SIX

 

It was a warm Indian summer evening when Blowdell rang the doorbell at the Paxton mansion. The butler who answered the door recognized his employer’s former political consultant, but did not invite him in. “Mr Paxton is not receiving,” he said.

“He’ll receive me. Go tell him I’m here.”

“Very good, sir.”

The servant closed the door. Blowdell stood on the doorstep telling himself not to get angry. He didn’t like it when people failed to give him the respect he was due. When the man came back and admitted him, Blowdell added his name to the list of people he would square the accounts with once he was ruling the world. It was quite a long list.

When he’d been advising Paxton on his run for governor – stepping stone to the White House – the old man had always received him in either his study or the big sitting room on the first floor. But now the butler led him up the marble staircase and along a corridor on the second floor. The man opened a door and said Blowdell’s name.

It was a bedroom, the lights dim, the air humid and full of a medicinal smell. Warren Theophilus Paxton was sitting up in the huge bed, wrapped in a dressing gown and propped against a Himalayan heap of pillows. A humidifier was bubbling away in a corner, and a sideboard against one wall was topped by a phalanx of bottles containing pills and liquids.

The old man squinted as Blowdell stepped into the room. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a dry cough. The butler hastened to fill a glass from a pitcher beside the bed and held it to the flaked skin of his employer’s lips. Paxton took two gulps then pushed the water away. He looked at Blowdell again, blinked as if at an apparition, and spoke. “Nat? Is that you?”

“In the flesh, W.T.” He looked around the room. “You’ve been sick?”

“Jesus, where have–”

A coughing fit interrupted the question. Blowdell waited for it to subside then said, “I can’t talk about it, W.T. National security.”

The old man peered at him a moment more, then waved a pale hand, its skin like age-spotted parchment. “Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now.”

“You’ve had a hard time of it.” Blowdell knew how to sound as if he cared about people he associated with.

Paxton made no answer. He was staring at something only he could see.

After a silence broken only by the gentle huff of the humidifier, Blowdell said, “And Poppy? How’s she doing?”

A tear made its way down the pale cheek. “Not good,” the old man said. “Something… happened.”

“I heard about that.”

“Doctors say…” Again, the limp wave of the dry hand.

“May I see her?”

Paxton’s aged eyes came around to him, blinked. “What for?”

“Maybe I could help.”

The old man looked at Blowdell as if the younger man had made some foolish but forgivable breach of etiquette. “Help? How could you help?”

“I don’t know until I try.”

Paxton went back to looking at the bleak vista inside his head. But he weakly signaled his consent and asked the butler where his daughter was.

“The conservatory, sir.”

“What is she doing?”

The butler gently cleared his throat. “Not very much, I’m afraid, sir.”

The servant led Blowdell back downstairs then down a corridor and across a large dimly lit room to where a set of French windows had once opened onto the mansion’s expansive garden. The late Mrs Paxton had preferred to enjoy her greenery indoors and had had a glass-walled and -windowed room built out onto the patio. It was well supplied with plants in pots, many of them now grown tall and full, and with cushioned wicker chairs and settees.

On one of the latter, underneath an overhanging potted palm, Poppy Paxton sat and stared at not much at all. Her maid had dressed her in a shapeless cotton dress, without make-up, and a pair of cloth slippers. She sat with her legs crossed, the knee on top bouncing continuously up and down. The motion had caused one slipper to loosen and fall off. Poppy had made no attempt to put it on again.

The butler stopped at the French windows and said, “I won’t stay, sir. Men can make her nervous. I must advise you to speak quietly and calmly and not to approach too closely nor to make any sudden motions.”

“I’ll take it easy,” Blowdell said.

The butler pointed out a hospital-style call button at the end of a cable attached to one end of the settee where the young woman sat and told him to press it if she became upset, then withdraw. The maid, a trained nurse, would come and take care of Poppy.

“No problem,” said Blowdell. He stayed where he was until the butler had left, then slowly crossed the tiled floor. Poppy Paxton did not appear to notice him until he was within ten feet of her. Then it was as if she awoke from an open-eyed sleep, with a sharp intake of breath. Her eyes opened wide and she stared at him as if he were an apparition. Her knee stopped bouncing.

