Bride of Death (Marla Mason) (3 page)

He squinted. “Do Better. It seems good enough advice.”

“At least it doesn’t say ‘fail better.’ That would be too pretentious for words. How long before we get to Vegas?”

“Three or four hours. The roads in this part of the valley are a bit primitive. There are some charms on the RV to help it negotiate the terrain, but even so, the start will be slow.”

“Let’s get rolling, then. Life in the country doesn’t suit me.”

“This isn’t the sort of place I’d choose to settle, or even visit, under other circumstances,” Pelham agreed. He moved to the driver’s seat and began flipping switches and turning knobs. I dropped into the passenger seat – it felt like the captain’s chair on a starship – and twiddled with the vents until a blessedly cold blast of air hit me full in the face. I sighed and slumped. “That’s better.”

Pelham deftly maneuvered the big camper around the tents the cultists had pitched, and a few of the black-robed figures waved at me solemnly as we pulled away. I pretended not to notice them, since that seemed the bitchy, goddess-like thing to do. Watching Pelly happily drive away from all that bad weirdness made my heart a little lighter. “I feel like we should talk, since I haven’t seen you in a month,” I said. “Except for me it doesn’t
feel
like a month, it feels like a rough night’s sleep, so you’ll have to carry most of the conversation. What’s new?”

On the long drive out of the national park and onto the highway, he filled me in on recent events. Pelham had mostly been dealing with pushy cultists. Rondeau had sold his property in Hawaii and invested in a hotel in Las Vegas, which was his new headquarters for debauchery. That made sense to me – Hawaii was beautiful, but Maui had been a little too laid-back and Zen for Rondeau. The flashing lights and ringing bells and vulgar glamours of Vegas were a better fit for his personality.

Pelham had heard from a couple of friendly acquaintances back home in my old city, Hamil and the Bay Witch, though for understandable reasons he’d been vague about what I was doing with my time – no reason to spread around word in the sorcerous community that I’d ascended (or descended, more accurately) to a position of part-time power. Sorcerers were pragmatic opportunists as a rule, and even the ones I considered allies would be tempted to find ways for my new status to help them.

Me, I never liked calling in favors that way, not if I could help it. I know a few beings of unimaginable power, sure. A psychic named Genevieve who can reshape reality at a whim, for one. My old apprentice Bradley, who’d become something as far beyond a mere god as gods are beyond humans, tasked with preserving the integrity of every possible universe. (I didn’t envy him that gig, but talk about the student surpassing the master.) Hell, as far as it goes, I sometimes make out with the god of Death. I don’t like leaning on people who are stronger than me, though. I didn’t get where I am by letting other people save me. The best way to find out what you’re really capable of is to get stuck in an impossible situation and fight or think your way out of it. (Then again, last time I got into an impossible situation, I ended up dead. Don’t listen to me.)

We reached the outskirts of Las Vegas around dusk. I’d been there once before, in my mercenary days, but I was on a mission then, and hadn’t exactly taken in the sights. The place had a dusty, worn-down vibe on the outskirts (I kind of liked that part, honestly), but became increasingly plasticized and flashy as we got closer to the Strip, every establishment trying to outdo the others and grab the attention of the walking cash machines – I mean, tourists.

Pelham pulled into some kind of gated VIP parking garage at a place just off the Strip called the Golden Light Hotel and Casino. Not one of the monster luxury resort hotels, like a city in miniature, but no little shithole motel, either.

“Rondeau’s place?” I said.

“Half his,” Pelham said. “But the other owner is retired and lives on a ranch in Montana, so it’s mostly Rondeau’s to run.”

“I hope he has good pit bosses. Rondeau’s not exactly management material.”

“He did run a bar and nightclub for years,” Pelham said.

“Sure. But a casino’s not the same as a bar.”

Pelham chuckled. “That’s true. But it turns, out having a psychic running a casino is very cost-effective.
No one
gets away with cheating at the Golden Light.” We climbed out of the RV and headed into the building through a side entrance that Pelham unlocked with a key card. I have always had an abiding interest in shortcuts and back ways and secret passages, so I enjoyed passing through the tunnels used by the employees and staff, those gray corridors with cinderblock walls and ugly metal doors. We wound our way through the non-public portions of the Golden Light, passing showgirls with feathers on their heads and blackjack dealers in red vests and hyperkinetic maids and serious-looking gorilla-shaped men in dark suits. Pelham knew and greeted every single person by name, and didn’t even once try to introduce me to anybody, bless him.

