‘Too bad.’ Max paused. ‘And how is Zal? Is he . . . ?’
‘He’s fine. Sort of.’ Lila didn’t know where to begin with that story.
Max wasn’t so hesitant. ‘What did the faeries do to him?’
‘They kept him. Fifty years. As a kind of Raggedy Andy doll, a pincushion. And now he’s a vampire. Of a kind. No blood, just
energy. Same effect though.’
Max snorted and sat back, putting her hands behind her head. She whistled a long, extended wolf whistle of amazement. ‘And
I thought
I
got a rough deal. And your other fella, Teazle?’
‘He’s okay. We got divorced. He went to Demonia. Anything could have happened to him.’
‘And you’re back at work already, just like that?’ Max was incredulous and disapproving, to say the least. She tipped her
chair back again, balancing on the back legs. ‘What a good girl.’
Lila scowled. ‘You make it sound so . . .’
‘Crazy? There’s not enough therapy in this universe to sort it out.’
‘I’m just trying to undo . . . to sort out everything I’ve made a mess of, I . . .’
‘Yeah, you’re going to sort out the faeries, undo the deals, make the undead into acceptable alternative citizens, correct
the demons, civilise those goddamned elves and make the human world into a beautiful utopian example of how to live and everyone
will cry in delight and follow your oh-so-correct model. Why can’t you find a worthwhile ambition for once, like gutting this
goddamned room and putting in a decent range? Or taking your still-alive vampire man and settling down out of the way before
one more fall of the dice takes him away for ever? Something you could actually have a hope in hell of doing? You always thought
you were so much better than Mom and Dad, but the fact is you’re exactly the damn same. You place a bad bet and then you chuck
your whole life after it trying to make it pay.’
Lila felt the words cut deep and knew their truth. She stood up, straight, tall, purposeful.
Max thumped the chair down warily. ‘What are you doing? You’ve got that look . . .’
‘You know,’ Lila said, gently putting her own chair aside and standing back to take a good inventory of the room. ‘You’re
so right.’ She moved to the first cupboard, opened it and began to remove stacks of plates and dishes. ‘This is just cheap
old stuff, right?’
‘Yes but—’
‘Good so . . .’ The cupboard was now empty, except for the shelves,
which Lila took out. Then she tore the cupboard itself off the wall, snapped it into smaller pieces and carried them out
into the yard, where she dumped them. ‘I guess nobody round here is interested in our old junk so we can either call up Yard
Sale and ask them to come get it or we can have it hauled to the recycling plant. What do you think?’
Max looked at her from the door for a minute. ‘Are we going to smash up all of the past like this?’
She sounded quavery, so that Lila stalled, her conviction wavering. She knew what she wanted to do, but this wasn’t her place
any more, wasn’t her house, or her home. But it was her sister standing there, wondering if she was going to be next on the
list of things to clear up.
‘I can’t stand it,’ Lila said, feeling thwarted, dangerous, defeated.
She stood with the broken cupboard and told Max the
story of the diner, and the two dead girls trying to throw themselves away, their unwelcome second chances stolen. There was
something about it that she couldn’t understand, couldn’t get a grip on, some important, necessary meaning that slipped endlessly
away, like water over rocks.
‘It was so pointless, all of it,’ she ended, tears blurring the vision of Max in the doorframe, pain in her throat making
it hard to speak though she wouldn’t let it stop her. ‘There was nothing in it but one sad thing after another. And I want
to burn the house down. I want it gone. I don’t want to know about these things any more. I don’t know what to do. And every
time I get some kind of hold on myself and move, do something that seems right, I turn back and find I’m here again and again.
I want to destroy this place and never return but I can’t. I’m stuck and I can’t be stuck. I’m not the one that gets stuck.
I’m the one that fixes things and gets on with what everyone else can’t do. Because I’ve been given all this power. I have
to act or what is it for? But I’m failing. I don’t understand. Why would it all come to me just to bring me here again? Why
has all this effort made nothing but the same old pain? You’ve lived. You’re older now. You must know why. Tell me.’
Max came slowly forward, taking the steps cautiously as if her legs might betray her – the stride of an old woman who’s learned
not to be bold. She looked at her sister Lila’s face, contorted into an ugly mask with the effort of resisting everything,
her hunched shoulders and crushed posture, chest sinking inwards, arms hanging lifelessly. Max put her arms around her gently,
so as not to disturb her and leaned her head on Lila’s shoulder.
