Pandaemonium (17 page)

Nothing to be done about it now. I was too tired anyway, and – no. Nothing to be done. Just a fact. Live with it.

I said, “Nothing, just...”

I shrugged against his side, mostly for the pleasure of watching how his head shifted when I did it. He waited, while I remembered that he never used to let me get away with that, he’d just ask again,
well, what?
until I told him.

Boys don’t change, apparently. So I surrendered to the inevitable, and blinded him with literature. “You know that Orwell thing, his vision of the future as a boot stamping on a human face, forever?”

Jacey was used to the way my mind worked. Used to be used to it. He said, “Uh-huh,” in a very non-committal kind of way.

“Well, I just thought of a more subtle version, that’s all.”
Your dad, walking on a costly carpet
– but I wouldn’t need to spell that out. I was used to him, too – used to be used to him – and I knew where his mind would go. He wasn’t that much interested in books.

He said, “That’s what you’re thinking about, is it? Here we are” – together after years of the other thing, lying on a rug in a suite in London’s grandest hotel with his finger tracing patterns idly on my breast – “and you’re thinking about rewriting old books. Have I ever said before, how downright bloody odd you are?”

“Once or twice, maybe.” It was his constant chorus, even back when I was Fay, when I was just this girl that he delighted in. That was a thing to be, a fine thing, but it was a lot less complicated than what I was now, Desdaemona with a whole other history he hardly knew. “Never mind, Jacey love. You’ll get used to me. Eventually.”

“I doubt that. Seriously.” He propped himself up on one elbow, looked down at me and said, “So on a scale of one to ten, how comfy are you feeling right now, and how much d’you fancy taking this somewhere else, like to the bedroom, maybe?”

I can take a hint, but sometimes I can’t carry it. I said, “Eleven and one.”

“Huh?”

“Bed sounds better than this.”
Better even than this.
“I just don’t think I can move, is all.” There’s always a crash, at the back end of extreme effort. Carrying an Aspect is, well, a new definition of extreme. Letting my Aspect carry me, for the better part of a day – or the worse part, more like – had left me exhausted past counting, almost past caring. I was drained, absolutely; my bones felt hollow and leaden, both at once.

I was, emphatically, blaming the day and the Aspect and nothing more. Nothing to do with a frantic fuck on a fancy rug, no. Nothing to do with Jacey, nor with Jordan neither. Just the day.

“Huh.” Jacey surveyed me thoughtfully. “Well, you’re not exactly a frail flower, but hey. You never were. I reckon I’m still up to your weight. Hold still.”

And he scooped me up and carried me, all through the suite; and I didn’t see any part of it, I was all too utterly tired to be curious. Just my head on his shoulder now, and it was like lying on the rug except for being smooth living skin beneath my cheek and not so colourful, even more expensive, just as out of focus.

And then he laid me on a bed, a blessed bed; and he lay down again beside me, on the proper side, his side – and I barely had time to register that Jordan had always been on the other side, because that was where I’d put him, where I’d wanted him, and I didn’t know if that was significant or not but actually I was already pretty much asleep, so let it go.

“W
HAT TIME IS
it?”

“Night-time. Darktime. Go back to sleep.”

“What are you doing?”

“Turning the lights off, so they don’t disturb you. Go to
sleep.
”

“Oh. Okay, then.”

H
E’D TURNED THE
lights off all through the suite, and drawn the curtains too – and all of that could only help so much, not enough, against the bright coming of the day.

I did eventually, reluctantly, have to wake up. And all but crawl in that half-light from the bed to the bathroom, where on another day, another time, in another world I would have loved to linger and play, but not now. I contemplated a hard cold shower, just to underscore that whole waking-up idea. It might be my turn. I did, briefly, contemplate it.

And then oozed back to bed, slithered under the covers, nestled up against the slumped and slumbrous warmth of my Cathar, mine –
mine!
– and was asleep again, as I deserved to be.

