Poison Sleep

by T. A. Pratt

  “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  They rode for several stops in silence. Marla made a point of meeting the long-term denizens of Felport’s streets and alleys. They saw things nobody else did, and many of them were happy to spill secrets in exchange for cash, which kept her better informed than the other sorcerers, in their high towers and libraries and laboratories. After forty minutes or so Marla pulled the cord to request a stop. Hamil’s place was a few blocks away, but she wanted to walk a little.

  This part of town was nicer than the neighborhood where Rondeau’s club and her office were, with apartment buildings overlooking Fludd Park, lots of bike paths, and plenty of little shops, coffeehouses, and restaurants nearby. Some of the professors and administrators at Adler College lived in the area, though the cheap student housing was mostly on the other side of the campus.

  Snow flurries began as Marla strolled along the salted sidewalks. It was February, and winter wasn’t through with Felport yet. Marla turned a corner, three blocks from Hamil’s building, and saw a woman sprawled out in the snow near the base of an apartment house. The woman’s thick caramel-colored hair obscured her face. She wasn’t dressed for the weather in jeans and a pale yellow blouse, and wore only a black wool scarf as a concession to the elements. Her cheeks were rosy, and her dingy white tennis shoes had no laces. The woman’s arms were extended in a Y over her head, and her legs were spread apart, as if she’d passed out in the midst of making a snow angel. But there was no snow around her body, just dead grass, as if all the snow had melted around her.

  Marla knelt and touched the ground. Warm, but not hot. She studied the woman, watching her chest rise and fall and her eyelids flicker. Not dead, only dreaming. Could a fever be hot enough to melt snow and ice? If so, Marla should have felt the heat radiating from the woman, and she didn’t. Was she some kind of pyromancer, then? Or hag-ridden by a now hibernating fire demon? Marla consulted her mental clock and chewed her lip. She should look into this, have the woman checked out, but she didn’t have time to do it herself. No one else in town knew about Joshua Kindler and his valuable power, but the longer he hung around unrecruited, the greater the chance Gregor or Ernesto or some other sorcerer would discover his presence and make him an offer. She’d send Hamil to check out the woman after she got to his apartment.

  “Sleep well,” she said, rising. And then stopped. “Holy shit.” Marla tried to remember what the woman in the photograph at the Blackwing Institute had looked like. It had been a lousy picture, blurry, but this woman was petite, she had that mass of hair, it might be her. “Hey,” Marla said. “Is your name Genevieve Kelley? Are you…lost, hon?”

  The woman moaned, a sound of deep distress, and Marla knelt again. “You okay?” She touched the woman’s cheek.

  The street tilted, and the sides of the surrounding buildings bulged out like the bodies of huge creatures taking deep breaths. Marla ducked her head and tried to grab the pavement, vertigo upending her sense of gravity. This was like falling through space, but the only movement was inside her head.

  The woman opened her eyes—they were violet, the color of crushed flowers—and clenched Marla’s hand. “His mouth,” she said, her breath a hot wind on Marla’s face. “His reeking mouth.”

  Marla fell backward, breaking contact with the woman and sitting hard in the snow. She looked around, bewildered, head pounding.

  What happened? Why was she on the ground? Had she fainted? She looked at the homeless woman lying on the grass. I didn’t even see her. Did I trip over her? She stood and brushed snow from her coat. The woman before her shifted a little, her fingers fluttering as if grasping for something. Marla felt a twinge of pity mixed with disgust. A thin layer of snow had started to form on the woman’s face. She’d be buried within an hour if she didn’t move. Marla nudged her in the side with her booted foot, but the woman didn’t respond. Sleeping off a drunk, probably. Marla sighed, took off her long coat, and put it over the woman’s sleeping form. That would keep her from freezing to death at least, and Marla had other ways of dealing with the cold. She’d walk back this way when she left Hamil’s place, and if the woman was still there, Marla would call someone from a shelter to pick her up. She stepped around the woman and went on her way.

