“Uh-huh.” Robert’s refusal to negotiate frustrated her. Aerune was pure power—and Robert was talking like he was some kind of special effect that could be captured between commercial breaks. All Robert could see was what he wanted to see—not what was there.
This was not going to end well. It was time to cut her losses.
“Look, I’ve got to finish up some reports on our lab rats and tweak the T-Stroke mix before I go home and grab some Z’s. What time should I meet you back here tonight?” she asked brightly.
Robert smiled, sure he’d won his point. “Be back here around nine. We’ll set things up in the Park this time—after midnight there’s nobody there but the muggers. We’ll have plenty of elbow room and plenty of peace and quiet. And a few surprises for our mutie friend.”
“Sounds good.” Jeanette forced another smile. “See you then.”
After Robert left, Jeanette spent a long time staring at her reflection in the black mirror of her office wall, making up her mind for sure. She’d always known that someday it would be time to leave this little party Robert was throwing, and actually, she’d been here longer than she thought she’d be. But she could smell disaster ahead, and with her own survivor instincts, Jeanette decided she didn’t want to be here when it hit.
Aerune haunted her thoughts. Power. Promise. Danger. She felt the temptation to stay just to see him again beckon to her, and quashed it firmly. It’s time to go.
She’d always known that someday it’d be time, and planned accordingly. Jeanette opened her guitar case and felt around in the lining until she found what she was looking for—a red plastic diskette with a smiley-face sticker on it. She loaded its contents to her computer and hesitated for a moment before pressing “Send.”
Has to be done. She pressed the button. The virus began working its way through the system, erasing every hint of her presence—and her work.
Next she went through her desk, pulling all her paper files and shredding them. She took the bags to the incinerator herself—in her outlaw days, Jeanette had never relied on anyone else to cover her tracks: when you wanted something done right, you did it yourself.
When that was done, she took a last look around. The office where she’d spent so much of her time was completely sanitized. No trace of her presence remained, except for her guitar and sound system, a rack of CDs, and a few posters on the walls. She wasn’t going to take anything but the guitar with her, but she couldn’t leave the other stuff down here. This place wasn’t supposed to exist.
Because it was Saturday, most of the day staff wouldn’t be coming in at all. She commandeered a cart from the laundry and loaded the rest of her personal gear into it, and took it upstairs where it belonged.
Her “official” office cubicle looked strangely virginal, since she was almost never there. She took a few minutes to set up the stereo, scatter the personal things she was abandoning around it, and hang her posters on the walls. She took the cart back down to the laundry (details were important when you were planning to vanish) and came back up to the office to turn on her computer.
She tested her worm by logging in with her Black Projects user code, and was relieved to see the message “No Such User.” She reset the time on her computer to a date last week and logged in under her rarely-used official, abovestairs account. Then she spent a few minutes writing memos that would “prove” she’d gone on vacation a week ago, and wouldn’t be back for two more.
Let Robert start a war with Faerie. I hope Lord Aerune makes hash of him. And either way, I’m covered, and he’s left holding the bag. Bye-bye, Lintel. I can’t say it’s been fun, because it hasn’t.
When everything was arranged to her satisfaction, she took her guitar and went home. Her apartment had always been just a place to store her stuff, and Jeanette wasn’t the kind of person who accumulated a lot of stuff she really cared about—she’d learned that lesson early and too well. She threw a couple of pairs of jeans and some T-shirts on the bed, and pulled her studded leather jacket and engineer boots out of the back of the closet. She took a moment to strip the vest with the Sinner Saints colors off the jacket—it’d been years since she’d worn her colors, and she didn’t want to run into any old friends now—before diving back into the closet for her saddlebags. She packed quickly—clothes, music, and cash, lots of that—before putting on her boots and jacket.
Time to go. If that idiot wants to commit suicide, he can do it without me—and if he manages to survive, he’ll still need me and maybe we’ll do the dance. But I’m not taking any falls for him. Survival of the fittest. I’m sure Robert would agree.