‘All I know is that when you can’t go on, you gotta quit.’ She waited a little longer and added, ‘And I don’t mind the past.
I mind the present. I want a new kitchen, with one of those old-fashioned china hutches, and a dresser, but the biggest, most
smartass range and gear that money can buy. What happened happened, leave it alone now. Doesn’t matter any more.’
‘But it does! It all matters! If it didn’t matter then what’s the reason for anything, what’s the point?’
‘You’re the reason. You get to choose. Blue and white or gold edged with Grecian motifs. Steel all around or hand-fired tiles.
World domination or sitting at home reading a book. That’s all there is. Saying there’s a point is like missing the point.
You get stuff, you make stuff, it gets eaten and then it gets forgotten.’
At last Lila said, ‘It’s better with you being the oldest.’
‘Meh, I went through this shit years ago,’ Max said offhandedly. ‘But I got over it. The trouble now is I don’t have any money.
If you rip out the kitchen who’s gonna build a new one?’
‘I’ll sort that out,’ Lila said, sniffing and wiping her eyes on her sleeves. ‘Zal has money and I think I get paid.’
‘Malachi still around?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hm.’ But Max wouldn’t be drawn any more on the subject. At least she didn’t call him a fucker. ‘Are you staying for dinner?’
‘I have to get back to Zal and . . . we’ve kind of got a lodger.’
‘Bring them over,’ Max ordered. ‘I’ll do barbecue. We can burn up this old wood.’
They separated rather awkwardly.
Lila cleared her throat and took a deep breath.
‘Steel or tiles?’ Max preempted her, leading the way back up the creaking porch steps and into the kitchen. She looked around,
hands on her hips, ready to get stuck in.
‘Tiles,’ Lila said.
‘But steel is so easy to clean,’ Max objected, leaning back to stare at the light fitting, a plain cone shade so old and dusty
that Lila was glad she’d never really noticed it before.
‘But tiles can be so beautiful,’ Lila said, staring at their plain white tile, each one an island of greasy emptiness edged
with crumbling grey grout.
‘Steel can be beautiful too,’ Max said though her voice made it clear she was in two minds about it and was in the mood for
a lot of
catalogue browsing before she made any moves. She glanced at Lila then, and Lila knew she had not been talking about kitchen
surfaces.
Lila conceded with a nod. ‘I’d better be going.’
‘Yeah, clear off,’ Max said, waving in the direction of the front door. ‘I’ve a lot to do suddenly. I mean, the kitchen isn’t
the only room that needs a makeover. The whole house has serious issues.’
‘See you later.’ Lila walked down the dark hallway, feeling strangely light, and tired.
‘Alligator.’
Max said it comfortably, not the way she used to leap in with it when they were children, so that Lila got to be the alligator
and the crocodile as well.
When she got to her bike she sat down on the saddle and rocked it off its stand, then sat and stared at the house. She felt
a long-stretched cord snap inside her and release its elastic grip on her stomach and lungs. She saw the peeling paint, the
old-fashioned round doors, the warped porch rails and felt nothing special at all.
She pushed with her feet and backed the bike around and then, as she started the engine, she noticed a faery sitting under
the massive overgrowth of the hedge that bordered the road. It was child-sized, green and brown and almost perfectly camouflaged,
which was important since it resembled a goblin much more than a human, but it had moved to attract her attention. Now it
sidled forward and she moved until they met at the driveway’s end, the faery still well hidden by the foliage.
‘Friendslayer,’ it said quietly, as though they were familiar with each other. ‘I helps ya with this. Ye must send the dead
home. Cloaked in shadows is they path, see? And path is open. Shadows comin’. While ye still can, stop them, aye?’
Lila narrowed her eyes, ‘I’ll take your words under advisement, Hob.’
‘Ah.’ The faery looked confused, because she’d agreed in a way and left no opening. ‘Whose advisement?’
‘The Necrolord,’ Lila said, extemporising a title for Tath.
‘Ah,’ said the faery, nonplussed again.
‘But why do you ask?’ she demanded, while it folded its large, gnarled hands together. They looked more and more like twigs
as the seconds passed. ‘Faery has no troubles.’
‘When the walls are too thin, everything’s heard, then they all falling down, see?’ it said, as though this was obvious. ‘Hurry.
