by Tom Holt
Long pause; then the fridge seemed to shimmer, like heat haze on the road, until it turned into Mr Laertides. ‘Very good indeed,’ he said, ‘I knew you had the right stuff, deep down inside where nobody but me could see it. That’s quite right, you’re the key. Though there’s a bit more to it than that, of course.’
‘Oh,’ Paul said. ‘Right.’
‘It’s a long story,’ Mr Laertides replied, with a grin, ‘and I’ll be happy to tell you all about it later. But right now I need you to open a door for me.’
‘Yes,’ Paul said, ‘but there might not be a later.’
‘There will be.’ Mr Laertides looked at him. ‘I promise.’
Paul looked back at him. On one level, the idea that he’d trust a partner in JWW ever again was about as likely as the Swiss army invading America; and a very good level it was too, as far as Paul was concerned. But there was a look in Mr Laertides’s eye, just a faint glow, as of something buried gleaming through, that was so different from anything he’d seen before that he could just about imagine himself believing in it. Not that that counted for much, given that Laertides was a self-confessed master of glamour and illusion; if he wanted to, he could have every US coastguard ship from Anchorage to San Francisco yelling into their radio sets, ‘The Swiss are coming, the Swiss are coming!’ And he’d said it himself, he needed Paul to do a job for him, a factor which in itself gave him the credibility of Bill Clinton trying to sell someone Mexico.
And yet.
‘Why can’t you do it?’ Paul asked. ‘If I show you where it is.’
‘I know where it is,’ Mr Laertides snapped. ‘I just can’t find it, that’s all. Come on, it’s not exactly difficult, and it’ll only take a moment of your time.’ He paused, calming himself down so obviously that he practically changed colour. ‘Or don’t you want to save Ricky Wurmtoter and Mr Tanner’s mother? I thought they were your friends.’
Bastard, Paul thought. ‘Ricky Wurmtoter drugged Sophie with the love-philtre stuff,’ he said. ‘He completely screwed up my life. Why the hell would I want to save him?’
Curiously, Mr Laertides found that extremely amusing. ‘Why indeed?’ he said. ‘But you do. Admit it. OK, it’s not so much wanting to as feeling you’re obliged to, conscience and all that malarkey.One of these days, I might even find time to tell you exactly why you feel under an obligation to him. But anyhow, let’s forget about Ricky. Rosie Tanner, now. She’s your friend, right?’
Paul looked away. ‘She had me killed,’ he said sullenly. ‘By goblins. Goblins jumping out of a cake, for crying out loud.’
‘Yes, but you know she didn’t mean anything by it. Come on, Paul, there’s no point lying to me, I know exactly what you’re thinking. You’ve got to save them, you don’t have a choice. It’s who you are. You’re the hero, see.’
‘Balls,’ Paul replied with feeling.
‘Absolutely not. Ever since you joined the firm, it’s been one heroic deed after another. Saving lives. Rescuing people. Standing up to Countess Judy and the Fey. You’re twenty times more of a hero than Ricky. He just does stuff for money. You can see the difference, can’t you?’
But Paul shook his head. ‘You’re wrong about me,’ he said. ‘Surprising, really, a smart bloke like you. I’m not doing it. Go and find your own bloody door.’
‘Good Lord,’ Mr Laertides said softly. ‘You mean it, don’t you? Even though it’ll leave Ricky and Rosie stranded in there for ever and ever.’ He frowned, then grinned. ‘It’s because you’re not sure, right? You can’t figure out who’s the real bad guy here, Theo Van Spee or yours truly. You think that if you open the door for me and I turn out to be the arch-villain or the Dark Lord or something, the universe’ll suddenly be knee-deep in the smelly stuff and it’ll all be your fault. Yes?’
Paul looked down at the ground. ‘Something like that,’ he mumbled.
‘You prat,’ Mr Laertides said, but there was the faintest trace of pride in his voice, as if he’d been hoping that Paul would turn out to have the moral fibre to refuse. ‘All right, then, here’s the deal. Sophie drank the love philtre, right? She’s now inalienably besotted with you for ever and ever.’
‘Apparently.’ Paul winced. ‘Don’t they have tact where you come from?’
