by Pratt, T. A.
Marla pointed. “Pull over in the park there.”
Rondeau sighed, paused to await a break in the oncoming traffic, and turned left into the lot of Wahikuli Park. The long, narrow strip of public ground boasted a few picnic tables overlooking the ocean but little else, and didn’t have much going for it except all the scenery you could eat. Marla barely noticed the deep blue vistas of ocean and sky anymore. She wasn’t sure it was true that you could get used to anything, but you could certainly get used to beauty.
“Well, hell,” Rondeau said, as the taxi pulled in and parked next to them. “What do you think? Is this the world’s least subtle assassin? Or – ”
Marla was already getting out of the car, just as the taxi’s back door swing open. Friend, or enemy?
When the cab’s passenger climbed out, Marla stopped dead, then broke into the biggest, most genuine smile she’d worn in weeks, if not months.
Rondeau got out of the convertible, too, and bellowed “Pelly!” He raced around the car and picked up the short, middle-aged man who’d emerged from the cab. He spun Pelham around twice, then put him back down on his feet, where he wobbled a bit.
“A pleasure to see you, sir,” Pelham said, and then looked at Marla. “And you, too, Mrs. Mason.”
The cab driver emerged, leaning over the roof of the car, squinting. “You going to ride the rest of the way with your friends, pal?”
“I wouldn’t presume,” Pelham murmured, but Rondeau was already saying, “Yeah, we got this, pop the trunk.” Pelham reached into the cab and removed a battered-looking canvas backpack, and a gnarled black walkingstick that might have passed for a wizard’s staff. The cab driver helped Rondeau wrestle a familiar-looking trunk out of the cab, then accepted his fare and a generous tip from Rondeau before driving off.
While Rondea was wrangling luggage, Marla walked around the car and looked Pelham up and down. He still had his wispy hair, his mild eyes, his mostly-unlined face, his general air of affable harmlessness, but he’d changed some, too. “You got some sun on your travels, huh? I never even imagined you with a tan.”
“I did indeed, Mrs. Mason, in Africa, mostly,” Pelham said. “Though the snows in Nepal reflected a glare even brighter.”
“What are you doing here?” Marla said. “I told you to spend a couple of years on your, ah, mission, and it’s only been a few months.”
Pelham nodded. “I am still traveling. I landed this morning on the Big Island, as part of a journey through the Pacific. But I could sense you, nearby. I took a flight to Maui, and frustrated my cab driver immensely by refusing to tell him my final destination, guiding him instead in the direction where I felt your presence, and... Why are you here? Have you finally agreed to take a vacation?”
“I was going to send word to you,” Marla said, “Except I wasn’t sure where, since we warded you so well from divination, nobody could tell where you were, exactly. I left word for Hamil to pass along my contact info if you called in, but – ”
“Don’t mind me.” Rondeau heaved the steamer trunk into the convertible’s too-small trunk and fussed with bungee cords to tie it down. “I’ve got this.”
“My apologies.” Pelham stepped in with his customary competence, swiftly strapping his luggage in and tying the trunk lid partly closed with the bungees. He turned back to Marla. “Then... this isn’t a vacation? Oh dear. Does something here in the islands threaten the safety of Felport? Volcano gods with strange grudges? A tentacled creature of ancient lineage stirring on the sea floor?”
Before she could answer, Rondeau yelped, and jumped like someone had stabbed him in the ass with a pin. “Marla... something’s happening. Something’s coming.”
Marla had a knife in each hand before he finished speaking, and she put her back to the convertible, scanning the area. Unless the picnic tables were about to come to life like Japanese tsukumogami, she didn’t see any potential threats. “What is it?”
Rondeau shook his head. “How should I know? Call it bad vibes. Some kind of... I want to say... eruption? No, I shouldn’t use that word on a volcanic island, it’s not that kind of eruption. Something’s coming, or actually it’s already here, but it’s about to make itself known – ”
“Oh, dear.” Pelham chewed at his lower lip. “Not these again.” He pointed with his walkingstick toward the ground beneath a tree. The dirt was beginning to rise up in little cone-shapes, like molehills. “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Mason, I thought I’d gotten rid of them.”
Marla frowned. “Of what?”
“Should I be wishing I had a gun?” Rondeau said.
