“Wow . . . I’m in an argument and I’m not the first one to go Godwin . . . weird . . . plus you’re the one cursing.”
“Are you trying to give me a fucking heart attack?!?” Plutarch yelled.
There was a sudden knock at the front door.
*
“Your tits start scraping on the ground yet, you old bag?” King Henry answered the door, thinking it must have been the Lady despite Plutarch’s insistence otherwise.
Who else would visit Plutarch at that hour?
Who else would visit Plutarch period?
Only it wasn’t the Lady.
It was a delighted Miranda Daniels.
At some point in their tumultuous relationship the Ginger Nemesis had ripped the stick out of her ass, started having sex, and even talked about it . . . without blushing! You had to embarrass her to get her to blush . . . and it was harder than ever to embarrass her . . . fucking awful! Ever since, she’d been the one to gross out King Henry with the fact that pale, freckled disgusting ginger she might be, but she was just as much of a sexual being as anyone else.
And King Henry had just thrown a hanging fastball. “Don’t,” he begged.
Unable to help herself, Miranda leaned forward so she could whisper it, “Only if he’s particularly rough and only if the room is carpeted.”
King Henry would’ve clawed out his eyeballs, but the problem was with his overactive imagination giving him a quick mental image. “For fuck’s sake . . . I’m not even over the hairy strawberry text you sent me yet!”
“Well, I’m not over all the times you drunk dialed me to moan about Valentine,” Miranda pointed out, “so I guess we’re even.”
He got sheepish for once. “Yeah, not the best week of my life.”
“I did warn you,” Miranda pointed out some more. It was one of her favorite things to do, especially to King Henry.
“Stupid me, I figured you were just telling me not to be an asshole like usual.”
Miranda grinned again. “Oh, I accepted that you would always be an asshole a long time ago.” Her expression softened some. “Both of you are very far from normal, King Henry. Valentine’s been told by just about everyone for her whole life that she’s special, so she doesn’t want to waste it . . . even on you.”
“Yeah . . . I don’t blame her . . . much.”
“That’s right, you have the Ceinwyn Dale Broke Us Up theory . . . I think I heard it four or five times, each time with a different reason for why she was doing it.”
“Junior!” Plutarch called from the kitchen, still grouchy. “I’m fine with you staying the night, but if you try to have sex with a woman in my spare bed again I’m throwing both of you out on your naked asses this time!”
Miranda and King Henry stared at each other. Brown as the deepest earth and green like moss rippling in a fierce Irish wind. “Don’t,” King Henry begged again.
Her lips quirked a bit, but she relented on whispering about her own freckled butt, instead going with. “We both know I’ve seen what you have to offer and would never partake.”
“Stop reminding me of all the stupid shit I’ve been through while you’re at it.”
“It’s hard . . . it was a bunch of stupid shit. Just since you graduated . . . if you want me to go back to school then . . . wow, I might need a couple books.”
“About one-hundred sessions with a tape recorder actually,” King Henry murmured.
“What was that?” Miranda asked inquisitively.
Fuck me, I need to burn those tapes before she finds them . . . her or Val . . . or Annie B . . . or Isabel . . . Isabel will probably make a dildo out of them or something freaky as shit.
“Junior?!?” Plutarch called to save him.
“What?” King Henry called back.
“Who is it, you numbskull?!?”
“It’s Miranda Daniels here to torture me.”
“Who?”
“Redwind!”
“Oh!”
Miranda looked confused; it wasn’t an expression King Henry was used to seeing on her face. “Redwind?”
“It’s your fairy title.”
“I have a fairy title?”
“He talks to them more than he talks to humans,” King Henry explained.
“I have a fairy title?”
“Every Ultra has a fairy title.”
“I have a fairy title and it’s Redwind?”
“It could be worse . . . Pocket’s is Fernthrower . . . I helped.”
“Do you know what it’s like to have your hair color as your defining personal characteristic for your entire life?” Miranda complained.