Eventually we emerged from a door partly concealed behind an immense potted plant and stepped out into the lobby. “Why couldn’t we just walk in the front door if this is where we were going?” I said.

“I thought you’d enjoy going the long way,” he said. “Seeing potential escape routes.” I couldn’t argue with that. I wanted to resent the wasted time, but I couldn’t, quite. In one sense, time was short: at the end of the month I’d be going back to the underworld for another thirty days of service. But since I didn’t actually have any plans for what to
do
with my month on Earth beyond eating and taking showers, there was no harm in taking the scenic route.

The lobby was very golden, though of course none of it was actually gold. The floor was white marble, flecked with gold chips. The chandeliers gleamed a brassy yellow. The reception desk was black and gold. The ashtrays – because in Vegas, you can still smoke most places – were golden pillars so beautiful they could have passed as artifacts in a gaudy emperor’s tomb. Pelham led me to the bank of elevators – even the doors were reflective and yellowish – and once inside, he swiped a keycard and hit the “P” button.

I have to say, after crawling up out of the dirt, it was nice to smoothly ascend through a beautiful gleaming tower. Even if the whole place did stink of cigarette smoke and gambler sweat.

The elevator doors opened at the top of the building. The hallway here had only three doors, the pricy penthouse apartments, and Pelham led me to the farthest one on the right. Before he could swipe a card, the door swung inward, and Rondeau was there, arms outstretched. He looked the same as always – tall, lean, grinning like he knows a secret I don’t, which is
so
not the case – except that instead of some hideous vintage thrift-shop leisure suit or an Aloha shirt he was wearing a yellow silk robe with the name of the casino embroidered over the chest.

I consented to the inevitability of a hug – I’m not much of a hugger – and then wriggled free and walked past him into the suite. The place had the kind of impersonal opulence you find in fancy hotel rooms, all overstuffed white furniture and golden lamps and deep pile carpet and floor-to-ceiling windows, with a view of the Strip and – farther out – the desert. There was a cute half-naked guy sprawled on the couch, deeply asleep and faintly snoring, and a table heaped with room service trays that held everything from bunches of grapes to shrimp. Good. I was still hungry.

Rondeau pulled up a chair by the table and dropped into it, while Pelham
tsked
and found a blanket to throw over the unconscious man. “Marla! So how was life in hell?”

I didn’t answer him, at least partly because my mouth was full.

“She doesn’t remember anything.” Pelham joined us, plucking a single grape and squeezing it mistrustfully between his fingers before popping it in his mouth.

“Ah, right, like the letter from beyond said.” Rondeau shook his head. “Here I was, hoping for a few secrets of the afterlife. Not that I ever expect to actually
go
there, but I’m curious.”

I glared, then swallowed. “Should we be talking about this stuff with your boy toy over there?”

“Oh, he only speaks Danish. Even if he was awake he wouldn’t know what we were saying.”

“You had sex with someone and you don’t even speak his language?”

Rondeau shrugged. “The other guy speaks Danish
and
English, so there was a translator, it’s all aboveboard.”

“What other guy?”

Rondeau looked around vaguely. “Huh. He was here a minute ago. I think he went to buy some cocaine.”

I rolled my eyes. “Cocaine? Seriously? I thought your psychic powers made you too delicate for drugs. Last I heard you couldn’t even drink espresso without getting the shakes.”

“Shakes, nightmares, the whole deal.” He grimaced. “Not being able to do stimulants is a pretty brutal downside to having insight into the deeper workings of the universe. Nah, the cocaine’s not for me, but the boys like to have their fun, and it sure does give them energy. I just told them I’m allergic to the stuff. At least I can still drink champagne. Speaking of, maybe we should crack open a bottle to celebrate your arrival before you head off on your mission, ha,
head off
, did you see what I did there –”

“Rondeau,” Pelham said. “She doesn’t remember
anything
. She doesn’t remember the head.”

Rondeau stared at him, then stared at me, then stared back at Pelham again. “Oh. Right. I didn’t even think about that. I had all these puns ready for nothing.”

