Selling Out (27 page)

“Must have taken more out of me than I thought,” he muttered, mostly to himself and smiled at Lila with a smile that soon faded until his mouth was as thinly drawn as a wire.

“What are you doing here?” she said. “Problems?”

“I came to . . .” His hesitancy and seriousness were uncharacteristic, and it was a relief when he gave up the effort of making a show and said simply, “I have to tell you some bad news.” He looked over his shoulder at Sorcha, who smiled at him with a cold elegance that said she wasn’t going anywhere. Malachi shrugged it off and turned back to Lila, walking forward to take her arm—pointedly avoiding a smear—and leading her to the very end of the terrace where date palms in giant pots provided a nominal kind of shelter. Behind them the summoned servants appeared and began cleaning with great haste and efficiency. Sorcha brooded and skulked around them, trying to listen in.

Lila was strangely grateful for the distraction, no matter how bad it was, but Malachi hesitated again and washed his face with the back of one hand—something Lila had never seen him do before. “You’re going feral?” she asked, trying to make him smile. He liked silly jokes.

“Are you going to sit down?” he asked impatiently.

“No,” she said. “Are you going to stop stalling and start talking?”

“Lila, your parents are dead.”

She saw Sorcha jerk slightly in the background. A moment later, in the long quiet, Thingamajig bounced back up onto the terrace railing and looked around for her; it opened its mouth and received Sorcha’s tail in it at something slightly less than a hundred miles an hour. It vanished over the edge again with a muffled cry.

“How?” she asked. She felt so calm it was really quite odd. She felt like a big space opened up inside her, around her, and what had just been important was receding on the perimeter.

“Car accident.”

“Really?” She wanted it to be that. She looked at him desperately, hoping it was not the overspill from what she had done. Praying . . . and distantly aware that it was odd to pray for death for people you loved.

His burning orange eyes fixed their gaze on hers steadily. “I didn’t see that.”

Oh.
Something the agency were covering . . . that was . . . “Demons?”

He shrugged—he really didn’t know. His wings shed a little dust and it sparkled in the air, a cloud of almost weightless magical matter, soon borne off on the breeze. “Later,” he said in a low voice. “Not here.”

“Are you sure . . . I mean . . . there couldn’t have been some mistake . . .”

“I have a picture of the scene,” he said in clipped, near silent syllables and gave a slight shake of his head.

Lila swallowed hard. “Can I see it?”

The faery backed off a step.

She held out her hand, “I mean it. I can handle it. I need to see it. I have about thirty vendettas out on me and I want to know . . .”

“It’s probably not a good idea,” he said. “Don’t you think . . .”

“Show me,” Lila demanded, losing all patience. “Give it to me! I have a right to know!”

“And I have a business to protect you right now,” Malachi countered, polite but unshakeable, his chin lowering with determination. “You’ll get to know when the time is right.”

He has a . . .
Tath began.

You shut up
, Lila snarled inwardly. To Malachi she kept her hand out and balled the other one into a fist. “Give me what you got, partner.”

Malachi didn’t miss the load on the last word. She saw him flinch. He wrestled visibly with his conscience for a second, then slowly reached into his inside pocket and withdrew his Berry. He flipped it open and cued the screen before holding it out to her.

All her conviction left. She didn’t want to take it because it was going to hurt, only, she didn’t know how bad. Everything was suspended, until the second she saw and it was true. She was okay, until she looked. She was aware of Sorcha staring at her, of the world being still and silent, of Malachi waiting. She wanted to live in this moment forever.

She took the Berry and turned it towards herself. The AI in her skull offered to take away everything but the facts; it could detach her from emotion and even deal with all the deductions. At all costs she had to remain a functional, capable agent, responsible for her awesome power, her duty foremost in her mind. It was there to help when that was too hard for an ordinary person. It wouldn’t be cheating. It was essential. It had protected her from the impact of so many things since she was Made. The only time she’d ever cut it off completely was the night and day she spent with Zal in his hotel room.

The prospect of using it again made her feel weak, grey, and flat. Empty; she was the robot girl who never had to deal, who downloaded her passions, who bypassed her pain, who had infinite energy and the strength of a thousand men and the heart of a zombie. And no change, not ever, always the smile of the medicated mind and the comfort of the hot guns. And nobody asked her. They saved her. Oh . . .