‘No, actually. Here’s what I’m offering. If you open the door for me, I’ll put it right. I’ll take the love spell off Sophie, and I’ll make her permanently immune to it. What do you reckon? Tempted?’
It was one of those moments that made Paul realise that, nine times out of ten, Life really is doing it on purpose. Suddenly, everything seemed to narrow down into a very small, tight place, where two alternatives confronted him, and both of them meant losing the girl he loved; and without her, what was the point of anything? Without her, he’d have to go on being the same old Paul Carpenter, Cupid’s labrador, always running after the arrows and bringing them back in his mouth. He could see the rest of his life stretching away in front of him, the long dark road you have to walk when you’ve fallen asleep on the last bus home and ended up at the terminal. Being himself, for ever and ever. But that seemed to help, in a way; because if he gave up on himself as a bad job, there could only be one logical course of action.
‘Deal,’ he said.
‘Excellent.’ Mr Laertides grinned, like a suitcase unzipping on three sides. ‘You’ve always managed somehow to be a decent bloke, Paul. Half-witted, annoying, thick as a stack of railway sleepers, but when the chips are down you’ve always done the right thing. Hasn’t done you much good, of course, but I’m proud of you anyway. Now then. Lead the way.’
‘Not so fast.’ Paul folded his arms; he meant it as a gesture of steely resolution, but he had a nasty feeling that it just made him look as though he had an upset stomach. ‘First you sort out Sophie.’
‘Already done,’ Mr Laertides replied. ‘Magic,’ he explained. ‘And no, you can’t go back and see for yourself because I haven’t got the time or the energy to run a bus service across the interdimensional void. You’ll just have to trust me.’
‘I thought you’d say that,’ Paul replied glumly. ‘Sooner or later everybody says that to me, and I always do. Probably explains a lot about how I keep ending up getting comprehensively screwed.’
‘Ah yes,’ Mr Laertides said, ‘but this time it’s different. This time, it’s me saying it.’
‘That makes a difference, does it?’
‘Yes. It’s the only difference between a lie and the truth, actually. And you can trust me on that, too.’
‘Oh well, in that case,’ Paul said. But apparently Mr Laertides didn’t do irony, either. ‘This way. Just follow me, it’s not far.’
‘Oh, I know where it is,’ Mr Laertides said. ‘After you, though. Might as well do it properly, I guess.’
Out into the corridor, turn left. Paul walked a few yards, then stopped. ‘It’s around here somewhere,’ he said. ‘Only I can’t be more specific than that, because—’
‘No problem,’ Mr Laertides said. He reached out with his left hand, and where the tips of his fingers touched the wall they seemed to soak into it, like ink into blotting paper. They flowed, sideways and down, defining a thin black rectangle about the size and width of your average door frame. ‘This is just a guess and God forbid I should presume to lead the witness, but would it be sort of near here, perhaps? Warm?’
‘Burnt to cinders,’ Paul replied. ‘Now what?’
Mr Laertides took a step back. The rectangle stayed where it was. ‘After you,’ he said.
Paul looked at him. ‘You want me to go in first?’
‘Essential,’ Mr Laertides said. ‘The door won’t open for me. Just give it a push and toddle in, there’s a good lad.’
‘I’m not sure, I—’ Paul didn’t get any further, because Mr Laertides booted him hard on the backside. He hit the wall bang in the middle of the rectangle, and fell forward.
He was home.
Which was ridiculous, because the house he was standing
in no longer existed. When his parents moved to Florida, they’d sold the house that Paul had grown up in to a developer, who’d razed it to the ground and built a block of flats. But here, apparently, he was again, kneeling on the living-room rug trying to figure out who’d just kicked him so hard.
Paul stood up. Home, he thought. Not that I was ever desperately fond of the place. This must be symbolism or some such shit; in which case, it probably doesn’t matter too much that I’m wearing my shoes in the house.
