Carpet Diem

  At the head of the table was Faunt; the man they all had to thank for their lives. The man everybody had to thank for their lives. And they’d probably never know it. He sat back in the chair, smoking a Cuban cigar and smiling like Santa Claus on Christmas Day.

  And, of course, there was Calderon’s head, placed on the sideboard amongst the drinks and currently being used as a candleholder. His black, thunderous eyes were visible through the streams of hardened wax.

  It was very funny, if a little creepy.

  Simon stood.

  “Excuse me, please, everyone. I’d just like to say something.”

  The room fell silent as everyone turned their attention to him.

  “We saved the world today. All of us. We all helped and I think we should all be proud.”

  There were murmurs of “hear, hear” and nodding.

  “But, I think it is important that we recognise two people in particular. Firstly, Maya, whom I assume is here?” Simon gestured toward the empty place across from him.

  He had directed the question at Faunt, but it was Cherry who answered, “Yeah, she’s here.”

  “Good,” Simon continued. “Because she lost her life and, without her, we’d all be dead too. I think that’s worth noting and saying ‘thank you’.” He raised his glass. “Maya.”

  “Maya,” the room joined him.

  “Secondly, our host and benefactor. Without him pulling the strings; without his knowledge; without his cunning, we’d all have been lost. I would never have come up with those plans. He is a genius and we all owe him our lives.

  “To Faunt: an immaculate host and a genuine hero.”

  Again, he raised his glass; again the room echoed him. After drinking, he sat down.

  Faunt stood.

  “Thank you all. There is also a specific thanks I would like to make.”

  He turned towards Luke and Gabby and raised his own glass toward them.

  “To Lucas and Gabrielle. If you two hadn’t stolen the Rug, I’d never have had the chance to make a plan in the first place. You had absolutely no idea what you were doing, but you two saved the world. Congratulations.”

  “Lucas and Gabrielle,” the rest of the room said.

  Gabby hugged Luke again, while he smiled through the tears streaming down his face.

  ----

  After dinner, when everyone had descended into jovial and rather inebriated conversation, Faunt asked Simon to step away with him for a moment, into the study.

  “You have questions to ask,” Faunt said plainly, as they entered.

  It was true. He did.

  “Would you like to ask them, now?”

  “I suppose so,” Simon answered, “if that’s OK?”

  His host nodded indulgently. Simon was aware Faunt already knew what the questions were, but was respectfully allowing him to ask them out loud.

  “Why did you tell Calderon where we were?”

  Faunt’s eyes darkened. “It was a calculated risk. He was going to kill Cherry. I risked Bob’s life, and yours, I suppose, to save hers. I hope you can forgive me.”

  Simon had already lost count of how many times Cherry had saved his life. He definitely didn’t object.

  “Nothing to forgive. Honestly. Did you know that you were going to send Maya after us when you told him?”

  “No. I confess I was making that part up ad hoc. It was ... challenging.” He said the final word with a mixture of fatigue and excitement.

  “OK, I guess,” Simon paused. “Why did you really want Cassandra back?”

  “I needed her to invite Priest here under the pretence of peace-making. He and I have not been allies. If I had asked him, he wouldn’t have come. I knew he’d come for Cass. And I needed him. He was the only one who could tell you how to get out of your contract without breaking the Rules. And in order to tell him without breaking the Rules myself, I needed him here for another reason.”

  “So that was all? You didn’t really want her back?”

  “What I want isn’t as important as what she wants, in this instance, Simon.”

  “Oh,” he shrugged, feeling a tinge of sadness for his friend and a little guilt for asking the question. “I guess that’s everything.”

  Simon turned to the door, but Faunt put a hand on his arm.

  “Before we go, I wanted to show you something,” he said.

  “Sure,” said Simon, bumping into a stool that moved across his path and wondering what could be left to see that he hadn’t already seen.

  “It’s this,” said Faunt, gesturing to the wall.

  Where Faunt’s portraits hung, there was now a new, large drape, with tassels hanging down.

