Mad Maudlin

by Mercedes Lackey

  At last luck favored him, and he found Neil over by the bar, playing gracious host among the wine bottles. Hosea waited until the two of them were alone.

  "How are you enjoying our little party?" Neil asked him.

  "Waal, it's real fascinatin' and Ah'm right honored to meet Master Fafnir," Hosea said, laying on his country-bumpkin act for all it was worth, "But truth to tell, Ah'm kinda worried about the Exoteric Plane consequences of the Work," Hosea said gravely. "Not on the Inner, you know, but the Outer."

  Bless Tatiana for providing him with all the passwords and jargon he needed for this. She'd done a little skit at the last Basement Party—something about a bunch of Satanists accidentally calling up a New Age guru instead of the Devil—that'd been funny, if peculiar. Paul had laughed until he'd nearly dropped his drink, though it hadn't made all that much sense to Hosea. But it had included a number of useful terms for him to trot out now.

  Neil seemed to accept that Hosea knew what he was talking about—and even better, that he had every right to ask the question. "Oh, you don't need to worry about that," he said easily. "There won't even be a body. In fact, as soon as one of them 'dies,' everyone will forget that they ever even existed. So it's the perfect victimless crime—if you can call it a crime. I'd call it justice, myself. After all, even if they were human once, they aren't anymore." Neil drained his glass, and reached for Hosea's. "Refill?"

  "Surely," Hosea said. The potted plants and ornamental vases at the Grandison residence had been drinking well tonight, as Hosea had no intention of taking more than a sip of wine here. No one with any claim to real Power drank much at all, he'd found—of course Eric stayed away from liquor, but none of the Guardians drank much beyond the odd glass of wine, and the Basement Parties were never fueled by anything stronger than wine and hard cider, and not much of that.

  If he'd needed any more proof that this was a hoodoo operation, it was the amount of vintage this room full of pretend Guardians were putting away.

  Neil turned away and refilled both their glasses, turning back and handing one to Hosea.

  "Jealous?" Neil asked, nodding toward Caity.

  Hosea looked over to where Caity was sitting, resting her head on Fafnir's knee. The Master stroked her hair as he would pat the head of a dog.

  "Ah'd be a pure fool to be jealous of a man like that," Hosea said with complete honesty.

  Neil smiled. "You're one of us already. And when we become Guardians—and she's an Acolyte—it's going to be a whole new world."

  "Ah can believe that." A new world somewhere in Upstate New York, Hosea thought. And a considerably smaller apartment that has barred windows.

  "You look like you're a million miles away," Neil said. His speech was very slightly slurred now, the pattern of the chronic drinker who was nearing his limit.

  "Ah was just thinkin', Ah wouldn't want to have his enemies," Hosea said, nodding toward Fafnir. "You're a brave man to throw your lot in with him like this."

  "Oh, Master Fafnir will protect us," Neil said with complete conviction. "He's got power."

  * * *

  Several of them—Caity and Hosea among them—were dismissed soon afterward. In the elevator down, Caity clung to him, giddy with something more than wine. Hosea had watched her closely, and she hadn't drunk that much.

  But she was as flushed and coquettish as a woman in love—and not with him, Hosea realized glumly. With Fafnir—or worse, with the fantasy that Fafnir'd sold all of them on. And so she'd go on giving "The Master" money in the future—probably more than she could fairly afford—and doing things that made her just a little uneasy, and digging herself in deeper and deeper until she was too ashamed of what she was doing to ask for help to get out.

  And right now, she wouldn't take Hosea's help even if he offered it, Hosea knew. She was in love with the whole idea of being part of a grand secret conspiracy for Good.

  Would he have been, in her place? If Jimmie Youngblood hadn't had to die to make him a Guardian, if he hadn't already had the music magic? If somebody had walked up to him out of the blue and offered him something like this on a silver platter, promising him the chance to be a hero?

