Something More Than Night (7 page)

She rose to her feet. The tile floor shifted underfoot like the fine gypsum sands she’d once visited in New Mexico.

“I didn’t do this, you jackass,” she said. “I was attacked.”

Bayliss blinked. For once, he didn’t respond with an incomprehensible wisecrack. He stared at her, his expression cloaked behind ancient eyes. After a moment he went into what remained of the kitchen. Molly heard a tap running. He returned with a glass of water. She didn’t recognize the glass; part of her wondered what distant and dim corner of her memory had produced it.

“Here,” he said, offering the glass. “Drown your tonsils.”

“Thanks.” Molly drank while he found a chair, tossed aside the taste of wood ash on burned campfire marshmallows, and sat down. The water was too cold. It hurt her teeth. But she drank anyway.

Bayliss said, “So tell me what happened.”

She did. It didn’t take long. The glass was empty by the end, but her thirst hadn’t subsided. Nor had the headache. She filled the glass by holding it upside down in the topsy-turvy rain. Then she rooted around until she found the bathroom medicine cabinet. It used to contain a bottle of aspirin. Now it contained her scream from the time she was bitten by a llama at a roadside petting zoo in Manitoba. She found the aspirin on a window ledge alongside her first orgasm.

Fury rose within her; it wrapped the world in a flickering heat shimmer. Memories, her private realities, crackled and blackened around the edges. To see the most cherished pieces of herself—the most intimate, the most personal, the things that made her Molly—cast aside with such disregard, such
contempt
 … It made her feel so small.… She’d never felt so helpless.

Bayliss still hadn’t said anything by the time she sat again. He lit a match on his thumbnail. Watched it burn almost to his fingertips. Shook it out. Did it again. He was thinking hard.

“I’m still waiting on an explanation,” said Molly.

“Can’t tell you what I don’t know,” he said.

“You know a shitload more than I do.”

Bayliss sighed. “Maybe I miscounted the trumps. Maybe you got caught in the rain on account of it.”

The Magisterium sagged like candle wax in heat haze of Molly’s rage. “What were those things? And what were they looking for?”

“The loogans? Hard to know. Sounds like you tussled with some real torpedoes, though. Couple of Cherubim would be my guess. You sure you didn’t see a flaming sword anywhere?” Molly shook her head; she remembered hearing something about that in Sunday school. He shrugged. “Well, that don’t mean much. You get a count? Eyes, wings, faces, that sort of thing?”

“Sorry. I was too busy being assaulted.”

At least he had the courtesy to look abashed. “Yeah. I suppose so.”

Molly stood. Her boots sank ankle deep in butterfly wings. They smoked and curled when her anger brushed against them. The reek of burned hair wreathed her legs. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Bayliss ran a hand through his hair and massaged the back of his neck. “So, the guy you replaced? Well, it’s true he ain’t around anymore. Just like I said. But maybe there’s more to it than that. I think he got pinked.”

Molly had to consider his tone and body language before the meaning sank in. Her heart understood before her head: for the first time since dying she was frightened. The anger at Bayliss and an unfair fate for taking her from Martin when he needed her most, the jittering frustration at a world that no longer made sense, even the rage at being attacked—violated—inside her own memories … it all disappeared. Replaced by simple fear. Sweat tickled the fine hairs at the back of her neck. A cold wind swirled across the hollow where her self-confidence had been.

Pinked: killed.

Somebody she didn’t know—living to inscrutable rules in an invisible, nonsensical world—had been killed. Somehow she was expected to replace him. And now others—even more inscrutable, moving along their own incomprehensible currents—had ransacked her most intimate personal space. Her attempt to
have
a personal space. She was embroiled in something enormous, dangerous, and utterly confusing. More than what he said, the way Bayliss said it conveyed a sense of ancient feuds. Of eons-old turf wars cutting through Heaven. And the powers at work were vast. Vast in ways she couldn’t comprehend. This she knew.

She still hadn’t come to terms with being dead. She hardly believed it, even now. But … The cold wind whistled through the empty spaces of her soul, like drafts through a windowless abandoned house. It made her shiver. It was the same shiver she felt when Mom had admitted she’d found a lump some time back but had been too frightened to go in and have a scan done. Dad used to say a shiver like that meant somebody, somewhere, had walked over her grave.