  “Pull it,” he said.

  Simon stepped forward and tugged at one of the tassels. The drape fell to reveal a new addition.

  “That’s what I needed a space for,” said Faunt.

  At the front, looking, he thought, rather impressively heroic, was Simon. Behind him, in a sort of ragtag vanguard, stood Luke and Gabby, Harriet and Cherry, Sean and Bob, Amelia and Prosper, Priest and Cassandra, George and a beautiful black woman with ice blue eyes. It was … awesome.

  “Yes, that is Maya, and yes, she is beautiful.” This time, Faunt answered Simon's unspoken question.

  “But…” Simon began to object. Faunt put up a hand to stop him.

  “Simon, it’s my gallery. I already know what I look like.”

  ----

  Simon’s footsteps were still audible in the hall as she stepped out of the dark corner.

  “So. What do you want?” Cassandra asked.

  “Honestly, Cass, I don’t know,” said Faunt. “But it’s nice to see you.”

  She looked him up and down.

  “Have you changed? You look different.”

  “It’s been a long time. I’ve seen things.”

  “You look tired.”

  Faunt’s eyes trembled.

  “It’s hard.”

  Cassandra grasped a chair that was passing behind her and sat down.

  “You hurt me,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “You don’t, though, do you?” Her smile was pure ice. “That’s the deal. You’re not allowed in here.” She tapped her head, then her chest. “Or here.”

  “Cass, I know. I know I hurt you, because I’m human. And I was an idiot. And I deserve it all.”

  “But you still brought me here to ask if I’d remove the curse.”

  “No. I brought you here because I needed you.”

  “Priest would have come for other reasons. You could have got him here without me.”

  “I couldn’t be sure…”

  “You damn well could have!”

  “All right. All right. I wanted to see you.”

  “To ask me to…”

  “No. To see you. I miss you.”

  Cass snorted. “But not so much that you couldn’t wait for sixty years?”

  Faunt’s head dropped.

  “I had no right…”

  “He kidnapped me! He took me against my will and kept me on that island for sixty years!”

  “I know, but…”

  “Why didn’t you rescue me?!”

  Faunt staggered, steadying himself on the mantelpiece. “Rescue you? You wanted me to rescue you?”

  “Well who else was going to do it?”

  Faunt fell to his knees in front of her, grasping one hand between his.

  “Cass, I swear, I didn’t know. You hated me. I thought you wanted me to leave you alone. You did … this to me.”

  “For God’s sake, Faunt, I was angry. I’m a witch!”

  Faunt shook uncontrollably.

  “Cass, I swear, if I’d known, if I’d even thought … I’d have done anything.”

  The witch smiled through her own tears.

  “But you didn’t, did you? I gave you knowledge of everything, and you’re still a damned idiot.”

  Cassandra stood, gently pulling her hand from Faunt’s. Silently, s
he crossed to the door and opened it. Without turning, she quietly spoke.

  “I’ll remove it. If you ask me to.”

  After a long silence, he answered.

  “I’ll never ask.”

  Cass nodded, and closed the door behind her.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Simon teetered gracelessly into the room. At best count, he’d had at least a bottle and a half of Rioja to himself, and then there was whisky. It was smoky and rich and sweet, and it burned the back of his throat. But it had left him feeling really rather merry. Which was nice. He was also relatively confident he would escape a hangover, knowing his host’s capabilities.

  What he was not expecting was for his bed to be other than empty.

  “Hey, sexy,” she said, pulling the duvet up to her neck.

  “Hello,” he slurred, equally surprised and delighted. “Why are you here?”

  On immediate reflection, it seemed an awful lot like checking a gift horse for cavities.

  “Well, technically, you didn’t buy me dinner, but we did have dinner together,” she smiled and lifted the duvet invitingly, just enough for him to see a line of naked thigh.

  “Best day ever,” he whispered to himself as he struggled with his clothes.