Unnaturally quiet. Back home, either the TV or the radio was on all the time, a permanent background drone, like the voices of the Furies in his head. Other things were missing, too: no smells - furniture polish, air freshener, recently cooked cabbage, stale cigar smoke, elderly and evil-scented dog. Without them it couldn’t really be home; in which case it was a construct, a set, contrived deliberately for his benefit by someone. No, he could be more precise than that. By Professor Van Spee. A password, maybe: as soon as you came in here, it morphed into your own personal space. Or, more likely, a defence mechanism - whenever someone broke in, it turned itself into the environment in which the intruder felt most uncomfortable. That made rather more sense. It’d explain the school set Paul had just come from, too. What a particularly nasty mind the professor had, to be sure. But it was a great comfort, practically overwhelming, to know that it wasn’t actually real, and he wasn’t about to be thirteen again. He’d managed to put up with a lot recently, including death, but he wasn’t sure he could have coped with another dose of adolescence.
So, if it wasn’t real . . . ‘Hello?’ Paul called out. ‘I’m here. Now what?’
Mr Laertides materialised beside him, a shimmering column of black dots like a newspaper photograph, rapidly coagulating into apparent solidity. ‘About time,’ he said. ‘I was afraid you’d got lost or something.’ He looked round, practically quivering with excitement, like a dog about to be walked. ‘So this is it,’ he said, ‘I’m finally here. You have no idea what it’s been like, waiting on the doorstep for thirteen hundred years but not being able to get in.’
‘I’m sure,’ Paul muttered. ‘All right, where’s Ricky Wurmtoter and Mr Tanner’s mum? We’re going to rescue them, remember?’
Mr Laertides nodded. ‘It’s all right, I hadn’t forgotten. And don’t worry - as soon as I’ve nailed Theo Van Spee they’ll be sent straight back to Realspace, no messing. How many times have I got to tell you? Just trust me.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t say that,’ Paul replied. ‘It doesn’t help.’
‘Oh, you.’ Mr Laertides grinned. ‘Anyhow, I can take it from here. You don’t have to hang around if you don’t want to. If you like, I can send you back right now.’
That got Paul’s attention. ‘You can?’
‘Of course. There’s practically no limit to what I can do - hadn’t you figured that out by now? And to think,’ he added, ‘all this time you were keeping milk and old mouldy bits of cheese in me, and you never knew I was one of the five most powerful entities in the universe. You want to go back? I can send you straight to the photocopier room if you want, it’s no trouble.’
‘Why would I want to go there?’
Another of those horrible grins. ‘Because that’s where your Sophie is, right now. Cured,’ he added. ‘Back to normal, or as close as she ever gets to it.’ His eyes (composite, like a spider’s, now Paul came to think of it) twinkled. ‘I don’t want to spoil any surprises for you, but this would actually be rather a good time. And you’ve helped me out here, rather a lot, so why shouldn’t you get something out of it?’
Paul didn’t say anything; but if he’d had movable ears, like a cat, they’d have been flat to the sides of his head. He stayed exactly where he was.
‘Fine,’ Mr Laertides said. ‘You can stay here if you like, makes no odds to me. It’d be good if you could stay back out of the way, just in case there’s any crossfire. I can guarantee your safety about ninety-six per cent, but beyond that you’re on your own. Make your mind up, one way or another. I don’t think I can wait any longer.’
‘You don’t want me here, do you?’ Paul said.
Mr Laertides looked away. ‘Nothing personal,’ he said.
‘Fine. I’ll stay.’
‘Whatever. At your own risk, though.’ Mr Laertides closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Wish me luck,’ he said. ‘Even I need it, you know; for the missing four per cent, if you follow me. Ninety-six per cent is pretty good odds, but I like dealing with gilt-edged stone-cold certainties. Like, for example, the last time I was this close to nailing Theo Van Spee, the odds were ninety-nine point six per cent in my favour, and that was thirteen hundred years ago.’ He took a step forward, then stopped as though he’d bumped into an invisible wall. ‘Word of advice for you,’ he said. ‘Never believe in any god who reckons he’s omnipotent. If the small print on the stem of the burning azalea says Guaranteed 99.78% omnipotent, you’re probably OK. But not a hundred. There’s no such thing.’
‘Thank you,’ Paul said. ‘I’ll bear that in mind. Look, can we get this over with, please? Only all this standing about—’
‘Fine,’ snapped Mr Laertides irritably. ‘Here goes nothing, then.’
He moved very suddenly - like the place where the film’s been badly edited, and five or six frames have been cut out. Before Paul knew what was happening, Mr Laertides had grabbed him; left hand covering his mouth, right hand digging a knife into his neck, almost but not quite hard enough to break the skin.
