Fathomless (27 page)

No fish lived in the aquarium—how could they with no way to feed them? It was all about the sculpture, with the water adding a depth air couldn't. Besides, this city was
supposed
to be underwater—a brass plate named it
Y'HA-NTHLEI
. Sean wrestled the crazy syllables with his tongue, and what came out was the “Yehanithlayee” Daniel had talked about, the Deep Ones' lair off Innsmouth.

Sean was about to call Eddy and Daniel over when a gasp from the next room startled him silent. He eased close to the pocket doors beside the aquarium, which weren't quite shut. Another gasp reached him, raspy, and a whoosh like wheels on carpet, followed by soft footsteps receding and a welling of Changer stink. He backed off—Old Man Marsh had to be coming at last.

Marsh did come, from the opposite direction. Sean had made it back to his seat when an undertaker strolled into the parlor from the front hall. Or not an undertaker, but with his black suit and noiseless black shoes, the guy could have played one on TV. Though his slicked-back hair was graying, making him more than old enough for the Change, he didn't look or smell like a Changer. Nor did he zing Sean with magical sparks or blur at his edges when he crossed into the parlor sunlight.

Which argued against an illusion.

Unless the guy was really, really good at it.

In which case, he was a major magician, maybe in Geldman and Orne's league.

Daniel stood, followed by Eddy, Sean a distant third.

Marsh made straight for Daniel and extended a (normal no-webs) hand. “Good afternoon, Daniel. Abel told me you were coming.”

Daniel didn't reach out, probably because he was staring so hard at his grandfather's face, he didn't notice his proffered hand until Eddy nudged his elbow. Then, as if his forearm weighed a ton, he lifted his own hand. Marsh clasped it, then turned it palm up and uncurled Daniel's fingers with his thumb. Also with his thumb, he touched Daniel's fresh webbing and traced the red scars above it. That blatant examination made Daniel jerk away. “Abel, your spy,” he said.

Unoffended, if you could trust his bland smile, Marsh offered his rejected hand to Eddy. “I won't pretend Abel hasn't informed me of your name, Miss Rosenbaum. Welcome to Innsmouth.”

Eddy shook. Sean was next. “Mr. Wyndham.”

He returned Marsh's grip. Skin to skin, he caught a faint buzz. If it wasn't his nerves-revved imagination, it might be magical energy gloving Marsh's paw in not only the appearance but the feel of humanity. Plus he had no smell. Zero. Not of a fish, not of a skunk, not even of a masking cologne like Daniel's.

And Daniel's cologne interested Marsh, because after he'd seated himself in the twin of Sean's armchair, he sniffed his right hand, delicately, like you'd sniff expensive wine. “Solomon Geldman's work, your scent?”

As if he didn't want to mention Cybele, Daniel nodded. Sean approved. They were here to get information out of Marsh, not vice versa.

“There's a remarkable magician,” Marsh said. “I was proud to hear he'd taken my grandson as his apprentice. Of course, you go to him for more than instruction. Well. Better Geldman than the butchers your father employed.”

“You mean the doctors, sir?”

“I mean the butchers. Look at the scars they've left on your fingers. Yanked your teeth, too, and put in those fakes. Tell me they had the brains to leave your gills alone.”

“They didn't know what to do about those.”

“But Geldman does.” Marsh draped one arm over the back of his chair and planted his right ankle on his left knee. The movie-still attitude made Sean think of the actor who'd played Straker in that old
Salem's Lot
movie. Marsh sounded a little like him, too, deep voiced and classy, only American classy instead of British. “Your reversion from the Change was going smoothly until the other day. Eli Glass must have thought he was beating us. What he couldn't impose on your mother, he'd impose on you.”

Angry as Daniel had been at his dad, he stiffened. “It's not like that. I don't want to Change.”

Marsh's dark eyes drifted from Daniel to Eddy. “Since recently?”

“Since always,” Daniel said tightly. He didn't cut his eyes toward Eddy as Sean did, but he probably felt the flame in her cheeks.

“No offense. But I've seen what happens when our kind get involved with uninformed humans, as your mother, Aster, did. I don't approve of the blanket prohibition against intermarriage that's in our treaty with the Order of Alhazred, but human partners must know all the consequences. They must consent free and eager. There are plenty who will, you know, but your father wasn't one of them.”

