Bride of the Rat God (43 page)

“Buffalo.” Norah shook her head. “Now I know I’m truly in the Wild West.”

The tufted feathers on Christine’s brow band tilted with the tip of her head. Against the furs, Norah could see the milky fleck of Black Jasmine’s skunk streak and the star of his single eye. “California’s not so
very
wild, darling. I mean, we’ve got the Beverly Hills Hotel. And during the filming Frank was absolutely dog-sick...
Norah
...!”

“Yes?”

“You’re the scenarist for Colossus Studios now, aren’t you? I mean officially? You did take that job Hraldy and Frank offered you?”

Norah nodded. She hadn’t been comfortable about it and intended to leave as soon as she found another, but at the moment, in Hollywood, she was an unknown quantity.

Mr. Brown had questioned her fairly sharply about why Christine had not reported onto the set that morning or the morning before. When Norah had met his eyes and said, “They don’t quite know. It’s a rather mysterious illness,” the producer’s gaze had shifted, and again she’d had the impression that he was quickly sorting things in the back of his mind. Wondering, perhaps, about his dream, if he’d had a dream instructing him to have Shang Hsu Kwan arrested. Wondering about the promises he’d thought had been made. Maybe wondering about the necklace that had vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.

He hadn’t pressed her and had given her surprisingly good terms: a hundred and fifty dollars a week and a bonus if a film she wrote did exceptionally well. For the first time in her life Norah realized she had an actual job.

The house on Ivarene—to which she and Christine had returned the previous day, though Norah suspected she herself would be living in Venice soon—had smelled of Ambrose Conklin’s pipe smoke and coffee when she’d reached it again, and there had been two unwashed cups on the low table in the living room; later that evening she’d seen Christine trying on the pink diamond ring in front of the bedroom mirror.

That diamond glittered now among the soft torrent of Black Jasmine’s fur. “Well, why don’t you write a story that takes place mostly on a ship, that will have to be filmed out here in Catalina? Frank’s absolutely been following me around, trying to find out what happened with the Rat-God without asking, hoping I don’t know he made a deal with that nasty thing to arrest Mr. Shang, and thinking all
kinds
of things about Ambrose and me. He’d be sure to follow me out here and get seasick and sunburned and get sand in his shoes and be miserable the whole time. And I do have
one
more film left in my contract with Colossus. Will you do that? And make it so good he
can’t
not film it?”

Norah laughed, looking up at the tousled bundle of fur and precious stones and Pekingese at the rail beside her. “Of course. Anything will be better than trying to write a scenario about a six-foot specimen of the genus orthoptera for Hraldy’s cinematic masterpiece.”

“What? Oh, that thing about the cockroach. You know he’s trying to get Hans to break his contract with Jasper Productions to come to Colossus and star in it? It’ll serve him right if Hans does: Hans has a
terrible
temper and will probably try to organize a union on the set. He left Germany because he was a socialist or something. He’s always going on about unions, and after working all day on one film and then going back and doing retakes for the last one all night, I’m not sure I don’t agree with him... Or wouldn’t if I was going to stay with Colossus.”

There was a soft scrambling clatter of toenails on the decking. Raising her head, Norah saw the pale shapes of Buttercreme and Chang Ming trotting purposefully across to them from where Shang Ko and the Mud Tortoise stood by the aft rail. They had been there for nearly an hour, ever since Captain Oleson had put about for home again, the tall shape and the small looking very much like their namesakes against the phosphorous chop of the waves. Now and then their voices could be heard, a soft murmur of Chinese against the voices of the sea; once the Mud Tortoise had raised her hand to lay it against Shang Ko’s cheek.

“Can I get you anything to drink, darlings?” asked Christine, turning back toward the cabin. “Captain Oleson has the most
marvelous
liquors down there.”

“They all come out of the same vat,” warned Alec. He’d talked to Chaplin at United Artists that morning—Norah had the suspicion he wasn’t long for Colossus, either.