  Hosea wasn't sure. But he did know that whatever Fafnir's secret society had started out as, it hadn't been anything like what it had now become, with all its loose talk of tidy convenient executions. Everyone in that room up there had gotten in deeper and deeper by degrees, until now someone like Neil could talk about killing someone as if it were the most natural thing in the world and never turn a hair.

  What Fafnir was telling them seemed fairly clear to Hosea now—piecing together the various things he'd heard tonight with what Caity had told him earlier. Some of this group were supposed to become Guardians immediately, and the rest would become Acolytes—Guardians-to-be. And all of that depended on their executing the False Guardians once Fafnir identified them—which wouldn't "count," because the False Guardians would conveniently dissolve away into dust.

  But Fafnir himself must know that wasn't true. Even if he did manage to capture and kill a Guardian, all he'd have for his pains would be a dead human being. The man was venal, not insane. He couldn't be intending to set these people up for murder—and even bedazzled as they were, when they were actually holding a knife to somebody's throat, they'd surely balk at using it.

  And why should Fafnir give up his soft life just to prove he had ultimate control over the people he'd deluded? He could spin out this nasty game of his for as long as he could deceive his followers, and as long as they never actually tried to execute anyone as a False Guardian, it was simply another sordid and hateful scam, not an actual Guardian problem, wasn't it?

  Or was there a plan behind the plan, one that didn't stop at murder?

  * * *

  He saw Caity to her door. She wanted him to come in and stay awhile, but Hosea wasn't even tempted. When he romanced a lady, he preferred her to be in her right mind, and thinking of him, besides. So he made the excuse of an early morning, and waited until he heard her do up the locks on the inside, and went to see Paul.

  Paul's business was free-lance computer design, and so he kept owl's hours. Hosea wasn't surprised to see a thin thread of light beneath his door.

  "Ah need to talk," he said, when Paul opened the door.

  "I was hoping you'd be by," Paul said. "There's been another Bloody Mary murder."

  "Another one?" Hosea said, appalled. "I was out—"

  "It doesn't matter. I doubt you could have done any more than you did before, and it's not as if we had any warning. Same pattern, same clues that lead . . . nowhere. How do we stop something like that?"

  Hosea sighed. "If'n you knew her True Name, maybe. But the little'uns say it's lost."

  "Well, the more you can find of the Secret Stories, the better. Maybe there's a clue in there, somewhere. But that won't be what you wanted to chat me up about. Come on in. I've got tea on the boil."

  Every inch of the walls of Paul's apartment was covered with books. Software manuals battled for shelf space with esoteric leather-bound tomes, and peculiar curios, both modern and ancient, were tucked into every spare corner of space that remained. What floor space in the living room that was not occupied by a couch, chair, and table was filled with computer equipment, and more computers and books packed every free corner of both bedrooms. The result made Kayla's far smaller apartment look spacious by comparison.

  Hosea transferred an armload of books from the couch to the floor and sat down as Paul went into the kitchen, returning with two large white mugs. When Paul said he was boiling tea, he meant it; the brew he brought Hosea was thick and dark, as strong as coffee. Hosea cradled the mug in his hands and wondered where to begin.

  "You look like a chap with a problem on his mind," Paul said, settling into the chair. "And I'm supposed to have all the answers."

  "Well, it could be a problem for all of us," Hosea said, "since apparently we're the evil False Guardians that this feller name o' Fafnir intends t
o hunt down and destroy."

  "Well, there's an interesting beginning to a story," Paul commented, gazing at the wall above Hosea's head—which contained, of course, more bookshelves.

  Slowly, Hosea told him the whole story, as far as he'd pieced it together: that Caity, along with about twenty other people, had fallen under the spell of someone calling himself Master Fafnir, who said he was a Guardian who had been stripped of his power by a coterie of Evil Guardians, and that once the lot of them had hunted down and killed the Evil Guardians and restored Fafnir's Guardian powers, he would be able to make them all Guardians as well. And meanwhile, they were all supporting him, to the extent of free room and board at the very least.

