At some point, I realised, we’d started holding hands again.
Good. I clung on, quite fiercely.
That pointing finger sent us to a far corner of the ticketing hall. I didn’t think I’d ever explored this way; this was Reno’s territory up here, and we just didn’t.
Another of those ubiquitous tiled passageways, only with more colour in the tiles, green and brown and gold – and suddenly it ended in an old-fashioned lift shaft, with those iron trellis gates drawn back.
Jacey laughed, brief and sharp and painful.
I said, “Shouldn’t we...?” with a glance back over my shoulder: not because I thought we should, only because one of us had to raise it.
“No,” he said, bless him. Being the reliable one, so that I didn’t have to. “No, we really shouldn’t. She’ll be fine.”
Or nobody will
, one or the other, not needing to be said.
So we stepped into the open lift, and drew the gates closed behind us, and looked at the control panel.
“I guess we’re going up,” Jacey said, and pressed the solitary button.
CHAPTER EIGHT
R
EALLY,
I
GUESS
we should have known. Not expected it, perhaps, in the circumstances, but we should have worked it out.
I think there’s something about modern transport, though, whether it’s a bus or an airplane or just a lift: the less contact you have with the world outside, the less curiosity it engenders. In a bus I’ll watch through the windows all the time, keep myself oriented, track the route, even argue with the driver if I think he’s missed a turn. On a plane, you hand yourself over to the unseen aircrew and find ways to pass the time with nothing on your mind except landing and what comes after. The windows are hopeless: too small and at the wrong height and there’s no useful data to be gained anyway. Nothing you can do about it, you can’t stop the plane and get off. Me, I just stretch my legs out into the aisle and never bother to look outside.
A lift? Doesn’t usually even have a window, doesn’t have a human hand in the operation anywhere. I think lifts stultify the mind. Deliberately, or we’d never get into them. Step in; don’t think about it; step out. Everything fixed beforehand, no hope of control or persuasion or influence. It does what it does, and so do you.
W
E STEPPED IN
, we went up. We stepped out.
Into – of course! – the lobby of the Savoy Hotel.
Into an obscure corner of the lobby, at least, where we could stand still for a moment and get our bearings, get caught up with where she’d sent us.
Vivid marble flooring, black-and-white checkerboard designs stretching away from one strong pillar to the next. Sofas and table-lamps, ormolu, wood and brass everywhere. And people too, people everywhere: staff in dark and sober suits with discreet badges, customers in vivid frocks and traditional robes and Savile Row tailoring.
And us. Me in black denim – of course! Jacey’s a quick learner, he’d found me the kind of clothes that Desi wore, not tried to remake Fay – and him dressed as I had dressed him, hunkered into his flying jacket, looking lean and mean and the kind of guy who’d only hang out in the Savoy if he were a film star meeting his agent and the press. Except that even the most louche of film stars would take time to dry his hair before he ventured into the public eye.
Or the private eye, come to that. Reno’s lift might debouch into a shadowy corner, and might be used seldom, but a watchful staff kept an eye on it none the less. That, or they had an alarm fitted to the gate. Neither of us needed long to orient ourselves, but someone was already on their way before we’d taken three steps across the marble, from black to white to black again.
A brisk blonde woman, in fashionably sensible shoes and a trouser suit of severe cut, her hair trained to the millimetre; it was almost a surprise to see that she could smile in that get-up, and a serious surprise to see that the smile was entirely genuine.
No surprise at all, that the smile was not directed at me.
“Mr Cathar,” she said, while everything in her body language said,
Jacey!
“Welcome back to the Savoy. It’s been a while.”
Too long
, her hands said, both of them reaching to take one of his in a gesture that was – just about – on this side of a handshake. By this time I might, just possibly, have been glowering.
“Julie. Good to see you. This is, um, Desdaemona...”
At least he’d remembered that much, my nom-de-guerre. I still had my Aspect on; this was still wartime, even if we’d fled the enemy. Her eyes assessed me, she freed his hand to take mine politely, I swear I saw her hesitate between “miss” or “ma’am,” a chilling put-down either way. In the end she simply nodded, professionally pleasant, with never a twitch of either eyebrow at the damp dishevelled state of me.
“What can I do for you today, Mr Cathar?” Anything that lay within her power, apparently. Presumably she’d done it all before. Though she hadn’t seen him here before, coming out of this lift; now that eyebrow did twitch in its direction, putting the question as politely as she could manage, a way that he might entirely ignore if he chose to.
Not he, not now. This day had rubbed away all his boundaries and all his protections; now he was raw and open, hoarse and direct. “We could use the suite, if it’s free. Or – well, just a room, I guess. Anything. And, uh, Reno could use some help down there, maybe. If you’ve got...?”
“Of course.” Of course they knew up here about Reno: how not? They kept that lift working and accessible. And of course they had people prepared to go down there, even in times of trouble. You always keep a watch on the back door. They might even have known that there was trouble brewing. The Overworld responds to unusual occasions; sometimes the aether just twangs with tension, you can smell it. Even I can smell it, me with my all too mortal nose.
At any rate, here came a man and a woman. I looked at them once and thought
bodyguards
; looked again, and thought,
Oh!
Since when has a hotel been keeping daemons on its staff?
Since it’s been hosting a broken angel, probably, beneath its cellars.
I thought perhaps I ought to warn them about the wyrm, just as a professional courtesy. But I didn’t like their strict haircuts and their formal suits, and I really didn’t like the way they looked at me and saw me, knew me for what I was and still dismissed me.
