Nightwise (28 page)

“Safe journey,” I whispered.

The music faded, only to be replaced by another Glass composition, “The Hours.” I sat and tried to not think. It didn't work too well. And I began to listen more and more to my inner bastard, and I began to plan my endgame as best I could with the limited information I had.

Pam was suddenly at my side. She looked tired.

“Time to go,” she said. “Field trip is over.” I let her lead me out, and I tried to ignore the worry and the sadness on her face whenever she looked up at her husband twisting and writhing in a synthetic heaven of his own design.

 

TWENTY

Ichi, home by four from his nature hike, was his usual chatty self and proceeded to trounce me soundly in chess a few times. Eventually I got up the nerve to ask.

“Ichi-sama,” I said as I reset the chessboard, “I mean no offense, but why are you still here?” The old Gun Saint did not look at me as he reset his pieces.

“Why have I not returned home or moved on now that our mission is complete?” he said. “When you reach a certain age, you find yourself locked in a press of days, more binding than any chain, any dungeon cell. You can feel yourself getting cold and brittle inside, and you … miss anything, anyone who distracts you from the grindstone your life has become. You and your associates are … distracting, and you remind me of myself and my old friends, all of whom I have outlived. I am in no hurry to go home.”

He finished setting up his pieces and looked across the board to me. “I know why you are asking, Laytham-kun. And I do understand what you must do now, even if the others do not. If I may add, as a lonely old man to a lonely young man, I urge you to not drive them too far away, regardless of the reason. You will regret it in the end.”

“Your move,” I said. “And thank you.”

Everyone was back to Foxglove by six that night. They came in from town laughing and happy.

“There's nothing on any of the news channels, the radio, or the papers about what happened in D.C.,” Magdalena said as she set a few grocery bags on the dining room table. “I mean nothing, like it didn't happen.”

“Same on the intrawebs and the TV,” I said. Grinner plopped down on the sofa next to Christine and Geri. Ichi stood, arms behind his back, palms clasped.

“So that's good, right?” Magdalena asked. “We're clear?”

“Not necessarily,” Grinner said. “It could just mean they plan to hunt us down quiet.”

“Exactly,” I said. “It's basically a cost-benefit analysis for them: Is it worth more to hunt us, find us, interrogate us, and kill us, or is it less hassle to just let us scuttle off like cockroaches?”

“A poet,” Didgeri said blandly. “You are a poet.”

“It isn't pretty, but he's essentially right,” Grinner said. “The next forty-eight hours will determine how in the clear we are.”

“Who is ‘they,' exactly?” Magdalena asked. “Is this the Illuminati we're talking about?”

“That is a very complicated question, dear,” Didgeri replied. “Most powerful and far-reaching secret societies are more incestuous than Ballard's family tree.”

“Nice,” I said. “Thanks.”

“It is often difficult to determine where one ends and another begins,” Didgeri continued. “I'd say that, given the close ties to banking and the federal government, Illuminati involvement would be primary.”

“But from what Ballard said,” Grinner interjected, “this is an off-the-books job Slorzack and Berman were doing, which means the powers that be may be as clueless as we are about it.”

“The covers Grinner gave us are sealed tight—doubtful they will blow back on us—and the mystic cleansing Ichi and I underwent should wipe a lot of the psychic fingerprints off us,” I said. “Our exit, however, is another matter. I am thinking that Neva wasn't a guardian of the archive; I think she was summoned by some third party to stop whoever was messing with those plates. An entity like her sets off all kinds of bells and whistles the all-seeing eyeholes will want to investigate. We also jumped space on our way out, and that leaves some really big mystic skid marks…”

“You need to not talk anymore,” Didgeri said, wincing.

“So, what's our next move?” Magdalena asked, sitting down in the chair next to the couch. I stood and turned off the TV news.

“There is no ‘our next move,'” I said. “First rule of a caper is knowing when to cut bait and run. And that time is now, gang. All of you need to get the fuck gone, now.”

I tried hard to ignore the look of hurt and confusion on Magdalena's face. Geri just shook her head to make sure I understood just how stupid I was being right now.