  Z watched Marla from the shadows of an alleyway across the street. He couldn’t believe she’d actually spoken to him on the bus! He’d been riding to the nightclub where Marla spent most of her time, to continue his stakeout, and had been astonished when she boarded the bus herself at that stop. He’d been in disguise all week, assuming the invisibility of the homeless. Instead, Marla had seemed to notice him more readily in his down-and-out disguise than she would have if he’d dressed in a suit and pretended to be a businessman. After she departed, he’d stopped at the next corner and circled back to observe her.

  Z could have put a knife into her ribs while they were sitting on the bus, and he’d been sorely tempted, but his employer wanted him to cut out Marla’s heart and deliver it to him—something about preventing magical resurrection, Z gathered—and that demanded a more private location and a stretch of uninterrupted time. He would keep stalking her, pin down her routines, and kill her during some dark empty hours when she wouldn’t be missed for a while.

  He watched as she knelt to examine a woman sprawled on the ground. Suddenly, Marla fell backward in the snow, landing hard on her ass. She sat still, chin on her chest, eyes closed, for almost a full minute. Z inhaled and exhaled seven times while Marla sat unmoving. Very interesting. Was she narcoleptic? No one had mentioned that. A woman who fell unconscious on the street would not be difficult to kill, he thought.

  Then she jerked, lifted her head, and looked around, confused. Z didn’t breathe—the puffs of his exhalations made small clouds of mist, and she might see them when she looked his way. Marla rose to her feet, draped her coat over the still-unconscious woman, and walked on purposefully.

  When Marla turned a corner, the assassin slipped out of the doorway silently and padded after her. As he passed, the sleeping woman stirred and sat up. She yawned and stretched, as if waking in her own warm bed, Marla’s coat sliding down her body to puddle in her lap. She looked at him, frowned, and said, “You remind me of someone. No. Wait. I remind you of someone.”

  And she did, though he wasn’t sure who, exactly. There was something about her hair, triggering some fond association…. He shook his head. No reason to call attention to himself. Would he be more memorable if he helped her, or if he walked away? He extended his gloved hand. She grasped it, and he pulled her to her feet. But then the world spun around him, the sky swapping places with the ground, and a strong, horrible smell—old meat, and halitosis, and mold, and rotten spinach—filled his head.

  Z recovered his senses and realized he was sprawled half on the sidewalk, half in the street, the curb cold and uncomfortable under the small of his back. He sat up, wondering if he’d been shot or hit on the back of the head with a blackjack, but he could find no evidence of injury. Had he simply…blacked out? Did he have some undiscovered neurological condition? The idea of such a loss of control terrified him utterly. He rose to his feet and looked around. Hadn’t there been a woman in the grass here, sleeping? There was something about her…but the memory melted from his mind, the way a memory of a dream sometimes did upon waking. The woman was gone now. How long had he been unconscious? He hurried down the street, hoping he hadn’t been down too long, that he hadn’t lost track of Marla, that he wasn’t going to fall again and die twitching in the street.

  Hamil greeted Marla at the door of his vast apartment, his bulk filling the entryway. Beads of perspiration glistened on the dark skin of his shaved head. He smiled broadly. Hamil was her consiglieri, her chief advisor and closest ally among Felport’s secret magical elite. Without his support, she would have been assassinated during her first year as chief sorcerer, though since then, she’d solidified her position by saving the city from destruction once or twice. He still helpe
d smooth over the inevitable interpersonal conflicts, though. The powerful sorcerers in Felport were used to deference and respect, and Marla was lousy at faking such things. “You’re sweating,” Marla said as he stepped aside to let her in. She gasped as the heat of the apartment hit her. “It’s sweltering in here, Hamil! God, doesn’t all the fat on you keep you warm enough?”

  “It’s only eighty degrees here,” Hamil said, shutting the door. “You just feel hotter because you’ve been outside in the cold.”

  Marla shook her head. “Eighty degrees? Why so warm?”

  He shrugged. “I’m growing orchids. They like it hot during the day.” He led her across the gleaming tile floor toward a long, low table that took up most of a wall, with about twenty evenly spaced pots, each bearing a single flower, all different colors and shapes.

  “I guess they’re pretty enough,” Marla said. “But you won’t see me taking orders from a bunch of damn flowers. I’m the boss of my thermostat.” She squinted. “But…ah. Sympathetic magic, right?”

