The Collected Christopher Connery (23 page)

“Here, evil subway train. Come here, little evil subway
train. Oh, and please don’t kill us.” Gail, still holding the cold scarf to her
head, leaned out over the edge of the platform and waved into the dark tunnel
beyond.

“That’s not going to help,” said Nia, eyes focused on the
massive spell she was drawing on the tile floor beyond the platform. She said
that the spell would call the train to them, but since it was taking about a
century to draw, Gail thought she would try her own methods.

Arthur was sitting a little away from them, carefully
sorting the various medical supplies in his bag. He’d already cleaned and
bandaged Nia’s scraped knee, but now he didn’t seem sure he had brought enough
stuff with him. Given how hard Connery had kicked their asses the last two
times they tangled with him, he was probably right.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” Gail sang. “Don’t
you want to try to murder us again? You better hurry before we die of boredom.”

“You do remember that trains don’t have ears.”

“Or eyes.” Gail glanced down at the words scrawled across
the back of her hand.

“That as well.”

“It has to know we’re here,” said Gail half to herself as
she sat back on the platform. “It was able to find you.”

The sound of scraping chalk stopped suddenly. “Detective
Lin.”

“Illuminator Graves.”

There was a long moment of silence that wasn’t broken by
voices or chalk. It was a bit surprising Arthur had failed to notice it, but he
was probably just caught up in preparing for the many ways they might get
maimed down here.

Then, “May I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything. I might give you a stupid
answer, though. Hey, train! Train! What’s taking you so long?” Gail whistled
and instantly regretted it when the sound bounced off the walls and burrowed
into her sore head.

“Please be serious, detective.”

“I’m not sure I have serious in me right now, princess.
Sorry.”

“Detective.”

Gail looked over her shoulder. Nia was gazing at her with
a melancholy expression that pricked Gail’s heart, which in turn pricked her
temper. “What is it? Shouldn’t you be finishing that spell? I’d rather not be
stuck down here all night if it’s all the same to you.” She pressed harder on
her temple with the scarf, hoping if she just held it long enough, the pounding
would have to stop.

A sad smile touched Nia’s lips and just as quickly
flitted away. “You’re angry with me.”

A number of possible responses crossed Gail’s mind, but
she eventually settled on, “Yeah.”

“And you have every right to be. I –”

A harsh laugh escaped Gail at that. “Oh, good, I’m glad
to know I have permission.”

Nia’s face tightened. “I wasn’t giving you permission, I
was admitting I was wrong.”

“Wrong about what exactly?”

Nia met Gail’s glare dead on. “I was wrong to have lied
to you, to both you and Arthur. I should have told you the truth.”

Gail glanced at Arthur, but he was still sorting bandages
like there was nothing else in the world worth paying attention to. Getting to
her feet, she moved closer to Nia, so they could talk without raising their
voices. “And the truth is?’

Another several moments passed in silence as Nia
scratched a pair of symbols on the border of her spell. Then she reached into
her handbag, pulling out the folded message. The embossed seal was unmistakable
even in the dim piss-colored lights.

When Nia handed it to her, Gail raised her eyebrows.
“Isn’t there some rule about letting a layman read Academy correspondence?”

“Oh, probably.” Nia turned her back to her spell.

Gail studied the broken seal then shrugged and unfolded
the letter. She read through the message twice, making sure she was getting the
tone right. Then she looked at Nia, who had stopped drawing and was just
staring down at the chalk in her hand.

“Well,” said Gail, refolding the message and letting it
drop to the floor, “that was some impressively passive-aggressive bullshit.”

Nia laughed, though not with much humor. “That is exactly
what I thought, detective.”

“What did you do to get them so pissed at you?” For the
first time, Gail wondered if this assignment was more punishment than
opportunity for Nia. When there was no immediate answer, Gail added, “Why don’t
you just quit then?”

Nia stared at her. “What?”

“I mean, if they’re going to be such unhelpful assholes
and make it impossible for you to do the job they gave you…” Gail shrugged.
“They clearly don’t appreciate what you’re doing, so why not tell them to go
fuck themselves and go do something more fun and less – well, less being stuck
inside a subway tunnel with an evil death train.”

