by Vivian Shaw
“Anyway,” said Amitiel, “it’s helped, hasn’t it? We’re closer. Even if it wasn’t the woman with our spell, it did something to the boundary. Weakened it further. Every little bit helps.”
“We are closer,” he said. “I can feel it. The thin places between worlds are getting thinner all the time. Soon it will tear open completely.”
“And then we can go home,” said Amitiel. “Home to our Heaven. The real Heaven, where they sing properly, not like this world’s false version. I miss singing, Zophiel. I used to sing all the time. Hosanna in the highest. All day and all night. Hosanna hosanna hosanna.”
“I remember,” said Zophiel. “The singing was so beautiful. And the chiming of the spheres as they rang.”
“I miss that, too. And the walls made of jewels. Battlements of rubies, gates of sparkling jewels, walls of precious stones. Sometimes I was assigned to polish them.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I liked polishing things. And the manna. I like manna. I miss it.”
Zophiel watched as the beautiful lips curved in a pout, and sighed. “I think it’s stupid of the humans to call something angel food cake when it isn’t angel food,” said Amitiel. “At all.”
His wings mantled in an avian equivalent of “humph,” and Zophiel was not quite in time to tell him, Mind the chandelier.
It was a bit over one mile from the British Museum to Greta’s clinic in Harley Street, and August Cranswell had set out on his own two feet, encouraged by the fact that it wasn’t precisely raining at the moment, just sort of spitting aimlessly. When, about halfway there, the heavens opened up all over again, he was not so much surprised as resigned.
This was shaping up to be a profoundly strange afternoon. He’d gotten a call from Greta while he was down in the archives looking for a particular reference; by the time he got back to his desk and called her back, she’d left another two messages. He knew she was abroad doing something weird with mummies, so why she’d be calling him instead of the curators from the Egyptian wing was a puzzlement to Cranswell—but everything got clear in a hurry once he got her on the phone.
His specialty was fourteenth-century Britain, but he knew a little about Egyptian art and archaeology, and he had heard of the Metternich and Hermopolis Stelae. “You can’t possibly be serious,” he’d told her. “There’s no way I can steal that thing. I’m not an international antiquities thief, I’m a junior curator with a couple of exhibitions on the history of London under my belt. You want somebody with a much more expensive car and bespoke suits—”
“We’ve got one,” said Greta. “You remember Grisaille, right? Ruthven’s new boyfriend, great hair, red eyes, morals of a cat?”
“He’s a thief? Okay. Um. I can see that, actually. I thought he was a really high-class interior designer.”
“The two often overlap,” said Greta. “Point is, Ruthven is in trouble, and so are my mummies, possibly for connected reasons, and we need to ask a specific god for help who isn’t reachable by any modern means. So if you could call out of the office for a few days, nip over to the clinic, and accompany him to New York City to come up with a good cover story to get him access to the artifact, I’d be profoundly grateful.”
“I can’t promise anything,” said Cranswell, but he was having to work quite hard at keeping his voice even and level against a rising tide of excitement. “I mean. Of course I’ll try.”
“You’ve broken into your own museum to return stolen artifacts,” said Greta. “All you have to do is run that sequence backwards. And this time you’ll have Grisaille with you, rather than Fass, and Grisaille is extremely good at manipulating people for fun and profit. You might even have a good time.”
“What’s happening with Ruthven?” he asked.
“We’re not sure. Well—he’s been cursed, that’s all we know. By something with an angelic signature that is apparently not an angel, which puzzles everybody. He’s safe in Hell right now, undergoing treatment, and Dr. Faust seems to think that as long as he stays there, he’ll be symptom-free. They’re working on finding out where the curse came from and how to take it off again, which is apparently difficult because it’s not associated with any of the angels Hell’s aware of. Right now we have to figure out what the hell is going on with my mummy patients, and the way to do that is to get our hands on the Hermopolis Stela, so—”
“Ten-four,” said Cranswell. “I’m on my way over there right now.”