“My mother didn't tell him she was a hybrid before they got together?”

“She didn't tell him even when she started to Change. At first she pretended she knew nothing about her ‘illness.' Eventually, she had to tell the truth, though, and then she agreed to go to the sanitarium, so you wouldn't see her Changing, Danny.”

“Don't call me that.”

“Why not? She did.”

Daniel's voice rose: “That's why I don't want to hear it from you.”

Kit had been Mom's name for Sean. After she'd died, even Dad hadn't used it. Until last summer.

“Have it your way,” Marsh said. “Daniel's as good a name, but it's not your only one. You've got a Shin-yay name, too.” He nodded toward Eddy and Sean. “That's our name in our own language,
S-h-n
-apostrophe-
y-e-h
.”

Daniel's left hand squeezed the right so hard, it had to hurt. Then he blurted: “My father said my mother died of leukemia. Then he said she killed herself. Then I found out she didn't die in the sanitarium. She left it. Do you know what happened next?”

Eddy slipped her arm through Daniel's. Marsh held his movie star pose, but Sean saw his shoulders rise. “Well, what else would she do, Daniel? She came home.”

Someone tapping magic electrified the air. Was it Daniel, straining his empathy to make sure Marsh wasn't lying? “To Innsmouth?”

“To this house. For a while.”

“Then—did she die?”

Marsh laughed softly. “Daniel, now. We don't die that young or that easy.”

“You can get killed, or kill yourselves.”

“Don't you remember your mother at all? Aster wasn't the quitting kind. Once she'd wrapped her mind around leaving you and settled into the Change, she did all right.”

“She's alive,” Daniel said.

“Of course she is.”

It hadn't been “of course” for Daniel, not after his father's lies. He sucked in a huge breath and held it, bent over his knees. If he did a face-plant on the table, it would be right into an elaborately iced cake—he'd drown in the frosting, gills or no.

“Daniel,” Marsh said. He broke his pose and leaned forward.

Daniel sat back, safe from the cake. “Where is she?” he got out.

“She's gone to Y'ha-nthlei. You know of the place?”

“I've read about it. A city underwater, off Devil Reef.”

“In the chasm
beneath
the reef, to be exact. Much deeper, secret and secure.”

Sean cleared his throat. “It's like that sculpture over there?”

“Yes. That shows our family's property below.”

Daniel went to the aquarium. Eddy turned to Marsh. “Lovecraft wrote that the Feds imprisoned Innsmouthers and torpedoed Y'ha-nthlei. But Geldman told Daniel that didn't happen.”

“If you're faced with one assertion from Howard Lovecraft and another from Solomon Geldman, believe Geldman. His statements may be tricky, but essentially they're true.”

Without turning, Daniel said, “How long's my mother been down there?”

“Since she completed her Change.”

“Does she ever come up?”

“Once or twice a year, maybe. Aster likes it better below.”

“You don't, Mr. Marsh?” Eddy said.

“Oh, I like it fine, but I've got business to look after air-side. The town, the refinery.”

“And dealing with the Order?”

“When someone's got to.” Marsh lifted the silver teapot that had been cooling its heels since the maid brought it in. You'd think the tea would have been cold, but maybe Geldman had taught Marsh some of his tricks, because the amber liquid he poured, one and two and three cups full, was steaming. He handed one cup to Eddy, one to Sean, left the third for Daniel, Sean supposed.

Daniel remained at the aquarium.

Not wanting to deal with the fancy creamer and sugar bowl, Sean gulped his tea straight. His throat was dry, and he didn't want his voice to crack when he asked the touchy obvious question: “Mr. Marsh, so. You're a Deep One yourself?”

“Thank you,” Marsh said.

“Sir?”

“For the compliment. My illusioning skills suffice to fool most humans, but I don't expect them to fool other magicians. Not for long.”

“Count me as almost fooled. Some people in the main square, I could kind of tell they were illusioning themselves. You, the only hint I got was when I shook your hand. The magic sparked me then.”

“Count me as totally fooled,” Eddy said. “I was starting to think Daniel's grandmother might be, um, Shn'yeh? Not you, sir.”