“I don’t think a gun would be much – ” Pelham began, but then a strange chittering emerged from the three mounds of black dirt, and at least a dozen cat-sized creatures poured out, like ants boiling up from a hill. The creatures moved fast enough that Marla couldn’t get a good look at them, but they seemed both insectile and mammalian, with hairy bodies and too many limbs and grinding mandibles and antennae and weirdly humanlike eyes.
Knives were not ideal for fighting off a swarm of rat-bug-people, and she was stepping to the side so she could unleash a fire spell without catching her friends in the spray when Pelham stepped forward and began to spin his stick in a blur. He caught the first of the creatures with a blow hard enough to send it sailing right out of the park and into the sea, and flattened half a dozen more in seconds using his stick and his feet, spinning with a fluidity and grace that Marla couldn’t quite wrap her head around – after all, Pelham looked like the manager of a small branch bank, or a longtime certified public accountant, but now he was become death; or if not death, then at least grievous bodily harm. “If I might ask you to destroy the mounds?” Pelham shouted, as more of the creatures came scrambling out of the dirt. Marla caught Rondeau’s eye, shrugged, and moved with him toward the source of the invasion.
She considered just stomping, but she didn’t like the idea of one of these things climbing up her leg, so she knelt, scooped up a handful of sand from the ground into a little heap, took a deep breath, and believed the mound she’d made was the same as the mounds the creatures were coming through.
Then she stomped on her little mound, and the other three flattened, smashed by the weight of Marla’s sympathetic magic. Rondeau watched the collapsed mounds warily, then nudged one with the toe of his foot. Nothing came out. “There’s not even a hole under here. What the hell?”
Pelham had finished bashing the little monsters, and those that survived burrowed into the ground, dragging their dead after them, and soon they’d all vanished from view, seemingly pulling their holes in after them, leaving the ground unmarked and unmarred. Pelham mopped his brow. “I am so very sorry. The creatures have not troubled me in weeks, and I had assumed they were gone forever. They are deucedly persistent beasts.”
“What the fuck are they?” Marla said.
“Nuno sa Punso,” Pelham said. “Frightful things, but really just a nuisance, incapable of doing real harm. I... picked them up during my time in the Phillipines.”
“Pelly,” Rondeau said. “Tell me these things aren’t some kind of supernatural STD you picked up in a Filipino cathouse. Or, better yet, tell me they are, because that would be hilarious.”
Pelham bowed slightly. “Loath as I am to disappoint you, the origin of this infestation is less lascivious. I spent a week in the Malay archipelago, studying the martial art known as Silat. I have long been proficient in Bartitsu, which incorporates elements of Malaysian stick-fighting, and I thought to refine my technique by studying at the source.”
“You seem to have gotten the hang of it,” Marla said. “You could have played eighteen holes using those little Nuno things as golf balls.”
“Yes. Thank you. Alas, that is not the first time I have needed to forcibly dispel the creatures. While I was out walking in the countryside in the Phillipines, I inadvertently disturbed an ant hill, or perhaps a termite mound, with my stick. I expected insects to emerge, but instead – out came severa
l Nuno. They looked more human, then, though they were still very small, appearing as tiny men with long ragged beards. They are local spirits, called ‘ancestors of the ant hills,’ though I think they are more closely aligned to imps than to true ancestral spirits. By which I mean, their resemblance to humanity is superficial and conditional.”
“Lots of supernatural creatures start to look more like humans when they have more contact with humans,” Marla said. “Or else people just perceive them that way. I looked at them in their true forms, and they weren’t much like people at all, apart from the eyes.”
Pelham nodded. “The Nuno are mostly used as a story by the locals, to keep children away from ant hills. If you disturb their homes, the Nuno can curse you – either trivially, to cause pain in the foot that kicked their hill, or more seriously, to... ah... this is indelicate... to urinate a viscous black fluid, or vomit blood. Most people never encounter the creatures, and only the superstitious believe they exist. I suspect they were attracted by the magical spells on my luggage.” He gestured toward the convertible’s trunk “Or perhaps I simply stumbled onto the one mound where they actually live. The Nuno have chosen to punish me more creatively than usual, it seems. They appear occasionally and attack me, wherever I am. I attempted to dispel them in Malaysia, paying an alularyo to perform a tawas ceremony. She poured molten wax into a bowl of water, interpreted certain signs beyond my understanding, and said I must make offerings of fruit at the site of the hill I’d destroyed, and beg for forgiveness. Unfortunately, I had difficulty finding the precise location again, and though I did make offerings... .” He shrugged. “I may have gotten the location wrong. Or perhaps the alularyo was a fraud. I did not realize the ritual had failed until I was a thousand miles away, when the creatures attacked me in an outdoor market. They are easily defeated, but terribly persistent, appearing days or even weeks apart. Though I lack your ability to pierce illusions, Mrs. Mason, they seem less and less humanoid to me with each appearance, as I’ve gone farther and farther from their home. Perhaps familiarity is enabling to see me more as they actually are.”
