Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9) (3 page)

B had spent the night on a rocky island decorated mostly with the shit and eggs of sea birds, teaching his apprentice how to transform into various interesting animals, and how to read omens in guano and the patterns of flight, and how to survive comfortably in inhospitable circumstances. Just before dawn he’d crept away from her sleeping form and taken their boat, leaving her to make her own way home however she could. She’d be pissed at him, but she’d shown some serious leaps in ability whenever she got annoyed or backed into a corner, and he was exploiting that quirk. Being a teacher meant being kind of an asshole sometimes, but he was a soft enough touch that he’d make it up to her when she got back.

He’d returned to find a message from Cole, about Marla maybe being missing, and Pelly and Rondeau being worried. Well, they were still on her staff, or whatever—in her service—so it was their job to be worried. She wasn’t Bradley’s problem. He wasn’t sure where he stood with her anymore. He’d always thought people were too hard on Marla, honestly. She was uncompromising and tough, and could be sharp-tongued, but she was also loyal, and devoted to doing what was right, no matter what the cost. But the way she’d teamed up with Regina Queen... even by the logic of the ends justifying the means, that was a terrible idea, and the ends in this case had involved stealing Nicolette’s chance at redemption. Even so, he would have talked things out with Marla, let her explain herself, but she’d just straight-up ditched him that night. She was supposed to come to the hotel after she froze Nicolette, to join him and Marzi on their trip to San Francisco, but she’d never shown up, never got in touch, and they’d made the journey without her.

For the first time, misgiving stirred in him. Had Marla gotten in trouble that night? He’d assumed she was just pissed-off at his disapproval, that she’d decided to stomp off and do her own thing, but what if something had happened to her? Had
anyone
heard from Marla after she froze Nicolette? She should have had a couple more weeks walking the Earth after that night, before returning for her month in the underworld, and now she hadn’t returned from
that
....

Had Marla been missing for more than a month without anyone realizing it?

Rondeau and Pelham arrived just then, and there were hugs and effusive greetings and annoyed glares from some of the people working on laptops nearby. They all sat around the table, and B dove right in. “Guys, did either one of you hear from Marla after that night she froze Nicolette?”

They exchanged glances and Rondeau shook his head “No. We argued, because she wanted to make
us
responsible for Regina Queen, so we took off.”

Pelham nodded. “We returned to Las Vegas. Wasn’t Mrs. Mason supposed to meet you that night?”

B nodded. “Yeah... but she never showed up.”

Rondeau whistled. “Whoa. Do you think she’s.... I mean... I know she’s half god, but there
are
things out there that can kill gods. I helped kill one myself, once. You were there, B. Or a version of you was, anyway.”

“Mrs. Mason is not dead,” Pelham said. “I would know.”

Rondeau frowned. “I know you were, like, magically bound to serve her, Pelly, but didn’t she absolve you or whatever? Set you free?”

“Some bonds cannot be broken. If she died, I would feel a pain, here.” He put his hand over his heart. “A very particular pain. Those of my family line sometimes succumb to death themselves, when that pain touches them, and they realize their principal is gone.”

“The rich
are
different,” Rondeau said. “Okay, so she’s alive, at least. But where is she?”

B shrugged. “Still in the underworld, just working overtime?”

Rondeau shook his head, with a stubborn and determined expression that seemed out-of-place on his face. “I don’t buy it. She made a deal to spend every other month in the underworld, and alternating months on Earth, living as a mortal, except for the bit where her husband gave her physical immorality, anyway. Those deals can’t just be broken, right? Mythology is full of gods getting fucked over because they made a promise to a mortal and had no choice but to stick to it. I figure one of two things happened. The first is, Marla came back to Earth on schedule, and we missed her arrival because she used magic to hide from us, or changed her point of entry to avoid us. In that case, she doesn’t want to see us, and okay, I can respect that. That’s Cole’s theory. I hope it’s true.” Rondeau leaned forward. “Because option two is,
something happened
, something that broke her deal, in which case, she could be in bad trouble.”

“So we summon an oracle and find out,” B said. “That’s why you wanted to see me, right?”

“It is,” Pelham said.