It had started pouring when he’d got to the corner of Cleveland and New Cavendish Streets, and he’d had to duck into a newsagent’s to buy yet another cheap umbrella—his flat contained four of them already—but he was still fairly soaked by the time he reached Greta’s clinic. Three of the people in the waiting room blinked at him as he let himself in: a tall, young black man with curly hair currently plastered to his head with rainwater. He had to wipe his glasses dry before he could get a clear look at the others.
One miserable-looking ghoul in an argyle sweater that did not suit them in the least; one greyish individual with what looked like folded wings humped under her shapeless coat; one teenage were-something with teal frosted lipstick and hair that had probably looked quite impressive when she’d left the house but currently was drooping out of its carefully arranged spiky points. And—one vampire.
Cranswell had seen Grisaille once or twice before, notably at one of Ruthven’s shindigs, where he’d claimed to be able to drink gin by the pint and also to teach anyone to dance, and had had to admit defeat on at least one of those points; after that, things went somewhat fuzzy in Cranswell’s immediate recall. But he couldn’t have forgotten those bright red eyes, or the waterfall of faintly silvering dreadlocks that flowed down the other man’s back. Or the way he—like Ruthven, like most of the other vamps Cranswell had met—exuded a kind of infuriatingly effortless style. He had apparently escaped the weather’s latest fuckery.
“Um,” said Cranswell. “Hi?”
“Mr. Cranswell,” said Grisaille. “Très bona to varda your eek. Have you been briefed?”
Cranswell glanced around at the others in the waiting room, and was extremely glad when Nadezhda Serenskaya came out of the back with a clipboard and nodded for him and Grisaille to follow her. He could just about overhear the were-teenager muttering something about, Hey, other people been waiting much longer’n he has, before the door shut behind them.
“August,” she said. “I’ve been on the phone with Greta and Harlach—he’s the Hell surface op assigned to London—and you two are booked on the red-eye to JFK, leaving Heathrow in about three hours. When you get there, you will go straight to the Carlyle Hotel on East Seventy-sixth Street, where reservations have been made for you.”
“We using our own names?” inquired Grisaille innocently.
“You can call yourself whatever you like as long as you’ve got believable ID in that particular name,” said Nadezhda with an air that suggested she’d got limited patience remaining. “Cranswell, you need to be yourself, that’s the whole point of having you along, although I’ve taken the liberty of slightly adjusting your CV and publications to indicate a focus in late-period Egyptian archaeology, specifically Thirtieth Dynasty. Take a quick look at Google.”
Cranswell blinked at her, but pulled out his phone. Sure enough, a search for his name pulled up a long string of results in a discipline he’d hitherto been vaguely interested in but lacked a single academic credential to pursue. “How—”
“Witch, remember?” said Nadezhda, and he tried not to notice her hair was beginning to curl and uncurl itself irritably around one hoop earring. “Affiliated with demons. We can make you anything you need to be; all you have to do is sell it.”
“Selling things isn’t my strong point,” said Grisaille. “Taking them away without paying for them is more in my line, you understand.”
“Grisaille?” said Nadezhda. “Please don’t take this wrong, I know you’re under a great deal of stress, but shut up, would you?”
He mimed zippin
g his lips shut, and she gave him a tired smile. “Once you’re in New York, you’ll be operating on your own recognizance, but if you need help in a hurry, contact these people. They’re the New York demonic surface ops and have been informed about what’s happening.”
Cranswell watched as she made a complex sigil in the air with one fingertip, and a moment later his phone buzzed with a text from UNKNOWN NUMBER: a picture of two dark-haired people, a woman in her mid-thirties of undetermined ethnicity and a fortyish man with curly hair and what would undoubtedly be described as a devilish gleam in his eye. Both were stunning; it seemed to be constitutionally challenging for a demon on Earth to appear anything other than stylish as hell.
“The woman goes by Glasya and the man calls himself Morax,” Nadezhda said. “They will help you if you need it, but the general impression I got from Harlach is that they’d really rather not get involved. Their numbers are in the text, but if you’re in dire straits and just yell their name three times, it’s probably going to be good enough, given the heightened state of pneumic energy currently flooding the plane.”