Blowdell knew that this was a crucial moment. He had been masked and clad in a full-body costume when he’d dragged Poppy down to Hell. She shouldn’t have been able to identify him. But he knew that the mind – especially the deranged mind – could make strange connections. If she recognized him as her kidnapper, he would have to rethink his plan.

She stared at him without blinking, her face blank. He studied her, saw no panic or terror, and began to relax. He took a seat on a nearby fan-backed wicker chair and showed her a smile. “Poppy,” he said, his voice soft, “it’s Nat Blowdell. I used to work with your father. Do you remember me?”

He wasn’t sure if she’d even heard him. She continued to give him the empty stare. He waited, and then it was as if a switch had been thrown somewhere in her disordered psyche. She looked down, then up at him again, and he saw her reaching for a memory, then catching hold.

“Politics,” she said.

He smiled again. “That’s right. Your dad was thinking of running for office, and I was advising him.”

She nodded and he could see her assembling some kind of framework that included him. Then she sighed, shook her head gently as if reminiscing on some folly of her childhood, and went back to staring at nothing. Her knee began to jiggle once more.

“Poppy,” he said, still soft, “do you remember what happened to you?”

She spoke without intonation. “No.”

“Do you remember a man dressed in blue and gray? He called himself The Actionary.”

He saw her briefly strain after memory, then fall back into inertia. “No.”

“I remember him,” Blowdell said. “What happened to you was his fault.” The knee briefly paused its bouncing, then resumed. “If he ever asks to see you,” he continued, “don’t be afraid of him. He can’t hurt you. I won’t let him.”

The knee paused. She looked at him again, but he wasn’t sure how much of what he was saying was getting through, and he had no great faith that she’d remember.

But that wasn’t the point of why he’d come here. Back when he’d been advising W.T. on his political ambitions, Blowdell had arranged for a team of technicians to visit the Paxton house between the hours of 3 and 4am. They worked for a private security firm with which he had a long-standing relationship. Blowdell did not trust his clients to follow his advice, so he’d had the techs install listening devices in the walls of key rooms; by a low-powered, short-range signal, the bugs fed whatever they picked up to a central receiver hidden in the gray box on an outside wall, where the house’s telephone system connected to the underground phone lines.

Every night, when the Paxtons were asleep, Blowdell’s computer used to dial the Paxton’s landline number and add a three digit code; the phone would not ring in the house, but the hidden collector would transmit a compressed digital package. The computer would use software borrowed from the National Intelligence Service – the spooks who listen in on everybody’s conversations – to winnow the recordings for keywords.

Now that he was back, Blowdell had reprogrammed the system to listen for a new set of words that included Actionary, Hell, demon, Hardacre, and anything he could think of that might fit his new assignment. But the technicians who had planted the bugs had not covered the conservatory – W.T. Paxton didn’t like the place and never went there. Blowdell now repaired that oversight by placing a listening device in the fronds of the palm that sheltered Poppy.

She twitched when he came near to plant the bug, then froze, staring at her motionless knee, until he withdrew.

“I’ll come and see you again,” he said.

She gave no sign that she’d heard him. The knee began to bounce again.

#

At the end of his first day as Chief Denby’s administrative assistant, Seth Baccala left his desk neat and tidy before asking his new boss if there would be anything else.

“Nope,” said Denby. “How are you settling in?”

“Fine.”

“Any surprises?”

Baccala shook his smooth head. “Admin is admin. Only the forms are different.” He took thought then said, “One thing.”

Denby had gone back to reading through the jackets of selected officers. He looked up. “What?”

“Hoople had a slush fund. He got a piece of every pay-off. His assistant kept a ledger. I found it in the safe.”

“So?”

“So a captain from vice squad dropped by and asked if the system was still in place.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Business as usual,” Baccala said, “until I hear different.”

“Good,” said Denby. “Just cause it’s a new broom, doesn’t mean it has to sweep totally clean. Not yet.”

 

Baccala did not go straight home. He walked the few blocks to the office building where, years before, he had accidentally killed the aspiring television journalist Cathy Bannister. It was past quitting time for office workers, but the lights were still on in the offices of Baiche, Lobeer, Tressider, and the main door was unlocked.