Her Harley was waiting for her in the garage below—a cream and maroon touring beauty she’d named Mystery, on which she’d blown most of her first paychecks when she’d come to Threshold. She stripped off the protective cover and slung her saddlebags over Mystery’s back, buckling them into place before lashing her guitar down to the pillion seat. It would make an awkward load, and she might have been willing to leave the instrument behind if she’d been sure she was coming back.
But she wasn’t.
She wheeled slowly out of the underground garage, blinking owlishly at the winter sunlight even through the tinted face-shield of her full-coverage helmet. She debated where to go for a moment, but given her mode of transport, it was pretty much a no-brainer.
South. Somewhere warm, with no snow and fewer questions.
Campbell didn’t show up at the lab at nine o’clock. At nine-thirty Robert checked her downstairs office, found it stripped, and called her house. At nine-forty-five he let himself into her apartment with a passkey he didn’t think she knew he had, and looked around. The place looked like a hotel room that had been trashed by gypsies.
God, how can anyone live like this? You can take the girl off the street, but you can’t take the street out of the girl, he thought in disgust.
She wasn’t here either. He looked around. There were signs of hasty packing, and the ice-cream carton in the back of the fridge where Campbell kept her stash of ready cash was empty. He felt a wave of smug disdain. So she’s bolted. Da widdle girly got scared and ran. Jesus, isn’t that just like a woman?
But did this really change anything? Robert thought about that for a moment, making up his mind. It wasn’t like she’d be going to the police, not with what he had on her. Actually, Campbell’s bailout wasn’t entirely a bad thing. Ever since the drug trials had started panning out, Campbell had been acting pretty skittish, and that mutant-guy from last night showing up had obviously been more than she could handle. After all, Robert Lintel thought sagely, it’s one thing to read about psychic powers in a fiction book and another altogether to see them in front of your face.
He’d probably scared her into running by talking about setting a trap for the guy tonight. Women just weren’t any good in military situations. Oh, she faked it better than most, but Robert had seen the flash of fear in her eyes when the guy in the cloak had showed up. She’d just lost her head and panicked. How typical. Women were all like that.
But I don’t need her anymore. I’ve got more than enough T-Stroke to turn a sample over to a good research chemist and find out the proportions—and more than enough to finish the trials without her.
And once he’d done that, he could write his own ticket anywhere in the world and kiss Threshold good-bye.
In fact, maybe it’s better to wait a day or two before trying to trap this Aerune again. He’ll be sweating, and I’ll have time to rope in a few more pieces of bait.
Pleased with his conclusions, Robert Lintel left the apartment.
Everything’s going to work out just fine. . . .
NINE:
A GAME OF CHESS
Though his dreams were only dreams, they were haunted by the Unseleighe taint Eric had felt in Central Park and the nagging sense that there was something he was missing. He woke up late on Sunday morning, rumpled and disgruntled and aware that somehow he’d blown most of the weekend without get
ting his coursework done. His mind felt fuzzy—the mental equivalent of indigestion—and he badly wanted someone to talk it out with. But Greystone wasn’t available—when he looked, the gargoyle wasn’t even on its perch outside his window—and Toni and Jimmie had both made it pretty clear last night that the Guardians wouldn’t welcome his involvement in the situation.
But the more he thought about it, the more Eric was convinced there was something back there in the Park that they’d all missed. Something important.
Well, if they won’t talk to me about it, I know someone who’ll at least listen.
Even the most avaricious capitalists took Sundays off, and Ria Llewellyn knew from long experience that you got better work out of people if you didn’t ask them to give 110 percent all the time. She’d been on everybody’s back most of the week, getting a feel for her New York companies and finishing up with dinner with Eric last night—which, while fun, could not by any stretch of the imagination be called restful—and today Ria was looking forward to a leisurely day of shopping and sightseeing. Maybe she’d even succumb to the impulse to go down and see the giant Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. She’d forgotten how much she liked New York—it was such a human city, so un-elvish, that she actually found herself preferring it to L.A., where not even the special effects were real, let alone the people. Too many bad associations there: tragedy and betrayal and her long painful climb back to life.