“Laytham,” Christine said sweetly, “you're being an asshole again. Stop it. We all came to help you.”

“And you did, Christine,” I said, standing and looking at everyone. “You guys saved my ass and kept me going, but if, in the next ten minutes, black helicopter thugs like the ones Ichi played with in Washington crash in that door, your life is over, your baby's life is over, your husband's life is over, the Haberscombs' lives are over. We all go into a black bag and we never come out.”

“You did,” Magdalena said, with bitterness in her eyes and voice. “You came back out of the black bag.”

“He is right, Megan,” Ichi said. “Together, in one location, we are too visible a target, too vulnerable. We need to scatter. And we do endanger our hosts. We should all depart soon.”

Christine snuggled in deeper to Grinner's shoulder. He looked pissed at me too. Good. The more the merrier.

“I'm done talking,” I said. “The caper's over. I have to wait to hear what Br … Haberscomb has found for me to get me back on Slorzack's trail, then I'm fucking gone. As for the rest of you, good job. If there was a take from this, I'd be giving you each your shares. Much obliged. Now get the fuck out. Tonight.”

The room was silent as I grabbed my jacket off the peg next to the door and walked outside.

It was damn cold and the stars boiled and burned, distant and wordless in their sharp, painful beauty. So many. I wondered for the thousandth time today where exactly Bruce Haberscomb was and what he was communing with.

I fumbled in my jacket and cussed. I was going almost two days with no cigarettes. I heard the door open, then close, and Magdalena, her hands thrust deep into her black leather-and-cloth hoodie, looking like a cross between a nun and a ninja, stepped down into the gravel parking circle with me.

“Nice show in there,” she said. “You really are a natural at working that. You're like an antimotivational speaker. Tony Robbins with a goatee.”

“I'm not trying to motivate anyone,” I said. “Just giving them the facts, and you should listen too. This is the Life, darlin': running, hiding, surviving. Waiting for faceless killers to come for you. Glamorous as hell, ain't it.”

“You didn't seem to mind a few days ago when you were planning this little field trip and you need them, needed me.”

“Yeah, well, like I said, caper's over. I don't need them anymore. Time for everyone to pack up their shit and go home before we all get busted.”

Magdalena stepped closer to me. Her eyes were huge and dark, liquid and perfect in the light from the full moon. Her breath was the wings of gray moths fluttering past her cheeks, silvered. She reached for me, to touch my face. I felt her fingers brush my cheek. It was the gentlest touch I could recall in a long time, since Torri Lyn. I looked up at the moon and tried to fight down the storm in me.

“You don't have to do this alone,” she said. “These people aren't here for money or power. They are all here because they believe in you, respect you, love you.”

I took her wrist and moved her hand away from my face. I was stone.

“You think because we spent one night together, that I am the dark prince of your little Gothic fairy tale?” I said.

“Don't do this,” Magdalena said. “Don't.”

“I don't do that,” I said. “I'm not for anyone. I'm not your romantic lead, and I find your schoolgirl crush sad and misguided. In case you didn't notice, in case Grinner didn't tell you, I left you in the morning and had no intention of ever coming back, ever teaching you, ever seeing you again, and I was cool with that.”

Hot tears welled in her eyes. She fought them, valiantly. Her wet eyes never left mine.

“I was like you a long time ago,” I said. “Then I wised up. I met enough people like me, watched enough dumb, sentimental lemmings die because they didn't know that things like loyalty and friendship and love are parlor tricks we play on ourselves to keep from losing our minds in this asylum. Consider this your first real lesson in magic. Know when to walk away, and don't drag dead weight.”

I let go of her wrist, and she stepped away, back toward the house. “If that's true, then why are you going after Slorzack? Why are you helping your friend?”

“Because I want to see if I can take this prick,” I said. “Nothing noble, just ego and balls and bragging rights. Boj just gives me cover. And now, because I want to know what this Greenway is, I want the secret, I want the power. It's really simple when you look at it without all those tears in your eyes, darlin'.”

“Trust me,” she said, flint in her voice, wiping her tears away on her sleeve, “these will be the last ones you see for a long, long time, Professor. I'm a fast learner.”

