Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9) (26 page)

“Not even her memories of Daniel?”

“Especially not of Daniel. Gods, who knows what she’d do if she remembered him? She might try to bring him back to life, and with her current abilities, she could probably do it—which would be ironic, since she killed him partly because he wanted to bring Artie Mann back to life. She’s better off forgetting the boy.” She sniffed. “You’re enough one true love for anyone, anyway.”

“I like to think so. Hmm. Seems a shame Marla went through all that, though, and won’t retain any of the experience. It’s the sort of thing that could change a person.”

“Oh, well. I might leave a
little
thought in her mind.” The Bride smiled. “A strong antipathy toward being overly merciful to her enemies, perhaps. Defeating someone by letting them win? It sets a terrible precedent, and I’d rather not have her repeat it.”

“I’m sure you know best,” Death said, with husbandly tact. “You have to go back to Earth soon. Your month here is almost over, and you need to deal with that thing that escaped from the caverns below Death Valley.”

“Oh, right. The vermin from Elsewhere. How tedious. I can’t believe the trivial things Marla chooses to spend her time on.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Creatures like that disturb me greatly. It’s not from this universe, and so it’s beyond our powers of life and death.” He shuddered.

The Bride laughed. “You’ve never been mortal. When you’re alive,
most
things are beyond your powers of life and death. Mortals gets used to it.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I will miss you while I’m gone. Perhaps we can spend some time together when I return? The workings of the world won’t suffer much if we spend an afternoon crafting our
own
little paradise, will it?”

“I can’t wait,” he said, and kissed her back.

The Dead Boyfriends Club

Elsie clapped her hands. “Bravo. What a romantic and, in retrospect, sad ending, though really you should have lingered more on my moment of triumph and elevation. Oh well. I’ll write up some editorial notes, you can tell it better next time.”

“Huh.” Rondeau gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling. They were surrounded by the remnants of pancakes, sausage, eggs, toast, and the other detritus of a pricy breakfast. “All this time you had a dead boyfriend. Tragic love. Kind of puts your whole... you-ness... in a new light.”

Marla sipped a glass of orange juice, her throat dry from all that talking. “I didn’t
remember
he was dead, so I doubt it had much of an impact on my life choices, Rondeau.”

He held up his hands in a warding-off gesture. “I know, I know, but that stuff has to get at you on some level, subconsciously or whatever... or maybe not, what do I know.”

“You can join me in the tragic dead boyfriends club,” Bradley said. “You be treasurer, I’ll be president.”

“Why can’t I be president?” Marla demanded. “I literally killed my boyfriend.”

“Well, me too. I got Henry into using. He wouldn’t have overdosed if I hadn’t handed him the needle.”

Marla shook her head. “Thpt. He could’ve said no. I hurled my boyfriend off a roof.”

“Yeah, but it was a self-defense thing. It was you or him. Nope. You’re treasurer.
Maybe
secretary, but only if I see some tears on the anniversary of his death.”

“I could have a dead boyfriend,” Rondeau said. “I probably
do
. I mean, depending on how you define boyfriend. I have definitely slept with some guys in Vegas who don’t make the kind of choices that lead to a healthy lifespan.”

“I have
loads
of dead boyfriends,” Elsie said. “I definitely probably almost certainly killed at least a couple of them. I call vice-president!” She paused. “But wait, there was some other point to that story Marla told.” She snapped her fingers. “Yes! You recruited your friends from their afterlives to help fight me. It was a terrible plan, of course, because you were up against me, so you had no chance, but it’s not necessarily a terrible plan in
general
. I imagine the souls of the dead are probably eager to leave their little bubbles and cause trouble now that they’re being boiled in molten feces, or whatever it is the New Death has come up with in terms of eternal torment. I was thinking: how about we stage a huge jailbreak? Flood Hell with the dead—I think given the circumstances we can technically call them the ‘damned’—and give Skully something to think about.”

“He would probably take vengeance on any souls who escape,” Marla said. She held up her hand. “But they’re already suffering unspeakable torments, etc., right, I get it. But... no. You just want massive disruption, Elsie. Any souls we come across, we’ll try to restore to their former afterlives, and free from suffering, but it’s not fair to ask them to fight.”

“Fun is over
here
, and you are way over
there
,” Elsie said.

“Tell you what. I might recruit some souls to help us, on a case-by-case basis. But nothing too indiscriminate.” She looked around. “Last chance to quit, guys. No hard feelings if you choose to bow out now. Going into Hell in your physical body means you can
die
in Hell in your physical body, and your soul won’t have to transmigrate very far. If we fail, you’re in for an eternity of suffering, probably with some distressingly personal touches.”

“I’m good,” Bradley said. “Yes, eternal suffering, not fun, but we’re in for that anyway, if Skully stays in charge.”

“Except probably not for a while,” Rondeau said. “Accelerating the timetable of eternal torment seems like a pretty bad idea.” He shrugged. “But what do I care? I’m a psychic parasite inhabiting the body of a murder victim. I don’t even know if I
can
die, and if I do, there’s no reason to think I’d end up in your dumb human afterlife anyway. What’ve I got to lose?”

“There has never been any doubt that I would accompany you to the gates of Hell, Mrs. Mason, and on beyond them,” Pelham said.

“Do we put all our hands together and shout ‘Go team Marla’ now?” Elsie said brightly. “Or can I start stabbing all of you and sending you to Hell?”

“Hold up!” Rondeau said.

“Yes.” Pelham carefully looked at a point about a foot to Elsie’s right. “You should put on some clothing first.”

“The Greeks went naked into battle,” Elsie said.

“That is true,” Pelham said. “Though perhaps not relevant.”

