Chasing the Dragon (34 page)

At that moment Glinda returned. She stood exactly on the same
spot, but now she was covered in a thick film of dust and not too few
cobwebs. Her head was on one side to regard him more speculatively
than before. She kept her mouth shut and held out her hand. On her
palm lay a large silver heart-shaped lady's compact. Half of it was
studded with what looked like diamonds, the other half was polished
smooth, but it was scratched and a bit dull with wear though there was
no tarnish.

With her other hand, drink intact, she indicated a space in the air
where glowing letters appeared: Do not speak. Think, and your words will
appear here.

It was Mr. V's book, Zal thought, careful to finish before he took the
small object. His words appeared below hers in glittering dust; then
they winked out.

Zal could see the compact had a hinge and a small pressure closure.
It was no use trying to open it, his fingers were too thick and blunt,
and he had no nails.

Glinda snapped her fingers in front of his nose and he looked up.
She pointed at her words: Well well. Take it back now and keep your word.
But remember, you are mine. We have played and I have won.

He frowned-when did that get into the rules?-but the glittering writing spelled out more.

You are mine and I am yours. I am always with you and I always have
been.

He nodded and understood. Some powers had nothing to do with
you, some took forms that everyone saw, and some were personal. This
was one of them. You would never encounter her otherwise. Lily, Mina,
they were all different for the individuals who perceived them and
gave them faces and shapes with meaning that for them went some
way to encompass and define their power and range. Glinda was his
death. This was his end of the world. Lila and Mina, even the cat, were
aspects of the same fey, which was split up for him, so that he had a
chance of surviving his interface with it. He wished that this knowledge made it any easier. He wished it meant he wouldn't have to walk
all the way to Mina's house and back again now, but it seemed he
would have to.

Come straight back, Glinda wrote, drinking at the same time and
moving her small cigar to the side of her mouth with a practised pout
where she bit on it with her sharp white teeth. We have a necromancer to
hunt and I've got something to give you. And don't go playing with Mr. V
Though I expect you will, you idiot.

He hesitated, getting up slowly. He felt light and unstable. Why
didn't you let jack kill me?

She looked at him through the filmy smoke of her cheroot and
grinned a fiendish grin that was as comforting as the smile on a skull.
Don't be long, Zal. Don't be long.

He found himself outside on the road. Any trace of the black palace
was gone. Because there was nothing else to do he began to trudge the
long way back towards Mina's house. He wondered if Mr. V's talking
rule included himself. In case it did he ranted silently in his head and
wondered how a faery could have secrets from itself. Maybe he didn't
understand it as well as he thought. It was probably the lint.

'm going, and that's that." Lila stood at the door of her office.
Malachi was beside her, hands in his coat pockets, frowning and
shaking his head.

"It's suicide," he said. "The first thing they'll do is expect you to
find him, for their own very pertinent and important reasons. No,
actually the first thing some of them will do is try to kill you any
which way they can. Then they'll watch while you find Teazle. Then
they'll try to kill both of you. Meanwhile they'll expect you to kill
him or else their justice enforcers will kill you and him. I can't see any
way out of it. Unless of course you survive, find him, and kill him.
Then you might expect about ten seconds' respite while they crown
you leader of the largest cartel in Demonia and after that the free-forall will commence."

"I know all that," Lila said impatiently, her hand on the door. Its
locks had already responded to her touch and opened; she was just
delaying the sorry inevitable.

"So, it's not just because you don't want to go home."

She looked around, but there was no sign of Temple Greer.
Zinging her Al system informed her he was at home, sleeping. The
agency was at a lull for the first time in days. She turned to Malachi. "I really don't want to go back to that house. I couldn't call it home.
And no, I don't want to find out and face what is living there or going
on in my absence. But I will. Soon as I make sure Teazle is all right.
Undead sister is probably sticking around and doing fine, according to
Azevedo. I haven't seen any reports that she's eating neighbours or sacrificing pets to the dark gods, so the missing demon husband wins on
points. Right after I check in here." She rested her forehead against the
thick wooden panelling for a second. "And I feel responsible ... no,
shut up a second ... because we had a deal going. I asked him to look
for things that could help me locate Zal. And the fact that he's in the
middle of them and the demons can't find him anywhere makes me
think he's found something. Might not be useful, but you never know
until you see it. Either way, don't you think as agents of the human
interest we ought to find out what that kind of thing is?"

She turned her head without lifting it off its resting place and looked
at him. He stared at her with his orange eyes, thinking, and then his
tense posture slumped and he took a deep breath and let it out.

"Nice try. Kinda convincing, I admit."

"Yeah, isn't it?" She straightened herself up and turned the handle.
The door opened-perfectly balanced elven wood on brass hingesand swung silently inwards to reveal ordinary rooms. Of the ghost
wreck there was no sign, except the tideline of office flotsam it had created and a smell of rot and damp. Relief flooded her.

"That's strange," Malachi said, following her inside. "The other
ships haven't decayed this much." He inspected the carpet, bending
onto one knee, then picked up papers and held them up. "Not dripping. Condensation and some ice melt, nothing more."

"The smell is bad." She looked around, aware that Sarasilien had
kept plants in here but seeing none now. The windows that opened
into the central courtyard were papered over and she hadn't had time
to pull it down. Now she went over and stripped the panes clear, at the
same time finding the lock controls in the Al system and opening them up. She wadded up the old sheet papers into a ball and looked for
a bin, but there weren't any, so she threw it into a corner. The sickly
odour of decomposing flesh, sweet, rotting fruit, and poppies drifted
sluggishly with the influx of mild afternoon air.