  ----

  Simon lay back, exhausted and happy, with Cherry nuzzled in against his chest. It was almost perfect.

  “Can I ask you something?” he asked.

  “What’s up?”

  Simon did not have a full grasp of the subtleties of American English.

  “Does that mean ‘yes’?”

  “Course it does. Ask away.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Well, not that I want to ruin anything but, I was just wondering, you know, what with everything that’s happened and, you know, I mean, I know I called you a prostitute … but that was before I knew you, and…”

  Cherry put a finger to his lips.

  “Do you think you could ask the question without insulting me again?”

  Simon nodded sheepishly, and she removed the finger.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, do you do this with a lot of people, or just me?”

  Cherry sat upright.

  “Are you asking if I’m easy?”

  Simon desperately racked his brain for a way to not make the next thing he said another insult, but since Cherry’s breasts were now between his face and hers, it was very hard to concentrate.

  “Umm, no … I just meant, em… are you my girlfriend?”

  After a moment, Cherry’s face broke into a wide grin.

  “Are you asking me to go steady, Billy Joe? Are you gonna give me your pin?”

  Simon was fairly sure he was being ridiculed, but he didn’t really care.

  “Will you be my girlfriend?”

  “Don’t you think we’re moving a little fast? I mean, we’ve only had sex like, what, eight or nine times?”

  “Oh, really?” Simon fumbled. “Em, sorry, I didn’t know…”

  “Shut up you idiot.” She slapped his chest playfully and smiled.

  “Sure, I’ll be your girlfriend.”

  She laid her head back on his chest and stroked his stomach affectionately.

  Simon grinned like the king of the world.

  “One thing though,” she lifted her head to look at him.

  “What?”

  “We’re going to have to teach you some social skills.”

  Epilogue One

  The doorbell rang.

  “You expecting anyone?” Luke called upstairs to Gabby.

  “Nope!” she called back. He lifted his coffee and went to the door.

  He opened it, and stopped dead.

  “What do you want?” he asked, a tremor of fear in his voice.

  “I … I’m sorry, I don’t know where else to go.”

  Luke realised the visitor looked rough. He had stubble and smelled terrible.

  “How do you survive? Nothing … nothing works. Where do I go?”

  Luke smiled and stepped back.

  “Come in, Daniel. You’re going to be OK.”

  The former angel stepped in, tentatively.

  “I made a terrible mistake,” he said.

  Luke put his arm around the newly mortal shoulders of his brother.

  “You’ve got time to make up for it.”

  Epilogue Two

  There was a knock at the door.

  Simon went to answer it. It was probably the new living room carpet. They were a little early, though.

  “Hello,” he said, when he saw who was actually at the door. “Déjà vu.”

  “Can we come in?” Lily asked. “We could do with your help.”

  “We?” Simon asked. He could only see the demon.

  She gestured to her side and a woman stepped into sight.

  “Sabrina?” Simon asked his cousin. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hey,” Sabrina said. “Lily said you might be able to help me with some stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?” he asked, bemused.

  “Well, apparently,” she answered, “I’m some sort of envoy.”

  THE END

  Biography

  Born in Edinburgh, Justin spent a decade of his childhood bouncing around the US, following his dad’s professional football (soccer) career. He returned to the Scottish capital in his teens and, after a few brief sojourns to Dundee (for an English degree) and the South of France (for his family), settled back in the city that’s always been ‘home’.

  In over 15 years of writing and editing for a living, he’s done everything from restaurant, theatre and comedy reviews to training manuals and magazines, including four years as the writer, editor and photographer for an Edinburgh guidebook. Currently working as a Content Editor, he lives with his Brady Bunch family in a permanent state of happy chaos.

  He has the same initials as the Justice League of America, and his favourite writers are Neil Gaiman, Aaron Sorkin, Joe Abercrombie and Joss Whedon, in no particular order.

  He misses Firefly.

  Follow him on Facebook: www.facebook.com/justinleeandersonauthor

  * Photograph by Stephen O’Neill