I cut off a hunk of brie and smeared it on a hunk of bread. “All right. What’s all this about a head?”

Rondeau started to rise. “Oh, I’ll show you –”

“Rondeau!” Pelham said. “If you just show her, she might – well – it might not end well. It probably won’t even begin well. We have to explain first.”

“We have to explain to Marla something
she
told us to do?” Rondeau shook his head. “This amnesia crap is a pain in my ass.”

“Yours and mine both, brother,” I said.

Rondeau sat back down. “You sent me a vision. The ghostly skull of a dog.”

“Pelham mentioned that.”

He grunted. “But he didn’t tell you what the skull said, huh? Decided to leave that to me.”

Pelham sighed. “I thought perhaps you could simply show her the video, Rondeau. That way we could avoid any... miscommunications.”

He snapped his fingers. “Yeah, that’s right. Then she can just get mad at the TV!”

“You filmed it? I sent you a ghostly apparition from the underworld and you took a video? Is this shit up on YouTube?”

“Well, nobody uses film anymore, but yeah, I recorded the whole thing. Pelham suggested it, so we’d have a record, and wouldn’t have to rely on remembering what you said. And, no, no YouTube, though that’s a good idea.”

“Huh. I thought supernatural stuff didn’t tend to show up on film. Video. Whatever.”

Rondeau shrugged. “This did. Maybe back in the old days supernatural creatures didn’t let themselves be captured on film because of, whatever, magical self-preservation. But these days you can fake
anything
in a video. A high school kid with the right software can make a totally realistic movie about ghosts or demons. So what’s the harm? Nobody’d believe it was real magic. If I showed the video I’ve got here to anybody, they’d assume it was from a low-budget horror movie, the fake-documentary kind. You know how adaptive magic can be.”

He fumbled around for a while and then found a remote control buried under some magazines on the table. He pressed a button and the doors of a cabinet across the room slid open, revealing a television screen that had to be at least 70 inches from corner to corner. Pelham, meanwhile, carried a laptop across the room and hooked it up to a cord near the television. “To the couch!” Rondeau cried. He shoved the sleeping man’s legs out of the way and flopped down facing the TV.

I took an armchair. “What if the Prince of Denmark there wakes up?”

“I’ll tell him I’m producing a low-budget horror movie,” Rondeau said. “And he won’t understand a word I’m saying on account of
Danish
-ness. Now watch the show. You won’t believe the shit you made us do.”

TWO HEADS

I’m getting sick of writing “I I I me me me my my my” so I’m just going to tell you what was on the tape.

•

Rondeau, wearing a yellow silk robe, dimmed the lights in the suite’s gargantuan bathroom, leaving the room to be illuminated by what seemed like a hundred candles – though maybe it was fewer, their light doubled and tripled and quadrupled by the bathroom’s many mirrors. Rondeau glanced back through the door, toward the camera. “Are you rolling?”

The cameraman – presumably Pelham – must have given some non-verbal sign of assent, because Rondeau. “Good. Probably best if you stay outside the room. Oracles can be... twitchy.” He knelt down on the furry rug beside the shower (which was easily big enough for three people, or four if they got cozy), his back to the camera. “Okay, Marla, I’m here, at the appointed hour, in a room of fire and mirrors – being queen of the dead sure has brought out a poetic streak in you – and I’m opening up the doors of perception as wide as I can without recourse to chemical accelerants –”

An apparition began with a shimmer in the air, like an orange-red ribbon fluttering above Rondeau’s head. Within a moment that flicker had solidified into the skull of a small dog, white bone with flames flickering in its eye sockets and nose holes and inside its toothy jaws.

Rondeau grunted and lifted up his head, seemingly with great effort. “A pale dog burning in the flames of hell. Well, okay. What’s the word?”

The dog’s voice was full of terrible echoes and clashing asynchronies, but I could understand its words. “My mistress has chosen a mission to fill her mortal days. She will seek to right wrongs and –”

“Help the helpless, right. Walking the Earth, going from place to place and uplifting the downtrodden. Sure. She mentioned something about that before she took the express elevator downstairs.” Rondeau’s voice was strained, like he was trying to stay casual and conversational in the middle of a firefight. “She’s seeking some kind of redem–”