Worldsend.’ Its words were fading and by the time it finished the last one it had changed by imperceptible but rapid degrees
into a mossy old tree stump, concluding the conversation most successfully in its own favour.
Lila considered this and then leaned down to the stump, her hands tightening on the handlebars as she revved the power and
selected first gear. ‘Get off my land.’ She stayed there, watching as the stump slid with the same motionless ease along the
hedge line and finally through the hedge itself until it was on the pavement side. Then, with a backward glance at the house
and a hollowing of her cheeks as she thought of Max’s safety, she sped away.
Lila planned to go directly home, but the screamers attached to half the messages coming out of her office were so insistent
that guilt, or possibly rage masquerading briefly as guilt, took her over and turned her wheels that way. She persuaded herself
the detour would be nothing more than a necessary pitstop although she only partly fooled herself. She was spoiling for a
fight and it was better that impulse got some outlet here than at home. What was between her and Zal felt precarious; too
much had happened too fast. But it was also precious – exactly how precious she didn’t like to admit because it caused a fluttery,
desperate feeling to rise in her chest – so she wasn’t about to have a fight with him.
Inside the place was like a press room. For all the speed and ease of the communications technology that everyone had, there
was nothing like really getting in someone’s face to get yourself some attention, and everyone wanted attention, immediately.
The corridors and rooms thrummed with activity and energy. Even her costume couldn’t command much more than a second glance
as Lila eased her way through gaggles of suited agents and their hundreds of milling contacts en route to Greer’s office.
Bentley was at the door waiting for her by the time she made it, her smooth grey hand flat to the glass pane through which
Lila could see Temple Greer hunched in his ergonomic chair in a cramped, troll-like pose. One arm was braced across his midriff
to support his other elbow as that hand rubbed the stubble on his chin in a vexed manner. A uniformed police officer and a
civilian agent were standing with him, both talking earnestly at great speed.
‘Best wait,’ Bentley said, easing back now that her mission was accomplished.
Lila made a disappointed noise. ‘Do you think they’ll be long?’
‘How long is a piece of string?’ Bentley replied, making a tiny gesture with her chin at the open-plan areas behind Lila’s
back. ‘It’s been like this all afternoon.’
Lila turned back from her second viewing of the chaos, a frown on her face, and saw Bentley’s mildly amused smile. ‘The diner.’
‘The diner. You may assume nobody is bothering you because they have been ordered not to.’ She pointed over her shoulder through
the glass door, indicating that Greer had been the author of that command. ‘I don’t think he threatened them with death, but
something about pay cuts was mentioned. On a similar note you can guarantee that all conversation out here is being severely
earwigged.’
Lila switched into machine-only mode, their spoken words translated directly into coded digits. ‘What’s Xavi been doing all
day?’
‘Sleeping mostly. She was piqued when she couldn’t go out but she’s gone back to poring over those ancient tomes you gave
her, drawing, making notes, pacing up and down, attempting the odd bit of strangeness I can only take for spell-casting though
nothing happens.’
‘Sure?’
‘If her face is anything to go by, I’m sure.’
‘And she doesn’t know about Sarasilien?’
‘If she does she hasn’t heard it here. I don’t like to vouch for supernaturals though. Haven’t got access to the same methods
so I can’t say for certain. You know.’
Lila did know, and signalled as much. She expected that Xavi would try to break containment, and that she would succeed. The
only uncertainty was when that would happen. She’d have given a lot to know the exact time on that particular clock. It made
it all the more important to resolve her outstanding issues with Sarasilien right away, even if that meant dealing with the
Lane clone.
Lila found herself grinding her teeth and had to work for a few moments to stop.
‘You can AI-govern your chemistry so you don’t get all that,’ Bentley said, appending a vast and extensive catalogue of human
responses to illustrate what she meant by ‘all that’. ‘You can have this instead.’ She showed Lila a handsome bar chart featuring
the entire rainbow, every emotion and response calibrated and displayed to twenty decimal places.
Lila, who had switched that feature off so many times she couldn’t
count it, nodded her thanks. ‘I like my inadequate human reactions the hard way. Keeps it real.’
‘ “To become a spectator of one’s own life is to escape the suffering of life” ’. Bentley said.
Lila mused on it a moment. ‘I love Oscar Wilde. But I was never sure if he meant you should become a spectator, so you don’t
suffer, or you shouldn’t, because then you’ve missed out on something vital to the human experience.’