  "Fafnir," Paul said musingly. "Interesting choice for a nom de ombre. In Norse mythology, Fafnir was the eldest son of the dwarf king Hreidmar, and was turned into a dragon for his wickedness. Guardian of a great horde of gold, which he slew his father—some accounts say his brothers as well—to gain, a horde sometimes known as the Treasures of Light, though by all accounts the treasure was cursed, containing as it did the Rheingold. Slain by the hero Siegfried, eventually, Fafnir was." Paul sipped his tea.

  "Knew about the dragon and Siegfried, didn't know about the other," Hosea said, interested in spite of himself.

  "As for the rest, I'm sorry that Caity's involved, but I'd have to put the whole mess down to ordinary bloody-mindedness and cupidity on this Fafnir's part. Word does get out about us now and again. Sometimes the people we help talk more than they should, afterward. And a clever con man can put a lot together from very little. But it doesn't sound quite as if he actually knows anything about us and how we operate. After all, you were there tonight and he didn't spot you, did he?"

  "Not that I noticed," Hosea admitted reluctantly. But he had to admit that if there'd been anything of True Power in that apartment this evening, he would have felt something.

  "It's a nasty little game the man's playing," Paul said. "And a lot of people are going to be hurt—emotionally and financially—when it's over. But I wouldn't worry about it too much from our perspective. From what you say, there's no power there, other than the power of overpersuasion and the Big Lie. Those followers of your friend Fafnir's are living in the same fantasy world as all the other Charmed Ones, Chosen Ones, and Mage-Knights that litter the streets of this city, and until they do something actively wicked—or actually illegal—it's nobody's business but theirs, unfortunately. And Caity hasn't asked you for help with her problem. Remember that. We cannot intervene unless we are asked."

  If there was one thing that grated on Hosea about the code the Guardians lived by, it was that, but he had no particular choice about accepting it. They could not intervene in a matter until someone asked them for help—or until their own Power demanded they intervene. And so far, neither thing had happened.

  "So Ah guess there's nothing we can do?" Hosea said, disappointed.

  Paul smiled. "I didn't quite say that. We can certainly see if the lads down at the Bunco Squad have an interest—it's a long shot, but worth a try. And you can go on being a good friend to young Caity. When she finds out that her guru's promises are nothing more than smoke and moonlight, she'll need one."

  "And if they invite me back?" Hosea asked.

  Paul considered the matter, gazing off into nothing for several seconds.

  "Now that might be very amusing," he said at last. "Very amusing indeed."

  Chapter Eleven:

  Here's A Health To The Company

  Ria always found Washington to be an exceptionally unreal city—like Hollywood, it worked very hard at producing the intangible. Each city could point to a finished product, but the work involved in producing that product was labyrinthine and disproportionate—an elephant giving birth to a mouse—and for every finished task, a hundred were begun and abandoned. In both cities, lies and secrets were the order of the day—and the people with the most power were not necessarily those who were the most well-known.

  Like every large corporation, LlewellCo did a certain amount of business in the nation's capitol—you didn't survive in the current commercial climate without keeping abreast of the laws and regulations that would affect your company—and so it maintained a permanent residential suite at the Watergate Hotel. It had amused Perenor to make the place his Washington headquarters, and Ria found a certain wry humor in keeping the address. She made good time from the airport, her limousine pulling up at the front of the building only an hour after her plane landed.

  There's a certain fitness in my being here, Ria thought to herself. If she was not in Washington to topple a president, she certainly meant to bring down another man who thought himself above the law: Parker Wheatley.

  Reaching the LlewellCo suite, Ria tipped the bellman, locked the door behind him, and went over to the desk. It was already piled high with phone messages and mail delivered by the efficient—and very discreet—LlewellCo underling who would be her assistant during her stay. Ria checked her watch and then her PDA. Siobhan Prowse, that was it, and she'd be meeting her here in thirty minutes. Maybe she could get her to unpack as well—or was that considered employee harassment these days?

  She opened her briefbag and began pulling out files, the fruit of almost a year's careful intelligence-gathering on their dear Mr. Wheatley. It wasn't much, but she hoped it was enough to alarm the cautious careful men she was going to meet with in the next several days—men who probably would not have been willing to meet with her at all, Ria realized ruefully, if not for what LlewellCo had been in Perenor's time, and for her own very public profile following the Threshold debacle.