Besides, Eric will be here for at least another year. . . .
That was certainly one of the attractions. They’d made a good start last night. He wasn’t as indifferent to her as he’d tried to pretend. And he wasn’t out to kill her, either on his own behalf or someone else’s. In Ria’s opinion, both of those things made a good start to a relationship.
The windows of her sitting room at the top of the Sherry gave her a magnificent view over the Park, an unexpected oasis of green in the steel and concrete forest of the City. The trees were winter-bare, the grass a faded brown-green, but at night the lights shining down into the park gave it an air of mystery—a man-made fairyland, in sharp contrast to the inhuman beauty of Underhill. Ria preferred it.
She was lingering over a last cup of coffee, a legal pad on her lap, when her phone rang. Few enough people knew where she was that she had no hesitation about picking up the phone instead of letting the front desk take the call.
“Hello?”
“Ria? It’s Eric!”
Eric! She allowed herself a small smile of triumph. The first one to pick up the phone lost. And your loss is my gain.
“Eric,” she purred. “How wonderful to hear from you so soon. Did you sleep well?” she asked, layering a double meaning into the innocent phrase.
She heard a rueful chuckle on the other end of the line. “Not really. I’d like to talk to you.”
And do more than talk, I’ll wager. Should she lead him on for awhile to demonstrate her power? Or would immediately giving him what he wanted be more effective? Decisions, decisions.
“Of course. Why don’t you come over here? I’m at the Sherry-Netherland. The view of the Park is spectacular. I’ll order a fresh pot of coffee. Or would you prefer tea?”
“Central Park?” For a moment Eric sounded completely nonplussed. Then: “Sure. Give me about forty minutes.”
“I’ll be waiting.” And to hell with the coffee.
Eric hung up the phone, staring at it as if it were about to do something strange and unusual. He didn’t know what he’d expected when he decided to call Ria, but it wasn’t this, well, blatant an invitation. What was she up to this time? Other than the obvious, and if there’s one thing you can say about Ria, it’s that she isn’t. Anyway, he was committed now. And there couldn’t be any harm in going up to her place to talk, now, could there? Besides, if he went there, he wouldn’t have to risk stirring up the Guardians by poking his nose into their business. He thought the best thing might be to stay out of their way if they’d stay out of his.
Time to get dressed, but in something a little less warlike than what he’d worn to their last encounter.
He pulled out a chunky oatmeal-colored fisherman’s sweater, and hesitated for a moment between slacks and jeans. Ria wasn’t a jeans kind of person, he decided, and went for a pair of dark grey slacks. He grabbed the leather jacket he’d worn last night, and dumped the contents of his messenger bag out on his bed to make room for the flute. He gave the books and notebooks a resigned glance. Rector wouldn’t cut him any slack; he’d better get his paper—or at least, some kind of paper—done before 2 p.m. tomorrow.
Somehow.
He’d been past the Sherry-Netherland a few times in his rambles, but he’d never been inside. It was an imposing structure, like something out of an Edith Wharton novel: very repressed, very Old New York. He almost expected the gaudily uniformed doorman to refuse to let him in.
He made his way across the lobby to the elevators, found the one that serviced Ria’s floor, and got in. The elevator was an express, and took off with a swoosh! that left Eric’s stomach far behind, though it mercifully released him a few moments later. The corridor outside its doors was painted a tasteful rose-beige that reminded Eric of something you might find at a mortician’s. Ria’s penthouse suite was at the end of the hallway, and as he approached it, Ria opened the door.