Did it count if she’d died on a city street?

She paced. Her footsteps kicked eddies of butterfly dust into the backward rain.

“You didn’t think to mention this to me?”

“Look. You were in a bad way. Thought I was doing you a favor by not piling on with the bad news. Didn’t think it mattered in the short term.”

“You didn’t think it
mattered
if you warned me about this?”

“Warn you about what? I didn’t know this was going to happen. How should I? Again, no offense, angel, but you’re small-time.”

“Oh, I see. I guess I’m just lucky then.” Molly swept up an armful of shredded memories. Somewhere, a narcissistic fifteen-year-old wept over a pimple on her chin. Molly flung the teenage angst at him. “What the hell is going on?”

Bayliss lit another match on his thumbnail. His hands shook. Molly thought he’d said all he intended, so rapt was he with the flame. But then he sighed.

“Look. Sometimes a guy hears things, okay? And sometimes he hears ’em and he thinks, that’s gonna be a bad, sad day for everybody. And he don’t want any part of it. No how. So he lams off, okay? And they let him. And they leave him alone. And for a long time everything’s jake. But then he gets a postcard telling him to lamp the heavens, so he does, and when he sees the shape of it he knows the tide’s coming in. The heavies call on him because they want something done, and he knows the score, he knows what they’re telling him, so he does the thing. He does one simple thing, no more, no less, because maybe he’s afraid the big fish are swimming in the deep but if he makes nice and doesn’t rock the boat they’ll leave him alone again. He doesn’t ask any questions and they swim right on past him.”

The flame burned past the end of the match, into his shaking hand. He didn’t notice. Fire became an emerald mist where it touched his flesh. Its smoke smelled of cinnamon and sulfur, and tasted like pickled starlight.

“Did you leave,” she asked, “or were you kicked out?”

“Don’t get cute. I left,” said Bayliss. He muttered, “I really wish somebody had given old Milton a sock in the kisser when they’d had the chance.”

Molly said, “So you figured you’d just pick somebody at random to take up the slack after the last guy died.”

“Not at random. I was told to find somebody who wouldn’t kick up a fuss. But I got you instead.”

One thing, at least, was beginning to make sense. Back at that shithole diner, he’d kept saying things about going with the flow, not rocking the boat. He’d implied it was just for the sake of getting oriented. But that wasn’t it at all. Somebody important, or powerful, snapped the whip. Somebody Bayliss feared.

“Who made you do this?”

Bayliss shook his head. “I have bent over backward to not know that.”

“You wanted somebody who wouldn’t get herself in trouble,” she said, “because you didn’t want her drawing attention to
you.
That’s what this is, isn’t it? You’re trying to save your own skin.”

“Lady, I’m just a two-bit player trying to get by in this crazy gummed-up world.”

“And you killed me in order to do that.”

Bayliss winced. “I apologized for that. You sure know how to make a guy feel like a heel.” He stood. “Figure I do owe you. Can’t help but feel a little responsible that you got your place tossed. So tell you what. Let me go talk to some folks. I’ll put my ear to the ground, get the lay of the land.”

“I’ll go with you.”

He shook his head and gave an embarrassed little grimace. “Nope. These players won’t talk to the likes of you.”

Molly narrowed her eyes. The edges of broken memories started to curl and blacken again. “Because I’m a woman?”

“Because in their eyes you’re still nothing but a well-groomed monkey.”

Charming.

“Trust me. It’ll be jake. You’ll see.” He looked into the sensory discontinuity where the pantry had been. “Hey. I know that joint.” He stepped through the remains of the kitchen into Notre Dame. “Later, angel. Try to keep buttoned till I get back.”

He flicked the brim of his fedora when he departed. He didn’t remove the hat when he slipped into the memory of the cathedral and out, through it, to the mundane realm. She watched him go.

Fuck,
she thought.
He’s a fallen angel. And he’s terrified.

5

NEXT TIME, SKIP THE WAKE

I knew she was trouble the minute I saw her, but damned if flametop didn’t prove it in record time. She barely had time to kick off her shoes and wiggle her piggies before the gunnies came for her. She’d rubbed somebody the wrong way. Hadn’t even bothered to cobble together a decent Magisterium before she did it, either. But never let it be said Bayliss turns a cold, hard heart to a dame in distress. Even if it was distress of her own making.

