by T. A. Pratt
“Hell, Jason. I don't know if I want to help you. Not to be a bitch or anything, but I kind of disapprove of what you do.”
“You disapprove? Marla, you're not exactly running a nonprofit yourself. I don't claim to be privy to details, but I definitely have a sense of what kind of pies your fingers are stuck in. They are dirty, dirty pies.”
“Sure, I make money from gratifying people's desires. It's not my fault if some of those desires are stupidly illegal. My word is actually good for something, though, and I stand by my deals. You just plain lie to people.”
“It's not like I don't have a code, Marlita. I don't rip off old people on fixed incomes, you know? I take money from people who have too much of it. I just redistribute wealth from rich stupid people to less rich smart people. And this guy Cam-Cam, there's nothing in the world he wants more than proof that magic exists, and to have some kind of big crazy adventure, and that's exactly what I'm going to give him. If this goes right, he'll never even realize he's been duped, and he'll have the time of his life.”
“So what you're doing isn't really wrong, and anyway, he'll enjoy it? That's seriously your argument?”
“It's what I do, Marla. If you don't want to help me, don't help me. Nobody's forcing you.”
“Damn right.” The next course arrived, delicate bits of duck wrapped in phyllo dough. She tried to concentrate on eating, but she'd never been any good at suppressing her curiosity. She put down her fork. “What kind of details were you looking for anyway?”
Jason swallowed and said, “I need to offer Cam-Cam something. It needs to be magical, naturally, but it also has to be unspeakably dangerous, so dangerous I can justify keeping it sealed up in a very heavy box all wrapped with chains.”
Marla laughed. “Because there's not going to be anything in the box, right?”
“Oh, there'll be something. Sand. Rocks. Whatever.”
“How will you convince him the mystery box contains whatever you're telling him it contains?”
He waved the objection away “That kind of stuff's easy. Convincing's what I do. I'm just not sure what to convince him of. Any ideas?”
“Give me a minute.” She pondered. There were artifacts, horrible things in Viscarro's bank of the catacombs, that might fit the bill, but something so deadly it couldn't be looked upon, something so dangerous its existence had to be taken on faith…
She snapped her fingers. “Tell him you've got a vial of the Borrichius spores.”
“What are those?”
“They're—” The waiter returned to check on them, and Marla impatiently waved him off. “They're unspeakably dangerous, incalculably valuable, endlessly sought-after, and very probably imaginary”
“That could work.” Jason picked up the wine list.
“Let's get something nice and raise a glass to all things dangerous and imaginary”
They settled into the meal, and into each other's company, bouncing around ideas for embellishments to Jason's basic scam, and Marla was surprised to realize she was enjoying herself. Her brother had a quick wit and a mind that twisted like a labyrinth, quite unlike her own ruthlessly linear approach to problem-solving, but she had to admit, his way sounded like more fun. Before long they fell into the inevitable game of “remember when,” dredging up names Marla had forgotten years ago, reminding each other of funny and formative moments from childhood—the boy Marla beat up in kindergarten for pulling her hair, the doe-eyed neighbor girl even younger than Marla who'd been hopelessly infatuated with Jason for so many years—and carefully avoiding the emotional minefields in the family plot.
Their final words to each other all those years ago had been so harsh, they'd come to overshadow all Marla's memories… but there were other memories underneath, good ones, funny ones, fond ones. She was beginning to remember what it meant to have a brother. She was beginning to think it might not be so bad.
“Hey, Jason.” She raised her second glass of wine, which was an extravagance for her. “Thanks for looking me up. This is nice.”
“As far as reunions with long-lost siblings go, this is the best one I've ever had. Here's to water under the bridge.” He clinked his glass against hers.
* * *
Nicolette was tweaking the drug mix she used for her divining spiders—the one on crystal meth was weaving webs that seemed way too orderly for a proper baseline, so she had to up the dosage—when her snitch phone rang. It was the only phone she kept in her chaos room, because it was the only phone that ever had calls she couldn't afford to miss. She put down the syringe and removed her goggles before answering. “Speak.”