  She had been able to do one of them a very great favor with the material she'd dug out of Robert Lintel's Threshold files, and she hoped he remembered it now. He was the one she was pinning her real hopes on, but it didn't do to have only one string to your bow, so she'd made several appointments. The first was in three hours.

  Ria sighed, resting her chin on her hand and gazing out the window. She had a breathtaking view of the Mall. The city, seen so often in films and television, had a certain surreal quality to it.

  Just as her visit here did. How often in the past had Perenor sent her off on assignments that bore too close a resemblance to what she was planning to do here—meet a man, dazzle him, bend him to her (or rather, her father's) will, and bear away the prize?

  But this won't be like all those times, Ria told herself, though the promise rang faintly hollow. But it was true in every way that mattered. Though she could certainly cast a spell on any of the men she was to meet with and get him to agree to anything, such a glamourie would be only temporary, fading if she did not reinforce it over time. And a failed glamourie would be pointless—worse than pointless; it might play right into Wheatley's hands. No, she had to discredit Wheatley with good old-fashioned facts and persuasion.

  Not that it should be too hard, if she could only get them to listen to her. Funding a black ops group of ghosthunters and elfchasers was the last thing Washington wanted to be doing—or be seen to be doing—in the current political climate. They should be only too happy to shut down Parker Wheatley and his troop of little green men, if she could play her cards right. These days, there was a great need for scapegoats, particularly expensive scapegoats, to be sacrificed publicly to deflect attention elsewhere.

  * * *

  Four hours later—the man she was to meet had been delayed in another meeting—Ria was sitting across the desk from a senior career intelligence official in an office with a splendid view of the Capitol Building. The nameplate on his desk said james hatcher.

  Not their main offices, of course. Officially, this meeting wasn't happening. Just as well.

  "I'm still not sure why you came to us, Ms. Llewellyn," Mr. Hatcher said, smiling agreeably.

  "I'm just a concerned citizen," Ria said, her smile equally agreeable—and equally insincere. "And I just think that a program like the Paranormal Defense Initiative is a rather odd way for the go
vernment to be spending money at a time like this. Or any time, frankly."

  "I did some checking after our phone conversation," Hatcher said, "And I'm afraid I couldn't find any record of such a program."

  "Perhaps it's already been closed down," Ria said guilelessly. "Or perhaps I don't have a sufficient security clearance for you to talk about it with me. Why don't I just tell you what I know, and we can go on from there?"

  She began to speak, reading from the notes in her folder. After about two minutes, Hatcher stood up. "Excuse me," he said.

  He walked out a side door of the office. About fifteen minutes later, another man came in.

  He was considerably older than James Hatcher had been, and looked as if he ate at least three bureaucrats of Hatcher's caliber for breakfast every morning. He smiled warmly when he saw Ria, and held out his hand.

  "Hello, Ms. Llewellyn. My name is David. James tells me you have some interesting information for us."

  She shook his hand. "I hope someone finds it interesting. I find it upsetting."

  David—apparently he had no last name—seated himself behind the desk. "I'm sorry to ask, but perhaps you wouldn't mind starting from the beginning?"

  She repeated what she had told Hatcher, and continued until she got to the end. David listened with an expression of polite attention. Ria tried skimming the surface of his mind, but there was nothing there to hear; the man had a very disciplined mind, one of those who refused to even think about sensitive subjects in unsafe circumstances. She'd encountered one or two like him in her industrial espionage days.

  "Well, this is all certainly fascinating," David said, when she'd finished her presentation. "And how did you happen to come across this information?"

  "I ran into some people involved with Mr. Wheatley in connection with Threshold," Ria said, sticking fairly close to the truth. "After that I did a bit of digging on my own." She passed the folder across the desk and watched as David paged through it.

  "And you say that this Parker Wheatley—a name I've never heard, incidentally—is hunting fairies?"