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spread before his eyes. In a matter of seconds, the feather had turned from purest white to a dark, bloodred.
    Grant studied the feather a moment longer before slipping it into the pocket of his jacket. He had lost the strange group by now, and he was woefully aware that he had left Shizuka alone in the hotel ballroom with the hanging bodies and the eerily playing band.
    â€œDammit,” he cursed, turning back the way he had come. As he retraced his steps, Grant plucked up both of the metal discs that had been launched at him by the men. They were four inches across with sharp, jagged edges, a little like buzz saws. Studying them as he retraced his steps, Grant couldn’t help but wonder what on Earth he and Shizuka had managed to walk into.
    * * *
    W HILE G RANT WAS chasing after the mysterious figures, back at the hotel, Shizuka rapidly enlisted several members of staff to assist in untying or cutting down the dancers who were hanging from the ceiling.
    â€œAlert the authorities,” Shizuka told a porter as he dragged a chair over from the wall to help her untie the first victim.
    The porter looked mystified, and Shizuka repeated her request. “Authorities. Police.”
    â€œPolicía,” the porter repeated, nodding in understanding. He hurried off, and a few seconds later Shizuka could hear him having a hurried discussion with the hotel receptionist before he returned with more help.
    It took four of them almost two minutes to get everyonedown from the ceiling, and Shizuka spent the whole of that time asking aloud for anyone to speak up if they could hear her while the receptionist translated the question in Spanish. Three of the hanging figures gurgled strained responses through the pressure of the nooses, and Shizuka ensured that they were the first she assisted down from their grisly positions.
    The five-piece band remained dazed by what they saw here, Shizuka noticed, as if they had only just awoken—except in this case, the nightmare was all too real.
    Despite her lack of Spanish skills, Shizuka managed to take charge and organize everyone, and it was not long before all of the previously hanging figures had been brought back down to the floor. A doctor who was staying at the hotel was found and called upon to check over the grisly scene. He was a portly man in his late forties who had been enjoying an after-dinner drink in the hotel bar, and he was efficient and calm as he looked over the ballroom’s occupants. Over two-thirds of the figures were already dead; just seven had survived, and of those only two could speak.
    The receptionist, a bottle blonde with dark roots showing, pretty and scarcely out of her teens by Shizuka’s reckoning, spoke flawless English with only a trace of an accent, so while the doctor worked, Shizuka cornered her and asked her what had happened.
    â€œI didn’t know anything was wrong until Paolo called me,” she admitted, referring to the young porter who had been the first to answer Shizuka’s call.
    â€œDidn’t you hear anything?” Shizuka probed.
    â€œNo. Nothing,” the girl replied, wide-eyed in astonishment. “I can’t believe…” She stopped and crossed herself, unable to finish her sentence.
    Shizuka looked back at the ballroom, eyeing the ceiling where the nooses had been attached to the open beams that ran crossways through the room. It was a curious affair, tosay the least. As she pondered, Shizuka’s eyes settled on the band, who were still waiting at one side of the room. They were talking among themselves and seemed distraught, faces ashen with the shock of what had occurred here. And yet, Shizuka recalled, they had been playing normally when she and Grant had happened upon the horrific scene, as if they were a part of it somehow.
    Shizuka placed a hand on the receptionist’s side and guided her across the room. “Come, I may need you to help me speak with them,” she