“This is Michael. Marla Mason just left the restaurant.”
“No way She only eats at places where the food comes in a greasy sack and you gobble it standing at a counter. I think you've got a mistaken identity thing going on. Recalibrate your instruments, busboy”
“It was her. I was her waiter, and the reservation was under her brother's name, Jason Mason.”
“A brother, huh? That's interesting. But not interesting enough to warrant a phone call. You're supposed to spy for me, Michael. That means actionable intelligence. Telling me the dessert orders of Felport's ruling elite doesn't count.”
A hint of desperation crept into his voice. “I think it was a business dinner. She kept hushing up every time I got close, but I heard her say something about giving her brother some spores.”
“Spores? Like anthrax spores? What kind?” Nicolette picked up a steel meat-tenderizer and used it to smash a four-inch-high, badly painted porcelain unicorn to pieces.
“Buh-something…Baphomet spores?”
“Borrichius spores?” Nicolette dumped the fragments of unicorn in a mortar and began grinding them to powder with a pestle.
“Yes, that's it.”
“Huh. Where, when, how, for what purpose?”
“I don't know. I'm sorry, I only heard a little. I didn't want to make her suspicious.”
“This isn't perfect, Mikey boy, but I guess a dribble is better than a drought.” She checked the pestle. The unicorn hadn't quite been reduced to its component molecules, but it was as close as she could come with hand tools, and looked like a handful of mostly white sand.
“So it's a good tip? Good enough?”
“Sure, sure. Remind me, what are the terms of our agreement? I've got dozens of you guys on the payroll and a lousy memory for names.” Nicolette remembered their agreement perfectly well. She was just fucking with him. She drew her power from disorder and confusion, and fucking with people was practically a habit.
“Cancer. My sister's cancer.”
“Oh, right, the doctor. Sure, I'll keep her renegade cells in line for a while longer, don't fret. Just keep your eyes and ears open. Is Ernesto still a regular at the restaurant?”
“He was in last night, but he ate alone. He was reading a book about steam engines or something.”
“Dullsville.” Nicolette hung up. She considered her wall of drug-addled spiders. Methed-up spiders aside, they'd been spinning messier webs than usual, which probably meant there was potential for extra tasty chaos in the coming weeks, but who the hell knew? She was still fine-tuning the whole arachnid divination system.
Fortune-telling had never been her strong point. She had a crazy seer locked up in the basement, giggling to himself and drawing pictures in his own poop, but she was trying to reduce her dependence on outside contractors. Besides, she liked having the webs. They made her penthouse apartment—inherited from her old boss and mentor, a neat freak she'd betrayed and murdered—feel more like her own.
She dumped the pestle of unicorn dust into a glass-walled terrarium filled with similar sand, then washed her hands at the industrial sink she'd had installed in the corner. She was trying not to overthink. Chaos flourished best when impulses were indulged, but what was her impulse here? The Borrichius spores were supposed to be serious stuff, created by a mad—or arguably visionary—biomancer back in the ’50s, and long since lost
or locked up or destroyed, if they'd ever even existed. If Marla was able to get her hands on something that powerful, though… how could Nicolette turn that knowledge to her benefit? How could she fuck with Marla and increase disorder in the city, conjure up a big old clusterfuck so she could grow fat on the ensuing disaster?
She left the chaos room, following all the appropriate safety protocols, and went into her office. Turning on her computer, she pulled up the latest edition of Dee's Peerage, the encyclopedic list of active sorcerers compiled by persons or entities unknown, which appeared mysteriously on every sorcerer's doorstep once a year or so. Dee's Peerage didn't have any juicy secrets—it was kind of the Who's Who of the magical underworld—but it was handy for getting the basics. She clicked through the “B”s, chasing a half-remembered entry she'd skimmed while looking for info on Marla's new apprentice, Bradley Bowman, who it turned out didn't rate so much as a line in the current edition.