“They look pretty much like pissed-off garden gnomes to me,” Rondeau said, helpful as always. “I didn’t bother to try and see their true forms. Stuff pretty much never looks better that way.”
“I send you on a trip around the world,” Marla said, “and you come back with a case of supernatural fleas. Well, curses can be lifted. We’ll see what we can do.”
“I would appreciate that,” Pelham said. “The Nuno are most unseemly. But I do not mean to burden you with my problems, Mrs. Mason. Please, tell me, how are you? Why are you here?”
“You ride up front with Rondeau.” Marla climbed into the convertible’s comically undersized back seat. “He’ll tell you how I am, and what I’m doing in Hawai’i.”
A VISIT FROM DEATH
“The first two things you need to know,” Rondeau said as he pulled out of the parking lot, “are that I’m crazy rich now, and Marla’s been exiled from Felport.”
Pelham turned around in the passenger seat and looked at Marla, his eyes owlish and wide, and she nodded, then looked away, concentrating on staring out the window.
On the ride back to the hotel, Rondeau gave Pelham the rundown on everything that had happened since he left Felport to go on his world tour. The recitation was enough to make Marla exhausted all over again. Rondeau told the valet about Marla’s run-in with her con artist brother Jason, about Bradley Bowman’s murder at Jason’s hands, about Marla’s ill-conceived (or, if you were feeling charitable, daring) plan to bring Bradley back to life. And, finally, about the horrible consequences of her meddling in such cosmic affairs, including a rip in the fabric of space/time and the subsequent emergence of her villainous counterpart from a parallel universe, the Mason. “She looked just like Marla,” Rondeau said, gesturing animatedly with one hand as he drove with the other. “Well, Marla when she was twenty, maybe, because the Mason didn’t age after that. Only... well, you know Marla’s white-and-purple cloak?”
“I am familiar with the cloak.” Pelham sounded thoughtful, but not especially freaked out. This was probably a lot for the guy to take in – but then again, he’d once literally traveled to Hell with Marla, and lately he’d been battling a repeated infestation by Malaysian ant-monsters, so he was used to rolling with the punches. And the kicks. “Indeed, I think of the cloak often. I find its very existence rather disturbing.”
“Don’t we all,” Marla muttered. When she was twenty, she’d found a magical cloak hanging in a thrift store, and she’d felt compelled to buy it, sensing it was an item of magic. The cloak was more than merely magical, though – it was an artifact, a conscious object of uncertain origin and mysterious motivation. The cloak had granted Marla profound powers, both healing magics and viciously destructive battle prowess... but the latter came at a terrible psychic cost. Every time she used the cloak for violence, its alien intellect tried to subjugate her mind and possess her body for its own destructive ends. Essentially, it was a parasite, and Marla was the host, though it had taken her a long time to realize that. Marla’s will had been strong enough to resist the cloak’s attempts to possess her, but she’d never been comfortable wearing it, not once she was old and wise enough to realize how dangerous it could be. She’d eventually discovered it wasn’t a cloak at all, but a malevolent entity from another universe that chose to look like a cloak, and that in its true form, it was so scary it even frightened gods. When she finally glimpsed the cloak’s true form – something like a many-eyed devil ray with extra tentacles and fishhook fangs – she’d been horrified and vowed to never wear it again. The thing couldn’t be destroyed, though, and she’d dispatched Pelham on his world tour, with the mission to hide the cloak somewhere deep and obscure, someplace no one, even Marla, could ever find it. Except –
“The Mason made Marla look like Miss Congeniality,” Rondeau was saying, so Marla swatted him on the back of the head. He went on, unperturbed. “Imagine a version of Marla who put on the cloak at twenty, didn’t bother to fight the cloak’s influence at all, and just let herself get possessed by the evil alien mind inside it. That version of Marla, over in that hell of a universe next door, pretty much literally conquered the world. And then... we fucked up, trying to save Bradley, and tore a hole in the fabric of space-time. That set the Mason loose over here, and she went on the warpath. Shit got ugly. A lot of people in Felport died before Marla managed to outsmart the Mason. Viscarro, and Ernesto, and Granger... .” He shook his head. “Don’t worry, the Chamberlain’s okay, and all your friends on her estate are fine too, the Mason didn’t go near her place.”
