by T. A. Pratt
“I heard about him,” Marla said. “Markov, right? Didn't he go back in, and never come out again?”
“Yep.” Ernesto shook his head. “But I don't count him as lost. He went in with no intention of ever returning.”
“So you've never seen anything weird in there?” B said.
“I didn't say that. There may have been a short-term interdimensional breach or two, I won't pretend otherwise, though I've got all kinds of safeguards to keep anything that comes in from getting out of the yard. If I didn't, Marla would have my head on a stick.”
“That's just good city management,” Marla agreed.
“Last week I found this big old landshark of a car, looked like it was in decent condition, and on the trunk it said it was a Chrysler Wendigo. That's no model of Chrysler I've ever heard of, and I know 'em all, even the concept cars.” Ernesto shook his head. “I went looking for it a couple of days later and it was gone. So, sure, weird stuff. But think of the money I save on property taxes! Whenever I need to expand my operation—which is really lucrative these days, the way the Chinese are buying up scrap metal—I just think really hard.”
“So, ah, your will holds all this together?” B said. “What if something happens to you?”
“Oh, we got binding spells. Don't worry”
“If he didn't have binding spells,” Marla said, “all this stretched-out space, and everything occupying that space, would collapse into the real space here, and that would get ugly Hell, theoretically, it could even squash down tight enough to make a black hole.”
“I call bullshit,” Ernesto said. “Maybe if I tossed a few hundred planets in here, or a star, but otherwise, we're a long damn way from the Schwarzschild radius for my yard. Marla just likes contemplating end-of-the-world scenarios.”
“What can I say? I get hung up on contingencies.”
“You've got a contingency for a black hole coming to Felport?” B found the idea amusing, scary, and comforting all at once.
Marla tapped her temple with her forefinger. “You wouldn't believe what I've got up here.”
“Better let the kid get back to practicing,” Ernesto said. “He doesn't seem half bad. I've got ten apprentices now, and most of 'em can't even rebuild an engine without fucking up.”
“Well, they don't have me for a teacher,” Marla said.
“I see you doing a lot of teaching out here today, drinking all my Cokes and talking shit.”
“I'm teaching B how to delegate, Ernesto.”
“All right, all right. Remember, B, rearranging space is good for more than playing dodgeball, so we're gonna work on a couple of other things. Reality here is nice and prestretched, so you'll be able to do some cool shit that might not work so well outside my yard, get it?” He paused. “You going to hang around getting in the way, Marla?”
“Nah.” She held up B's phone, which she'd pretty much commandeered. “Rondeau sent an ambiguous text, said he has something to tell me about Jason, but ‘not to worry,’ which makes me worry more, naturally. Anyway, I'm supposed to meet him in an hour or so. I hope it's not black treachery. I was starting to like having my brother around.”
“A brother, huh?” Ernesto said. “There's more of you?”
“Not all Masons are made alike, Ernesto.”
“Let me know if you need me,” B said.
“Sure thing.” She tossed him his phone. “But I wouldn't sweat it. I've handled worse things than Jason will ever be.”
Rondeau followed Jason into the living room and sat down in the nice armchair Cam-Cam had used in their last meeting. Jason had instructed Rondeau to act arrogant and entitled, and Rondeau was willing to give it a shot. Jason took the far end of the couch, leaving Cam-Cam with no choice but to sit between them, glancing nervously from one to the other. Cam-Cam looked older than Rondeau had first supposed—in the window-light his crow's-feet were visible, as were the frown lines around his mouth.
There were several chains around his neck—silver, gold, and baser metals, all disappearing into the collar of his tailored shirt. Rondeau suspected the poor bastard was wearing a bunch of amulets, always a favorite fake artifact for charlatans to sell to the credulous.
“Gentlemen,” Cam-Cam began, “I have some concerns—”
“I'm afraid I have some bad news, Mr. Campion.” Jason played disappointment tinged with embarrassment perfectly “My sister says we can't involve you in this.”