‘Sorry about this,’ Mr Laertides whispered. ‘But it’s, you know, the old omelette/egg causality nexus. Real bitch, but there you are. Theo!’ he shouted. ‘I know you’re here somewhere. If you make me do it, I’ll snuff the kid.You know you can trust me on that, Theo.’
A sigh. Quite a clear, audible noise: disappointment, regret, contempt, annoyance. ‘There is absolutely no need for violence,’ said Theo Van Spee, walking out of thin air as if he’d just been standing behind a curtain. ‘Just as you know that if you kill him, we will all be lost beyond any hope of recovery.’
Paul could feel Mr Laertides’s shoulder shrug; an instinctive translation of the slight increase of pressure behind the knife-point. ‘Broad as it’s long to me, Theo, you know that. Which is it to be? If you really do want a thousand years of utter chaos either side of now—’
Van Spee laughed coldly. ‘You have never even begun to understand me,’ he said. ‘No wonder you have failed so wretchedly up to this point. To hunt something, you have to understand it perfectly. But you are the sort of hunter who closes his eyes and shoots arrows into the forest at random. Eventually you will hit something, but it will take you a very long time.’
‘Whatever, Theo. Right now, I’ve got your nuts in a mole wrench. Whichever way you choose, I’ll have you this time. All that’s left is how much damage you want to do to the scenery, and that makes no odds, as far as I’m concerned. Either way, your choice.’
‘You clown.’ Van Spee’s voice was quiet and utterly contemptuous. ‘You claim to be the guardian of all that is good in the universe, but you have the heart and soul of a policeman. Very well; we will let them fight it out. Will that satisfy you?’
A deep sigh from directly behind him; Paul could believe it was thirteen hundred years’ worth of frustration drifting away into the air. ‘Perfect, Theo, that’ll do just fine. I’ve got mine right here; you got your two handy?’
‘As you know perfectly well.’ Van Spee lifted a finger, and that same curtain of invisibility lifted off Ricky Wurmtoter and Mr Tanner’s mum. They stood quite still, but looming slightly, like heavily sedated elephants. ‘And of course,’ he added, ‘the weapons themselves.’
Two bright flashes in the air: a sword and an axe landed on the floor with a clatter, like the loose, rolling hubcaps so dear to the hearts of film directors. Paul didn’t need to look closely in order to know that the sword was a shiny brown colour, with cute spirally silver patterns. Only it wasn’t; more a sort of dark steely
blue.
‘Sorted,’ said Mr Laertides. ‘No, fuck it, where’s she got to? Daft bloody tart. Heel!’ He snapped his fingers, and Vicky materialised a couple of feet away from where Paul was standing. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘What kept you?’
‘All right,’ Vicky snapped back. ‘I was drying my hair, actually. Came as quick as I could.’
‘You were drying your hair. Anyhow,’ Mr Laertides said, ‘you’re here now. Let’s get this over and done with, Theo, before you figure out some other way of making trouble. You’re a clever bloke, but you change your mind more often than a tart changes her knickers. Ready?’
Van Spee shrugged. ‘Of course.’
‘And no cheating. Promise?’
A mild click of the tongue from the professor. ‘Even now you wilfully refuse to understand anything. All I wanted to do was prevent the fight. If that objective is lost to me, the outcome is a matter of complete indifference. In fact, I would prefer not to watch. I would rather read a book, if that is acceptable to you.’
Mr Laertides laughed. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘If you want to improve your mind, go ahead. It’s the last chance you’ll ever get.’
‘Then I most assuredly shall not neglect it,’ Van Spee replied mildly. From his pocket he produced a battered black paperback; he picked out a bookmark and began to read.
‘“Heart and soul of a policeman”,’ Mr Laertides muttered under his breath. ‘You’re going to have a long, long time to regret saying that. All right,’ he barked, letting go of Paul so that he stumbled forward. “let’s finish up and then we can all go home. Your majesties.’
Ricky came to life with a shudder, walked forward, stooped, and picked up the axe. He was staring at Paul as though there was nothing else visible in the room.
‘You what?’ Paul asked.
‘You and him,’ Mr Laertides said. ‘Fuck me, I was just trying to be polite. Oh, for pity’s sake,’ he added. ‘You still haven’t got it, have you?’