Free City of Dark Magic by Magnus Flyte Page B

time!” she yelled.
    And it was as if the cacophony rattled something loose in Sarah’s own brain, pushed through the fog and disorientation. Why had she been so slow?
    There
was
something off here.
    Miles Wolfmann had said that Sherbatsky had been making enemies in the group. What if someone had forced him to jump out of the window? Threatened him in some way? It was hard to imagine the professor as a drug addict. Maybe someone had drugged him? It might not have been a suicide.
    It could have been murder.
    It wouldn’t be the first time someone got pushed out a window in Prague. It was definitely time to meet the other people staying in the palace.

TEN
    W hile getting dressed for dinner, Sarah became aware of two very inconvenient physical facts. The first was that the slight frisson of sexual interest aroused by the Sexy Stabber at the castle gates had returned full force. She was, she had to admit, somewhat uncomfortably . . . aroused. The second was that traveling for eleven hours in a pressurized cabin had completely blocked up her sinuses. She had no sense of smell.
    This was a bad combination. Sarah relied on her nose to steer her libido into appropriate waters. Without it, she couldn’t really answer for the results. This was especially irritating since she was about to meet a room full of colleagues, one of whom just might be responsible for the death of her professor. She needed to be at her sharpest.
    Well, Sarah thought philosophically, it might not be so bad. After all, during her senior year of high school while working her way through the practice SAT tests in her workbook, she had scored the highest while masturbating. Though tempted to ask for a private room during the actual exam, she had restrained herself and still gotten 800s. Presumably she could make it through one dinner.
    On her way back upstairs, Sarah glanced at herself in the Rococo mirror in the hallway outside the dining room. Her lips were slightly swollen and there was sweat on her upper lip. Her eyes had a glazed look. Damn it. A man had died! A man she knew and respected. Rumors were being circulated that he was a drug addict. Miles said he had made enemies in the group. She needed to find out who and why.
    And she was horny as hell.
    She pushed open the kitchen door. The long table was now covered with a painter’s white canvas drop cloth and crazily baroque candlesticks dripped white church-candle wax down its length. The benches were almost all occupied with people digging into Suzi’s roast chickens. It was like something out of a knightly engraving, tankards and revelers holding chunks of meat in their hands, while a large dog made hopeful rounds. Tiny Nicolas raised a goblet and winked at her. Only a monkey was missing. Which made her think of spanking.
Stop it,
she told herself.
Right now
.
    “Sarah,” called Suzi, patting space on the bench next to her. Unknown faces looked up and called out greetings and she made her way through the room, shaking hands and smiling. She nodded at Daphne, who sat protectively close to Miles, who was arguing in Czech on his cell phone, and wellthlike somaved at Eleanor, who was chatting with Bernie. Sarah slid into the space between Suzi and a slim, red-haired guy in a paint-stained T- shirt.
    “Sarah Weston, meet Douglas Sexton,” said Suzi. Douglas smiled and waved fingers glistening with chicken juices.
    “Sorry, love, we can’t seem to find the silverware,” apologized Douglas in a cockney accent. “Or the napkins.” The sight of Douglas’s wet fingers, his British accent, and his pillowy lips had a distinct worsening effect on Sarah’s situation. Cut off from her nose, she was forced into intense awareness of other physical stimuli.
    She looked around the table. In the dim candlelight, she took in the unfamiliar faces, and one she recognized eating alone at the end of the table.
    “Max,” whispered Suzi. “Doesn’t talk, just eats and runs.”
    Something underneath the table