by John Meaney
All of Andy's body started to rip outward, to flow across the room, but Alyx shouted at him, “No! Pull yourself together!”
“Can't . . .”
“Now.”
With a whimper, Andy sucked his body back into normal configuration. Then he looked over at Donal and gave a tiny smile, ignoring the tears flowing on either side of his mouth. “Some people would pay good money for this.”
“I'd pay a shitload to be somewhere else.”
“Don't”—a painful ripple spread across Andy's chest and face—“make me laugh.”
Then Donal's chair swiveled away. It was time for his treatment to begin.
Back in the ward, body aching in what might have been a good way—Donal hovered in that strange place between hurt and joy—he was sitting up beside the bed in a hard wooden chair when he heard strange voices coming from the nurses' station.
“. . . Commander? I'm not sure he's up to it yet.”
“But it's just me, and I'll keep it low key.”
“You mean”—this was Sister Felice's voice, and she gave a soft hiss before continuing—“the both of you?”
After a moment: “Very perceptive, Sister. I can see that Lieutenant Riordan is in good hands.”
“Ha. Come this way.”
Sister Felice came walking down the wide aisle between the beds, her feline eyes slitted, her ears flattened against the sides of her head, and her hair flowing straight back, not hanging down. Behind her walked the pale woman who had shot Donal with the dart gun, wearing a pale-blue skirt suit today, with dark-blue gloves. And behind her . . .
Something?
“Yes.” Sister Felice bared her delicate fangs. “That's right, Donal. Call me if you need anything.” She placed a green stone in his hand. “Squeeze it, and I'll be here in a second.”
Behind the woman, the air rippled. But if Donal turned his head and closed his eyes nearly all the way, the wavering became almost human-shape.
“Thank you,” he told Sister Felice. “You're the best.”
“I know.” She gave a soft laugh. “Remember, you just need to squeeze the callstone.”
Then she walked away, silent and elegant. Both Donal and the pale woman watched her go. After a moment, the woman said, “Do you remember who I am?”
“Yeah.” A knot of pain was forming over Donal's right eye. “Not your name, but I remember in the cabin, when I . . .”
Do you hear the bones?
But the words were distant, no longer clinging: just an abstract memory. It was the image of the diva stretched out upon the table—the dead diva—that made Donal's gorge rise. He turned to one side, grabbed a trash can, and vomited into it.
“Perhaps this is too soon.”
“No, it's all right.” Donal wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So who are you?”
“Laura Steele.” She held out her gloved hand. “Nice to meet you properly.”
“Er . . .” Donal sniffed. “We should shake when I've cleaned up. And does that mean you're Commander Laura Steele?”
“That's right. And this”—Laura nodded toward the wavering in the air—“is Xalia. She's a member of the federal task force that I'm heading up.”
“Ah.” Donal leaned back against the hard chair. “Are you here to cheer me up or to interrogate me?”
“Neither one. We're here to recruit you.”
“You're joking.” Donal closed his eyes and remembered the long drive into the forest and the blur—how many days?—that was his stay in the cabin, while he kept the diva's corpse laid out and made his preparations for scraping clean the bones. “How many laws did I break?”
“You were effectively ensorcelled.”
“Yeah, but not actually. Doesn't that make me effectively guilty?”
“No, it makes you a damned victim, especially if you keep acting like one.”
“Thanatos.” Donal looked at her, then at Xalia's near-invisible shifting form. “Nice bedside manner you got. You say you're heading up a task force. So what are you working on?”
“Well, it's a task . . .”
“That is so fuckin' funny.”
“We're investigating the exclusive little club that Malfax Cortindo belonged to. We call them the Black Circle—”
“That's original.”
“—because their real name is a secret only they know.”
Then a soft whisper that might have just been a breeze sounded:
*I wanted to call them the Pink Collective.*
A smile twisted Donal's face, despite himself. “How about the Lilac Conspiracy?”
Xalia's form rippled.
“So how big is it?” added Donal. “This conspiracy?”
“Let's just say”—Laura's glance flickered toward the end of the ward, where Sister Felice sat at the nurses' station, drinking hellebore tea—“the BC have gone for quantity over quality when it comes to recruitment.”
“But not just in Tristopolis.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you're federal, even if you're based here. And because of the background to my screwup. We were supposed to be on alert because of what happened in other cities. Including overseas.”
“Hmm.” Laura walked over to the bedside cabinet. On top stood a cheap stained vase containing two black dandelions. “I think Sister Felice likes you.”
“It's her job. She's good at it.”
“Whereas you let your principal die seconds before killing the chief suspect.”
Donal consciously relaxed his shoulders. “You said you were here to recruit me, and now you're telling me how badly I performed. Interesting tactic, Commander.”
“The thing is, we”—Laura nodded toward the near-invisible wavering of the air that was Xalia—“understand more about ensorcellment and the ways of manipulation than your superiors do. Or more than they'll pretend to, for the sake of political expediency.”
“You mean I'll be a scapegoat? But it was my operation, didn't you know?”
In lucid moments, Donal had wondered what might have happened to his career. Or whether he was going to jail, or worse.
