Books and Covers Thereof (1.21)

Kitty looks at the invitation.

Kitty looks at the bartender.

Kitty looks at the nearby invitation.

Kitty looks at the sultry bartender.

Kitty looks at the important invitation.

Kitty looks at the vamping bartender.

Kitty looks at the very-easily grabbed invitation

Kitty looks at the seductive bartender.

Kitty looks at the seductive invitation.

Kitty looks at the very-easily grabbed bartender.

Kitty soon finds herself fleeing out of the bar entirely.  In one hand is the invitation.  In the other is Annie’s hand, which Kitty figures she must have blindly grabbed at some point shortly after running out of the bartender’s office screaming.

They pass Mindy and Kiplin on the way.

“GETINTOTHECARNOW!” shouts Kitty, running around it, opening the back door, and jumping in.  Annie follows after sliding in as far as she can go.

Mindy and Kiplin slide in after.  Unfortunately they climb into the backseat, necessitating Annie to move to sitting on top of Kitty’s lap, causing Kitty to lose most of the feeling in her legs.

“What’s happening?” asks Mindy, as she and Kiplin calmly buckle up.

Kitty glances out the window, watching impatiently as Pamela hobbles along with the french woman and the man behind her, carrying an assortment of costumes in their arms.  They pile the costumes into the trunk before entering the car.  Kitty is not entirely surprised to see the woman sit on the man’s lap in the passenger seat.

“I panicked!”

“Eh?”

“I tried to seduce the bartender for the invitation but I panicked and grabbed it and I ran and she’s a very scary attractive lady who does knife tricks and she’ll probably throw a knife right into my eye and then I’ll be blind and dead!”

Pamela sighs, starting the car.  “I’m sure she won’t.  She seemed more lonely than violent.”  Pamela begins to calmly drive the car, taking a turn down a side street.  “I’m sure you can apologize to her and explain everything later.”

“Um.”

“Anyway, I’m making a quick detour.  We’ll drop...What’s your name again, fella?”

“Antonio,” says the man.

“...Really?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t seem like an Antonio.”

“Well, I am.”

“Well, Tony-”

“Antonio.”

“Tony.  Since you’re on the lam, we’ll drop you off at my detective company.  It’s probably the safest place for you to hide until we return.”

Tony glances back at Kiplin.  She grins at him with cracke lips.  “Don’t worry, I am incredibly incompetent.”

“...Sure.”

The car pulls up to a little two story building in a back alley.  The only indication that it’s anything special is a sign outside reading “AZALEA DETECTIVE AGENCY”.

Someone has added, in a note attached to the sign between AZALEA and DETECTIVE, “And Daughter”.

At the end of daughter, in small paper note attached to that, someone has added an S to the end of Daughter.

“Daughters?  When did that happen?”

“We’ll talk about it some other time, Kitty,” says Pamela.  “Everyone get in and out quickly, we can’t stay.  Use the bathroom if you need it.  Those Hotel bathrooms can be...Awkward.”

* * *

Outside the front door of the well known and venerated Dragon’s Den Hotel (known for technically being more of an extremely upscale condominium), the bouncers watch as a veritable clown car of women pulls up in front of them.

A group poured out of the vehicle; a woman in one of those...what were they?  Asian dresses, the bouncer thinks.  Yeah, that’s it.  Korean or something.  With a tiger mask.  Another woman appears to be dressed as a schoolgirl being devoured by a massive shark head, odd.  There’s another woman dressed in some kind of...weird, slightly offensive two piece leather ‘tribal’ outfit with a skull mask.  Another woman appears to have thrown the upper half of a orange dragon’s head over hers and put on some sort of weird scale suit,, and yet another individual of unidentifiable gender appears to have simply throw a European knight’s helmet over police body armor and called it a day.

Another woman in a fedora and wearing a trenchcoat and white face covering cloth mask pokes her head out of the car.  “You dames head on in, I’ll catch up after I find a good parking space!”  The vehicle drives off.

The woman in the tiger mask walks up to the bouncers, holding up an invitation.  The bouncers take it, looking it over, opening it up, inspect it for authenticity.

“Go on in, Miss Faust,” says the bouncer, handing it back.  “You and your entourage have a good time.”

The tiger mask woman smiles and nods, walk inside, followed by the rest.  The dragon headed woman gives a toothy grin.

“Does Meb usually bring quite so many guests?”

“She doesn’t usually show up at all.”

“Oh.  It’s nice to see her socializing.”

The bouncers stood in silence for about fifteen seconds.

“...Wasn’t that woman in the dragon mask Lady-”

“Yes.”

“Why did you let her in?”

“Because it’s funny.”

The inside of the Hotel’s club was...Big, to say the least.  Most prominently, a crowd of people dances slowly in front of a stage while a lounge singer who looks as if she is temporarily visiting from the 1950’s croons out a tune Kitty doesn’t recognize.  A large, multistaffed, well-stocked bar is visible from a large side room that also clearly features a number of tables, along with food, darts, and pool.

Nearby, a set of stairs leading upwards features a small sign in front of it.  VIP AND ELEVATORS, it reads.

“Dante’s probably in the VIP room,” says Mindy.

“So we should probably go up there, then?”

“Worth a shot.”

The girls ascend the dark stairway, in a fairly orderly fashion.  At the top, they find a young man waiting for them there.  He’s not very tall, but he looks rather lean and mean, with an apparent fondness for cracking his knuckles.  His skin is a bit tanned, and a small bandage covers his cheek.

“Hey, where do you wise guys think you’re going?” he asks, with no trace of amusement.

Kitty leans over to Annie.

“We should have brought Pamela.  They could have wise guy’d at each other.”

Anyway, this mook (tee hee!) is blocking the group’s  way into the VIP room and private elevators.  

How will they get past him?