  Hamil nodded, gesturing for Marla to sit. She settled herself on his black leather couch and he lowered himself into a big club chair specially made to accommodate his weight. His apartment was sleek, modern, and spare, everything her own place was not, which was why Marla preferred to take her meetings here.

  “Growing orchids is very delicate, but the result is a beautiful flowering. I am involved in some, ah, other delicate negotiations, as you know, and by caring for the flowers, I’ve created a field of sympathetic resonance. As the flowers prosper, so will my other endeavors.”

  Marla laughed. Hamil looked like a giant bruiser, a movie version of gangster street muscle, but in reality he was a master of delicate sympathetic magics. Marla could work a few sympathetic magic spells—burning effigies to create bad luck for her enemies, that sort of thing—but Hamil was an artist of the technique. Specialization had its benefits, though Marla preferred her own hodgepodge approach to magic, using a little bit of everything. She’d been called a brute-force-o-mancer, and a foul-rag-and-bone-shop sorceress, and though both terms were usually meant as insults, she supposed they were accurate enough. She preferred broad adaptability to niche expertise.

  “You can meet with Mr. Kindler in my office, if you like,” Hamil said. “The heat there is less oppressive. He should be along shortly. He called to say he was running late.”

  Marla grunted. “He’d better learn to be punctual if he wants to work for me.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m sure you’ll be very stern with him,” Hamil said. “It’s not as if he has some supernatural power that makes people fall in love with him—oh, wait, he does. He’s a Ganconer, Marla. I doubt even you would find it possible to speak sharply to a lovetalker.”

  “Whatever. You’ll see. Besides, he’s not a Ganconer, a Ganconer’s a kind of fairy, and I’m not even convinced those things are real, despite what your crazy-ass friend Tom O’Bedbug says. Joshua Kindler was born of man and woman. He’s no elf.”

  Hamil rolled his eyes. “But we call his kind lovetalkers and Ganconers for convenience, though they do more than seduce. When I was young we called them Charismatics, but since the ’50s that word has too many religious associations.” He glanced at his watch. “I hear from one of my street urchins that you rushed out to the countryside this morning. Any problems?”

  Marla grunted. “Your little orphans have eyes everywhere, huh? Yeah, I went out to Blackwing. Dr. Husch has a runaway.”

  Hamil’s eyes widened. “Not Jarrow? No, of course not, you wouldn’t be sitting here so calmly if that were the case. Who, then?”

  “Genevieve Kelley. She’s a psychic, maybe a reweaver. She’s been catatonic for a long time, but Jarrow woke her up while trying to escape, and now it’s Genevieve who’s gone wandering. I’m going to track her down before she gets hurt, or hurts anyone else.”

  “Do we have a description? I can put the word out among my children.”

  Marla shrugged. “White lady, light brown hair, petite. Wearing a yellow blouse and a black scarf…Wait.” She frowned. “Strike that last. We don’t know what she’s wearing. Probably a nightgown. I don’t know why I thought…huh. Funny. I have this mental picture of her in yellow and black.” She shook her head. “I’ll have Rondeau send the picture over.”

  “I’ll expect it to arrive in six to eight weeks, then,” Hamil said dryly.

  Marla grinned. Rondeau was not the most reliable courier. “And I met a slow assassin this morning. There are a bunch of them in town looking for one of their wayward brothers.”

  She recounted her conversation with Kardec, and Hamil clucked his tongue. “An eventful morning. I hope this Zealand isn’t in town to eliminate anyone we know. Well, unless it’s Gregor. I wouldn’t shed any tears over him.” His phone rang, and Hamil answered. “Yes? Ah, Mr. Kindler, I’ll buzz you in.” He closed the phone. “Your beautiful boy is downstairs. Don’t be too rough on him. I’m sure he’s very delicate.”

  “Yeah, a precious flower who’s always gotten his own way. A little jolt will do him good.” She cracked her knuckles.

  A few moments later the doorbell rang, and Hamil opened the door. “Do come in,” he said, and Joshua Kindler entered.

  Once she saw him, Marla couldn’t stop looking. His slim hips, his pale eyes, his dark, long eyelashes, his sweet lips, his copper-colored tousled hair, his beautiful hands, the entirety of him. Looking at him was like sipping brandy, like snuggling into down comforters, like soaking in a warm bath. Just the sight of him was sensual. The thought of touching him—it was enough to make her a little dizzy.