"Azevedo said this wasn't the same. I called her after her Tai Chi
class. She isn't keen to come here and this seems to be part of the reason
why. But if he wasn't part of the Fleet, why did he arrive on that ship?"
Malachi put the wet papers down carefully on a sheet-covered table
that was still upright near the wall. He surveyed the scene morosely.

"Not all ships are-"

"But they are," Malachi said. "They are. Every vessel of any kind
belongs to it. I guess perhaps they might manifest alone. I wish I could
ask. Do you think that might be because the person who sent the
zombie is with the Fleet?"

"Would it be a good place for a necromancer to hang out?"

"Would be," Malachi agreed. "If they could survive it. The Fleet
isn't a stable entity. It can decompose rapidly and turn into mist or
less, or at least it used to. If it fizzled out while they were inside one of
the ships, then they'd be floating in the Void. No air, no nothing. It
took a ton of technology for the Ghost Hunters to make it out there."
He sounded doubtful, but to Lila's mind not doubtful enough.

"Demon tech?" she asked, confident it must be since the machines
of her type didn't deal with aetheric creations well. At all.

"Mostly. Uh-huh."

"You go talk to Jones about it. Find out why she's running and
dumping on you all over." She finished her unproductive prodding
about and went through into the laboratory proper. It was still littered
with her previous experiments. She was an exact, tidy worker but there
were so many setups that there was barely room to walk between the
benches. "And get some rest. You look grey."

"Aye-aye, and you?" He bridled slightly at his ready acquiescence
to her order, but it was too late now he'd said it.

"I am going to get this cleaned up by an expert." Lila snapped her
fingers.

Malachi turned as he heard footsteps and Bentley appeared at the
door. He realised Lila must have called her earlier, but the effect was
briefly unnerving. He turned back. "And then you're going to
Demonia."

"Soon as you tell me where the portal is."

"I ... uh ...,,

"You can tell me or I can just trash the Al systems and find it."

He sighed. "Is there anything about you that isn't overly aggressive today?"

Lila shook her head as Bentley began to dismantle the convoluted
glass monstrosities Lila had created in the fume cabinets. The red
streak in her hair shook side to side. "Nothing."

"I wish you'd change your mind."

"Can't."

"Won't." His anger surprised him with its sudden reemergence.
He saw her silver eyes flash and she crooked her finger at him, lips
thinning. Bracing his jaw he followed her into the back room of the
suite, where Sarasilien had eschewed all paraphernalia and stuck to fine
furnishings and comfortable chairs. She sat down in a large armchair
still covered in its dustsheet and indicated he could do the same in one
next to it. Outside the door they could hear the steady clink and tinkle
of Bentley working. The toxic smell was almost unnoticeable.

"Mal," she said awkwardly, knitting her fingers together until her
gauntlets creaked. "I'm grateful you care."

"But ...... he sniped.

"Yes but. But back off. Ever since I got here you've been on my
case." She looked up at him and then down at her hands. "It's like you
don't understand. I mean, look at me ..." She held out her arms, and
the leather armour vanished into her skin softly, like butter melting
into warm tea. She breathed with great control, and when she glanced up the silver metal eyes were gone and she was looking at him with
ordinary blue eyes, faintly lilac around the iris in a way he wasn't sure
that she knew about but which made a jolt stir in him as he recognised
Tatterdemalion's hold. He was astonished when she seemed to read his
mind and plucked at the thick purple cape self-consciously.

"Yeah," she said. "And that. And the other. But they're just more
of the same thing. I didn't ask for them. But I've got them whether I
like it or not." She pulled the cape around herself. "And they bring a
lot of power. Stuff that an ordinary person has no use for. I mean, when
the agency made me, they weren't thinking about saving my life so
much as making themselves a handy tool for the outworld kit. I
stopped being a person then and I started being an instrument. It was
automatic. Nobody asked me; I did it by myself. I'd become a thing,
so I was worthless, I decided it. I don't blame the people who remade
me exactly, not for that part. I didn't get that for a long time. I was so
angry with them, played my role as the tragic victim heroine. Thought
I'd save the day and that would make it all worthwhile. I kept on
trying ..." Her voice cracked and she made a snarling face of pain and
mastered it. "I kept on trying to deny it. It's only when I met Zal I
started to notice, and then, a long time after-actually when I met
Tath and we talked in Under-I understood it doesn't matter about
your makeup or what happened or what other people do, only your
will. So I decided I wasn't going to be an instrument anymore. I wasn't
going to be a good girl and serve my saviours. No martyrdom anymore. It's all me now. And here you find me, fighting the forces. Whatever they want me to do, I'm not interested in doing unless it suits
me."

She tapped the side of her head with a callous gesture. "The
Signal-that fucking hissing shit-I won't bore you with its contents,
but it has a mission.... Forget that. It's not important yet. It's far
from being able to do what it wants, so we can forget it for now. The
old faeries ..." She plucked at the cape. "They want their own things. I don't care about that. I don't even care about the games we play. I'm
a parasite opportunist, looking for my chances same as them. If they
let me use them, then that's their problem. I know they have plans
that are nothing to do with me. I'm just a handy method of passage
for things that aren't shapeshifting death machines. And the agency
still thinks I give a shit, which is interesting. Sometimes I seem to,
even to myself, but I can tell you for certain that if they didn't give me
everything I wanted I'd be out of here in a second. The only people in
existence that I give a damn about are all in deep trouble. And I am
going to try and get them out because my foolish caretaker habits die
very hard and they aren't entirely dead yet. I expect this mission will
kill them off. I don't know what I'll find. I don't expect you to help
me. You don't owe me anything, Mal. But don't stand in my way.
Maybe the demons will kill me. Fair enough. I'll risk it. Because the
alternative is hanging around here forever `doing research' until I get
the phone call that says love is dead."