Selling Out (8 page)

“She was fine,” Zal said defensively, thinking the same thing now that Malachi had said it. “Fine.”

The faery stared at him.

“Maybe I’ll pay a visit to Demonia.”

Malachi nodded slowly at him and Zal felt manipulated and grateful.

“Thish time itsh for your HEADZ!” the doll squeaked in glee.

Zal reached over without looking anywhere but at Malachi, picked the doll up, and jammed it head down in the liquor between the ice cubes. “If you and your gang of fools does anything to harm or cause to be harmed by accident, omission, or stupidity, one tiny little bit of Lila inside or out I will make you all wish you had never been born.”

“Likewise,” the faery agreed with a smile.

They stared at each other and the grass in the glass slowly came apart until it was floating weeds.

Malachi glanced at it with a moment’s regret. “I can’t take responsibility here. You may pay for that.”

“I pay for everything,” Zal said sourly. “And I sell out to no one.”

CHAPTER SIX

S
orcha was thrilled to hear of Lila’s situation when she returned from rehearsals that evening at a quarter past six. Her apartments were next door to Lila’s guest rooms and in typical fashion she wandered between both of them as she went through the lengthy process of undressing, drinking a hot tea, taking a bath, dressing, and changing her makeup for the evening. None of these activities rooted her for more than an instant except the bath, during which she insisted that Lila circulate around the tub, handing her sponges, loofahs, soaps, towels, and alternate glasses of the tea and some cordial she was taking to improve her voice. After the bath, as she patted herself dry and showed no inclination to notice the clock moving inexorably towards half past seven, she stopped interrogating Lila on every detail of the day, flicked her long, black mane over her shoulders, and smiled with warm approval. “I knew you wouldn’t let us down.”

Lila felt her spirits sink another notch. She kept finding herself daydreaming about good reasons to return to her own world as she stood there, stinking faintly and feeling demon blood go dry and crackly on her skin. “I’m in this on my own,” Lila said. “Your family aren’t related.”

“Mmmn,” Sorcha hummed as she rubbed scented oil into her skin. “You’re our guest, honey. And we don’t let guests die. Not on the premises at least. You’re safe here. Safe as you can be.”

Lila tried to look comforted. Through the open window of the bathroom she could see the glowing orange sun setting over the lagoon. Party boats and flotillas of pleasure craft dotted the open waters with beautiful colour and twinkling lights. In the skies flying jalopies, small personal air balloons, and winged individuals flitted and drifted. Close to the town the canals were alight with lamps and lanterns and the buildings were all outlined in electric fairylights of rainbow hues. Statues stood in arrested motion all along the skylines. The humid air was filled with the hum and swagger of coming night against a background of wild insect thrumming and the chorus of bull-frogs and other creatures inhabiting the darker regions of the vast delta that stood at the city’s back. Occasionally the pulse of so much life was interrupted by the piercing shrieks of unexpected death.

Lila turned from the view. “You don’t have any words up in lights. Just lights.” She thought a change of subject was in order.

Sorcha threw everything she had used or that displeased her into the draining bathtub and put on an almost demure outfit of white miniskirt and blouse. She placed a diamond on the arrow point end of her tail and glued it down firmly. “We don’t need words. The colour says it all. Just like on us.” She inspected herself in the mirror and smiled with satisfaction. Her living flame hair moved with a slow motion flow all its own and her eyes gleamed like scarlet coals. Where her skin caught the light it glowed a soft crimson and where it did not it was a soft, pearly black. Superficially she reminded Lila of Malachi and reminded her that she ought to call him back and check in.

Lila shot a glance into one of Sorcha’s many mirrors and saw herself standing like an automaton. The chrome metal of her legs was streaked with gore and the synthetic skin looked as waxy and ashen as the real thing. The stain on her hair and face where she had been magically scarred stood out in livid contrast to the blue-green demon blood that had splattered her from head to foot. Her arms were draped with towels and Sorcha’s discarded clothes, each one sticking out to the side like a rail. She looked like a demented robot maid. She let her arms fall and everything slid off them. “What do my colours say?” she asked, having a dim memory of going into a department store with her mother and some woman there talking about colours. Something to do with what you should wear. The demon world was saturated with colour and everything meant something. It was not what you wore. It was what you were.