He made his way to Tressider’s corner office. The door was half open, but he knocked and waited until the lawyer told him to come in. The older man was seated on the couch reading a document on foolscap-sized paper, a glass of aged scotch in one hand. He gestured with that hand for the young man to take a seat, his gaze still on the paper. Not until he’d finished reading the last dense paragraph of single-spaced print did he look up.

“So?”

“Good,” said Baccala. “So far, it’s business as usual.”

Tressider sipped his scotch, looked at the younger man over the rim of his glass. “No new projects? No unexpected enthusiasms?”

“New broom, same old sweeping. But he’s reviewing the files of some of the senior officers.” The lawyer’s eyebrows put a silent question. Baccala said, “I think he’s confirming some long-standing opinions.”

“He strikes you as thorough?”

“And focused.”

“Which could be good,” Tressider said. “Or not.”

“Time will tell.”

The lawyer took another swallow, finishing the drink. “And when it does, you’ll tell me.”

 

After Seth Baccala left, Tressider returned the document he’d been reading to its file and locked it away in his private safe. He made a note in his billing diary then got his jacket from the armoire in one corner and shrugged into it. He went out into the firm’s main space and checked to see who was working late, saw the lights on in a couple of smaller offices where younger lawyers who hoped to make partner some day were going the extra mile. Then he went back into his own private domain and locked the door from the inside. He closed the blinds and drew the heavy curtains over them, plunging the room into darkness relieved only by a dim spill of light from under the door.

The armoire door was still open. He reached up until a finger found a cavity in the molding between the top and the back. He pressed and heard a click. The back of the armoire swung away from him, revealing a shadowy flight of stairs leading upwards. He stepped through and began to ascend.

An odor surrounded him, of camphor and something sickly sweet. But he was used to it and his face remained impassive. At the top of the stairs was a small square landing before an unmarked door that showed no apparent means of opening. Tressider knocked gently and waited, not looking up at the hemisphere of dark glass over his head. After a moment, the door disappeared silently into the wall. When he passed through the opening, it slid closed behind him.

The room was small and furnished like a parlor in a wealthy man’s home, a home of a few generations before. Its air smelled musty, as if it had been breathed too many times. A plush, wingback chair stood in the center of the deep pile carpet, a round table beside it holding a crystal carafe and a glass. Sunk in the chair was a diminutive figure, wrapped in a brocaded bathrobe. The head that protruded from the robe was completely hairless, the face a mass of wrinkles, the eyes like two bullet holes in parchment. But the gaze they turned on Tressider was sharp, and the voice that issued from the bloodless lips, though thin, was full of power.

“Well?”

“So far, sir, nothing to cause concern.”

“You’re sure?”

“As sure as we can be, at this stage.”

“Your agent?”

“In place.”

The figure in the chair coughed twice. “And we’re sure of him?”

Tressider gave the same answer. Then he stood and waited to see if there would be more. A minute passed, then another. The thin voice said, “Go away.”

The lawyer turned, the door opened for him, and he heard its whispery slide closing behind him as he descended the steps. A moment later, he was in his darkened office again, the armoire closed on its secret.

He crossed to the outer door and unlocked it. But before he opened it, he let the shudder he had been repressing convulse his back and shoulders.

 

“Casual but not plebeian, that’s what I wanted,” Simon said. “So is it?” He was looking at himself in the full-length mirror in the dressing room of the suite they were occupying at the MGM Grand complex in Las Vegas.

“You’re a peach,” Xaphan said. “A humdinger.”

The magician frowned and turned to Chesney. “Are we all still speaking the same language?”

“Yes. Xaphan has a few verbal idiosyncrasies.”

For convenience’s sake, Chesney had had the demon give Simon the power to speak and understand modern American English. The man was now examining himself in the mirror again. The demon had clothed him in a cream-colored linen suit, a pale blue silk shirt, and a pair of white loafers. He turned and looked over his shoulder. “I’ve seen Persians wearing leggings like these,” he said. “Very functional.”

Then he rubbed his palms against his upper arms. “I see desert out there, baking under the sun. Why is it so cold?”

Chesney started to explain about machines that cooled the air. After a few words, Simon signaled that he didn’t really care about the technicalities. “You brought me here to tempt me,” he said. “What have you got?”

“Food?” Chesney said. “Drink? Entertainment? Gambling?”

“Yes,” said Simon. “And women. How are the flute girls in your world?”

Chesney turned to Xaphan. “Does he really mean they have to play flutes?”