She shut it down.

Lila . . .
Tath was afraid for her. She knew it was real concern and she was glad of it, no matter what fucked up shit else he was keeping back for another day.

No. You’re right. I thought when you said lying you meant to you, and to other people. I didn’t think about me. I have, ever since . . . since Vincent died, or even before. Yeah, maybe before that, before the bomb even came.
(She thought of weddings and school and a feeling she had never named, a deep dissatisfaction with the prospect of a normal adult life, her parents’ visions of what it held in store. Within her shock, was there not just a tinge of . . . relief? Yes. She felt herself fragmenting, almost grateful that her missing limbs and pieces were not here to see what she had come to because she did not feel like a horrified, upset, dutiful child.
At last
, said some old, old voice in her mind.
We can stop now.
An exhaustion came over her so profound that she had to lock her limb mechanics to hold her up. She thought she could lie down right there and sleep for a thousand years.)
I’m so tired
, she said and looked at the image in her hand.

“Oh,” she said.

Her mother was seated on the sofa—a new sofa, all beautiful hand-tooled leather and Italian design like she’d wanted for so many years, but when Lila was at home it had been an old divan set—she was relaxed and slumped. Her mouth hung slackly. Her eyes were wide open and rolled up, just the bottom part of the iris showing. Her dad was the same, but he half lay on the sofa, like he’d been draped there. A string of saliva hung from the corner of his mouth.

They didn’t look dead, just passed out. On the table in front of them was a box and a lot of silver and white wrapping paper, ribbon and tape, scissors, and a card tucked into the fold of its envelope. It bore a picture of two bears holding hands, one in a tux and one in a veil—“Congratu lations!” Next to it was a half-finished bottle of vodka and her mother’s chunky glass, leaded crystal. Ice cubes in it had melted almost down to nothing and the glass ran with water on the outside. A deck of her mother’s trademark Lucifera casino playing cards had spilled off the corner and lay in a scatter on the carpet next to two unopened packs, their crumpled cellophane wrapper beside them. In the corner of the image she could see the curve of the white baby grand piano her sister played, covered with silver-framed photographs of the family that always used to ring faintly whenever someone hit a high F. They were dusty.

“How did you get there so fast?” Lila’s voice didn’t sound like her own. She was barely aware of speaking.

“I didn’t. I got the picture from Delaware. A neighbour called the police. She heard screaming.”

“That was lucky,” Lila said without thinking.

Malachi frowned with incomprehension.

Lila became aware of a coldness in her chest. Tath?

I cannot tell which of two possibilities are there
, he said, calm and gentle.
Either they were soul-sucked by a necromancer, or they were eaten by the shadowkin or some creature of that kind. I have seen this petit-mort often, but without a close inspection I cannot tell the cause.

Petit mort?

The little death. Those taken out of time are spoken of this way. To die in the body by more natural means is the grand mort.

She handed the Berry back and turned away to find Sorcha staring at her. The servants were gone. The place was pristine. Lila felt a grim determination fill her.

“Sorcha,” she said. “I need to go home.”

“I . . .” began the demon.

Lila cut her off, “If you would keep all my duel notes and just say I’m delayed, and send a No to all the proposals and business plans while I’m gone, I’d be grateful. I’ll leave you some money for the messengers and sacrifices and all the stuff you need for that. Now, I understand I have to take on the Mantle of Vengeance for Adai, and I’ll deliver the notice on that as soon as I find who did it. I believe that frees you from debt to her family.”

Sorcha nodded, her face serious as she matched Lila’s change of mood. “I will also send out the wedding invitations.”

Lila frowned.

Malachi groaned as he got a grip on the facts, finally. “Of course. Li, you inadvertently caused Zal’s wife’s murder. You have to replace her with a like value.”

“With what?” Lila asked.

Sorcha rolled her eyes, her brief interlude of solicitious patience over. “Will y’all be wearing red or black?” she smouldered, giving off a slumberous purple vapour, her flare lit with scarlet and cerise.