There it was. “Bulliard.” He was a long way from local, being a solo sorcerer up in the Pacific Northwest, but based on his biography the spores would probably pique his interest enough to bring him running to Felport. Nicolette especially liked the bit of his C.V that mentioned the allegations of persistent fixed delusions and borderline personality disorder. Bringing a guy like that to Felport could only stir up trouble. Getting a message to him would be tricky, but she knew a guy in Seattle who owed her the kind of favor you can't refuse on pain of painful death, so after fifteen minutes on the phone and some threatful cajoling, she'd set things in motion.
Nicolette settled down with a beer and a warm feeling of accomplishment. She felt sort of bad, in the abstract, for the shitstorm she was maybe going to bring down on Marla. Nicolette admired the woman's resourcefulness and willingness to do her own dirty work. But Nicolette was only loyal to disaster, and messing with the chief sorcerer of Felport had the potential to wreck all sorts of things.
arla crept into the spare room where B was bunked down and knelt beside his sleeping head. “Good MORNING!”
She was hoping for a nice startle, maybe an amusing tumble out of bed in a tangle of sheets, but B just opened his tropical blue eyes, yawned, and said, “Good morning to you, too.”
“You're no fun. You could have at least acted like it was a rude awakening.”
“Not even an actor of my abilities could do that convincingly. I'm psychic. I felt your mind. Also, I've met you before.” He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “I'm still beat from yesterday. I'm not sure I've ever been this tired before, and that includes fifteen-hour days on movie sets followed by way too much clubbing. Who knew thinking could be so hard?”
“Using your thoughts to boss reality is tough, B. You have to be careful not to overstrain yourself. You're still learning your limits. Come on. I'll give you ten minutes to shower, then we need to head for the bank of the catacombs.”
B crawled out of bed, wearing only a pair of boxer briefs, and Marla took a moment to admire the view. B was gay, so she couldn't do anything about it, even putting aside issues of inappropriate behavior between apprentice and master. Still, he had been a movie star, and he had the local market on cute cornered, so she looked. He didn't care. He'd made his living being looked at, once upon a time.
“Bank of the catacombs, huh? Sounds ominous.”
“Sounds pretentious. We're going to see a sorcerer named Viscarro. He's the materialistic type.”
Marla went in search of Rondeau while B got ready, and found him drinking a Bloody Mary at the battered kitchen table, wearing a hideous green bathrobe with gold trim. “A little early for boozing, isn't it?”
“Only if you've been to bed, which I haven't.”
“You sober enough to deal with that thing this morning?”
“Am I sober enough to carry an envelope full of cash to a guy in a bar? Yes. Going to a bar is high on my list of priorities anyway”
Marla dragged over a chair and sat with him. “Why the slow-motion bender?”
He swirled his drink with a stalk of celery. “Lorelei broke up with me.”
“Again? Why this time?”
“You wouldn't believe it.”
“You know that's not true.”
“She cheated on me with some guy last week. She did the whole tearful confession thing. Then, when I didn't get mad—when she realized it didn't bother me—she kicked me out of bed! Said if I didn't care enough to get jealous and possessive, she didn't want me in her life.” He shook his head. “You humans are crazy.” Rondeau occasionally played the species card when he was feeling persecuted.
Marla snorted. “You don't act the way you do because you're not human, Rondeau. You act that way because you're an ass.”
“Bitch,” he said, but amiably.
B came in, still damp, but dressed. “If the ladies aren't doing it for you, Rondeau, you can come play for my team.”
“Eh, sure, for an inning here and there, but it wouldn't last. Men just don't have the same capacity to drive me bugfuck insane that women do. It's a chemical thing, I guess.”
“Sorry you got dumped,” Marla said. “Want to get some dinner tonight and listen to me go on and on about how I never liked her anyway?”
“I might take you up on that, if I'm not in a drunken stupor already” He checked his watch. “I'd better get ready to see that guy.”
“Finish your drinking after the business is done.” Marla beckoned for B. She turned to him with a grin when they were in the elevator headed down to the basement garage. “You get to drive the Bentley today Viscarro's catacombs have entrances all over, but I don't feel like walking down five miles of slimy tunnels, so we're driving closer to the hub.”