“Nope . . . no idea at all,” King Henry deadpanned.
“You’re not that short,” Miranda said, “you grew out of it.”
“Could dye your hair . . . like, black maybe. Be a Goth. Can’t do anything about the freckles though . . . or the hairy strawberry.”
“Oh, that was just a joke,” Miranda informed, “I’m bald as can be down there.”
Again King Henry considered how to tear his brain out of his head. “If you’ve finished tormenting me, I really need to get back to tricking Plutarch into helping me make a golem.”
“That’s illegal, King Henry!” Miranda regressed.
“Only if you put a fairy in it.”
“Also, I didn’t come all the way across the school just to annoy you. You don’t rate that highly on my list, thank you very much.”
“That’s good, because I’d need to be drunker than when I drunk dialed you to even consider making out with you, much less bumping uglies. It might be shaved, but in my heart I’d know the ginger pubes were in there just waiting to sneak out and infect me.”
Her hands found her hips in a bit of indignation. “We both know that if we bumped uglies I’d be the one worried about getting infected.”
“Why does everyone think I caught something from Isabel?”
“Because Isabel has plenty of crazy to spare and syphilis would be the least of it.”
“If I knew you would get so annoying over the Redwind thing I never would’ve brought it up. Although I’m beginning to think it’s not about your hair and is about how you’re always on your period. Menstrual fluids blowing in the wind!”
She slapped him.
He blinked.
“Sorry!” Miranda squeaked. “Force of habit!”
“Yeah . . . well, guess I overstepped,” King Henry found himself apologizing. “And Redwind ain’t so bad . . . I kind of like it.”
Miranda forced her hand down. “What are you called?”
“The Dirt King.”
She stared.
“I know . . . it’s awesome. Hey, maybe I can put in a word for you and we can get it changed?”
Now she shivered. “No thank you; once was enough with you and your fairies.”
“About that . . .” He motioned for her to leave.
“Did the sentence where I mentioned that I wasn’t just here to tease you just go right over your head?” she reminded him.
“I’m busy. Tell whoever it is that I’ll talk to them tomorrow . . . unless it’s Ceinwyn and she can still fuck off.”
“It’s the Lady,” Miranda said as King Henry closed the door in her face. “You can’t say ‘no’ to her!”
“I am!” he yelled at the door.
“I’m supposed to lead you into the bowels of Admin, into the restricted sections!” she tried again.
“Fuck me,” King Henry growled as he yanked the door back open.
Miranda smiled at him. “Curiosity will get you killed one day.”
“Yeah, so I hear . . . that or my big mouth, right?”
*
The Lady looked old. She always looked like she was old, but . . . she never looked old. You never thought she might drop dead. Which was why King Henry could make all the jokes about her doing just that. The Lady was eternal . . . might not be ageless like Ceinwyn Dale, but she would always be part of the Asylum.
; .
.
.
Right?
Odds didn’t look so good right now.
She leaned heavily on her cane, much more heavily than Plutarch did his. When Miranda arrived with King Henry, she gave her arm over to the Lady without needing prompting, drawing a smile of thanks from the older woman. “Thank you, dear. At least we managed to get one of you Daniels being helpful instead of in a corner shouting the rules, didn’t we?”
Miranda finally blushed, leaning towards the Lady’s ear. “Please stop giving him ammunition.”
“Got a lot more on my mind at the moment than whether your strawberry is useful or shouting the rules,” King Henry told her, glancing around at the hallway.
He’d never been this deep in the Admin complex before. Couldn’t even call it a building that far down. So far down he felt the earth beyond the walls, coils of geo-anima just waiting to be used, but impossible for a mancer to ever touch. Unless you have a key and the time for it to work.
Mostly the complex was as boring as he expected it to be. Offices and shit. Saw Estefan Ramirez talking up a secretary that very much wasn’t his wife. Not that Estefan would cheat on Debra . . . he just loved being loved by any woman around. Recruiters offices too, but no sign of Ceinwyn. Signs . . . lots of signs and directions on the walls. King Henry pointed at one of them. “Can we go to the Artifact Lockup?”