“Also because we wanted to bask in your glory, movie star,” Rondeau said. “But, yeah, basically. I’d do it myself, but I’ve had some bad experiences with the whole oracle-summoning business. I think I’m starting to get a phobia. Especially when it comes to summoning something big enough to tattle on a god.”

“It’s not a small thing,” Bradley agreed. “The divinities value their privacy. But, okay. Let’s do it.” He rose.

Rondeau’s eyebrows went up in alarm. “Right now?”

“We’re not all lazy millionaires with time to kill, Rondeau. Soonest begun, soonest done, and all that. I think I know where we can find a potent oracle. I sensed it a few days ago, and did a little research. Could be just the thing for us.”

They summoned a car with a ridesharing app, and a gray SUV driven by a man with elaborate facial hair topiary showed up not long after. The journey, less than four miles from the Mission to the edge of the Financial District, took twenty minutes, because if the city of San Francisco was a beating heart, the streets were its clogged arteries. They disembarked at the corner of Grant and California, before a stately brick church.

“Old St. Mary’s Cathedral,” Bradley said. “The cornerstone was placed in 1853. When the structure was finished, it was the tallest building in the state.” The church now stood in the shadow of skyscrapers.

“I do so love old things,” Pelham said approvingly.

“We’re not going to talk to God, are we?” Rondeau said. “I mean, is there a God? Like,
that
God? The big beard in the sky one?”

B shrugged. “If so, I haven’t met Him. There are powers of varying degrees, and some choose to appear in different guises, so who knows? No, we’re here to converse with a ghost. I figure, if we want to find out what happened to the ruler of the land of the dead, why not ask someone who’s probably spent some time there?”

“That makes as much sense as anything,” Rondeau said. “Who’s the stiff?”

“His Imperial Majesty Norton the First, by the grace of God Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico. His twenty-one-year reign ended when he collapsed and died in front of this church in 1880.”

“Ah, this was the madman who declared himself a sovereign?” Pelham said. “And the city humored him, by accepting his currency and printing his proclamations? I’ve read about him.”

“He was more than a madman,” Bradley said. “Which isn’t to say he
wasn’t
a madman. But he was also a sort of natural-born Fisher King, as I understand it, with a powerful magical link to San Francisco and its people. He once stopped a riot by standing between two angry mobs and reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and he spun more powerful glamours than that, on occasions that weren’t as well documented. His death was the result of a powerful magical assault on the city.”

“Sanford Cole was his court magician, right?” Rondeau said. “Playing Merlin to Norton’s hobo King Arthur.”

B nodded. “Cole doesn’t talk about Joshua Norton much, and when he does, it’s usually with as much exasperation as affection, but there’s no denying the emperor had a strange power—majesty born out of adversity.”

“Not unlike Mrs. Mason herself,” Pelham said.

“Now, now, Marla never declared herself Empress,” Rondeau said. “She just
acted
like one.”

“Let’s see what his majesty has to say.” B tapped Rondeau on the arm. “No making fun of the emperor, if I manage to call him up, all right? Norton was pretty serious about his imperial dignity.” B sat down cross-legged on the sidewalk, leaning his back against the wall of the cathedral. He opened himself to the world, and sensed the same wisps and vibrations and tremulations in the air he’d noticed before: something unsettled dwelled here, or at least this spot was a point of contact for that unsettled things multi-faceted existence.

Bradley’s most potent power—and Rondeau’s too, not that Rondeau had bothered to learn how to use it with any delicacy—was oracle generation. He could call into existence creatures of mysterious provenance, which took the forms of ghosts, demons, demi-gods, or monsters, and ask them questions or give them tasks (though the latter was especially dangerous, as Rondeau had learned to his dismay). There was always a price, and the depth and danger of that price varied depending on the magnitude of what you asked. The ability to generate oracles was rare, and poorly studied, and there was great debate in the sorcerous community about exactly what the oracles even
were
. One prevailing theory was that the creatures summoned up had no true, external reality of their own: they were simply visions conjured by powerful psychics as a way to access information their supernatural perception couldn’t make sense of directly. Like a mentally unstable character in a movie talking to a hallucination, learning truths they couldn’t confront without the illusion of distance: according to that theory, oracles were just a way of talking to yourself.