  Fucking pheromones. Or aura manipulation, or empathic projection, or however the hell it works. “Mr. Kindler,” she said, putting a lot of steel and razor wire into her voice. “If you’re going to work for me, you’re going to have to learn to be on time.”

  Kindler still stood in the open doorway. He looked shocked, and in his shock, he was beautiful. Marla wondered if she was the first person to ever see that expression on his face, or even the first to cause it.

  “I haven’t agreed to work for you yet,” he said cautiously, “Ms. Mason. I’ve just come to hear you out.”

  Marla shrugged. “So come into Hamil’s office, and we’ll talk.”

  “If you don’t mind, Marla, I’m going to make a few calls,” Hamil said. He couldn’t take his eyes off Joshua, either.

  Marla gave her assent, and beckoned for Joshua to follow her. He moved like a cloud, and for the first time she noticed his clothes, perfectly white coat over an immaculate shirt and slacks. Most lovetalkers didn’t bother to make themselves look good, trusting their magical attractiveness to win over anyone they encountered. Marla had met a few who were disgusting slobs, who took pleasure in their ability to seduce people even while picking their noses or sucking on foul, cheap cigars. Joshua was different, special, more wonderful than the rest—

  Ah, shit. His power was strong. Marla shut the door to the study and pointed to a chair in front of Hamil’s desk. She plopped down in Hamil’s huge executive chair, grateful to have the desk between them, and squelched the mental voice that lamented her choice of clothes, that wished she’d worn something more feminine than loose pants and a baggy shirt—after all, her breasts were still pretty good; she’d been a topless waitress once upon a time; early thirties wasn’t too old for him—a whole annoying line of insecure bullshit.

  Joshua sat down, gentle as fog settling over the city.

  “Let me get right to the point,” Marla said.

  “Please,” he murmured, looking at her from beneath his long lashes, eyes fixed on hers. Marla thought of pictures she’d seen of Persian harem boys, bronze-skinned and slim with girlish lips, and thought, I’d like to kiss him all over.

  She leaned forward in her chair, counteracting her urge to lean back and stretch, catlike. “Occasionally I require certain services.” He raised an eyebrow and smiled, and Marla blushed, much to her irritation. “Not the kind of services dried-up
rich women cruising in Cadillacs ask you for, Joshua. I think you know that.”

  “I would never suggest such a thing,” he said, quirking an amused smile. The look didn’t even piss her off, and her failure to get angry made her angry. That whole emotional tangle only served to fluster her further.

  She gritted her teeth for a moment, then spoke. “You’re charming. Unusually so. People like you, everybody likes you, even I like you, and I don’t like anybody. I’ve been told that I can be a little abrasive, and I don’t have a lot of patience for bullshit. My job sometimes requires a lot of diplomacy, and frankly, I don’t have the skills for it. You do, and your skills could be very useful to me.”

  “I’m sure.” He looked into her eyes. Marla wanted to pour wine down his chest and lick it off. “But I have to ask…why should I work for you when I can get anything I want just by asking for it?”

  “Because if you’re not bored with that kind of life already, you will be soon. I think you’re too smart to enjoy drifting through life, getting everything handed to you on a silver platter. You came here to meet with me because it seemed like it could be interesting, right? I can promise you interesting times, Joshua.”

  He chewed thoughtfully on his thumbnail, a gesture Marla found unspeakably endearing. “I’m intrigued,” he said. “All this is new to me, understand, sorcerers, mysterious societies, underworlds within underworlds…I used to think I was just very lucky, and likable. I believed no more in magic than anyone does. Your associate, Mr. Hamil, has shown me things I can’t explain, and so I have no choice but to believe there is a whole side to the world I never imagined before. He tells me you are the most able guide to that world I am likely to encounter.”

  “So that’s a yes?”

  He frowned. “I have…one concern. Mr. Hamil is often accompanied by small children. Forgive me if this is indelicate, but…is he a pedophile? If so, I’m afraid I can’t work for anyone who would condone such a thing. When I was a child…Well, let’s just say I’ve always been very attractive, and there were those who tried to take advantage when I was young.”