“No!” Miranda and the Lady both shouted.
“I’ll just look . . .”
The Lady removed Miranda’s helping arm and shuffled towards him.
“You look like shit, old bag,” he greeted her.
Her greeting was to slap him upside the head hard enough that it rang with stars. Black-grandma-caught-her-granddaughter-in-clear-heels kind of slap. King Henry blinked a few times, but didn’t complain about it. “That for the Ouroboros?”
“That’s for making Ceinwyn cry.”
“Yeah, well . . . she took my girlfriend away, so we’re even.” Not like I didn’t cry a little when I told her to fuck off anyway . . . not that I’ll ever admit to it. Dust, it was just dusty.
The Lady laughed her crackling laugh. “No, I took your girlfriend away. Ceinwyn just chose the location of her transfer and gave her the promotion, which Valentine seems to hate from the reports I’ve read. Regardless, she’s still on her path and free from your bad influence, furthermore she’s safe from the trouble you keep calling down on your head.”
Behind the Lady’s back, Miranda shook her head at him, eyes wide. Don’t! they said.
“And everyone called me paranoid,” King Henry growled. “That why I’m here? So you can get an emotion kick to the balls in?”
“It’s for your good too,” the Lady pointed out. “She would’ve distracted you when you need to focus on staying alive.”
There are things more evil in the world than good intentions, but the people who use them as an excuse are one of them. “I’ll chalk all this shit up to you being tired and crankier than Plutarch usually is. If you’re done whipping my ass, I need to get back to him, and next time make sure you use a belt, got so used to it I can’t even feel an open palm no more.”
“I wasn’t the one who asked to see you,” the Lady finally called once King Henry was halfway down the hallway.
Forcing him to turn around and stare at her.
She nodded to a sign near Miranda.
Medical Ward.
King Henry kept his face passive. “So?”
“Eva’s awake,” the Lady said. “She asked for you. Against my better judgment I’m allowing you to see her. Evelyn is inside, try not to get in her way or she won’t bother slapping you, she’ll just needle you like the old days.”
No one moved.
Eva’s awake. Eva’s talking. Eva’s not dead.
“Miranda dear,” the Lady called over her shoulder, “can you please start spreading the news? Make sure you drop by my house and tell Mr. Samson about it, so he can stop worrying. I need to inform the Learning Council myself of course, but I think it will cheer the school up to learn of it. Even at this hour.”
“Of course!” Miranda said with a big smile. As she walked past King Henry, she even awkwardly reached out to give him a pat on the shoulder. She almost skipped with joy.
King Henry didn’t move until she was all the way down the hallway and into an elevator. Then he advanced on the Lady. Stood in front of her. Dared her to slap him again. “You have something to do with it then?”
The Lady’s lips went crooked. “I provided her with an opportunity to save herself. Even that was a small miracle.”
“She’s alive . . . but, is she okay?”
The crooked lips straightened. “She is what she will be for the rest of her life.”
A mancer infected with were-anima. “Yeah . . . guess that’s enough.”
The Lady surprised him again by reaching out to hug him. He snarled down at her like she was some wormy parasite . . . and one of the ones that stick out of your asshole at that. She let go of him eventually. “That was for saving the Welfs and avenging Jason Jackson.”
“Too bad Val wasn’t there, she would have burned Isabel down to nothing but a pile of ash,” King Henry growled.
The Lady shrugged at him. Less I-don’t-give-a-crap and more who-can-foresee-these-things. “There are other fish in the sea, King Henry.”
“Don’t think even I’d hit on a chick who just woke up from a coma.”
The Lady cackled as she started ambling towards an elevator. “I was talking about Miss Daniels. She had a crush on you when you two were teenagers, did you know that?”
She’s just fucking with me again, King Henry told himself as he headed for the door marked Medical. Typical Asylum mindfuck bullshit.