“I am relieved.” The Chamberlain had been Pelham’s... employer, sort of? Or maybe foster mother? Pelham came from a long line of professional servants, pledged (and magically bonded) to serve prominent sorcerers. Marla hadn’t wanted a valet, even a supernaturally savvy one, but the Chamberlain had insisted that, as chief sorcerer, Marla required such help, and she’d “given” Pelham to her. Pelham had turned out to be amazingly competent, and soon became a friend, but Marla wasn’t happy with the notion of servants, especially supernaturally-bound ones. Which was one of the real reasons she’d sent him on his world tour –
“Oh, and check it out,” Rondeau said. “The Mason had a sidekick who was like an evil version of me, called Crapsey, with a creepy wooden jaw and a nasty trick where he could jump into people’s bodies, shove their souls into the void, and walk around in their skins – ”
“Get to the exile part,” Marla snapped. Rondeau was breezily reciting events that had left some pretty brutal wounds on her, psychically if not physically.
“Right.” Rondeau coughed. “The, uh, sorcerers in Felport who survived the Mason’s attacks blamed the whole interdimensional invasion thing on Marla, and... they kicked her out of the chief sorcerer job. Exiled her here. Well, not here specifically, they just forbid her to ever set foot in the city again. I didn’t see the point in staying in Felp
ort with Marla gone, so I sold my nightclub and decided to retire in style. Marla didn’t have anything better to do, so I asked her to come along, and... here we are.”
“Mrs. Mason.” Pelham twisted around in his seat again, and this time, put his hand on her knee. “I am profoundly sorry for your loss. For all your losses.”
“Me, too,” Marla said. “Look, Pelham, the Chamberlain is actually the chief sorcerer of Felport now, and me... I’m nobody. If you want to go to Felport, I’m sure the Chamberlain would be happy to take you in – ”
“I am bonded to you, Mrs. Mason.” Pelham voice was gentle, his eyes placid and sure. “I could not break that bond if I wanted to, and I do not want to. Even if I did care about status, well, you are greater than any mortal nobility – ”
“Shush,” Marla said sharply. Pelham knew a secret about her that no one else in the world besides Marla herself did. It was bad enough he kept calling her “Mrs.” – that would be a giveaway to anyone more attentive than Rondeau.
“Shush what?” Rondeau said.
“He was going to say something about my amazing natural gifts,” Marla said. “And you know I hate being complimented.”
“Whatever,” Rondeau said. “Now that Pelham’s back, he can keep you company at the bookshop. That’ll really open up my afternoons for spa visits.”
“I am pleased to serve in any capacity you wish,” Pelham said. “Shall I stay here, Mrs. Mason, or do you wish me to continue my travels?”
“Did you, ah, dispose of that thing yet?” Marla said. “The thing in the trunk?”
“Do you mean the bedsheet you glamoured to look like your cursed cloak?” Pelham said politely. “No, ma’am. That is still wrapped in bindings and wards in the steamer trunk.”
Marla groaned, and Rondeau whistled. “I was trying to figure out how she was going to break that to you,” Rondeau said. “Sending you off on a mission to get rid of a fake cloak.”
“Pelham, listen, I wasn’t trying to screw with you, I wanted people to think the cloak was gone from the city,” Marla said. “There were powerful people who wanted it, and I was afraid of what would happen if it fell into their hands. But at the same time, the cloak was so powerful, I couldn’t bring myself to really get rid of it. I wanted to keep it in reserve, just in case I needed it, like... a nuclear weapon or a vial of super-flu. And I didn’t let you in on the secret because I wanted you to – ”