by Tom Holt
It was quite a long time, relatively speaking, before Cassie answered. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’
‘Provided’ She was looking at him again. ‘Provided you’ll help me with this other thing. The reincarnation stuff.’
‘What? Oh, that.’ Colin made a slightly contemptuous gesture. ‘If you insist.’
‘Right, then.’ She snapped the lid of her briefcase shut. ‘I’ll see what I can do. No promises, of course, but I will do my best. Thnt’s all I can offer.’
‘That’s fine.’ He could feel himself wilting, like a microwaved violet. ‘I’d really appreciate it.
‘I think you’re stupid,’ she added, ‘and probably mad, but it’s not up to me to pass judgement. Unprofessional.’
‘Fine.’
‘All right, then.’ She moved toward the door. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
‘Good. I’ll, um, look forward to hearing from you.’
‘Okay. I’ll see myself out, I know the way.’
When she’d gone, he sat down in a chair, feeling filleted and rather sick. He wondered if he’d made the offer because he didn’t really believe in any of it, so naturally it didn’t matter. That’d be good, if it was true, but it wasn’t. Instead, he realised, he’d just performed an act of mindless, pointless, gormless heroism, a bit like running back into a burning house to save a cockroach. An image of Oscar formed in his mind, and he squirmed. A truly noble and altruistic act; but there’d be no medal, no headlines in the local rag about have-a-go-hero Colin Hollingshead. Instead (and this really did make him wince) there they’d be, the three of them, in perpetuity; himself, Dad and Oscar. Together for ever, like it says on kids’ T-shirts.
Talk about bloody stupid.
The door opened, and it was at least two seconds before he realised who’d come in.
‘I thought we were having lunch,’ she said.
Christ, he thought, I’d forgotten. Then he realised that it wasn’t quite as important as it had been, an hour or so earlier.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Actually, I was wondering, do you think we could possibly give it a miss for today? Only I’ve got a bit of a headache, and’
She was looking at him. That made two young women looking at him on the same day. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, in a voice that suggested that it bloody well wasn’t. ‘You don’t need to make up any excuses.’
‘Sorry? I don’t’
‘I heard you,’ she said, tight-lipped with anger. T was just passing the door earlier, and I heard you talking to her. That bitch,’ she amplified, for the avoidance of any doubt.
‘What? Oh, you mean Ms’
‘She said, we need to talk about last night. I heard her. You must think I’m really, really stupid.’
Oh for crying out loud, Colin thought. ‘Look, it wasn’t anything like’
‘And then I went back downstairs to have a bloody good cry,’ she went on, ‘and then I thought, maybe I got the wrong end of the stick, I’ll go back up and see if they’re still there, so I came back up and I heard you. You were in my dreams, you said. You bastard,’ she added. ‘So don’t you give me any bullshit about a headache, because’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Colin said, and even while he was saying It he could feel the fuel gauge of his emotional reserve dipping into the red. An hour or so can make all the difference. Not so very long ago, nothing could have mattered more than putting things right with the only girl in the world for him. Now, though, he was too worn out to care. Nevertheless: ‘She’s just someone I have to work with,’ he said. ‘That stuff you heard, it’s completely out of context. I couldn’t give a stuff about her, all right?’
‘Liar.’
And he thought: yes, I do love this stupid woman, very much indeed. On the other hand, life’s too short. Very much too short. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said wearily. ‘If you don’t believe me, that’s your choice. Great pity, but there it is.’
There was some small consolation in seeing on someone else’s face the sort of shocked bewilderment he’d been feeling ever since he’d joined the meeting. ‘Right,’ she said, and slammed the door behind her.
Colin sat down again and tried not to laugh. Comical; what had the Clay female been saying about time-crossed lovers? Nothing like the prospect of eternal damnation to take the sting out of a tiff with a girl. In fact, looked at from that perspective, it was a universal panacea for all possible ills. So he was a born loser with no love life and lousy career prospects, but he was going to hell for ever, so who cared? Might as well toddle back to his kennel and stick a few more of those revolting brochures into envelopes, because it really didn’t matter. Once you kick the habit of hope, there’s all sorts of tiresome chores you don’t have to bother with any more; it’s as good as a doctor’s note, or a letter from your Mum saying you’re to be let off PE. It was enough to make a man next best thing to cheerful.
