Dead Reign (26 page)

“So, then, when are we?” Pelham said.

Marla shook her head. “Work on the building was stalled for a couple years. But that was at least five or six years ago, back when I was a freelancer. And this isn’t time travel. There are no people here, no cars, no traffic sounds, no radios, nothing.” This felt less like Marla’s city and more like the set of a postapocalyptic movie. “I bet it’s Somerset. We fought on a night like this. Though I’d expect great clouds of pigeons in that case. He was a vermomancer, among other things. Let’s keep moving.”

“Vermomancer?” Pelham followed her down the sidewalk, in the direction of the Whitcroft-Ivory building. “I’m unfamiliar with the term. A sorcerer of…worms?”

“Vermin. Somerset used rats and roaches, but he especially liked pigeons. Rock doves are all over cities, you know, and nobody takes notice of them, but send five hundred pigeons after somebody, each one weighing about a pound, with talons out and beaks stabbing and wings flapping, and when they’re done, you’ll find nothing left but a bloody pecked-up mess.” She stepped around a pile of rags and garbage on the sidewalk. “He was a nasty guy, Somerset. Besides his magical ambitions, he was a slumlord, and he used to drive out tenants with swarms of roaches and rats, then raise the rents before new people moved in. The city was a polluted, unpleasant mess under his leadership, at least for a lot of people, but he made the sorcerers under him rich, so there was a lot of loyalty there.” She looked skyward. “But I don’t see any pigeons.”

“Watch out,” Pelham said, and she stopped short, realizing she’d almost stepped right on another pile of refuse, this one bigger than the last, and more fragrant. Marla started to go around it, and then the pile of garbage reached out a hand, grasped her ankle, and moaned her name.

Marla jerked back, drawing her knife, but the thing on the street didn’t attack her, it merely shifted and half rolled over. She could make it out now, just, as a human being wrapped in torn rags, body broken, folded, spindled, dampened, splattered. A rather beautiful green eye rolled into sight and gazed at her.

Pelham vomited.

“I didn’t die for two days,” the thing on the sidewalk said, and Marla’s own stomach rolled over. “After you threw me from the roof.”

“I’m sorry,” Marla whispered. “It was nothing personal. I was working for someone. You were working for someone else. They should have fought each other. We fought instead.” She didn’t even know this dead man’s name. He’d been an apprentice, Marla a mercenary in someone’s temporary employ, and they’d fought on a rooftop for possession of a deck of cards wrapped in a silk scarf that their respective masters both wanted very badly.

“I suffer for the things I did.” The thing on the sidewalk coughed wetly. “You will suffer, too, when you are like me.” It tried to drag itself toward her. “I will make you like me. I will pull you down here with me, and we will run into the gutters together when it rains.”

“I’m sorry,” Marla said again, meaning it, but knowing it was empty. “Can I—could I—put you out of your misery? A knife in your brain, would that give you peace, even here, for a little while?”

“Die with me. That’s all I need.” It inched itself forward again, the remnants of its fingernails breaking off on the pavement.

“Ms. Mason,” Pelham said. “We should go. Forward, remember? Ever forward.”

“He was like me.” Marla stared down at the dead man. “Just doing his job, trying to take something from me, but I fought him off, I knocked him over, he fell.”

“You threw me.” The thing’s voice was more ragged now from its efforts at locomotion. Marla knew she would dream of its pursuit forever, that her occasional nightmares of being chased would change to nightmares of this thing—this
man
—pulling himself along after her, endlessly, implacably, tirelessly.

“Ms. Mason,” Pelham said again, and then, more loudly, “Marla!” She heard him, distantly, but mostly she looked at the streak of red left in the wake of the man she’d killed, the blood left behind as he dragged himself after her, and wasn’t that just like her life, too? She moved forward, and left a trail of the dead behind her? A streak of blood on the pavement of her past?

Pelham slapped her face, and the shock made Marla gasp. He reared back to slap her again, and she grabbed his wrist, twisting it and dropping him to his knees.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Mason, I was losing you, you haven’t moved in nearly ten minutes, that thing wouldn’t stop
whispering
...”