A
ND WOKE AGAIN
the best way, roused by a curious, enquiring, suggestive hand, an impertinent hand; and bit its owner, complementarily hard; and one thing led to another, as it does.

S
O THEN HE
was asleep again, as boys do, and for a wonder I was not. I felt... slept, quite exhaustively slept. Not enough, of course, never enough when sleep is such an all-consuming pleasure, but maybe enough for now.

I poked a toe out into the world, a whole foot, and then another. Sat up cautiously on the edge of the bed, and Jacey never stirred; so okay, I tried standing up. Found I could manage that, more or less, at least for the short stagger to the bathroom. Not that short, not in the Savoy – it wasn’t so much en-suite as distantly related – but still, I made it. And the door between the two was solid enough that the sound of rushing water shouldn’t disturb a sleeping male, so I closed it on him firmly and ran a bath, deep and hot, while I soaped and rinsed and shampooed in the shower.

Then I just soaked in the bath till I was wrinkly, and just a little longer. And finally, reluctantly, hauled myself out and dried off with the world’s fluffiest towels and spoiled myself entirely among the lotions and the unguents supplied; and then slipped out and checked on Jacey – yup, still sleeping: how do they do that, men, like sex was an anaesthetic? – and went to explore the suite.

S
OME SUITE.
S
OME
neck, my even being here, even under Jacey’s aegis, under his arm, under his shadow.

There were three bedrooms as big as ours, each with its luxury bathroom in attendance if you could find it, if you could walk that far. They all three inhabited their own passageway, to give a sense of privacy, detachment from the business end of the suite.

At the end of that passage was the main sitting-room, a lounge area bigger than a lot of hotel foyers I had known. Opening directly off it I found a conference-room with a long table, a dozen chairs and as many screens hung like portraits around the walls to allow for off-site attendees, and an office with computers and faxes and phones, several desks for secretaries and PAs.

Not opening off it was another door, which I didn’t even think of leaning into with even a hint of Aspect-strength. In honesty, I’d be just as happy not to touch my Aspect for a day or two, or a week or two, or more. Besides, it would be rude to go breaking Savoy doors when they’d been so quick to welcome us in. And besides again, I thought I knew what lay the other side of this particular door. I thought it was probably the boss’s private office, and he probably had reasons to keep it locked. Even against family. Maybe especially against family.
Jacey, love, I just had a look through your dad’s files, and –

And no. Just, no. I wasn’t going there; that wasn’t anywhere I wanted to find myself, no matter what else I might find.

Besides, I’d already found something else. Not the spectacular view of the Thames from Canary Wharf to the Houses of Parliament, that long march of bridges that came visible when I drew back the sitting-room curtains. Also coming visible in the fall of light was a small dark pile on a side-table, which was all our clothes, Jacey’s and mine, picked up from where we must’ve left them strewn in the hallway over there.

Picked up and laundered, pressed and folded and delivered back to us. Jacey didn’t do all that when he was pulling curtains and switching off the lights.

Jacey didn’t do
any
of that. He’d been way too privileged all his life, he’d never think of it.

I thought about it, briefly. This was the Savoy, a private suite in the Savoy. Nobody here was going to be disturbed by a swift rap on the door and a voice that called “Housekeeping!”

Even so. Likely the suite came with its own housekeeper.

Even so...

After a bit, I picked up the phone and didn’t even have to dial. A voice that managed to be both warm and deferential at the same time – which is a neat trick if you can do it – said, “Good morning. How may I help you?”

“Um,” I said. “This is –”

“Yes, Miss Desdaemona. How can I help?”

Okay, that’s a neat trick too, but it’s just technology tipping them off. I don’t know how it works, but I do know what it does. Even when it takes me by surprise. Even when I can hear that extra ‘a’ being pronounced very carefully in the middle there. I said, “When we... arrived yesterday” – you couldn’t exactly say we’d checked in, but I didn’t suppose anyone in this suite ever would – “we were greeted by a, a,” – a miss? a ma’am? a clerk, a manager, a what? – “by someone called Julie,” I said, ducking all the questions frantically. “I wondered if she might –”

“One moment, please.”