She had expected another laugh or at least a smile, but
instead Nia’s eyes darkened and she began drawing her spell with renewed
intensity. “It isn’t that simple. If I fail this assignment, I’ll be
apologetically blacklisted. It would mean the end of my career.”

But that didn’t make any sense. “Aren’t you one of the
best magicians they have? Why would they let you go to waste?”

“If I had to guess, though I don’t really have to, I
would say that my success at the Academy has always been considered something
of a fluke. The Directors have waited years for my inevitable plunge into
self-destruction.” Nia’s tone was light, but she pressed down so hard on her
chalk that it snapped in her hand. “Damn.” She cleaned away the resulting smear
with her sleeve

There’s a hell of a story here,
Gail thought. “So
that’s why you decided to come down here by yourself? You thought you could
prove them wrong by getting yourself killed?”

“That was not the original intent, I promise you, but
yes, it almost turned out that way.” Nia met Gail’s eyes again. “Thank you,
detective. I don’t know how much weight my words carry for you now, but I
promise I will find a way to undo the damage I’ve done.”

Gail touched the icy scarf to her brow again. “I – well,
I’m glad to hear it, but I guess I can’t complain too much about this. If you
hadn’t fixed me up, I’d be dead on the floor of that playroom.”

When Nia smiled in relief, Gail felt it necessary to add,
“I’m still pissed about the lying and the almost killing yourself.”

“I understand.” Nia returned to work. Gail watched for a
few minutes. She had never seen such a large spell before and even through her
anger, she had to admit it pretty impressive. If she looked too hard, it became
a bewildering, almost chaotic mess of intersecting symbols, but if she leaned
back and looked at it from an angle, she could almost see a kind of picture. If
asked she wouldn’t have been able to say what the picture was
of;
it was
just an impression, but if she looked at it just right then maybe –

She looked away, gritting her teeth as her headache
flared. Through the stabbing pain, she heard the soft
click
of chalk
hitting the tile floor and then Nia was beside her.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Gail forced out. She squeezed her eyes closed as
her vision began to blur. The effort of holding her eyes closed actually made
the pain worse, but the double-vision made her sick. Throwing up required
movement and right now, she was pretty sure any extra movement would kill her.

“I should have told you not to look too closely.” Nia
took the cold scarf from Gail and began wiping beads of sweat from her
forehead. “You are currently – technically, you’re –”

“Unconsciously trying to do magic even though it’s
apparently crushing my brain?”

“Once again, you put it better than I could have. Magic
feeds upon magic, so every time the magic within you reacts to something, it
multiplies itself.”

The icy touch of the scarf was finally making a dent in
the pain. After a minute or two, Gail was able to take the scarf back from Nia
and sit against the wall without feeling like she was about to pass out. She
held the scarf over her eyes for a moment, letting the chill numb her brain,
then she lifted the cloth to smile wryly at Nia. “I guess I’m not cut out for
magicianship.”

“No layman is. It’s a purely biological difference.” Nia
sat on her knees in front of Gail, her normally bright eyes dark and fearful.
“How are you feeling, detective? Oh, that’s a stupid question, I’m sorry.”

“I’m fine for the moment,” said Gail and it was only half
a lie. The pain had receded to a dull throbbing, but there was a tight feeling
in the back of her head. If she moved too quickly or spoke too loudly or
breathed too deeply, she feared whatever it was would snap. She didn’t know
what would happen then, but she didn’t think it would be pleasant. “You better
finish your spell. We don’t want to be down here all night.”

Nia shook her head. “First, we need to take care of you.
I have an idea of how we could remove most of the magic, but I’ll need Arthur’s
help, let me just –”

“Wait,” said Gail before Nia could stand. “I’m no expert,
but I’m guessing that big spell over there is going to need a lot of magic to
power.”

Nia smiled at her. “Fear not, detective, I can do both.”