“You were the only person in the whole theater, cops included,” said Laura, “to break the trance. If you hadn't been there, the diva would have died anyway, with police protection all around. The story that everyone remembered would not have been what happened.”
“So I resisted the influence.” Donal looked down at the floor, remembering. “One kind of influence, anyway.”
“Cortindo sowed the seeds of what happened to you,” said Laura, “when he showed you the artist's bone. He did show you the bone, didn't he?”
“Thanatos, yeah. How did you know?”
Another ripple moved through Xalia's discorporate form. This time, Donal sensed no amusement in her.
“We investigated his office.” Laura nodded toward Xalia. “Every nook and cranny. It was no big extrapolation to work out what happened. We already knew you'd been ordered to go there.”
Donal stared at Laura's pale face, trying to read between her words. Without using Commissioner Vilnar's name, was she accusing him of being a member of the conspiracy? Or of abetting it without realizing?
Sister Felice was a long way down the ward, but Donal already knew how sensitive she was, how acute her hearing. It was best not to discuss specifics.
“So the only reason I've got for joining your team,” he said, “is because my current bosses are going to leave me twisting in the wind.”
*No.* Xalia's insubstantial form drifted closer. *That's not the only reason.*
“And the other is . . .”
Laura answered for Xalia. “She's talking about revenge.”
“Ah. That.”
After discussing a few specifics about the job offer, Laura said she wanted to check with Sister Felice regarding Donal's progress. Laura walked with Xalia beside her down to the nurses' station.
There was a brief discussion, which Donal observed, watching without makin
g judgments. Then Laura returned, while Xalia remained hovering by Sister Felice.
“Nine days or nineteen,” Laura told Donal. “Or ninety, if that's what it takes to get you rehabituated. What's rehab like, anyway? Rewiring-body-and-mind thing, right?”
“Exercise and illusion, to restore the old patterns of thought and movement,” said Donal. “With plenty of pain, so you know it's doing you good.”
“Sounds . . . interesting.”
“Uh-huh.” Donal wondered what she was thinking. “You understand, I still haven't agreed to join you.”
“There's no rush.”
“All right.”
“So I wondered . . . You understand Xalia's nature, right?”
“What? That she's a freewraith?”
“Exactly. She's not bound to a crane or an elevator or a . . . wheelchair. She's a member of the team, not some kind of device.”
“Obviously. Though I think you don't know Gertie very well.”
“Who's Gertie?”
“Elevator Seven at HQ. Next time you ride up, tell her you know me.”
Laura's pale eyes narrowed. “A lot of cops wouldn't feel that way.”
“So they're assholes. It's 'cause they don't know any better.”
She opened her mouth to speak, closed it, then spoke up. “I hope you decide to join us, Lieutenant Riordan.”
“Thank you.” Donal wondered what it was she hadn't said. “Thanks for coming out here.”
He watched her leave, accompanied by the wavering of the air that was Xalia. The heels of Laura's shoes were high stilettos, and the fit of her skirt was snug; her motion caused him a certain feeling in his gut that was unexpected.
“Oh. . .” Sister Felice was standing beside Donal's bed, her slit eyes widening into roundness. “I guess the lady commander made an impression on you, huh?”
“Not really.”
“Ha.” Sister Felice gave a tiny cat smile, allowing her claws to flick in and out a centimeter. “You are such a liar, Lieutenant.”
“Shit.”
“Oh, do we need to use the bedpan?”
“No, we don't.” Donal swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “But I am going to walk to the bathroom by myself.”
“Really?” Her eyes were slits once more.
“Yes.” Donal's voice was tight with pain.
“Good for you. If you fall over, just shout.”
On the following day, the liquefying patient called Andy, the man who had difficulty maintaining his normal form, began to scream softly. The sprites floating around his bed went wild, emitting banshee yells of their own, flaring from bright orange to blazing white and back again.
Sister Felice came running, stared at the silver bands wrapped around Andy's bed, and checked the intricate device that appeared welded into the bed frame. She hurried to the wall phone.
“Get Thaum Support here, stat. We have morph-support equipment failure.”
Donal sat up in his bed, watching but unable to do anything. Even Sister Felice appeared helpless now, as she reached toward Andy's bubbling form, then drew back, unwilling to disturb his equilibrium further.
Donal wondered what would happen if Andy's skin burst.
Soon a young man with pale, smooth Asian features was walking quickly into the department, with two older, gray-haired men following. All three wore rust-and-brown jerkins embossed with brass-colored runes.
Sister Felice said, “Thank Thanatos you're here, Kyushen. Can you fix it?”
The younger man, Kyushen, carried a steel toolbox. One of the older men nodded as Kyushen took a silver forked rod out of the chest and ran it above Andy's bed.
“The hex-flux integrity failed.” Kyushen looked up. “We can handle that.”
The three men worked swiftly, muttering about resonant frequencies and shifted octaves, replacing a blackened valve with a shining amber new one.
Suddenly a clear sheet of light passed across the bed, and Andy's suffering form shivered into stillness. His body was still distorted, but static.
“Good work,” said Sister Felice. “I'll call Dr. Drax, and we'll take it from here.”
“But it's fixed,” said Kyushen.