Cam-Cam blinked, straightened, and said, “The money's not a problem. I can—”
“It's not the money, it's you,” Rondeau said. “You're an outsider. Them's the breaks. I'm annoyed, too. Now we have to shake some other trees and hope money falls from the branches.”
“This is ridiculous! I assure you, I'm perfectly trustworthy”
“It's not even that,” Jason said. “It's just… this is dangerous and delicate business, confidentially trafficking a highly sought-after commodity, and some people—”
“And things that aren't people,” Rondeau chimed in.
“—are going to be interested in stealing it,” Jason went on. “Marla doesn't want your demise on her conscience.”
“Sorcerers worry about karma,” Rondeau said. “Be cause karma pays extra-close attention to them.”
“Marla says sorcerers know what they're getting into, and they're prepared to deal with stuff that would drive most people insane. I'm sorry, Mr. Campion. You're just, well, a mundane. A muggle.”
“An ordinary,” Rondeau said.
Cam-Cam clenched his fists. “I may not be an initiate, but I've studied magic, from Paracelsus to Grant Morrison, sacred rites to profane rituals and points in between. I'm ready for this.”
“A theoretical grounding isn't much comfort when things from behind the stars try to suck your mind out through your face.” Rondeau tried on a look of contempt. “Shit, you've got no idea.”
“But I want an idea. I want to know. I've been trying my whole life to pierce the veil, to see the true reality beyond the illusions of the known world. Can't anything be done?”
“Like I said, it's out of our hands,” Jason said. “It's Marla's call.”
“Can I—can I talk to her?” Cam-Cam asked. “Plead my case?”
“Oh, I don't know.” Jason held up his hands.
Cam-Cam narrowed his eyes. “Would a cash donation help grease the wheels?”
“Oh, this guy,” Rondeau said. “You think we're fishing for a bribe? We're sorcerers. Money is not, generally speaking, a problem. I can walk up to an ATM and whisper sweet nothings in its card slot and have it spitting bills at me until I can't close my wallet.” Rondeau enjoyed the speech, even more because it was mostly true. That was the reason Cam-Cam had never found much traction in his quest to become intimate with the workings of truly powerful sorcerers—all he had to offer was cash, and real sorcerers seldom hurt for money, unless they were choosing to be impoverished for ritual reasons.
Cam-Cam didn't deflate. He laughed, though it sounded more like a cough. “Then why did you come here asking me for money?”
Jason sighed. “Rondeau's right about charming an ATM, but we're talking about big money for this deal. The kind of money you can't just filch without people noticing.”
“You can rob some random guy of the cash in his wallet and then erase his memory with magic,” Rondeau added, “but you can't erase the memory of the entire Internal Revenue Service. Even sorcerers don't fuck with the IRS.” In truth, sorcerers mostly just avoided the IRS, but even Marla had extensive money-laundering operations to make her cash flow look legit.
Jason went on. “Without getting too heavily into specifics, we're gathering funds to purchase a… certain item… that Marla would rather not have traced back to her. We're then going to sell that item to a third party, and Marla doesn't want to be connected to him at all. Basically, Mr. Campion, there's a war going on between a couple of magical factions, and Marla wants to help one of them out. But for political and personal and otherwise compl
icated reasons, she can't be seen taking sides. This quantity of money doesn't get moved around without attracting notice, so she'd rather not risk dipping into her personal accounts.” He glanced at Rondeau, who took up his end of the spiel.
“We're collecting some money here, and some money there, and approaching people like it's an investment—which it is, should be a hell of a return, too—so it's not obviously connected to Marla. But there could be blow-back, still, and she doesn't want you to get splashed with acidic monstrous death.”
“I tell you, I don't care about the dangers, and I'll pay all of it!”
Jason looked at Rondeau. Rondeau shrugged, almost imperceptibly Jason said, “We can ask. Tell her we explained the dangers, see if she's willing to talk to him.”
“You ask,” Rondeau said. “You're her brother. She won't kill you.”
“All right.” Jason stood up abruptly. “Mr. Campion, we'll be in touch.”