Marla released his hand abruptly. “Pelham, I didn’t know, I…it’s fine. You did right.” She looked down again at the broken man on the pavement. If Pelham hadn’t been here, would she have been mesmerized, trapped here until the thing reached her and pulled her down? “I left flowers. I poured whiskey on the grave. I
tried.
”

“Not for years. You have not left those offerings for many seasons.”

And it was true. Marla had let time heal her guilt. Killing this man accidentally had taught her not to kill casually, to murder only when her own life or the fate of her city was at stake, but while she’d remembered the lesson, she’d forgotten the man who inspired it. “When I get back, I will again. I promise.”

“Die with me,” it said again, and Marla could only shake her head, and turn away, allowing Pelham to guide her from the mess she’d made.

Pelham and Marla took a construction elevator, partially open to the wind, up the Whitcroft-Ivory building. The air was so cold their breath puffed, but when they reached the top level, there was a walkway that led to a wooden door. This time Marla led, and this time the doorknob turned easily in her hand. Marla took a deep breath, pushed it open, and stepped into a perfect replica of her own office, with her high-backed desk chair turned to face away from her.

“Hello, Joshua,” she said. The chair swiveled, and her dead lover tried to nod at her with his broken neck.

Rondeau spat the regulator out of his mouth. “Fuck this.” He pulled himself up the ladder. “Two fucking days of this, and not a goddamn—” He stopped. Beadle sat hunched in the far stern of the boat, and the Bay Witch was in one of the swivel chairs, staring at Rondeau quizzically.

“Fuck what?” she said.

Rondeau got onto the boat, legs shaking. The Bay Witch was weird, but powerful, with titanic forces at her beck and call. Marla said the witch could’ve given her a run for chief sorcerer, if she’d had any political ambitions. Nobody knew what the Bay Witch’s ambitions were, if she had any, and Rondeau had no idea how to talk his way out of this. “Hello, ma’am. I’m just…frustrated. Nothing you need to worry about.”

“You work for Marla,” she said. “I like Marla. When does she come back?”

Rondeau glanced at Beadle, who shrugged miserably. “Ah, she’s been banished by the Walking Death. You know, that guy who killed all the zebra clams or whatever?”

“Yes. Marla is still banished? Sad. I like Marla. I like your boat. I like boats.”

This is like talking to a six-year-old. Only a six-year-old who could drown you with a gesture.
“Thanks. It’s a good boat.”

The Bay Witch rose abruptly. “What are you looking for? Tell me what you’re looking for.”

“I was just going for a little swim—”

“Don’t lie. Liars get turned into chum. Into cut bait. Don’t lie!” She was right up in his face now, shouting, and her breath smelled like raw fish and salt. Rondeau couldn’t back up without falling off the boat into the water, and going into the water wouldn’t make him any safer from her.

“Okay! I’m looking for Marla’s cloak.”

“Cloak? No cloak. Not in my bay.” She sounded puzzled, and strands of wet blond hair hung clumped in her face, giving her a slightly deranged look.

“The cloak is in a box. A wardrobe. I know you took it.”

“Oh. The box. Yes. The death man asked me to take it deep, where no one else could find it, as a favor. I owed him a favor. For killing the zebra mussels.”

“Okay. I understand. But that’s what I’m looking for.”

“You’ll never find it. No one but me ever will. That was the favor.”

Rondeau spread his hands. “I have to try. For Marla. To help her.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you ask me for help? To find it?”

Rondeau stuck his pinky in his ear and wiggled it around. There was water in his ear canal, but he could hear okay. “What? You hid it. Why would you help me find it?”

“You would owe me a favor. Better, no, wait, yes, better if
Marla
owed me a favor. You can owe me a favor from her?”

“You…want me to promise Marla will do a favor for you? If you help me find the wardrobe?”

The Bay Witch nodded vigorously.

“But aren’t you loyal to Death?”

The Bay Witch frowned at him. “He did me a favor. I owed him a favor. He asked me for a favor. I did him a favor. I owe him nothing now. Even-steven. He never said I couldn’t bring the wardrobe
back.
”

He didn’t know he had to,
Rondeau thought, and right then he could have kissed the Bay Witch right on her bizarrely literal lips.