She walked back in the house without another word. I felt my balls in my stomach and copper in my mouth. First times and beginnings are rare and fragile, like spring flowers in the late winter frost. I had just destroyed another one. I was the prince of frost.

I walked toward the work building, under the bright regard of the swollen moon. I didn't want to go back inside. Light and warmth and everything from the night before, it was a dream, it was for others, never for me. I looked down and noticed as I walked I had no shadow—an old debt to a harsh loan shark, the harshest in the Life. It was a jarring reminder of how far I had fallen and how right my choice was to send them, to send her, away.

I heard the groan of the metal door to the building and saw Bruce emerge, clothed again and in his barn jacket and a stocking cap pulled down to his brow. He seemed to teeter a bit as he tried to close the doors. I sprinted over to help him. Motion lights caught me and painted me and the Acidmancer in a circle of harsh halogen light.

I helped him with his keys to lock the door. “You okay?” I asked. He seemed a little out of it, his pupils slightly dilated, but he righted himself quickly.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “I am fine. The words feel funny in my mouth—jagged, like they don't quite fit, but I am already readjusting to this dimensional harmonic, and I'll be … I'll be okay. I want cheesy potatoes.”

“I'm pretty sure Pam has those waiting for you,” I said. “She smacked Ichi's hand when he made a move for thirds, that's no mean feat—old guy's spry for his age. C'mon, let's get you inside.”

“No, no,” he said waving me off. “You need to know first, you need to hear.”

Behind me, I heard voices exiting the house and the sound of a car engine starting. Shouts and returned voices. I heard Grinner's booming voice and several female voices. I thought I heard my name. I looked intently at Haberscomb, and he leaned in.

“He's been excised from the Record,” he said, his lips trembling in the cold. “Slorzack, his entire beginning, middle, and end, it's all gone. His thread has been removed from the skein.”

“How is that possible?” I asked, holding Bruce up. “How could anyone erase himself from the memory of Humanity?” I heard the engine growl to life and then the crunch of gravel as the Jeep turned and headed down the road, leaving Foxglove Farm.

“He didn't,” Bruce said. “He couldn't. It would require a higher-order entity to alter space-time on such a comprehensive level. He's got friends in high places.”

“Or low,” I said. “Any idea who? The Watchers? The Court of the Uncountable Stairs? The Lodge of the Animal Lords? The Hungry? Who, Bruce?”

“Don't know, don't know,” he muttered. “No resonance I could trace. Same with the magical operations on that money—all space-time adjuncts to it had been just wiped away, unraveled and allowed to be lost in the roar of the Styx, black waters rushing…”

A cold coil tightened in me, and I had a sudden insight into exactly who had done these things for Dusan Slorzack. However, I needed to be sure, to cover all the dwindling possibilities funneling down into a singularity, a certainty. Down to him and down to me.

*   *   *

I got Bruce inside. Pam helped him up the stairs to their bedroom; she had to promise him a big plate of scalloped potatoes would be brought to him. While I had been talking to Bruce outside, Didgeri, Ichi, and Magdalena had left—headed back to New York eventually. They were going in a very roundabout way to ensure that they were not being hunted. They took the Jeep. That would be a hell of a road movie.

While Christine and Pam said their good-byes, I helped Grinner pack the Mazda.

“You,” Grinner said as he tossed a duffel bag in the backseat, “are king of the dumbasses, you know that, right? You had a fucking army ready to roll for you, and you just had to go and fuck it up, didn't you?”

“I didn't ask for an army,” I said. “And what the hell happened to ‘Fuck you, give me the money and get the fuck out'? I respected that guy; he had his mind on his business and his family.”

“Hey, fuck you, Gomer,” Grinner said. “You called me up asking for shit and we came back to try to help you. Jesus, you are such a moron. You have no fucking clue.” I handed him the last bag, and he tossed it in the back. “My beautiful, sweet, trusting wife, who actually believes that there is more to you than evil and ego—Christine insisted we come help you. She loves you, you stupid shit kicker, and you made her cry tonight. Fuck you, Ballard. I ought to kick your ass right now.”