The sooner I knew what she’d done, the sooner I could smooth the ruffled feathers and wipe my hands of the whole affair. For good this time.

Problem was, getting a bead on that meant making a visit to the old homestead. It’d been a good long while since I’d been back. I barely knew my way around any longer. And if too many people knew I’d returned, it was apt to get awkward. Last thing I needed was to have every joe and jane in the Choir ribbing me for not having the courage of my convictions. I’d made a big point of making myself scarce.

I escaped Notre Dame through the Portal of the Last Judgment (
domine, domine, pater noster,
and all that jazz), took a seat alongside a hedge, lit a pill, and considered my next move. The steel-gray smoke of my contemplations mingled with the scent of incense-laden guilt leaking from the cathedral and the humid stink of the Seine. A light rain fell on me, dusted the flower gardens, pattered on the river. I listened to the Babel hubbub of tourists, mostly German, English, and Japanese, and the ticker-tape clatter of cameras. Old ones, too. Actual film cameras. From back when the monkeys used chemistry to capture their holiday memories. (All possible courtesy of the Mantle of Ontological Consistency.) Those cameras predated flametop’s conception by decades. I wondered whose memory she’d lifted. My money was on a shutterbug grandparent with a photo album. Had to hand it to her: she had a good eye for detail. She’d build a crackerjack Magisterium someday. Assuming she survived long enough to do so, and assuming she didn’t get me killed before I could see it.

A gargoyle funneled the rain into a steady drip on the crown of my hat. Now that brought me back. My one and only gig as a model happened back when they were sculpting all those gargoyles. Had to do it through dreams, though, so I never made any folding from it. The monkeys are a superstitious lot, but never more so than when they’re building a cathedral. A few centuries later I could have taken the master artisan to dip the beak, and convinced him to blame the hallucinations on the green fairy. The artsy crowd was mad for that hooch even after it drove them a little loony. But Paris was a different place then. A few francs could buy you a bottle of wine and some willing company.

I squinted at the gargoyle. It wore a big, wide frown on its puss. I said, “Long time, no see, pal.” It spit in my eye.

Another puff sent tar swirling through my wet and glistening simulacra of monkey lungs. It set my thoughts in motion.

Someone had a real beef with flametop. Why? And what did this mean for me?

Who
wasn’t the issue. Not really. Even I could take a decent shot in the dark on that one. The way I figured it, any notoriety she had stemmed from coming along just after Gabby punched out. That was her only claim to fame, but it was a lulu. So whatever had the loogans’ dander up was probably connected to the stiff. And that pointed to whoever tapped me for their fishy little errand down on Earth. And, by extension, whoever rubbed the Seraph.

I thought I’d sidestepped that whole flop after seeing which way the winds of the Pleroma blew. The currents hinted at something too big, too ambitious, too dangerous. I figured the scheme was destined to blow up in the conspirators’ faces like a novelty cigar, but not before it rained trouble on everybody in the Choir. So I ducked the guilt by association by lamming to Earth. Or so I thought.

It was too good to last. I’d barely been among the monkeys a few centuries—hardly enough time to pick up decent vices—when the first of the anonymous telegrams arrived. Messages sculpted in the swirl of cigarette smoke; implied in the sleep-murmur of a dozing street-corner wino; outlined in an improbable roll of dice in a back-alley parlor; writ across the sky in the hiss and flare of burning space debris. I ignored them long as I could but the deck was stacked against me. My attempt to steer clear of the trouble made me the perfect stooge. So perfect that my unwillingness to cooperate didn’t enter the math.

Once that came clear, I kept my head down. Didn’t ask any questions. Didn’t try to get clever. But above all I made it a point to not know who
they
were. All I knew was I’d been tagged by some faction in the Choir with deep pockets and an ax to grind. We had an implicit agreement: I’d run their errand—using my familiarity with the monkeys to plug a hole in the MOC—and then they’d go climb a tree. Forever.

And besides. I gave long odds to their grudge. A cork isn’t useful unless you have a place to put it, and that told me they were fixing to scratch somebody. But who ever heard of bumping off an angel? Everyone knew that was impossible. We can’t die. Even nickel-grabbers like me.