“You can decide,” Lila said, ignoring everything that wasn’t of essential importance. She had no intention of going through with a wedding. She could deal with it later however.

“Red, then,” Sorcha said. “No sense in being half-assed about it.” She looked pleased, her tail became lofted and perky.

Malachi seemed to have come to the same conclusion. He put the Berry in his pocket. “I will summon a taxi to take us to the port.”

“I need this thing off my wrist,” Lila held up her shackled arm. “What can I do?”

“Nothing.” Sorcha dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand. “I will inform them of the situation and they’ll give you Leave of Mis ericordia. Five days of free action.”

Lila nodded at her and then said to Malachi, “Let’s go.”

He spread his wings and lifted clear of the ground. “I will fetch a car.”

He disappeared into the night air. Where he had stood a small pile of black coal dust blew into a ring and then glittered briefly before it faded entirely to nowhere.

Sorcha curled her lip at it. “Cheeky creature. Still, what do you expect from cats? Marking themselves on everything. At least he didn’t piss on the plants.” She glanced up at Lila. “I don’t know what gives in your world, but if a demon did this, we pay. We always pay for our mistakes and we always keep our end of a deal. Even if we ain’t the ones making them. We take a strong view on it. You understand? Adai—I know you meant nothing there. I’m just sore is all. If you need help, send your imp. They’re a useless gaggle of crap, but they can send messages fine.”

Lila nodded. “Mine says he’s a lord of Hell.”

“The old ones are the best,” Sorcha shrugged. “It’ll be fine.”

Lila guessed she didn’t mean the imp with the last line. She tried for a brave smile but didn’t make it. Sorcha snarled for a servant and instructed it to retrieve Thingamajig. Her face was deadly serious, an expression Lila had never seen on her before and hoped never to again for it was like seeing a sunny day turn to the point of a sword. She fixed Lila with a steel gaze.

“You’re one of us now. Do as we would do, or be damned.”

Without thinking, acting only on her feelings, Lila snarled in return, “I’m not one of you and I’ll do as I will.”

Sorcha glared at her then laughed, “No less!” She sobered as an aircar appeared from the night, balloon swelling like a second moon in the torchlights.

It approached rapidly, fanning all the flames to flat streaks of light with the wind from its propellers. Beneath the gasbag Malachi leaned out, one hand on the rail, the other held to Lila as they walloomed close to the terrace with a whirring and the jingle of a chain ladder being unrolled expertly into position. The ladder shone faintly and seemed feeble, but a large and capable-looking baboon swiftly swarmed down its links to the terrace rail and secured the end of it with a piece of rope cast into a knot faster than Lila’s eye could follow.

“Hup, lady,” it said to her with some difficulty around its large yellow canines. “Be so kind. Master y’ave paid and we is hurry. Otopia Portal close in the quarter mark o’ the clock.”

Lila, stone inside, heavy and numb, sprang up without the use of the ladder and set her foot to the deck, taking Malachi’s hand. The aircar swung heavily down at her side and dropped a few metres, slackening the ladder until it was horizontal. The baboon raised its eyebrows, loosed the knot, and leaped the gap, barrelling past both of them wth a rattle as it stowed the lines. The pilot, a monkey-headed humanoid, turned the wheel, and they moved steeply away from the Ahriman mansion. Lila turned to look back. The house looked huge from the air at this angle, as many lights as an office block, but of strange shapes that were inhuman in their setting. Coloured banners draped it, now being replaced by the white streaming trailers of mourning even as she watched. The stonework on her side moved with shadows that did not seem entirely in keeping with inert architecture.

Malachi’s hand gripped her shoulder.

“How long until we arrive?” she asked.

“Otopia Portal will open to Bay City. Did you live far away?”

“Half an hour,” she said.

“I got my car. Twenty minutes then.”

“I should call my sister.” She activated a line link into the Otopia Tree before she even thought about it, then cancelled the call. She’d been gone for years. What would she say?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T
he bone did not open its secrets. Zal sat as the sun rose and his headache grew and blew out through his lips, a sigh of defeat. The earth elemental was drying out across its back where the light fell on it and from the warmth that Zal’s fire body gave out. Periodically it would stop watching him and roll itself into a ball, then reform its little humanoid shape.