the lobby. Oh, well played. This was self-assured villainy. Villainy that said I already own everything and have all the power. Relax. You’re going to die in a minute, so you might as well enjoy this soothing string quartet.

Next to me, Austin fingered the keys of his saxophone. I could tell he, too, was worried about the sound track.

“Wish it was Miles Davis,” he said.

“That would be nice.”

“Hey, if we don’t get out of this—”

“None of that talk,” I chided.

“Yeah, but I wanted to tell you, I’m glad we had some time together. Like…time time.”

His words warmed me even more than Paul Blofis’s lasagna.

I knew what he meant. While I’d been Lester Papadopoulos, I hadn’t spent much time with Austin, or any of the people I’d stayed with, really, but it had been more than we’d ever spent together when I was a god. Austin and I had gotten to know each other—not just as god and mortal, or father and son, but as two people working side by side, helping each other get through our often messed-up lives. That had been a precious gift.

I was tempted to promise we’d do this more often if we survived, but I’d learned that promises are precious. If you’re not absolutely sure you can keep them, you should never make them, much like chocolate chip cookies.

Instead, I smiled and squeezed his shoulder, not trusting myself to speak.

Also, I couldn’t help thinking about Meg. If so little time with Austin had been this meaningful, how could I possibly quantify what my adventures with Meg had meant to me? I’d shared almost my entire journey with that silly, brave, infuriating, wonderful girl. I had to find her.

The elevator doors slid open. We stepped into a hallway with a floor mosaic depicting a triumphal procession through a burning New York cityscape. Clearly, Nero had been planning for months, perhaps years, to unleash his inferno no matter what I did. I found this so appalling and so in-character for him, I couldn’t even get angry.

We stopped just before the end of the hall, where it split into a T. From the corridor to the right came the sounds of many voices in conversation, glasses clinking, even some laughter. From the corridor on the left, I heard nothing.

Austin motioned for me to wait. He carefully removed a long brass rod from the body of his sax. He had all sorts of nonstandard attachments on his instrument, including a bag of exploding reeds, tone-hole cleaners that doubled as zip-ties, and a stiletto knife for stabbing monsters and unappreciative music critics. The rod he chose now was fitted with a small curved mirror on one end. He edged this into the hallway like a periscope, studied the reflections, then pulled it back.

“Party room on the right,” he whispered in my ear. “Full of guards, bunch of folks that look like guests. Library on the left, looks empty. If you need to get to the southeast corner to find Meg, you’ll have to go straight through that crowd.”

I clenched my fists, ready to do whatever was necessary.

From the party room came the voice of a young woman making an announcement. I thought I recognized the polite and terrified tone of the dryad Areca.

“Thank you all for your patience!” she told the crowd. “The emperor is just finishing up a few matters in the throne room. And the, ah, minor disruptions on the lower floors will be taken care of very soon. In the meantime, please enjoy cake and beverages while we wait for”—her voice cracked—“the burning to start.”

The guests gave her a polite smattering of applause.

I readied my bow. I wanted to charge into that crowd, free Areca, shoot everybody else, and stomp on their cake. Instead, Austin grabbed my arm and pulled me back a few steps toward the elevator.

“There’s too many of them,” he said. “Let me cause a distraction. I’ll draw as many as I can into the library and lead them on a chase. Hopefully that’ll clear a path for you to get to Meg.”

I shook my head. “It’s too dangerous. I can’t let you—”

“Hey.” Austin smirked. For a moment, I glimpsed my own old godly self-confidence in him—that look that said, I’m a musician. Trust me. “Dangerous is part of the job description. Let me do this. You hang back until I draw them out. Then go find our girl. I’ll see you on the other side.”

Before I could protest, Austin ran to the junction of the corridor and yelled, “Hey, idiots! You’re all gonna die!” Then he put his mouthpiece to his lips and blasted out “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

Even without the insults, that particular song, when played by a child of Apollo, will cause a stampede 100 percent of the time. I pressed myself against the wall by the elevator as Austin dashed toward the library, pursued by fifty or sixty angry screaming party guests and Germani. I could only hope Austin found a second exit from the library, or else this would be a very short chase.

I forced myself to move. Find our girl, Austin had said.

Yes. That was the plan.

I sprinted to the right and into the party room.

Austin had cleared out the place completely. Even Areca seemed to have followed the rampaging “Pop Goes the Weasel” mob.

Left behind were dozens of high cocktail tables covered in linen, sprinkled with glitter and rose petals, and topped with balsa-wood centerpiece sculptures of Manhattan going up in painted flames. Even for Nero, I found this over-the-top. The sideboard was loaded with every conceivable party appetizer, plus a multilayered red-and-yellow flame-motif cake. A banner across the back wall read HAPPY INFERNO!