Good luck with it, then,
I thought sourly, watching them go down. Didn’t quite hope that they’d find the wyrm still in fine fig, I couldn’t wish that on Reno, but even so. If it slimed up their sobersided costumes, the way it had ours – “damp and dishevelled” really didn’t cut it as a description, now that I could see myself in mirrors – I wouldn’t care a bit.
Meanwhile, Jacey’s friend Julie was leaving them to it, asking no more questions, leading us away. Towards a bank of other lifts, more regular but not too much so, not the common lifts for common people. A swipe of her ID card commandeered one; she punched buttons herself and rode up with us, walked us along a corridor, swiped the card again to let us through a double door.
And then didn’t come in, left us there on the threshold with a smile and, “If there’s anything else, Mr Cathar, you know my number.”
I was sure he did. But she was gone and he wasn’t watching her clip away, silent on the carpeting like a muted pair of scissors. All his attention was on me, and I thought we’d been here before.
Not literally, not in this suite together, though it was obviously familiar to him. But his attitude was intimately familiar to me, and after a moment I pinned it down. He was like this when he took me to the family home, the house that he’d grown up in: sort of proprietorial but tense, not sure how I would like it, not knowing where I’d find my comfort in all this ostentatious wealth and luxury.
Like the young prince bringing a revolutionary into the palace and hoping that she wouldn’t make a scene.
I wasn’t going to make a scene. I was just curious. “A suite, Jacey? In the Savoy?” And on retainer, clearly, always accessible. I couldn’t begin to imagine what that cost.
“Not mine,” he said hastily, though I’d worked that out already. “Dad keeps it, for business. You need somewhere to meet people...”
I was sure of it. When you had fingers in as many pies – and as many upper crusts – as the Cathar clan, no doubt you needed somewhere impressive and imperturbable. The Savoy would meet both those criteria handsomely: so, no, the people here would be no strangers to the Overworld. Of course they’d keep a couple of daemons on the staff.
I eyed my own particular scion of the Cathar clan, closed the door determinedly at our backs – and let my daemonic Aspect slip.
For a moment there, I thought it didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to let go.
Then it slithered off my shoulders like an old coat shrugged away. I almost looked down to see if it lay puddled on the carpet at my feet.
Almost. Not quite. I still wasn’t taking my eyes off Jacey.
My own particular Cathar. Still that, apparently. To me, at least, and maybe to him too, however many Julies there might have been in the meantime.
I’d woken up this morning with Jordan, my other Jay, but morning was a long time ago and a long way away. And now –
Well. Now I stood there with him, alone, door closed against the world and all my defences stripped away, and –
Well. I had all these unfamiliar clothes on, and God, I’d never felt so naked.
Never so wanted to be naked.
Oh. Yes.
Every time you let your Aspect go, remember?
It was hard enough, hot enough last time, when he was the one with no clothes on. Since then I’d kept it close all this time, hours, and – oh, yes. Hot wasn’t even a measure any more.
When I looked down, there really were clothes puddling on the floor around my feet. Apparently I was doing that. He wasn’t moving, so it must have been me. He was – well, just standing there. Looking at me. Not staring, exactly, just really focused. Intent. Like me.
Breathing quite hard now, like me.
Shivering a little under my hands, when I abandoned my own clothes and moved on to his.
Either my body shoves out enough pheromones post-Aspect that whatever male I focus on gets caught up in the backdraught, or else Powers have the same side-effect when the action’s over, or else everybody does and it’s nothing special after all, or–
Well. He was still my Cathar, my own particular boy. Maybe it was just us, suddenly flung together after way too long apart, suddenly alone and maybe safe with a door closed against the world and a whole empty suite of luxury to explore and –
W
ELL.
W
E DIDN’T
get to do much exploring, just then.
We didn’t actually get out of the hallway.
There was a nice soft rug right there on the polished wood of the floor, and that was good enough.
Actually, up against the wall would’ve been good enough for me. I guess the rug was his idea, while the urgency was mine. We wouldn’t have made it as far as any bedroom; if we’d moved at all, if he’d tried to move me, things would’ve got frantic. Things would’ve got broken. Better a rug in the hallway than bending him backwards over an antique table and hearing the joints all splinter.
Later – not actually that much later, but later enough – I lay there with the pile of that rug under my cheek and the colours of it all out of focus in my eye, almost literally in my eye, and I thought,
Mmm. Feels like silk. Oh – it probably is silk, isn’t it? It’s probably Bokhara, or some such. Or Persian. Valuable, anyway. Expensive. Antique...
What did I know from rugs? Absolutely nothing, except a few iconic phrases; but I knew where I was. Whose suite this was. Of course it would be valuable, if this was where Jacey’s dad did business. Of course it would be expensive.
Well. Okay, then.
It was just a rug. He could always have it cleaned – expensively – if necessary.
He’d probably never notice. I doubted if he ever looked down, once he’d tied his shoelaces of a morning. That would be beneath him. If you owned a fancy rug, to the Cathar way of thinking, what mattered was that other people should see you walk on it.
I may possibly have giggled, at that point. It’s undaemonic and undignified, but – yeah. Might’ve done.
“Hey. What’s funny?”
Oops. If there’s anything more wounded than a boy who thinks he’s being laughed at, just at the very wrong time, I hope I never have to hear it.
He was mostly faking for effect – of course he was! this being not exactly our first time, after all – but even so. I did need to turn my head.
Which should’ve been a pleasure. Would’ve been. Was, in many ways –
oh, look: there’s Jacey, back where he belongs, his head cushioned on my shoulder and that long body stretching away, too far, beyond my toes’ best reach
– but oh, it was an effort.
And
oh, look, that’s just where Jordan’s head was, just a day ago
– that was a fact I couldn’t deny, a thought I couldn’t squeeze out of my head.