Raven experienced a moment of utter cold and darkness. Then he opened his eyes and found himself back in his apartment. He looked around for Lisa, but she wasn’t there.
He phoned the hospital, learned that she’d been released, and dialed her number, only to be told by an electronic voice that no such number existed.
How could I forget it?
He hunted up the phone book and looked for her name. It wasn’t there. Then he tried Information, which was unable to help him.
“What the hell is going on?” he muttered.
In quick order he tried to find a listing for the Eddie Raven Detective Agency and the underworld bar where he and Lisa had gone as Frankie and Euryale. No luck.
He walked into the bathroom and stared at the mirror.
“Same face I’ve seen since I was kid,” he said. He continued staring intently. “I don’t look crazy.” He sighed deeply. “But what sane man spends time as a man-made monster and an elegant Jane Austen character, to say nothing of the ones that came before? Damn it, Lisa, right at the end you knew the answer. Where are you now?”
Well, if you can’t give me the answers I need, there’s one person who can—always assuming he’s still alive and hopefully awake. Raven frowned and concentrated. Rofocale, are you there?
No response.
Damn it, Rofocale—wake up, or come back to life, or whatever. I need some answers.
He sensed that Rofocale was there—wherever there was—but he couldn’t elicit a response.
He tried the phone book, and Information, and got the same response he’d received when asking for Lisa.
So am I stuck here until I’m transformed into something else that makes no sense—or until someone or something tries to kill me?
He sat perfectly still, eyes shut, fists opening and closing as his hands rested on the desk.
Maybe, just maybe, there’s another way to go about this. This guy’s got to be on record somewhere, if only as a physical freak.
He had a friend who worked for the police check to see if a Lucifuge Rofocale was wanted anywhere. The answer was no. He called the Secret Service and asked if they wanted a lead on the whereabouts of Lucifuge Rofocale. They’d never heard of him. Finally, he activated his laptop, brought up Google, and typed in the name Lucifuge Rofocale.
And even after all he’d been through, the response still startled him: Lucifuge Rofocale is the head of Hell’s Government—named by the Dark Prince himself in recognition of The Rofocale’s competence.
Raven half frowned and half grimaced. “You’re kidding!” he muttered. Then he thought back over the last couple of weeks—his incarnations in Casablanca and Oz and Camelot and Africa, as a detective and a monster and a British gentleman—and he realized that the computer wasn’t kidding at all.
“But why me?” he muttered. “I haven’t lived a perfect life, but I’ve never hurt anyone, at least not knowingly, I haven’t committed any felonies, I’ve just been a goddamned clothes merchant in the Garment District since I quit college. There’s got to have been a mistake!”
I don’t make mistakes, Eddie, Rofocale’s thought came to him, weak but identifiable. Not of that magnitude.
“What the hell do you want of me?” demanded Raven, half shouting into the empty room.
You’ll know soon enough.
Soon enough isn’t soon enough, thought Raven. Tell me now, damn it!
He felt a mental chuckle at the other end of the connection.
Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to curse at a demon, Eddie?
Just tell me what the hell is going on, and what I have to do with it, or what it has to do with me!
Patience, Eddie.
Raven could tell the connection was broken.
He spent a couple of minutes considering his options. When he eliminated those that were clearly not viable, he was left with only one: walk over to Rofocale’s room and find some way to get answers out of him, by clever questions if possible, or by physical force if necessary.
He got to his feet, walked to his closet, and pulled out his jacket.
“Damn it!” he muttered. “I always thought I was one of the good guys. Am I a demon, too?”
“Never forget,” said a familiar voice, “that a demon is merely a fallen angel.”
He turned and found himself facing Lisa, who was dressed in an elegant, flowing white gown.
“Don’t be afraid, Eddie,” she said. “I am here to assuage your fears, not to exacerbate them.”
“I didn’t see you come in,” he said.
She smiled. “I didn’t use the door.”
“You just somehow appeared?”
“If you say so.”
“So am I a demon?”
She smiled enigmatically. “It’s one of the infinite number of things you might be, given the choices you make.”
“You’re making about as much sense as Rofocale,” said Raven.
“Maybe you’re just misunderstanding me as much,” she replied.
“Look,” he said, “if I’m not a demon, or not yet one, why is everyone trying to kill me?”
“Think, Eddie,” she exhorted him. “If you saw Hitler as a small boy, if you knew it was Hitler, would you wait for him to grow to adulthood before killing him, or would you save six million lives and kill him now?”
“I’m that evil?” he asked with a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach.
“Calm down, Eddie,” she said, reaching out and gently holding his hand. “It was merely an example.”