“There’s a heightened state of pneumic energy?”
“So says Harlach, who has it from M&E downstairs. Fastitocalon’s in charge of that department these days, and appears to be running it with considerably improved efficiency.”
“How come you’re so in tune with the state of Hell?” Grisaille wanted to know. “Also, when did you turn into Q?”
“You’ve only known me half a year, darling,” said the witch. “It’s entirely possible you haven’t had the opportunity to experience the full variety of my capabilities. Also, I like demons. They buy nice rounds of drinks for the whole table, and don’t mind importunate prehensile hair. You two should get going if you want to make it to Heathrow in time to catch that plane.”
“How are we getting there?” Cranswell asked. “Are you gonna—what was that called, flip us?”
“I am not,” she said. “For one thing, I have patients to see, and for another, you can almost certainly manage to get yourselves there on your own, like a couple of grown-up sentient beings, hmm? Tickets will be at the BA counter. I’ll be in touch if anything changes.”
“You heard the lady,” said Grisaille, straightening up and tipping Nadezhda a lazy salute. “Best be toddling. Cheers, Ms. Serenskaya. Your capabilities are not in doubt.”
CHAPTER 9
Grisaille had his doubts about this.
He was a perfectly competent—nay, talented—thief; he had broken into and out of all sorts of places in his two-hundred-some years on the planet; he was a reliable second-in-command as long as the person he worked for wasn’t an idiot—not that he’d had the best track record with that one—and he could tie cherry stems in knots with his tongue, but he was nobody’s idea of a babysitter. The young man sitting next to him in the first-class cabin might be in his late twenties, but Grisaille would not personally trust him to follow simple instructions.
He’d spent the first half an hour in the air marveling out loud at the luxuries of first class. “The guy in front of me’s reclined his seat and it isn’t bruising my forehead!” he’d raved. “And the glasses are made out of glass!”
Grisaille couldn’t remember a time when he’d had to fly coach. One of the things about being a vampire was that your bank accounts had such a long time to accrue interest; most of them who had a couple hundred years under their belts were independently wealthy to varying extents. He supposed he should feel sympathetic to people who couldn’t afford nice seats, but all he currently felt was exasperated.
“Oh my God,” Cranswell said as the flight attendant set a tray in front of him. “The cutlery is metal. And that napkin is made out of cloth. And—this is a plate.” He poked at the china with a forefinger, in wonder. Grisaille looked over his head at the flight attendant, giving her the hint of a shrug: What can you do, he’s an idiot, I’m so sorry.
“And for you, sir?” she said. Grisaille smiled.
“Just the Château Faugères 2006, I think. Thanks so much.”
“Of course,” she said, and he could watch her go faintly pink. He knew exactly the effect he was having on her, and was—if briefly—enjoying himself; at least this museum business was something to take his mind off the concern for Ruthven.
He took the glass she offered, with another smile, and was faintly amused to see her simper slightly before moving on to the next row. Beside him Cranswell was now poking at the contents of the plate (seared fillet of Herefordshire beef with truffle taglierini, rosemary jus, grilled asparagus, and baby carrot), and drew breath to speak; Grisaille placed a hand gently on his wrist. “If you say something along the lines of ‘this food is made out of food,’ I am afraid I will have to stuff you in the overhead luggage bin for the remainder of this flight.”
Cranswell looked at him, and grinned. “Fair enough,” he said. “Take it as read that I am basically in Cortez-on-peak-in-Darien mode right now about all of this.”
“Wild surmise acknowledged,” said Grisaille, and sipped his wine. Okay, so the kid knew his Keats. Fine. There might be hidden depths.
He just wished he didn’t have to be the one to go fishing in them, right in the middle of a goddamn heist operation. Oh, well. If worse came to worst, they had the demons’ numbers, and Grisaille smiled a nasty little smile to himself, picturing museum security’s reaction to thieves escaping via translocation. Explain that one to your bosses, ducky, he thought. Wouldn’t I love to see you try.