Sorcha gave her a critical look from top to toe. “Your colours say, Here comes some bad-ass bitch!” She laughed and slipped her elegant little clawed feet into high-heeled ruby mules. “That doesn’t make you smile?”

Lila thought it over. “What do your colours say?”

“My colours say I am a raw creative force of nature—that’s the impasto statement, the primary colours, always. Black is the colour of the Void, the final and the eternal, the ever-rising and the ever-falling rhythms of life and death. But I’m not just black; it’s a rare thing to be one colour. I have this red sheen which is all good luck and friendliness. It’s a dark red so I have lots of passion, but it’s still red so I’m a civilised queen of what she surveys, not some green-hide barbarian. Then my hair is the fire of the day, showing my mood—that’s where my flare is, where you read today’s menu of Sorcha; what am I going to be like . . . changes all the time. Some demons have these on their backs, on their wings, wherever, but you have to show it so others can know it, right? And I wear white to show that demon mother whose party we’re going to that I am sorry her son is dead, even if he was a lily-livered piece of scum from the bottom of a bog not fit to wipe my shoe on.” She ended with emphatic contempt, then added demurely, “That’s just politeness.”

“Your eyes are red.”

“I have an intellectual bent,” Sorcha said with pride. “I am a scholar.”

Lila decided not to mention that red eyes on demons in human terms usually signified insatiable evil though she wondered at it. “What about feathers?”

“They count as impasto—the portrait of the aetheric self. But you can wear or paint your bad self with secondary colours to say more about you; lime, indigo, that kind of thing. And those colours show up in the flare always . . .” Sorcha put on a purple necklace. “For my strong spirit,” she said. “Don’t worry. Nobody expects you to read the palette. They’ll tell you what you have to know.”

“If red isn’t the danger colour . . .”

“White,” Sorcha said without hesitation. “Always be wary of demons with white. It’s also the colour of grief, hence my outfit. But you go as you are. Ready?”

Fantastic, Lila thought. She pulled out the feather that Teazle had given her. “Light this.”

Sorcha held out an imperious hand and twitched the small thing out of Lila’s grasp. She inspected it closely, smelled it, and licked it.

“It’s white,” Lila said helpfully.

“I see that,” Sorcha replied, quietly. Her hair had turned to a brooding maroon storm of flame, lit with lightning flashes of alarming blue. “You didn’t mention it was this brother that came in the window. What did he say?”

Lila told her.

“You know why white is so difficult? Because white is all colours in one. You don’t know what the hell is going on with somebody who is white, all you know for sure is that they could be anything they wanted, no power they wouldn’t draw on, nothing they wouldn’t do. White is blindness. White is the display of power that hides every motive, every move.” Sorcha spoke with a cold dislike that Lila could never have imagined was in her repertoire. “That assassin you were so worried about . . . this is his.” Her tone became thoughtful. “But it has no evil charm. I can’t feel a thing but a summons on it. It’s like he said. A party invitation. Even so, strange to pull something like this off your own butt.”

“From his arm . . . under his wing . . .”

“Whatever.” Sorcha smiled and with her free hand struck an imaginary lighter. A yellow flame shot up from the tip of her thumb. She stepped next to Lila so that they were touching gently at shoulder and hip and put the feather to the flame. It went up with a
pfft
of white and blue, the world blinked, and the two of them were standing at the head of a grand staircase.

The ballroom was huge, a natural cavern lit by crystals and torches, by dancing werelights and slowly drifting globes of feylight. Frosted crystals in the rock roof and on the branches of the petrified forest glade that acted as columns in this natural cathedral glittered and reflected everywhere. A grand table below them stretched out for almost half a mile, festooned with garlands, laden with sculptures in ice, in fruit, in other foods. Champagne and other drinks played in fountains and fell in cascades as though born of nature. Sublime, itchy-footed dance music played and instantly Lila felt Sorcha start to gently bounce to the infectious rhythm. The place was full of elaborate, saturated, incredibly coloured and decorated demons of every imaginable shape and size. Faeries were there too, their spectral wings visible in the thickened demon aether. Lila and Sorcha were atop a high dais—where arrivals all must come in. There was a queue forming at their backs between two white plaster statues of heraldic, naked dragonmen . . . when a beautiful baritone voice boomed out . . .