‘So, Mr Shumway,’ said the face behind the desk. ‘What do you see yourself doing in five years’ time?’
Benny looked at him through his bulletproof-glass-thick spectacles. ‘Exactly five years from now?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Right,’ Benny replied, ‘just bear with me a second.’ He put a hand to the side pocket of his jacket and produced something the size and shape of an orange, wrapped in a spotlessly clean handkerchief. ‘Thought you might ask me that, so I borrowed this from a pal of mine. At the Bank,’ he added, whisking away the hanky to reveal a clear glass globe. As he did so, something flat and shiny tumbled out of the folds and fell on the desk, but Benny appeared not to have noticed. ‘So,’ he went on, glancing at his watch, ‘it’s two-fifteen on Wednesday the’
The glass ball started to glow; then its interior went milky. Benny nodded in satisfaction and put it down in the middle of the desk. ‘Reception can be a bit tricky sometimes this side of the Divide,’ he said, ‘but this is the Zone 2 model, they reckon it works in the land of the living as well. Now, let’s see.’ The milkiness was beginning to disperse. ‘Look, there’s me,’ Benny said brightly, pointing to a small figure in the centre of the globe. ‘And’ He paused, and a grin slowly spread across his face. ‘And just look what I’m doing,’ he said. ‘And in the middle of the afternoon, too.’ He bent his head over the globe and squinted; the face on the other side of the desk was looking away with a rather stunned expression. ‘Can’t say I know her,’ Benny went on. ‘At least, not yet. Definitely something to look forward to, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Yes, fine,’ the face said, in a high, strained voice. ‘Could you please cover that thing up or put it away?’
‘Sure,’ Benny said, swathing the globe in his hanky and pocketing it. ‘Right, next question.’
The face had that look on it that suggests its owner has just seen something nasty he’s read about in books but never actually witnessed before. Benny made a mental note of that.
‘How do you think,’ the face went on, after a three-second silence, ‘you could best improve your contribution to the success of the team?’
Benny stroked his beard. ‘Hm,’ he said, ‘tricky one. Let’s see, now. My job description says I’m the cashier, and of course I do all that, including,’ he added, with a slight tightening of the voice, ‘the banking. And since young Ricky came to his bad end I’ve been looking after the pest-control side of things, so that’s two people’s jobs I’m doing; no big deal, mind you, it’s just killing dragons and battling the Undead and so forth, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist. How could I best improve my contribution, though?’ He frowned thoughtfully. ‘I guess the best thing would be for you lot to make me a partner. You see, if I was running the show, instead of just’
‘I see.’ The face made a note on his sheet of paper. ‘So, how long have you been with the firm?’
‘Now you’re asking,’ Benny said, scratching his head. ‘It’d have to be ‘56 or ‘57 - not sure which, I think the Crimean War was still on - when Jack Wells fi
rst asked me if I’d fancy coming and working for him. I was with Cunningham’s at the time, if memory serves, or was it Barker and Earl? I get them mixed up. Anyhow, it was just after I’d married my third, no, I tell a lie, my fourth wife.’
The face glanced down at his notes. ‘That would be,’ he said, ‘Contessa Judith de Castel’ Bianco.’
‘That’s her,’ Benny said, smiling. ‘Of course, at the time she was still in the chorus at the Gaiety - I didn’t find out she was actually the Queen of the Fey until some time later. Bit of a shock, but I still think we could’ve made a go of it, if she hadn’t been so dead set on wiping out the human race.’
‘Ah,’ said the face. ‘Now, then.’ He looked at his piece of paper and seemed to draw strength from it. ‘If we look at your personnel file for a moment, I see that you were suspended on full pay in June 1963. Could you tell me something about that?’