“And thank you, Miss Rosenbaum.”

“Is that who's in there, my grandmother?” Daniel asked, his voice sharp. He'd stepped from the aquarium to the pocket doors—he must have noticed the Changer smell.

As if Marsh had been expecting the outburst, and why not, the telepathy thing and all, he merely redirected his gaze. “No, Daniel. She's like Aster, spends most of her time below.”

“Then who is it? Another one of your spies?”

“It's your cousin Tom. Your aunt Elspeth's boy. But you won't have heard of Tom and Elspeth. Why should Eli mention them while he pretended we were dead, your grandmother and I, and, in the end, your mother?” He walked toward the pocket doors. “Don't mistake me. I'm not saying your father's a bastard, though you may think he's one at the moment.”

“You know what I think.”

“That's a fact, and you know what I feel. I'm glad you've come. And no, I couldn't go to you. Aster didn't want me interfering with Eli. She knew you'd eventually show up in Innsmouth. The place our people first pulled out of the sea, we all come back to it. Biological imperative, you could say.”

Like salmon returning to their birth streams? Only Daniel hadn't come to Innsmouth to spawn. Even though Eddy had come with him.

That was a line of thought Sean had better cut short.

Daniel had stared at the floor while Marsh was talking. What he finally lifted weren't his eyes but his right hand, to slip its fingers into the gap between the doors. “I want to know what could happen, if I stopped Geldman's treatments.”

“What
would
happen, no
could
about it.”

The one Daniel glanced at was Eddy. “How old is my cousin?”

“Twenty-five, and yes, he's been Changing for a while. He's come to the last stage, when things get rough and a Changer needs looking after.”

Daniel gave the door beside him a tentative pull. Well oiled, it slid without a squeak into the wall—the simultaneous groan came from the darkened room beyond, maybe a second parlor, maybe a dining room, though who'd ever want to eat in a room that exhaled such a reek? It was worse than the Servitor's stench in a way, because at least the Servitor had smelled like one thing, itself; this was the ultimate Changer amalgamation of fish and putrefying skunk and human misery.

When Daniel gave another tug, widening the gap to a yard, Marsh gave the other door a shoulder shove that propelled it all the way into the wall. The room he revealed looked like the twin of theirs, but with the heavy draperies drawn and no fixtures lit except for a pair of sconces that bracketed the fireplace. A wingback chair loomed on the hearthrug, with a folded wheelchair nearby.

“Go on in, then,” Marsh told Daniel. “I told Tom you were coming. He's willing to meet you.”

Willing maybe, but was he able? With the doors open, the sound of his gasps and gurgles made it to where Sean and Eddy sat. If Tom wasn't already on a respirator, he needed one.

Daniel eyeballed Marsh, who eyeballed him back without a blink. Magical energy was condensing between them, probably telepathic challenges and defiance, but listening to Tom, Sean couldn't concentrate on it. At last Daniel broke the staring match by walking into the second parlor. Marsh stepped in after him and pulled the pocket doors back out. He left a gap wide enough to walk through, from which he nodded at Sean and Eddy before receding into the dark.

“What should we do?” Eddy said. She'd risen on one knee so she could see over the sofa back. With Marsh's retreat, she slid down and gave Sean the rarest of all Eddy looks: the anxious one that meant she really didn't have an answer.

“I think Mr. Marsh left the doors open so we could go in, too.”

Eddy folded up as tight as Tom's wheelchair, knees clamped together, shoulders drawn forward. “What if we were wrong to help Daniel come here?”

“He would've come anyway.”

“Maybe he should have come alone. Now we've seen and heard things he might wish we hadn't. I don't know if we should look. At his cousin, I mean.”

Because that could be looking at Daniel's future, the one Geldman was trying to prevent. “I want to look,” he said.

“God, Sean, this isn't a freak show.”

Anybody else saying that, it would have rocketed him through the roof. But Eddy knew him. She'd earned the privilege. “Yeah, I might have been like that before the Servitor. It's different now, because we know reality's weirder than anything in a book or movie. You said it when we came to Arkham—we've got to learn to face that. And Daniel's in the same boat, even if he's further along than us.”