“Welcome the Magnificent Sorcha Azlaria Ahriman, Diva of the Nine Deities of the Fundamental Groove of Mousa. Welcome the Otopian Ambassador, Lila Amanda Black, Friendslayer, Lover of Azrazal Ahriman of the Cursed Race, Killer of Azarktus the Beloved Son of Our Glorious Hostess, the Principessa Sikarzi!”

The room went utterly silent. Every face and body turned to face Lila. Every movement stilled, except for the gentle dancing of Sorcha who went on quietly bopping as though nothing had altered, the model of relaxed enjoyment and pride at Lila’s side.

Sorcha murmured with sultry assurance, “We rule, darling.”

Lila’s AI took a picture of the frozen throng.

You are famous
, Tath whispered, hidden deep in her heart, pulled as tight on himself as any magic would allow. It didn’t lessen his sarcasm.

The demon who had taken her photograph at the library was there, just starting to run away through other figures Lila began to recognise as guards and servers. Before he could get very far he was caught and, to her utter disbelief, ripped limb from limb on the spot by two lithe, red guards. They snarled and spat at each other over the little body, then let go of the dripping bits and started to fight over the camera like dogs.

She had just turned to confirm what she thought had happened when, as though released by that instant of savage punishment, the pent-up feelings of the crowd ripped forth in the form of a hail of missiles, all aimed at her. In the time it took for her to turn back from her sideways glance her AI-self had come into full capacity. Time seemed to slow down to give her enough time to relax into a defensive stance. As part of her turn to face the threat her left arm knocked Sorcha down and behind her. Her right arm and hand opened out and activated an emergency deflector that was usually housed in the back of her forearm. It opened out, as big as a tent into a shield of diamond-fine filaments which, like the airbag of a vehicle, would provide adequate defence for a split second before collapsing. Her legs shifted into combat mode. She got taller. She got stronger. In a blur of white and black metal her defensive and assault systems armed, targeted their most likely opponents, and offered a bewildering array of weapons to her hands. Hormones rushed her so that she felt almost like she was flying, was superhuman, could take on anything. Her left hand, coming back, caught the gun from its holster at the side of her leg and brought it around to bear.

There was a sound like a big, indrawn breath, and then the spatter of many items falling onto the stone dais around them. Lila’s diamond net shield became soft as gossamer and began to float like dandelion fluff over her. A small motor hummed and reeled it back in, ready for a second cast.

A thousand flashbulbs went off from all over the room and there was a sudden great thunder of clapping and hooting. Lila, rooted, ready to defend her life, realised she was being applauded.

What a charming image, you the great heroic defender, the beautiful girl at your feet
, Tath said witheringly, not without a trace of envy.

I’m the girl
, Lila objected.

“Ow,” Sorcha said, sprawling even more prettily beneath Lila’s titanic stance. She smiled and posed for the shots with relish, scattering some of the poisoned darts, arrows, bullets, jewellery, bones, charms, and pieces of underwear that lay everywhere as she writhed obligingly. “Ow, ow, ow . . .”

Disgusting.

Lila thought she detected a trace of some other feeling in Tath but he withdrew completely before she got the scent of it. The music picked up again. Grey shadows came to pick over and clean up the dead press imp. Conversation resumed, all the words not meant for her ears—and that was almost all of them—sounding like yet more voices joining in the accompaniment of the songs as if the speakers were singers in a massed yet unconducted choir. Gradually attention was slowly withdrawn in a graceful way, though many glances were thrown back in their direction. Slowly Sorcha wriggled her way up to all fours and moved around, picking up items here and there. When she finally stood she presented two handfuls to Lila.

One was of little scrolls. “Duel challenges.” The other was a collection of bones tied around with what looked like hair. “Marriage proposals.”

Lila put her gun away.

“Keep it up,” Sorcha murmured. “Looking good.”

Lila left the gun where it was but remained in defensive mode. If it kept this incredible mass of interesting, fixated, obsessive creatures away from her then it could stay. Sorcha gave her the handfuls of tokens. “What do I do with them?”