Rondeau raised his hand. “That’s not what I meant. Since when do I object to naked anybody? What’s I’m saying is, can you give us a couple of hours to settle our affairs, at least? By which I mean, go out and get laid one last time? You’ve been leaning on this ‘certain death’ thing pretty hard, so....”

Marla nodded. “Okay. We’ll reconvene here at, say, six tonight? And then... into the pit.”

“I’d better call Cole, and make sure Marzi still has a teacher after I get eaten by Cerberus or whatever.”

“I should return my library books,” Pelham said. “Lest they be out of circulation forever.”

“I’m going to Paris so I can shop for an invasion-of-Hell outfit.” Elsie vanished, presumably appearing naked in a French dress shop a moment later.

Rondeau looked at Marla. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m just going to take a walk.” She closed her eyes, and folded the Earth, and when she opened her eyes again, she was in a dark office in the city of Felport, standing before a huge block of ice.

“Hi, Nicolette.” She sat in a dusty chair and looked at the iceberg, which was also dusty. The room, indeed the whole building, had been magically sealed off; she could feel the wards pulsing from here, but she’d cocooned herself in obfuscating magics. “So it turns out freezing you into a block of ice was sort of hasty. A part of me I couldn’t consciously access decided it was
done
, that I wasn’t going to let my enemies win ever again, even if they weren’t exactly enemies anymore, and even if them winning actually made the world a better place. It was a cold, nasty, vengeful personality quirk... and the truth is, I still have it. I still feel it. I’m not quite the Bride of Death right now, but I’m not quite plain old Marla Mason, either. I’m something in between, and it’s less an amalgam and more oil and water, mixing and churning without ever quite blending. One goes up, the other goes down. You were a pretty terrible person, Nicolette, but if I’m honest, I’ve done some terrible things myself. You found your place, and you were doing good... and I threw a petulant fit, took the hard line, and stole all that away from you, deciding what you’d done was unforgiveable... and that I was the person in charge of making sure
no one
ever forgave it.”

She rubbed the place on her wrist where, in recent incarnations, the words “Do Better” had been tattooed. A message from her higher self, urging her to rise above petty and selfish actions, to take a wider and more inclusive view. She hadn’t done a very good job of that.

Marla considered melting the ice and setting Nicolette free, but there wasn’t time now to explain herself, or help undo the damage she’d done. Setting Nicolette loose now without guidance or assistance would just lead to a magical war between her and Perren River and the other sorcerers of Felport, fighting for supremacy, and sowing that kind of chaos and just walking away was more Elsie’s style than Marla’s. If Marla managed to survive the next day in Hell, she could see about redressing this particular wrong... and taking care of a few other things, too, before she succumbed to the inevitable consequences of her plan.

She turned the Earth, and found a nice mountaintop to sit on, and thought about all the things she’d done... and the remaining things she had to do.

Last Meal

Bradley tried to come back to the suite early, but the sound of Rondeau and some friend and/or paid companion making the most of his remaining time on Earth in one of the bedrooms led him to flee to the kitschy old-fashioned diner in the casino.

B had settled things as best he could, made sure Marzi would continue her education if he never made it back, and said goodbye to her without making it sound like he was actually saying goodbye, because it would be just like her to insist on tagging along to the underworld.

Now his mottled reflection in the chromed napkin holder on the table turned its face toward him. “Hey. Psst. Little B.”

“Hey, Big B.” He took a sip of his vanilla milkshake and tried to decide how crazy he looked talking to himself. Probably not that crazy; it was Vegas, after all. “Are you here to convince me to get reabsorbed into the collective instead of throwing my life away?”

“Nah, I tried that in a couple of adjacent branches of the multiverse, and you’re the same all over. It’s cool you want to help Marla.”

“Any glimpses of likelihoods for me? Are we totally fucked or just regular fucked?”

“Some of your counterparts didn’t bother with this whole one-last-afternoon-off thing, and bounced straight down to Hell.... because Elsie just started thwacking you all with the sword without asking first, mostly. I peeked in on a branch or two of the multiverse, but none of you have come back yet, which either means you failed or you’re still in the process of winning.”

“That’s not comforting, but it’s not
not
comforting. So what did you want, anyway?”

“To be totally honest? You seemed kind of lonely.”

Little B laughed, and then went quiet, and said, “I’ve been thinking about Henry.”

Big B nodded. “Sure.”

“He’s dead in this reality. Which means he’s in that underworld. Which means he’s suffering.”

“I hear you.”

“So we
have
to win. I know I’m punching out of my weight class, here. That I’m sidekick material at best in the company of gods. But I’ll do anything I have to in order to put Marla back on the throne.”

Big B nodded. “Yeah. Believe me, I’m rooting for you, even if... well. It’s too bad about Marla, but that’s how it has to go.”

Bradley frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, if she wins, I mean.... Oh, you hadn’t put it together. Or maybe you don’t have the pieces you need
to
put it together. If you ever worked on a puzzle with Marla, she’d probably hide the edges and corners, just to make it more challenging.”

“Are you going to clarify what you’re talking about?”

“I... don’t think so? Because it might be too much like trying to influence the outcome of events in your branch of reality? I say that because the wall beside me here at my house in the center of the multiverse just bloomed a big patch of black mold, which means I’m starting to overstep my bounds again. So, uh, never mind? Fight the good fight and do your best and believe in yourself and... don’t do drugs? I guess you’ve got that last one covered.”

“The only thing worse than worrying about something is knowing there’s something you
should
be worried about but not knowing what it
is
.”

“Nah,” Big B said. “There are at least a
million
things worse than that. Good luck avoiding an eternity of suffering, Little B.”

The reflection was just a reflection after that. Bradley considered fretting, and then he considered extrapolating and deducing, and then he ordered another milkshake instead.