“They do not, either,” Christine retorted. “They’re imported especially from Vancouver—he said so. Norah, that man has no sense of romance, and if I were you, I’d think twice about marrying him. We need to drink to the Rat-God’s disappearance, at the very least, and to me
finally
being able to sleep at night without wondering what’s going to be creeping up on me, completely aside from letting you two quit guarding me and get a little time to yourselves...”

She paused, turning in the doorway of the cabin, a dark silhouette with her flashing diamonds and her dogs about her feet. Her voice was suddenly shaky. “Thank you,” she said softly and very quickly. Then, turning, she fled downstairs.

She could face danger, thought Norah, and the wild demands of make believe; she could face exhaustion and producers and any number of incomprehensible directors. She could face crazed fans and rough fate and the black Rat-God of eldritch legend. But she could not yet face love.

Perhaps, Norah thought, eventually the dogs would teach her that.

She hoped Ambrose Conklin would be kind to her.

She leaned against Alec’s shoulder for a time, gazing out across the midnight ocean that seemed to stretch behind them to the farthest reach of the world. Moonlight sparkled like the froth on bootleg champagne. From the cabin, Captain Oleson’s voice boomed out, “Don’t get saucy with me, wench! Nor your little dogs, neither! I’ll have you know I’m the captain of this boat!”

Something in his voice told Norah that he was utterly captivated.

“If he’s the captain of this boat,” Alec said thoughtfully, pushing up his glasses, “that means he can marry us, doesn’t it?”

Norah glanced sidelong at him, small and comfortable and unprepossessing, solid as oak or bread or leather. A curious thing to find, she thought, in a place like Hollywood. She took his hand. “I suppose he can,” she said.

Barbara Hambly (b. 1951) is a
New York Times
bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction, as well as historical novels set in the nineteenth century.

Born in San Diego and raised in the Los Angeles suburb of Montclair, Hambly attended college at the University of California, Riverside, where she majored in medieval history, earning a master’s degree in the subject in 1975. Inspired by her childhood love of fantasy classics such as
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
and
The Lord of the Rings
, she decided to pursue writing as soon as she finished school. Her road was not so direct, however, and she spent time waitressing, modeling, working at a liquor store, and teaching karate before selling her first novel,
Time of the Dark
, in 1982. That was the birth of her Darwath series, which she expanded on in four more novels over the next two decades. More than simple sword-and-sorcery novels, they tell the story of nightmares come to life to terrorize the world. The series helped to establish Hambly’s reputation as an author of intelligent fantasy fiction.

Since the early 1980s, when she made her living writing scripts for Saturday morning cartoons such as
Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors
and
He-Man
, Hambly has published dozens of books in several different series. Besides fantasy novels such as 1985’s
Dragonsbane
, which she has called one of her favorite books, she has used her background in history to craft gripping historical fiction.

The inventor of many different fantasy universes, including those featured in the Windrose Chronicles, Sun Wolf and Starhawk series, and Sun-Cross novels, Hambly has also worked in universes created by others. In the 1990s she wrote two well-received Star Wars novels, including the New York Times bestseller
Children of the Jedi
, while in the eighties she dabbled in the world of Star Trek, producing several novels for that series.

In 1999 she published
A Free Man of Color
, the first Benjamin January novel. That mystery and its eight sequels follow a brilliant African-American surgeon who moves from Paris to New Orleans in the 1830s, where he must use his wits to navigate the prejudice and death that lurk around every corner of antebellum Louisiana. Hambly ventured into straight historical fiction with
The Emancipator’s Wife
, a nuanced look at the private life of Mary Todd Lincoln, which was a finalist for the 2005 Michael Shaara Prize for Civil War writing.

From 1994 to 1996 Hambly was the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Her James Asher vampire series won the Locus Award for best horror novel in 1989 and the Lord Ruthven Award in 1996. She lives in Los Angeles with an assortment of cats and dogs.

Hambly with her parents and older sister in San Diego, California, in September 1951.

Hambly (right) with her mother, sister, and brother in 1955. For three years, the family lived in this thirty-foot trailer at China Lake, California, a Marine Base in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

Hambly (left), at the age of nine, with her brother and sister on Christmas in 1960.

Hambly’s graduation from high school, June 1969.