“Yeah, but that’s just the beginning, right? Then the
train shows up and who knows what else we’ll have to deal with.” Part of Gail
was screaming to just let Nia fix her, to let Nia do
anything
if it
would stop the pain, but her logical side told the rest of her to shut the hell
up and quit making so much damn noise. Nia needed to be in peak form. Sure, it
would be great if Gail was too, but right now, they needed magic more than they
needed Gail’s skills. And as much as it hurt – and it did fucking hurt – this
affliction of Gail’s had actually helped them once, so maybe it was better to
wait until they escaped before getting rid of it. Or at least until Gail
started bleeding out the ears.

The way Nia was hesitating, fingers twisting her skirt,
made Gail think she agreed and just didn’t want to admit it.

“Look,” said Gail. “We’ll make a deal. If I pass out
again, you do whatever you have to do, but so long as I’m walking and talking,
we leave it be.” She did her best to look wide awake and not
brains-leaking-from-the-ears exhausted.

“Very well,” Nia sighed at last. “It’s a deal.”

“Good. Now you better finish that spell.”

Nia nodded but didn’t move. Instead she looked over at
Arthur who was currently inspecting a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

“That reminds me,” said Gail. “Should I tell him that I
know about – well, about you know. I think I should, but I’m willing to take
your advice on this one.”

“Yes,” Nia answered immediately, though she was twisting
her skirt again. “I should have told him myself, but I’m afraid I was rather –
distracted this morning.”

That was one way of putting it. “Anyway, what was that
you said about an ‘inevitable plunge to self-destruction?’” When Nia’s hands
clenched almost hard enough to tear her poor dress in two, she added, “No,
never mind, sorry. You have work to do. My mind’s just wandering because of the
– stuff. You get back to it and I’ll find something to throw on the track to
lure the noisy bastard to us.” But as she moved to get up, which required
putting far more of her weight against the wall than it should have, Nia spoke
softly to her hands.

“Do you remember last night, when I told you about the
magician who attempted to experiment with unbound magic?”

Gail sat back down, trying to ignore the trembling in her
legs. “The one who got all those students killed? Yeah, I remember.”

Nia’s shoulders drew in sharply as if Gail had tried to
hit her. Then she took a deep shaking breath. “That magician was my mother.”

“Hell, I’m sorry, I didn’t –”

“It took months – years – for her to convince the
Directors to allow the experiment. I was only six at the time and not allowed
to participate, but she and twenty specially selected students and a single
Director went into a locked room to perform the magic. None of them came out
alive.”

Gail shook her head. “You – you didn’t have to tell me
that.”

Nia looked up, smiling miserably. “I know. I wanted to.”

Then why do you look so damn sad?
“So that’s why
the Academy is giving you so much shit? Because they think you’re going to end
up making a mistake like your mom?”

“That’s about the whole of it, yes.” Nia wasn’t crying.
She looked too sad for tears, which was actually worse. “They’re concerned I’ll
eventually cause some monumental disaster that will be remembered for years to
come. I suppose there’s some comfort in knowing that at least the Graves family
name won’t be forgotten, though infamy wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I
set out to make my mark on the world.” The words were joking, but Nia’s voice
was as gray and empty as the New Crossbridge sky. “At any rate, now you know. I
know it doesn’t excuse anything, I only –”

“Hey.” Against her better judgment, Gail reached out and
lay her hand against the side of Nia’s face. “What you did today? Stupid as
hell, there’s no way around that. But from what I’ve seen you’re usually pretty
damn brilliant and not at all the ‘plunge to self-destruction’ type. So, the
Academy can take their concerns and choke on them, okay?”

Nia leaned her cheek into Gail’s hand and closed her
eyes. “Okay. Thank you, detective.”

Despite the chill that seemed to radiate from the
concrete all around them, Nia’s skin was warm against Gail’s palm. Her hair was
soft where it brushed against her wrist and smelled like – of all things –
coconut. “You know this is a bad idea, right?”

This time Nia’s smile was edged with mischief. “Oh,
terrible.” Then she leaned toward Gail, one hand closing gently on her arm.

Gail had just closed her eyes when a rumbling beneath her
startled them open again. “What the –”