Bradley had gradually come to believe in the other theory, though: that oracle generators lent their psychic strength to real supernatural creatures that otherwise hovered below the level of perception, giving them depth and heft and, sometimes, a terrible autonomy. Rondeau was right to be afraid of his power. It could conjure up dangerous things.

Ghosts weren’t usually dangerous, though. They were sometimes fragmentary, stubborn remnants of a deceased individual’s strong emotion—not the soul itself, but the soul’s fingernail clippings, its blood stains, or the echoes of its last screams, retaining the shrapnel of a personality. Other ghosts were the remnants of people strong-willed (or unhinged) enough to avoid entering the underworld at all, stuck dwelling in an Earthbound purgatory of their own making, and generally driven mad by the experience. Still others were like shadows cast from the underworld into the material world, projections of larger-than-life figures who’d passed on: those ghosts belonged to sorcerers of extraordinary power, mostly. This ghost felt like the latter sort to Bradley. Emperor Norton was in the underworld, but his connection to the city he’d loved was still powerful, and his attention could be drawn at the site of his death. B thought the emperor could project his form here, with the proper encouragement.

“Your majesty,” Bradley said. “Could I have a word?”

The air before Bradley flickered. Rondeau grunted, but Pelly didn’t react. Whatever was happening was below the level of non-psychic perception, apparently, at least so far. That was good. Bradley sitting down on the sidewalk hadn’t drawn so much as a glance from passers-by, but a truly visible ghost would. Something inside his head
tugged
, like a fishhook was embedded in his frontal lobes, and Bradley exercised mental discipline to grab that line and pull it. Slowly, slowly –

The shimmer in the air snapped into focus. Emperor Norton, a dignified old man in a uniform of his own making (something between that of a drum major and a doorman) and wearing a battered top hat, stood on the sidewalk, looking down at Bradley. He had a doleful and distracted air. Bradley rose shakily to his feet, beads of sweat popping up on his brow. Calling up oracles was purely mental work, but it took a physical toll.

“I am always happy to hear the entreaties of my subjects.” The Emperor’s voice seemed to come from a long way off, filled with echoes and sonic tribulations.

“Your majesty, I seek news of the underworld.”

The Emperor shook his head slowly. “That is a realm where my rule does not reach, young man.”

“I need only knowledge, not action, sir. Can you tell me the whereabouts of the Bride of Death?” Marla always seemed more amused than irritated by the name her cultists had chosen to give her. It was accurate, after all: she was a god by marriage.

“The Dread Queen,” the Emperor murmured. “I –” He turned his head, frowning. “The walls of my palace tremble, young man. This is not information to be lightly given.”

“Then name your price.” Bradley had learned long ago to never give an oracle carte blanche, but to always define the terms of the bargain up front. Usually the oracles didn’t want anything
too
difficult: things that took time and effort, actions to honor or soothe, or to make small changes in the physical world that the oracles couldn’t manage themselves.

“I—there is a power greater than myself here, you understand. I am an emperor, but I serve at the pleasure of the sovereign of Hell.”

“You deny me?” Bradley felt the hook in his mind wriggle, and almost pull free, but he held it tight. Sometimes oracles couldn’t do as he asked—their levels of knowledge and power varied—but he’d never encountered one that
wouldn’t
: usually they just set a terribly high price if they were reluctant, and then it was a question of how much Bradley was willing to pay.

“It is not I who deny –”

A hand appeared, skin the color of bronze, resting on the emperor’s shoulder. There was a wrist attached, but that was all—the limb was cut off beyond that, like it belonged to someone else, reaching into the frame of a shot in a film. The emperor turned his head, looking at the unseen figure, and the stricken expression of terror on his face was so total and bleak that Bradley shrank back in sympathetic fear. The emperor nodded, as if agreeing with some unheard comment or command, then turned his face back to Bradley. “You must accept my apol –”

Bradley screamed and fell to his knees as the hook was
ripped
from his mind, and Norton vanished. Bradley thought,
Shit, am I lobotomized, would I even
know
if I was lobotomized, does wondering about it mean I’m
not –