Rondeau went to Cam-Cam and shook his hand “I gotta hand it to you, champ, you're braver than I expected. You've got that real seeker's fire in your heart, I can sense it. Maybe Marla will sense it, too. Take care of yourself.” He went toward the front door after Jason, and they let themselves out.
Back in the car, Jason grinned. “That was good, Ronnie. That was really, really good. Now we just need to find somebody to pretend to be Marla.”
“Piece of cake,” Rondeau said. He already had a very intriguing idea for who should play that role. At first he'd thought of asking Lorelei, using the fun of the game as a way of getting back into her good graces and her panties both, but then he'd had a better idea.
“Rest stop.” The messenger parked the van and rubbed his eyes. Even with the mushrooms on the back of his neck pumping stimulants into his blood, he was exhausted from driving so far for so long, stopping only for gas every several hours. Bulliard was not the most pleasant traveling companion. He stank of rot and body odor, and though he didn't talk much, he was always back there, rustling.
“No rest. Back on the road.”
“I need to piss, and I need food. Maybe you're happy back there eating the morels that grow out of your armpits or whatever, but I need a godsdamn cheeseburger.”
An ominous silence. Then: “You are an impertinent slave.”
“You're right. You'd better kill me, then.” He turned around and confronted the eye-twisting blot of darkness that was his master and passenger. “Motherfucker, I've got mushrooms growing into my brain stem. I'm enslaved to, forgive me, the smelliest, craziest, scariest freak I've ever met. I know my glimpse of the Mycelium was supposed to convert me to your way of thinking, make me into a zealot in your cause or whatever, but here's the thing: seeing the face of a giant mushroom god just convinced me that some things in this world are way too fucked-up to even bear thinking about. I had every expectation of dying back there in the woods, and I don't hold out a lot of hope of getting out of this alive. So either let me piss and get some food, or kill me and drive yourself to Felport, if you can figure out which pedal is ‘go’ and which one is ‘stop.’”
“I could just… hijack you, you know. The mushrooms in your brain. They allow me that power, to use you, like a puppet.”
“Would your puppet know how to drive a stick shift, stinky?”
“Go, then. But make haste.”
The messenger pushed down the handle on the van door.
“While you're in there, bring me some food,” Bulliard said.
“Sure thing, boss.”
The messenger washed as well as he could in the bathroom, trying and failing to get a glimpse of the mushrooms at his neck. He tugged on one, gently, and the pain that erupted in his head was blinding. Once he recovered from the agony, he turned up his collar to hide the mushrooms from sight before exiting to place his order. Returning to the van, he tossed a wrapped sandwich back to Bulliard. “There you go.”
The sound of paper rustling. “This,” said Bulliard, “is a mushroom swiss cheeseburger.”
“That's right.” The messenger started the van. “I'm a funny motherfucker.”
arla slid into the red vinyl booth at Smitty's Diner, where Rondeau was playing drums with a pie-stained fork and knife. “This better be important. I had to drive myself over here, and you know I hate that. I think I broke the horn from honking it too much.”
“Nice boots.” Rondeau leaned way over to look under the table at her feet. “What did you do, lose a bet? Those look like—”
“Like what? Like something you'd wear? Shut it. I like them. So what's the bad word?”
Rondeau shook his head. “If Jason has nasty nefarious stuff in mind, he's keeping it to himself.” Rondeau ran his thumb over his plate and then sucked off a gob of smeared pie filling. “I really like the guy, boss.”
Marla grunted. “He's likable. Professionally.”
He sighed. “Maybe this was a bad idea. Never mind. Forget it.”
Marla rolled her eyes. “ ‘Never mind, forget it’? And now the mark, that's me, is supposed to be consumed by curiosity and say, ‘Oh, no, please, tell me,’ right?”
“I'm not as cynical as you are, Marla. I'm kind of jealous you've got a brother, honestly, and I wouldn't mind seeing you two get close again. I think it'd be good for you. Lord knows Jason can actually keep up with you, and he's not afraid to give you a little crap, and he can probably absorb all the crap even an accomplished crap-flinger like you can fling. Crap style.”