Benny let his head loll back, and laughed. ‘That was a right old game,’ he said. ‘Of course, old Kurt Lundqvist was still with us back then, before his accident, and he got this call from a very old and valued client of ours, one of those big private hospitals in the States; Florida, I think it was. Anyhow, they’d got a vampire in the plasma store, drinking them out of house and home. Kurt could see it’d be a two-man job, so he asked me if I fancied going along, I said yes, because it was years and years since I’d last been to Florida’
Twenty minutes later, he said, ‘And that’s all there was to it, really. Of course, once Humph Wells and Dennis Tanner realised what had happened, and I’d actually saved two hundred and fifty thousand lives and landed the firm the Union Tool & Die account, they reinstated me like a shot and gave me a nice juicy bonus to make up for it all. I still kid young Dennis about it from time to time, when he needs taking down a peg or two.’
The face, who’d been trying to interrupt for the past quarter of an hour, made a great show of ticking something on his sheet of paper, put the cap back on his pen and dropped it into his top pocket. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think that more or less covers everything, unless there’re any points you’d like to raise’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Benny said, ‘there are. Actually, I made out a short list.’ From his other pocket he took a medium-sized spiral-bound notebook and riffled through the pages, all of which were crammed with neat but minuscule handwriting. ‘We can quickly skim through them now if you like,’ he went on, ‘or I could leave my notes with you and we could reschedule. Up to you entirely.’
‘If you could possibly leave it with me’
‘No trouble.’ Benny handed over the notebook and smiled. As he drew his hand back, he palmed and retrieved the small, shiny flat thing that had fallen out of his hanky earlier. The face was too busy staring in horror at the notebook to pay him any attention. ‘Right,’ Benny went on, looking at his watch. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d better be getting down to the Bank. I know time has no meaning down there, but they still get a bit funny if I’m late.’
On leaving the interview room, Benny didn’t head for his office and the connecting door that led to the Land of the Dead and the Bank; instead, he dashed up the stairs and along a corridor to Connie Schwartz-Alberich’s office. He had at least twenty minutes in hand before he had to do the banking, but he’d gambled on Them (whoever They were) not knowing that.
Connie looked up as he came in. ‘Well?’ she said.
Benny chuckled and sat down. ‘Give you three guesses,’ he plied.
‘Benny, I’m not in the mood’
‘Give you three guesses.’
‘Oh, all right.’ She sighed. ‘A porcupine.’
Kenny frowned. ‘No.’
‘Two porcupines.’
‘Proper guesses.’
‘Just tell me what you saw in the bloody mirror.’
Kenny shrugged, and grinned. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
Connie lifted her head and stared at him. ‘What did you just say? ‘
(The little shiny thing was, of course, a small shard of genuine imp-reflecting mirror: a rare and expensive device of Chinese origin which shows the person reflected in it as they really are. The mirror polish on JWW’s boardroom table wasn’t just there to look nice; over the years, the partners had found it extremely handy during meetings with clients and fellow professionals for finding out exactly who - or what - they were dealing with.)
‘Absolutely nothing,’ Benny repeated. ‘He might as well not have been there.’
‘Oh.’ Connie sat back in her chair and blinked a couple of limes. ‘You sure that’s the right bit of glass?’ she asked. ‘I mean, if it’s just an ordinary mirror’
‘No way.’ Benny frowned. ‘I do know the difference, Con.’ He look the shiny fragment from his pocket and put it on the desk where she could see it. ‘So no, we’re not just dealing with a boring old witch or vampire. The imp-reflector shows you the true shape of what it reflects. So, logically, if I couldn’t see anything at all’
‘Bugger me,’ Connie said softly.
‘So,’ Benny went on, ‘I’ve been thinking, and I reckon that when I go to the Bank this afternoon, I’ll ask Mr Dao to do me a favour. That ought to settle it once and for all.’
Connie’s eyebrows tightened. ‘What kind of favour?’
‘Let it be a surprise,’ Benny replied, and grinned. ‘Anyhow, the bottom line is, if I were you I wouldn’t start clearing out your desk or looking for another job quite yet. All right?’
Before Connie could say anything, there was a knock at her door. It proved to be the thin-faced girl, the one whose name nobody could ever remember.