“Yes,” Beadle said, rising. “Will you do this favor for us? And keep it a secret, and tell no one?”

The Bay Witch looked at him, then at Rondeau. “This man can make a favor for you for Marla?”

Rondeau thought he followed that. “Listen, yes, I can promise Marla will owe you a favor when she comes back, if you get the cloak for us. But we’d like you to keep it a secret. And, um, don’t take it away from us or anything later on, even if somebody asks you to. Is that okay?”

“Okayfine,” she said, all one word, and then, “Wait here.” She dove cleanly into the bay and vanished from sight.

“Guess we should have asked her in the first place,” Rondeau said.

Beadle sighed. “Some people defy rational analysis.”

“So if she pops up with this cloak…we hit the party tomorrow night. Agreed?”

“Let me lay some charms of deflection and misdirection on you, and, tentatively, yes. Partridge and Langford are on hand to provide distractions. We have to be careful, to spoil the party without harming the guests. The cloak might make you…unpredictable, yes? Likely to attack bystanders?”

Rondeau shrugged. “Marla says it’s tricky, that you sort of lose control, but she said it’s like steering a really big boat, you have to be steady and guidance is slow, but it
can
be guided.”

“We’ll try to chase the party guests out anyway, to be safe. Langford is working on a potent stink bomb that works psychically as well as olfactorily. It shouldn’t affect Death—or, alas, the ghosts of the founding fathers—but it should clear out the rest of the guests, and give you a free hand to face our opponent. He really might kill you, you know, oust your psyche, force you to find a new body. And now that Ayres has dropped out of sight, you won’t be able to seize his body.”

Rondeau shrugged. “There’s risk, I know. But it’s for Marla. For the city. It’s gotta be done.” He sat down. “That’s crazy about Ayres disappearing. You think he’s dead?”

“Probably all the excitement got to his heart. No one has seen the mummy Ayres raised, either, the one that claimed to be John Wilkes Booth. Being in Death’s employ seems a hazardous enterprise.”

The water rippled, and the Bay Witch surfaced, along with a box wrapped in chains. She climbed the ladder one-handed, carrying the heavy wardrobe by a chain wrapped around the fingers of her free hand, and she swung the box onto the deck, where it landed hard enough to make the whole boat rock. “Okay,” she said. “Marla owes me a favor. Good-bye.” She vanished into the water, then emerged again. “Wait.” She seemed to be thinking something over very hard. “Will you be at the Founders’ Ball?”

“We will,” Rondeau said.

She nodded. “I will see you then.” Looking pleased with herself—for managing a simple social nicety, perhaps?—she dove back beneath the waves.

Rondeau and Beadle stood on opposite sides of the wardrobe. “All right, then,” Beadle said. “Let’s get these chains off.”

“You’ve looked better, Joshua,” Marla said. “Death doesn’t agree with you.” She was trying to be strong and cold, but seeing him again whipped her emotions into a whirlpool with a sucking funnel of darkness at the center. There was hate in there, sure, and she tried to focus on that, but there were other feelings, too. Joshua had made her happy, for a little while, before he turned to poison, but the happiness had been real, even if his motives had not.

Joshua had been a lovetalker, a Ganconer, a man with supernatural charisma, capable of seducing anyone. He’d bewitched Marla, but all along he was working for one of Marla’s enemies. At the end of their affair, he’d murdered one of her friends, right in this very office, and then tried to kill her. She’d killed him first, breaking his neck, but she had still been so thoroughly under his spell that killing him had been like ripping out her own heart and grinding it under her boot heel.

“Marla,” Joshua said. His broken neck made his head cock at an angle, giving him a quizzical appearance, like a little boy lost. “I know I don’t look my best. Forgive me. You look beautiful.”

“I have nothing to say to you.” Marla crossed her arms, trying to separate out the hate from the churn of her feelings, trying to isolate and distill that fury until she felt nothing else. It was like trying to separate the whiskey in a glass from the water. “You’re a betrayer, Joshua. Ever read Dante’s
Inferno
? In his vision of Hell, betrayers get chewed up for eternity in Satan’s mouth. You should be there with Judas and Brutus, gnawed forever.”