“If Lucifuge Rofocale is trying to protect me,” he said, “then maybe I should be killed.”
She sighed. “Not everything is as it appears to you,” she said. “You must trust me on this.”
He stared at her, but said nothing.
“I will help you sort out truth from lies, and greater truths from lesser truths, as you continue your quest.”
“What quest?” he demanded. “And while we’re at it, who are you? Clearly you’re not Lisa.”
“I am also Lisa,” she replied, still holding his hand. “And I have been drawn to you as you have been drawn to me from the first moment that we met almost two years ago.”
“You’re ducking my question,” said Raven. “Who are you?”
“You’re a bright man, Eddie,” she replied. “I should have thought the answer would be obvious.”
And as the words left her mouth she became an exotic Asian girl dressed in a blue velvet gown.
“I am the Mistress of Illusions,” she continued. “Great powers are aligned against you, Eddie Raven. I will help you sort through the maze of intrigue and misdirection they have set in your path.”
Raven frowned. “But why?” he asked at last. “What am I expected to do if I survive?”
“The same thing you would do if you were really the detective you were pretending to be,” she answered. “Put the villains where they can do no more harm. Or if you were Mordred, magic them away. If you were Alan Quatermain, line them up in your sights and pull the trigger. Or . . .”
“I get the picture,” he said. “So am I a hero or a villain?”
“Everyone’s a villain to someone,” said Lisa.
“You’re driving me crazy!” he snapped in frustration. “Can’t I get a straight answer?”
“Not from the Mistress of Illusions,” she replied with a gentle smile that seemed tinged with sadness or regret. As she spoke, she changed form again, this time into a gorgeous peasant girl from the Russian steppes. “You must learn to interpret, Eddie, and to intuit, if you—and all the worlds that coexist with yours—are to survive.”
“Mine, not ours?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“This world,” said Raven. “Isn’t it yours too?”
“It is while I’m on it, interacting with you. And when we are on another world, or in another reality, then that will be mine for as long as we reside upon it.”
“Where’s your real world?”
Suddenly she was Lisa again, and her smile almost made him forget his situation.
“Wherever you are, Eddie.”
He realized that despite all her changes in appearance she was still holding his hand, so he pulled her toward him, leaned down, and kissed her.
“At least you’re not an illusion,” he said.
“I never was,” she replied.
“And that was really you in Casablanca and Camelot and the other places?”
She nodded. “It was really me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It would have been against the rules,” said Lisa.
“Rules?” he repeated. “What rules?”
“The ones that I live by, that govern me.”
“But the rules say you can tell me all this when we’re in the real world—my real world?”
“No, Eddie.”
“But you just told me!” he said, frowning.
“I know.”
“Well, then?”
“I broke my rules, Eddie,” she said. “I did it when I spotted Mako’s killer. After what I said, I didn’t think you would be able to buy that I was just Lisa and no one else.” She smiled a bittersweet smile. “Perhaps I was wrong.”
“What will happen to you for breaking your rules?” he asked.
“Nothing, until we know how this adventure ends.”
“Adventure?” he repeated. “You mean in Manhattan?”
“No, Eddie.”
“This is the beginning of something else, like being an African hunter or a Frankensteinian monster?”
“No, Eddie. The episode in question is your life.”
“My life?” he repeated with a confused frown.
“You must know by now that it’s not a normal life,” said Lisa.
“You make it sound like it’s not a real life at all,” he said, “like I’m some kind of puppet who’s being Eddie Raven this week and will be someone else next month.” He grimaced. “But I’ve been doing that since you and Mako and Rofocale were shot, and I always wind up as Eddie Raven.” He stared intently at her. “So am I me—I mean Raven—or not?”
She stared into his eyes. “It’s a real life, and you’re Eddie Raven.” Then she paused and added, “At the very least.”
“I’d ask you to explain, but somehow I know you’d just give me a bullshit answer that would be more confusing than no answer at all.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Eddie,” she said.
“You’re sorry?” he said with a bitter laugh.
“Eddie, I wouldn’t be breaking the rules and jeopardizing my safety if I didn’t care for you—and more to the point, believe in you.”
He sighed and hugged her. “I know I’m being difficult tonight, but that answer makes it all okay,” he said, then released her and shrugged. “Well, ninety percent okay, anyway.”
“Just remember, Eddie,” she said. “Whatever happens, I’m on your side.”
“That means a lot,” he said. He glanced briefly at the kitchen. “I’ve been gone so long I think just about everything I have to eat is spoiled. Would you like to go out for a meal?”
But as he turned back, he found that he was speaking to an empty room.