She was wearing a man-tailored blouse of heavy white silk that she’d wrapped, kimono-style, instead of buttoning, and it was pretty obvious that there was nothing under it. It was tucked into the waistband of a pair of wide-legged cuffed and pleated pants of bronze hammered silk, and on her feet she wore a pair of high-heeled gold mules. Eric could see that her toenails were painted Jungle Red. With her blond hair hanging loose in a Veronica Lake sweep, Ria looked like the Bad Girl from every film noir ever made.
“Nice to see you again,” she said briskly. Spoiling the illusion? Or breaking a deliberate spell? With any other woman, he’d know. “Come on in.”
Eric followed her into the main room of the suite. Her perfume hung in the air, the same subtle understated floral she’d worn last night at dinner. He tried to ignore it. He’d come here to talk over a problem, not be a slave to his raging hormones.
There was a coffee service set out on a low table bordered on three sides by loveseats in a pale shadow stripe. As Ria had said, there was also a splendid view of Central Park. Eric tried to locate the spot where he’d stood last night and failed. It wouldn’t be hard to find again, though.
“Coffee?” Ria asked, and when Eric nodded she poured. He still found something deliciously perverse about drinking coffee, since what was harmless to him was so deadly to Kory and his other elven friends.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your day,” Eric began, “but something pretty weird happened last night, and, well, I wanted to talk about it to someone who’d understand. You see—well, to begin with, the place I live isn’t an ordinary apartment building.” Lame, Banyon, really lame!
But Ria didn’t zing him on it, the way Beth or some of the Sidhe would have.
“So I gathered, after I met your stony friend,” she commented, sipping her own coffee. She regarded him over the rim of the cup with steady emerald-green eyes, their vivid color one of the many legacies of her mixed blood.
“Well, Greystone’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Eric said glumly, belatedly realizing how much he’d have to explain before he got to the Unseleighe Nexus, and how little Ria was probably going to like any of it. “You see, there are these folks called Guardians. . . .”
Quickly he sketched out as much as he knew of the Guardians and their mission to protect the average run of humankind from the Dark Powers. He told her about Dharinel and Kory’s warning of Unseleighe activity in the city, and of his own strange, possibly prophetic, dream about the goblin tower overshadowing Central Park amid the ruins of Manhattan.
“I told Jimmie about it, but with the Sidhe you never know when. Right now? Next year? Next century? But last night after you left, Toni ca
me to see me because the Guardians had run into something funky out in the Park that they wanted my opinion on. When I took a look, I found that the whole place is lousy with Unseleighe magic—and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on—and it looked to me like somebody was trying to open a Nexus.”
“In Central Park?” Ria’s voice was rich with disbelief. “Using what for a Bard? And leaving aside the question of what kind of Sidhe maniac would want to open up a Nexus in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world? Sidhe magic would be almost worthless with all the iron and steel—and man-made electro-magnetic fields—around, even if they lived long enough to use it. Even a human sorcerer has trouble in a big city, with all those minds around clogging up the Etherial Plane.”
“Seleighe magic wouldn’t work here,” Eric admitted. “At least not consistently. But Unseleighe power runs a little differently, doesn’t it?” He knew Perenor had been acting pretty much as a lone wolf in his vendetta against Terenil, but someone that ruthless must have made overtures to the Dark Court at some point.
Ria considered, worrying at her lower lip with her teeth as she thought. “I don’t know that much about the Dark Court, but I’d have to say that most of the power they use isn’t that different. Not in kind, anyway, or ultimate source. But in degree, yes—the Dark Court isn’t squeamish about feeding off other peoples’ life-force. And in a city this size, I’d have to say there’d be enough prey available to take the edge off any discomfort Cold Iron would give them. Enough deaths would allow them to punch through any kind of interference, at least for a short time. But whoever it is that’s trying to put up a Nexus here, he’d have to know he couldn’t just maraud around and not expect to be stopped—by your Guardians, or the police at the very least. And for all that either of us knows, there’s some alphabet agency out there like the Men In Black to save the world from the scum of Faerie. This isn’t the Stone Age!”
A Host of Furious Fancies Page 24