‘I am certain it is the former.’
‘And I’m sure it’s not,’ Lila sighed and leaned against the low divider full of plants that screened the main office from
all the negative chi streaming its way across the open zone. ‘Though better for him if it were. Isn’t that the enlightened
position, to treat your life from the distance of an eternal perspective?’
Bentley laughed in silent zeroes. ‘I guess it is. The machine makes it much easier than I remember it being before though.’
Lila stared through the glass, watching Greer argue forcefully in his own special silent movie. ‘Will we get old and die?’
The grey android shrugged slowly. ‘The machine has kept me in perfect restoration. So far.’
Lila spent a moment or two deliberately listening to the susurrus of the machine whispers that continued eternally throughout
her body, the soft promises of for ever from the Signal. She didn’t feel convinced that it was a personal promise. She might
not last for ever, though it would. It might not be conscious except through beings like herself and Bentley, but that didn’t
mean much, although she took some comfort in the fact that her screw ups weren’t going to be global mishaps, just like Zal
said. (Oh, Zal, how neglected he was! A burst of guilt and longing flared hot across her skin.) And yet her entire existence
felt like it had been engineered to be pivotal. Why else bother? Super agents were rare. All-powerful ones, much more rare.
Which left only the question – would she jump or would she be pushed? Greer suddenly caught sight of her in the middle of
his rant and paused for a full second, halfway through the word ‘and’, causing the two policemen to turn and look as well.
He finished his line as he stood up and they gave way before him as he shouldered past them to wave at the door. It opened
and, with misgiving and curious looks, the officers reluctantly let themselves be waved out as she was ushered in. The glass
walls turned themselves an opaque white at their backs so nobody could see inside any more.
‘Black,’ he grated. ‘Nice of you to show up.’ The sarcasm was made all the more effective by his overused voice growling like
a bear’s. His eyes raked across her, taking in Tatters’ display of gory justice with frowning disapproval. ‘I can see the
headlines already . . . because here they bloody well are.’ He flicked out his hand and the walls obediently filled with the
text news as delivered on the Otopia Tree’s fastnet.
It was pure hallmark drama to which Lila didn’t respond, having already dismissed the hysteria as uninteresting the second
it came zipping along into her AI’s inbox, and thence into the junk file and instant deletion. To humour him she looked across
the largest type-faces where they stamped themselves across his potted palms and sofas and read them aloud.
‘ “Red-headed Knight Templar Saves Diners From Fate Worse Than Undeath.” ’
Greer was glaring at her. ‘And yes, I did see the Hot Nun one, before you ask.’
‘ “Cuffs leader with own gun,” ’ Lila said and then turned to face him. ‘See, no killing. Superman-clean action.’
‘And this one?’
The lettering changed and she obediently turned to read, managing not to hesitate.
‘ “Inhuman droid agent chops up dead-butchers, twenty-eight arrested.” I hope you penalise inaccuracy,’ Lila said, surprised
by the jolt she felt at reading it. A hot burn of injustice boiled quickly up from her belly into her face so that it was
hard work to maintain the lightness of step that dancing with Greer required. She knew what the problem was from his perspective
– it was the D word. Otopia had never revealed the existence of its few cyborg creations to the public: it was a subject relegated
to the pages of conspiracy blogs. This headline had come from one of the most prominent of these.
Temple Greer, dishevelled even in an expensive, pressed suit, black hair flopping on his forehead, moustache bold, went through
ten kinds of calculating behind his fixed stare. Lila supposed it would have unnerved her if she were younger.
‘What I don’t like about right now is that it’s a god-awful untidy mess,’ he said. ‘Agencies leaking all over each other.
Strangers treading my carpets, whining. Boss on my back, stamping feet. Dangerous creatures everywhere, and most of them in
this goddamned building where I have to hide them, protecting them from execution whilst I
wait for them to break my security, escape and cause even more hell. Meanwhile you, pageant queen, are out eating burgers
and getting involved in publicity stunts from which you dash off like Cinderella leaving nary a shoe behind.’
Lila’s chin had gone down several notches during this mini lecture and now she regarded him steadily. ‘And how you love it,’
she folded her arms.
His gaze became gelid for an instant. ‘If you had killed them you would have looked like a normal agent at least.’