“He's certainly had practice. So, Mr. Reconciliation, what do you want from me?”
“In the spirit of family, how'd you like to help us out with the scam?”
“Oh, it's ‘us’ now, is it? You and Jason, hustlers for hire?”
“What can I say? The guy has drawn me to his very bosom. I'm supposed to find somebody to pretend to be you, so Cam-Cam can have a meeting. It's part of the convincer—give him an impressive meeting with the head of Felport's magical underworld, so he knows he's involved with serious people. How funny would it be if the actress was you? Jason would shit.”
“The only reason I'm okay with you guys ripping off Cam-Cam is because he's annoyed the ever-loving shit out of me every time I've met him. Why would I want to meet him again?”
“Ah, but it's so much more fun when you're running a game on the guy, Marla. I'm having the time of my life here. Remember when Cam-Cam showed up in your office and offered to buy you your own private island if you'd take him on as your apprentice?”
Marla laughed. “I said I'd show him a good trick, and blasted him in the face with a dose of forget-me-lots potion. Then we dumped bourbon all over his head and took him to Mary Madeline Monroe's brothel, left him snoozing in the lobby I wonder what he thought when he woke up with no memory of the previous two days?” She shook her head. “He's got all that private-jet privilege shit going on, for sure. Too much money and not enough sense, thinks he can buy anybody.”
“And you hate people like that.”
“Truth.”
“So why not give us a hand taking his money away, so he can never bribe another alley witch into telling him your whereabouts? I know he's pestered Hamil and Ernesto in the past, too. They'd thank you.”
“His memory's been erased so many times I wonder if we've done permanent brain damage,” Marla mused. “There's never been a test on the long-term effects of forget-me-lots, though there's some evidence that it works less effectively the more often it's administered. We did have to give him a pretty big dose the last time.”
“See? By taking away his money, you're saving him from future brain damage! It's win-win. I still say you should've let him buy you an island and then erased his memory, by the way.”
“If I wanted an island, I'd get an island. Hell, there's Shrove Island out in the bay. It's technically under the Bay Witch's protection, but she wouldn't care if I used it.
She's only interested in the bits that are below the water-line anyway, the caves and shit under there.” Shrove Island, a couple of miles offshore, ha
d once been chosen as the site for a federal prison in the bay, a sort of East Coast analog to San Francisco's Alcatraz. Partway through construction one of the caves under the surface had collapsed, killing a dozen construction workers, and the project had been abandoned for safety reasons. The remains of the prison complex were still out there, concrete and rebar ruins overgrown with scrub pines and full of treacherous sinkholes. Marla'd been out there once or twice to investigate reports of things living in the caves, though neither she nor the Bay Witch had been able to confirm or disprove the rumors. “You know,” Marla said, “if you're going to dazzle Cam-Cam, you need a suitably impressive setting. Just sitting him down with somebody in a bar won't do the job. And even if it would, it lacks style.”
“You have any ideas?”
Rondeau had a self-satisfied smile on his face, and that was almost enough to make Marla change her mind. But, hell, Jason was back in her life, and she had to admit, it would be fun. She'd never had the chance to play even a bit part in his scams when she was a kid—he'd kept her out of that stuff, because she was too young, and he didn't want her to get in trouble, though there were times she'd begged for the chance to be a shill or an extra. They'd certainly had a blast carousing and making bar bets and playing games the other night—he could do things with dice she would have almost sworn were literally magical. “I might have one or two thoughts.”
“You're willing to play the part of Marla Mason, witch queen of Felport?”
“Fuck it. Okay. You going to tell Jason?”
“Only if you make me. Otherwise, I think it'd be a nice surprise.”
“Let's do it that way. It'll do Jason good to not be five steps ahead for once. Set it up for tonight. Midnight, dark of the moon, like that.”
“Okay, but where are we going?”
“For a boat ride.”
B was sweaty, disheveled, and covered in oily slime when Marla came back for him. “How you doing, kid?” She lounged against the side of the Bentley