*
Miss Strange promised more than a giant needle if he somehow negatively affected Eva’s condition. Words like ‘eunuch’ and ‘ball less wonder’ were liberally thrown around, along with her usual helping of ‘moron’ and ‘idiot.’
“You should really just upgrade to ‘fucktard,’ it’s a lot more versatile.”
“You’re a fucktard, Price,” she humored him.
“See? Feels naughty, don’t it?”
She made him disinfect his hands and gave him a box for his coat and shoes. Good thing I don’t have many artifacts to worry about losing, huh? Except for Poug’s glass-metal knife. King Henry pulled it sheath and all out of its special coat pocket and slid the thing in his belt.
Strange did a double-take. “How did you get that through security?”
“It’s glass . . . sort of.”
“A glass dagger?”
“Yes . . . sort of.”
“Do I want to know?”
“Do you want me to be thrown in the Pit?”
“No.”
“Probably play it safe and keep it to yourself then.”
She gave him a pair of booties to put on and a hair net.
“I thought she was better?”
“She’s alive, but we still aren’t sure how her system will react to stimulus. Eva has weeks of testing ahead of her before I let her out of that room and months before she’s through with me.”
“She’ll hate that.”
Strange pulled her phone out and took a picture of him. “She doesn’t have a choice.”
The phone disappeared. “What was that about?” King Henry asked.
“There are about a dozen teachers who will get a good laugh out of you dressed in booties and a hairnet, Price. That’s Asylum currency I can’t pass up.”
“Should’ve said something, I would’ve sucked my gut in and flexed my arms,” King Henry deadpanned.
“Remember: don’t work her up, stay calm, be friendly,” Strange told him. “I know it’s you, but try, okay? I’m giving you some privacy, but there will be a camera without audio I’m watching.”
There were two doors. One led into a small room. Looked like it had glass to see in usually but now it was covered with layers of
black curtain. The second door had a red light above it until Strange shut the one behind him, then the lights dimmed to nearly nothing and red went to green.
King Henry opened it, expecting the worst on the other side. Eva in a hospital bed, pale, shrunken, tubes inside of her. He was armoring himself against tearing up in front of her and then . . . Asylum and expectations, still getting him at twenty-three.
Eva was in a chair, watching a small television. The screen was the brightest light in the room and what came from above barely counted as light, even for LEDs. She had on a hospital gown, and an IV tube stuck into one hand, but she didn’t look sickly at all. Pale, yes, not much of the tan she usually had due to being out in the sun, and her hair had more length than usual, but . . .
“Knew Death would be too boring for you to take him up on the journey,” King Henry forced out a greeting that was tougher than he felt.
Eva smiled up at him. She was taller than he remembered. More muscles. Smile had some canine in it now, more than the little bitty teeth she used to have. Sunglasses too, even in the darkened room. “I’m told you saved my life,” she said. “Who owes who now?”
“Even probably, or near enough,” he said, walking over to casually sit in a second chair beside her. “Only an asshole would weigh and measure something like saving a person’s life. Bigger asshole than me even.”
“I’d give you a hug, but you would complain,” she told him.
“And Strange would come in to yell at us.”
“Probably,” she laughed.
It was nice to hear it.
“Thought I lost you, seeing you like that,” King Henry admitted. “Ain’t the way Eva Reti is supposed to be.”
“Eva Reti is quite a bit different nowadays,” Eva mumbled.
“Like the shades.”
“Too MIB, I’ll need to go buy some Ray-Bans.”
“Or go full Maverick with the aviator glasses.”
“They updated me on everything that happened.”
“They never update you on everything.”
“Okay, but . . . enough of everything.”
“Enough for what?”
“Enough for me to want to punch you for being stupid.”
“That’s every Thursday, and to be fair you are the woman who took on the Three Queens and Isabel Soto alone, right? What were you thinking?”
King Henry and the Three Little Trips (The King Henry Tapes) Page 18