Of course she might. Even if she was off duty, at home, in the bath or in bed or in mid-fuck on the rug: this was the Savoy. Very, very quickly, I heard her voice on the line. Not out of breath, not caught on the hop, not disturbed in the least. Of course not; this was the Savoy.

“Good morning. How may I help?”

The same formula, but short of warmth: all crisp efficiency. As she was in person, immaculate and prompt and professional. I was suddenly very aware of standing naked by the window, in full view of any passing helicopter, any paparazzo with a zoom lens, any creature with enhanced sight...

No matter. Sometimes nakedness is strength.
I can do this, I can wander around this time of the morning with no clothes on. You can’t. Guess who’s doing better? Even before you take one sleeping Cathar into account?

Stop it. We weren’t in competition: not for Jacey, not for anything. I said, “I suspect that you’re the one I need to thank for having our clothes cleaned.”

“It’s all part of the service,” she said, which was likely true, but... I thought about strangers letting themselves into the suite while we slept, and would have felt deeply unhappy about it except that this was the Savoy, and we were guests, and they’d go to any measure to keep us safe. Or she would. I was fairly sure that she was the one who’d picked our things up, personally. Not a stranger, then.

I suddenly wanted to talk to her about Jacey, but I was damned if my own life was going to fail the Bechdel test. Instead I said, “Julie,” in hopes that she would reply in kind, “tell me what happened down in the station. Is Reno all right?”

“She’s fine. It takes more than a wyrm to get by an angel in her wrath. Our people didn’t have to do much; stood and watched, mostly, by their own report, while she took it apart. I sent them to haul the pieces up a side tunnel and butcher them more thoroughly, just in case. They think it’s a penance.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Good Lord, no. I wouldn’t send a pair of daemons down against a wyrm. Not and expect to see them come up again. I wanted intel, not action; I’d have been livid if they hadn’t hung back, in the circumstances.”

Despite myself, I found that I was warming to her. Human or Overworld, mostly people look on daemons as cannon-fodder, more or less. I said, “So why...?”

“Why the butchery? Because I’ve heard too many stories about wyrms regenerating from any random fragment, and I don’t want to find a nest of the nasty things breeding directly beneath us. Tolk and Carter will strip it flesh from bone, in so far as it has either, and treat the pieces so that I can be quite sure there’s no hint of life left in them. Then we can safely leave it to the dark; there are scavengers down there that even a wyrm is right to be afraid of.”

“Daemons too,” I said pointedly.

“Oh, yes. They’ll be careful, and they’ll be quick. They’d be quick anyway, it’s a foul job, but someone’s got to do it. And they won’t be fit for human company afterwards. They can clean up in Reno’s bath-house if that’s still operable, but even so. When they come back I’m sending them on a week’s leave, effective immediately. With tickets to the Maldives. I think that should be far enough.”

“There’s water enough to soak the slime off,” I agreed. And then, because I couldn’t keep up that neutral tone that seemed so natural in her, “Some daemons get all the luck. Why didn’t I ever – ? No, never mind. I wouldn’t have liked it anyway. Well, the corporate side of it. I could’ve handled the Maldives.” And the butchery, if necessary. But, “Are you sure you can spare them both? Someone’s got his eye on this place now, bound to have.”

“I’m sure,” she confirmed. “They’re not the only two on the payroll, and the Savoy is... not short of protection in other ways.”

Well, no. Not with Cathars in a top-floor suite and Reno watching the underway. Even so, I was anxious now. And reluctant to confess it, or to press my case.

“What else can I do for you?” she asked. “Are you ready for breakfast?”

“Jacey will be, when he wakes up.” He’d be starving. It’s another male attribute, seemingly. First they sleep, then they eat. “He’ll want the works, full English with American pancakes on the side. And cereal, toast, all the coffee that there is. You know.”