‘Pathetic,’ she said. ‘If that’s the best you can do I’ve got betraying bastards coming out of my ears back in my own office,
not to mention their back-chatting, grudge-holding, bitch-clone sidekicks and a monster in the vault pretending to be a cute
little goth girl who never done no wrong ’cept to ease the pain in her sweet, tiny emo heart. Do you think some headlines
from a few humans is going to make a dent in that?’
Greer broke his righteous stance with a sigh and raked a hand through his hair as he walked restlessly across the few paces
between himself and the sofa. He threw himself down into it and lay there, as if poleaxed. ‘You think Xavi is a fraud too?’
‘I don’t know what I think about her,’ Lila said honestly. ‘Mostly I don’t think about her.’
‘She gives me the creeps.’
‘Zal gives you the creeps.’
‘Yes, but in a wholesome, rock and roll kind of way. I’m making her Malachi’s special responsibility, not yours. I think you
should stay away from her.’
Lila was so used to his non sequiturs that they made sense to her now. She let this pass without comment. ‘What about dead
duty?’
‘They can patrol together.’
‘Did you have a feeling about this or something?’
‘No,’ he said with a rising groan of reluctance that let her know he was about to admit something that he hated to tell. ‘A
hexxing doll we seized during a raid on a demon nest down in Palm Beach said you had to stay away from her.’
‘Say what?’ Lila frowned.
Greer flung an arm across his eyes, playing even more the fainting dandy although she wasn’t sure the exhaustion part was
much of a joke. ‘A doll. One of those voodoo things the faeries and demons
make. They had one. When we broke in they were busy destroying it – it had finished whatever work it was supposed to be doing.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Faery dust, smuggling information, nothing to worry about. Not my point. Point is: we get in, they get arrested, the doll’s
on the table sitting on the drugs, falling to bits and we’re in the middle of leaving when—’
‘Why are
you
there?’ she said.
He sighed. ‘Have to personally oversee all supernatural arrests. Black, stop interrupting me with stupid questions. Point
is, doll sits up and speaks to me. Tells me some blessed rubbish about a thing called an assemblage point in the future at
which you, a shadow and the angel of death make a very unfortunate combination promising untimely demise for all if you deviate
from something it called the path of the heart. I don’t have such a good memory for these things but that did rather burn
into the synapses. A message. From . . . I don’t know who it was from.’ His look at her said he knew only too well and they
were not going to mention the name, ever, because pulling its attention was the last thing anyone wanted. The Hoodoo.
Greer sniffed and rubbed his moustache violently. ‘I thought only the maker of the doll could order it to do anything. Demon
that made the doll didn’t like it much either. Freaked out. Broke the arresting officer’s arm, ripped its own hand off making
an escape. And now there we are, stuck with this hand: should we keep it on ice in case it returns for it or should we just
burn it? You’re the expert, what’s the etiquette on this kind of thing?’
‘Serve it with a side salad,’ Lila said, all her attention on reprocessing the important part of his speech. ‘Angel of death?’
she wanted to be sure.
‘Xaviendra, it said. I was extemporising.’
For a doll to be speaking without a making was indeed unheard of, but the cause seemed reasonably clear to her. Beings like
the Hoodoo needed a vehicle. She remembered the ugly faery at her garden gate, devoting some time to delivering the same message,
although with different details. No mention of Xavi in that one but still a vague promise of End Times and her love of horror
stories was long gone.
She set the information to the back of her mind to compile itself into sense. ‘Is Malachi in?’
‘As in as he ever is,’ Greer said, feigning a state somewhere close to his last breath. ‘You kids, you’ll be the death of
me.’
Lila smiled in spite of herself. She couldn’t help thinking of Zal at times like this, because Greer’s humour was just like
his, and Greer had learned it off Zal’s albums and escapades in the way-back-when, six months or sixty years ago. ‘What did
Sarasilien say to you?’
‘Well he didn’t mention anything about a time machine or a dimensional polarity shift if that’s what you mean.’
‘No explanations of his lost years?’
‘Nothing. Just wants to see you. Prepared to wait apparently, although it’s only been a few hours. I think you could easily
let him stew for several weeks, see what pops out of him in the meantime. Unless the end of the world is tomorrow. But no.
I’m sure he would’ve mentioned it. Actually, he seemed very sad to me, down about something, like his dog died.’