The car purred to life under B's hand. “This makes the Batmobile look like a go-kart.”
B drove a lot less recklessly than Rondeau usually did—Rondeau knew the Bentley was magically crashproof, and drove like a man with nothing to fear, while B treated her property with appropriate respect. Well, not her property—the car, like nearly all her assets, belonged not to Marla personally but to the office of chief sorcerer. Thinking of which…
“Hey, B. How do you feel about taking over my job? Eventually, that is, once I get eaten by dire wolves or turned into bloody jelly by a monster from the center of the Earth?”
B glanced at her, then back at the road. He couldn't have looked more stunned if she'd smacked him in the face with a dead fish. “I would feel … um … I don't think there's a word for the combination of abject fear and confusion I need to describe. Maybe ‘terrorfucked.’”
“Huh,” Marla said. “See, I agreed to take you on as my apprentice with the idea that I could groom you to take over my job. The only other sorcerer in town I'd halfway trust to do it is Hamil, and he's too smart to accept such a thankless position.”
“And… you think I'm less smart?”
“Now, now. Differently smart.”
B shook his head. “That's heavy stuff to drop on me, Marla. I'm not anywhere even remotely close to ready to contemplate something like that. I'm so underqualified I wouldn't even comprehend the entire job description.”
“Don't fret yet. Consider this the world's longest interview. I intend to be around for a while, and you're going to be my apprentice for a significant percentage of my remaining time on this planet, but eventually an apprentice has to become a master, or quit the profession. If I'm the one training you, and you don't break or wash out or go crazy, you'll be uniquely suited to run the city when I'm gone.” Assuming he comes to love this place as I do. That was one thing she couldn't teach, and it was absolutely necessary in her successor. “Have I just totally freaked you out? I figured, between us, honesty is better.” She'd also wanted to see which way he'd jump if she sprang something like this on him, of course.
“It's… a lot of pressure.”
“Good. My job is all about being under ridiculous quantities of pressure. So consider this practice.”
“Marla, I'm honored you would even think of me. I'll
try not to disappoint you.”
“Oh, I'm sure you'll disappoint me at some point. Just don't ever disappoint me the same way twice and we'll be okay”
He grinned. “I'll do my best. I can't tell you how much it—”
“Shush, before this turns into a tender moment. I don't do those.” Marla fiddled with the radio, but found nothing but static—until a sepulchral voice said, “… darkness, emptiness, everything everything stolen away…”
“That is not the Hot 97.9 FM,” Marla said.
“Have to pull over.” B lurched the Bentley into an empty space in front of a hair salon. “Head hurts. It's an oracle.”
Marla grunted and turned up the radio. B was an oracle generator, a supernatural catalyst, and weird entities sometimes precipitated out of potentiality when he was around.
“All-swallowing darkness. And things that grow in darkness. Oblivious, before oblivion. The snuffling of oncoming death.”
“I don't understand.” B pressed his hands to his temples. “You aren't making sense.”
“All is darkness,” the voice intoned. “Darkness and darkness and partly cloudy skies today, clearing off by late afternoon, and in our five-day forecast—”
Marla switched off the radio, which had transitioned smoothly from the eldritch to the everyday “As far as vague threatening voices go, that was one of the vaguest and most threatening I've ever encountered.”
“The oracle didn't ask for payment.” B frowned at the radio. “They always ask for payment, even if it's just a song, or a kiss, or a cup of coffee, or an old newspaper. Something to balance the equation.” He lifted his eyes to Marla. “What does it mean, that the oracle doesn't want payment?”
“Maybe it wasn't meant for us.” She chewed her lip, troubled. “Maybe it's a case of some celestial wires getting crossed?”
“Maybe.” B sounded as uncertain as Marla felt, and they drove on in silence.
* * *
“Seriously,” B said. “We're going into the sewers? This is a joke, right? A hazing ritual?”