tell Nick, “Hef’s a man of his word. He was calling Julie Cottontail his ‘clever bunny.’”
“Dumb bunny is more like it,” Gwen stated, a little too loudly, cutting viciously into her steak. When all the men looked at her, she said, “Don’t you gentlemen know? All the girls do.”
“Know what?” asked the editor.
“Julie just asked Dr. Zimmerman for the pill. Just like that. Like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.”
“The pill?” Nick echoed. “You mean birth control pills? Those aren’t fully legal yet, are they?”
“No,” Constance said, rolling her eyes, “not unless you have severe menstrual cramps.”
“Surprising the number of women who now have severe menstrual cramps,” Gwen remarked. “The pill might get legalized later this year, if we’re lucky.”
“Yes, but then Julie just bounces in going, ‘Where can I get the pill? I lost my prescription, because my old doctor is being a baby now, so I need a new one.’”
“Doc Zimmerman was not being a baby for refusing her,” Gwen stressed. “He’s got a wife and a baby boy to look after. He could have lost his license.”
Constance nodded in violent agreement. “He has to play along with Congress’s charade. They’re the real babies here.”
“Yeah, but Julie’s no prize either. Crazy bunny is more like it,” Gwen added. “Julie claims she’s been on birth control for years when Enovid has only been available for two.”
“Clinical trials for a couple years before that, if you were lucky enough to get picked,” Constance chimed in, “not that they’d pick a teenager, let alone a joker.” She shrugged and took a dainty bite of steak. “Julie got the pill anyway, but only because Hef called in a favor and had us give her a talk first.” Constance shrugged. “Might as well call her lucky bunny.”
“Oh?” Nick asked.
“Yeah,” Gwen agreed in hushed tones with a glance up to the head of the table, “she could have ended up in jail. Around Christmas, Hef got a call from the Palmer House. These crazy swingers had set up in his favorite suite and were charging everything to his tab. Guy claimed he was a friend of Hef’s from Hollywood and had the passwords from Hef’s little black book. Hef didn’t know a thing about it and hasn’t even been to Hollywood yet. But he went down to have a chat, and the next thing we know, he’s paid the Palmer House, brought them back to the mansion, and they’ve been here ever since.”
Constance stabbed a potato with her fork. “I think he just admires their chutzpah.”
Nick had to admit that he did, too, though he was fairly certain there was more to Will Monroe and Julie Cotton’s story than just chutzpah.
Nick awoke to a presence at the foot of his bed. Actually two.
He was used to tuning out the electrical energy in other human beings, but only when awake. Asleep, it made him jumpy, and soon after drawing his ace, he’d even shocked people who tried to wake him up, but never so badly he hadn’t been able to blame it on static electricity.
A locked door solved most of that risk, and getting in the habit of sleeping in the nude explained the need for a locked door. Fortunately, mentioning this peculiarity at the Playboy Mansion was greeted with cries of “Who doesn’t?”
He opened his eyes the barest crack, seeing only darkness except for a dim bit of illumination from the narrow window. No one was standing at the foot of his bed, but his bed was placed against the wall, and the presences he sensed were just on the other side of that wall. And each bore double Ds—not breasts, but batteries.
Somewhere there had to be an ace or deuce who could sense breasts, but Nick was not him. But batteries were easy, their size and charge, and whether or not the circuit was connected. These were paired D-cells in a configuration Nick immediately recognized as indicative of flashlights switched off. And the height they were held at suggested the bearers were female, breast size unknown, but given what he’d seen at the Playboy Mansion thus far, probably at least a B-cup, likely a C or above.
And by the glimmer of moonlight coming in the window, once Nick’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could see a tiny strip of paneling was missing, and behind the missing strip he could see the glitter of a pair of eyes belonging to the owner of one of the pairs of batteries and the presumed flashlight.
Nick tamped down the instinct to fluoresce with an aura of light and energy. It had happened a few times and was the worst defense for an ace trying to keep his card up the sleeve, and the only thing that had saved him before was that no one had seen his face. But Hef and half of the Playboy staff knew who was sleeping in the former maid’s bedroom, and then they’d not just get the show they’d been hoping for, the former swim champion sleeping alone in the buff, but also get to see an ace blowing his cover.
Using a parlor trick to draw some of the energy out of the batteries and light up the flashlights was also not a good idea, nor was ionizing enough energy to light up the light bulbs in the room without touching the light switches. But touching the lights as a nat would …
Nick reached out and pulled the chain of the bedside lamp.
The light crackled to life as the slot in the paneling slammed shut. Nick felt the pairs of double D batteries retreat along with the associated human energy fields.
Being able to control electricity did not mean being able to control light, and Nick was blinded by the sudden glare. But once his eyes adjusted, he got up and went and looked at the paneling. The panels were smooth and polished, but he could just make out the crack in one, set in to look like a bit of piecework used to remove a knothole. Nick’s ace, however, could sense the metal behind, the interference consistent with an iron bolt and a hinge.
Two more hinges were detectable as well as a latch. Feeling around on a nearby section of panel revealed a knothole not large enough to warrant removal, but the center functioned as a button. The panel at the foot of his bed swung out.
Nick had already been dropped down one secret chute—thankfully into a swimming pool and not a vat of acid—and now he’d been spied on through a peephole from a secret passage.
The chance that the architect of Chicago’s Murder Castle had designed only one such building was not a chance that Nick was willing to bet his life on. So while it would usually be the height of foolishness for a former swimmer to wander nude into a dark cobwebbed passage, most former swimmers weren’t aces who could conjure ball lightning charges that could hang in the air with the same illumination as Chinese lanterns. Plus his will-o’-wisps moved as he willed. And Nick could sense other people, especially if they carried flashlights.
Whoever had spied upon him was definitely shorter since they hadn’t broken the cobwebs at his head height. He used his hands for that, not wanting to set the mansion on fire, and explored down the passage, will-o’-wisps bobbing before and after.
A few yards down, he found the bolt-and-hinge arrangement of another Judas peephole. Nick recalled his will-o’-wisps, letting the energy ground back into his reservoir, dousing their light, then popped the peephole and gazed out into the bedroom of two Playmates. A night-light provided soft