‘Oh,’ the girl said, looking at Connie and then at Benny. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were busy. I’ll come back another time.’
Benny stood up. ‘That’s all right,’ he said, ‘I was just pushing off. I’ll drop in later, Con, after I get back. Good idea of yours about the crystal ball, by the way,’ he added. ‘Freaked him out somewhat, no idea why. See you.’
Once Benny had gone, the thin-faced girl sat down in the chair he’d just vacated. ‘I wanted to ask your advice,’ she said. ‘If it’s no bother, I mean.’
Connie shrugged. ‘Fire away,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’ The thin-faced girl frowned. ‘I came to you because I know you’re very experienced and you’ve worked in all sorts of different specialisations’
‘Don’t worry about all that,’ Connie interrupted. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Well,’ the thin-faced girl said and then seemed to stall, like a dodgy old car at traffic lights. ‘It’s a bit difficult, actually. Personal, if you see what I’
‘Understood,’ Connie said, ‘that’s fine. Mum’s the word.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I said mum’s the word.’
The thin-faced girl raised an eyebrow. ‘The word for what?’
‘Don’t worry about it. I mean, it’s just an expression. What’s the problem?’
‘It’s not actually for me, you understand, it’s for a friend.’
‘Got you,’ Connie said impatiently. ‘So?’
The thin-faced girl paused, visibly collecting her thoughts. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘my friend - let’s just say, she’s not terribly good at, urn, personal relationships.’
Connie’s heart sank like an over-insured freighter, but she nodded briskly and said, ‘I see. Go on.’
‘She has trouble, urn, relating to people,’ the thin-faced girl said, ‘especially in, let’s say, a romantic context.’
‘All right. And?’
‘She was wondering’ The thin-faced girl hesitated. ‘Do you happen to know if JWW makes such a thing as a love philtre?’
Here we go, Connie thought. It was the inevitable newbie question, and answering it was very boring when you’d already answered it five hundred times. ‘Yes,’ she said, and as she said it, a little annoying Microsoft paper clip appeared in the margin of her mind. ‘Yes, it’s the best in the business, though we say so ourse
lves. But,’ she went on, as the virtual paper clip dropped down into a memo, ‘surely they had love philtres at - where was it you said you worked before you came here?’
‘UMG,’ the thin-faced girl said. ‘And before that I was at Mortimers.’
‘Well,’ Connie said, ‘I know for a fact that Mortimers make one. Our main competitor in that sector.’
‘Yes,’ the thin-faced girl said, ‘but it’s not’ She frowned, until her face was practically one-dimensional. ‘It doesn’t last for over,’ she said.
‘What?’ Connie thought for a moment. ‘Oh, I get you. Yes, there’s an antidote to the Mortimers philtre. Actually, it’s one of their selling points, that you can reverse the effects if you change your mind or something. Just as we make a big deal out of the tact that there’s no antidote to ours.’
The girl was looking at Connie with little sharp laser eyes. ‘Really?’
‘Well, there’s death,’ Connie said, a bit rattled. ‘Till death do us part, and all that. Otherwise no. Drink the JWW philtre and it’s for ever. I used to know all the gory biochemical details; Something about a resequenced agapotropic enzyme’
‘For ever,’ the thin-faced girl said. ‘I see. Thanks, you’ve been very helpful.’
She got up to leave. Red-alert klaxons started blaring in Connie’s mind. ‘Just a second,’ she said. ‘This friend of yours’
‘Yes?’
‘Look, take it from me, they really aren’t worth it. Men, I mean. You spend half your life trying to nab one, and the other half asking yourself how you could’ve been so bloody stupid. You know, fish and bicycles.’ She tailed off; the thin-faced girl was staring at her.
‘Well,’ the thin-faced girl said, ‘she’s not a friend, exactly. Thanks. Bye.’
She closed the door behind her. Connie hesitated for a longish moment - about a fifth of a second - before jumping out of her chair, running to the door and yanking it open. But the corridor was empty; fifty yards in either direction.
CHAPTER ELEVEN