“I know. But”—Sister Felice pointed at Andy's twisted, elongated body, frozen in the bed—“he isn't.”
“Oh. The patient.”
“Just a little detail,” said Sister Felice, but she was smiling. “Like I said, leave it to us ordinary mortals. You thaumies go back to your labs.”
“All right.”
By the end of the week, Donal was hobbling around the silver lawn in thin mist (while mistwraiths floated around in odd patterns, murmuring encouragement) beneath a dark-purple sky. You couldn't call his motion running, not yet.
His firearm was in a secure locker somewhere—according to Sister Felice—so Donal did the next best thing. He stood at the lawn's edge, using an imaginary gun, visualizing the attacking figures in his mind's eye, feeling the imaginary pressure of the trigger and the recoil as he fired again and again into the shadows advancing on him.
Rehabituation continued, using pressure and psychic stress to reestablish the neural patterns of the preensorcelled Donal. Jan told him that the old patterns would reemerge stronger than before: a virtual guarantee that he would remain free of senility in old age.
On the third morning he hobbled to the nurses' station and asked Sister Lynkse if he could use the phone.
“Sure.”
She left him while he made the call. Silvery fingers seemed to play around the handset: he'd used a secure number.
*What can I do for you, Lieutenant?*
“Put me through to Commander Steele, please.”
*One moment.*
A strange sighing drifted down the line. Perhaps the countermeasures ached for the chance to defend against spikewraiths infiltrating the network.
*Putting you through.*
“Hello?”
“Commander Steele, this is Donal Riordan.”
“Lieutenant. Have you considered the job offer?”
“Yeah, and I'm accepting it.”
Again, the line sighed.
Then: “Good,” said Laura. “Report for duty as soon as you're discharged.”
“All right.”
“I won't send you into anything strenuous until you're fully fit.”
“That's all right, I didn't expect to—”
The line went dead.
“Nice talking to you too,” said Donal to the silent receiver. “Rats.”
Sister Lynkse, returning, gave him a strange look.
“Just renewing my membership,” Donal said, “in the Rat Fancy Club.”
Half-revealing her slender fangs, Sister Lynkse gave a silent laugh.
“Kill some of those rats for me, okay?”
A black low-slung ambulance came to take him back to the city. The vehicle was wide, with flared housings along the running boards.
Sister Felice pushed Donal in the wheelchair he no longer needed, while Sister Lynkse walked alongside. They stopped at the edge of the dark-blue gravel drive.
The ambulance rear door rose up, and Donal stood. He kissed Sister Felice on the cheek and patted Sister Lynkse's hand.
“You're wonderful,” he said. “Both of you.”
“Well, we knew that.”
“Yeah.” He smiled at Sister Felice. “Look after yourself.”
“You too, Lieutenant.”
Two black-suited paramedics with bone-gray skins descended from the ambulance.
“I can climb in,” said Donal, “by myself.”
The paramedics watched in silence, unblinking, as Donal hauled himself into the rear compartment. He sat down on one of the stretchers that were fastened in place. The two paramedics locked gazes, exchanged some form of silent communication, then bowed to each other.
One of them climbed into the back and sat down on the opposite stretcher from Donal; the other returned to the front and slid into the driver's seat.
Sister Felice waved.
Donal blew her a kiss, and then the rear door lowered itself into place and clicked shut.
And that's that.
The ambulance rolled into motion, scrunching its way along blue gravel until it reached the road. The driver hauled the vehicle through a tight turn—the paramedic sitting opposite Donal gave a tiny grin—and then they were accelerating smoothly, back toward Tristopolis.
When they were a mile from the hospital grounds and the road was wide enough, the housings alongside the chassis split open. Bat wings unfurled, stretching to either side.
The engine note dropped as the front of the ambulance tipped up, gathering speed.
And the ambulance rose into the air.
The bat-winged ambulance howled low over dank marshes until it reached the city limits, where the density of thaumaturgically charged airborne particles forced the vehicle down to the ground, for fear of a flameout in the engines.
Slowing to a normal crawl, the paramedic driver took the black ambulance through desolate west-side streets before reaching midtown.
“You live in Lower Halls, yes?” asked the paramedic riding in the back with Donal.
“Yeah, but . . . take me to HQ, why don't you?”
“HQ?”
“Police headquarters. It's Number One Avenue of the Basilisks.”
“Yes.” The paramedic's voice grew oddly sibilant. “We know where it is.”
He blinked: a slow, wet motion of nictitating membrane preceding the flicker of his eyelids. In the driver's seat up front, the other paramedic gave a slow nod.
Neither spoke a word for the remainder of the journey.
Donal exchanged greetings with FenSeven and another deathwolf that he didn't know well, FenNineBeth. FenSeven sniffed, tasting the air for evidence of Donal's health. Then his tongue lolled in a lupine grin.
Once inside, the first thing Donal did was descend to the gun range. Gertie made no smart remarks during the descent, and she was gentle pushing him out of her elevator shaft and into the corridor. It disconcerted Donal more than anything else might have.
Brian, behind the counter, his skin a healthy medium-blue, waved to Donal. “Hey, Lieutenant. How's life?”