Around two thousand miles away, Greta Helsing straightened up and stripped off her gloves. “There,” she said with satisfaction. “That at least is a job well done.”
The mummy Nefrina peered down at her forearm, flexed her fingers experimentally. The replacement tendons Greta had installed were partly visible through the gaps in her remaining skin, very white against the mahogany-colored surface. They moved smoothly and easily.
“It feels odd,” said Nefrina. “Being able to move my fingers again. When can I get back to typing?”
“I’d give it a week to settle,” said Greta. “And for any adjustments to be made. Now, wrappings. Can I have the color sample book, please?” she asked the nurse, who was tidying away the surgical implements. “And if you could page Tefnakhte to do the spells.”
The patterns of a mummy’s wrappings, and the spells said over them at various stages of the process, held magical significance. Greta could do the rewrap job on her own, of course, but Nefrina’s results would be noticeably inferior to what she’d get with the proper chanting.
She had no actual idea what time it was. The last time Greta had owned a watch had been before the Paris business, and it hadn’t even worked; she had given it to a monster in exchange for getting her stolen earrings back, due to the fact that wellmonsters liked shiny things. Ruthven had promised to buy her a new one, and had never gotten around to it, what with one thing and another. Greta’s own sense of the diurnal cycle had ended up nonexistent during her captivity under Paris, and she was aware now of losing it again.
That was another thing to worry about. She tacked it onto the end of the growing, presumably endless, list, and set it aside to be dealt with some other time, looking up with a tired smile as Tefnakhte came into the room—accompanied by Varney.
She raised her eyebrows at the mummy, who looked faintly embarrassed. “Is it all right if Sir Francis observes?” he asked.
“Nefrina?” Greta said. “Do you have any objection?”
“No, that’s fine, I just—kind of want to get this done with?”
“Of course. Here, based on the rest of your wrappings, I’d suggest either of these,” she said, offering Nefrina the linen sample collection. “This one’s too light, and the other one’s much too dark, but either of these two ought to color-match quite well.”
Oasis Natrun had its own linen-weaving shop, which turned out ream after ream of cloth in different weights, which was then dyed in various shades ranging from cream to caramel—
and rolled around in a barrel full of rocks, to obtain the correct weathered texture. Greta had marveled at the scope of their operation, and then marveled all over again when she saw the jewelry production line halfway through a faience bead net. While Nefrina peered at the sample book, Greta looked up at Varney and Tefnakhte, who still looked a little embarrassed, and made a go on, tell me gesture with one hand.
“Er,” said Tefnakhte. “It turns out that having two voices reciting the spells seems to have a beneficial effect—Mr. Antjau seemed to feel much better for it, anyway—and Sir Francis’s voice, well—”
“Is mellifluous,” said Greta, smiling. “Famously so. That’s—I hadn’t thought of it, but it makes sense.”
“I’m finding the pronunciation rather a lot less challenging than I expected,” said Varney, looking almost shy. “And it’s… pleasant to be of use. To have something to do.”
“Don’t I know it,” Greta said, and turned back to her patient as Nefrina appeared to come to a decision. “This one? Excellent. Since Sister Melitta is still busy putting things away, Varney, can you look in the cupboards and find me a box labeled 620C?”
The wrapping linen was packaged in individual rolls of fifty feet, unlike the original version, which could be over a hundred feet in length; the idea was for the replacement wrappings to be modular, allowing for one section at a time to be unwrapped if anything needed to be done to it. As she began to unroll the strip, as Tefnakhte and Varney stepped forward to watch closely what she was doing, Greta was aware of a certain kind of comfort despite all her aches and pains: a sense of rightness, of correctness, of doing the job she was meant to do, and doing it together as part of a team, with Varney there beside her.
Seen from above, Lake Avernus is roughly circular, its banks quartered by the mouths of the four rivers feeding into it. From farther up, the waterways of Hell resemble a crosshairs: Lethe, Acheron, Cocytus, and Phlegethon converge on Avernus, and the vast border-defining River Styx forms a circle intersecting with each. Beyond Styx lie the neighboring domains of Hades and Purgatory.