“Depends on what you call a flute,” the demon said.

They went down to the casino, which was roaring with light and noise. Simon took one look from the top of the stairs that led down to the enormous room and said, “The lights! The noise! Wonderful!”

Then he plunged into the crowds. He went from table to table as Chesney followed, bewildered by the welter of ways to lose money – blackjack, poker, some kind of clicking-spinning wheel with card suits on it, rank upon rank of electronic slot machines. Simon stopped for a while to watch the croupier spin a roulette wheel, and while he did so a young woman in a short skirt offered him a drink from a full tray. He took it, sipped, and said, “This is not rum.”

“It’s bourbon,” said the waitress.

The magician repeated the word to himself and drank some more. Then his eye caught movement at another table. He sidled over, watched as a large-bellied man leaned over the craps table and threw the dice, then watched again as the croupier apportioned winnings and losses to the people crowded around.

Simon turned to Chesney. “How is this played?”

“Um,” Chesney said. Poker was the only form of gambling he’d ever indulged in. “Xaphan? Can you explain?”

“I’ll just clue him in,” the demon said. It gestured.

Simon’s eyes widened. “Ah,” he said. Then, “I’ll need sesterces.”

Chesney looked at Xaphan. The demon told Simon to look in his pocket.

“What’s a pocket?”

Xaphan gestured again, then told Chesney, “It’s easier this way.” The magician was already digging into a side pocket of his jacket and coming out with a wad of bills. He already knew that they were money and that he had to exchange them for chips.

“You didn’t steal that, did you?” Chesney asked his assistant.

“Yeah, but I got it from some bad eggs across town.”

Simon was placing a bet. The dice flew across the board and bounced. The croupier pushed chips toward the magician’s stack. He stacked them on the same oblong space. The dice rolled again, and again Simon collected.

“He’s really lucky,” Chesney said.

“Luck ain’t got nuttin to do with it,” his assistant said.

Chesney dropped his voice, even though no one could hear him, or even see his lips move, when he was speaking to his demon. “He’s cheating?”

“Reason we want the guy is cause he’s got powers, right?”

“But casinos don’t like cheats. I’ve seen movies where they take them in a back room and some guy with a hammer breaks their hands.”

A roar went up from the table as Simon raked in another wealth of chips. The croupier picked up the dice and dropped them into a slot under the table, producing a new pair. He gave the magician a humorless smile as he passed them to the big-bellied shooter.

“Let him know about the hammer,” Chesney told the demon. A second later he saw Simon blink. He reached down and moved the lesser part of his piled-up chips off the playing grid. The shooter threw the dice again, and Simon shrugged as his stake was raked away. He pocketed the remaining chips.

“How about dinner?” Chesney said.

In the restaurant Simon said he had been in taverns where people ate sitting at tables. “The food is never good. Besides, the digestion is always improved when one eats while reclining.”

Chesney assured him the meal would be excellent and had Xaphan make the man literate in English so he could read the menu for himself.

“There’s no garum,” Simon said, after perusing the offerings.

“What’s garum?” Chesney said, which won him a look of astonishment. Then Xaphan put the knowledge in his head and he grimaced. “Really? A sauce made from rotting fish?”

“And no larks’ tongues,” Simon said. “This is how you tempt a man of culture?”

Chesney signaled a passing waitress. “A double bourbon for my friend here.”

Simon looked up at the young woman. “Will you be available after the symposium?” he said, adding in a hand gesture that, though new to Chesney, still left him in no doubt as to its meaning. “What do you charge?”

The waitress gave him a hard look. “Do what now?”

Chesney put up both hands. “He’s from out of… I mean, he’s come a long way.”

“And he’s like to go all the way back with a pain in his–”

“He didn’t mean to offend. It’s different where he comes from.”

The woman’s eyebrows said she wasn’t buying it. “Sounds to me like he’s from down the block.”

“He had excellent language teachers.”

“Well, he’d better get some manners teachers, somebody going to tear him a new one.”

“A new what?” Simon said, when she’d gone to get the whiskey.

“Maybe it would be better if you just observed for a while,” Chesney said. “Modern interpersonal relations are complex.”

“It’s a mistake,” said Simon, “to be too lenient with your slaves. You’ve never heard of Spartacus?”

The woman was coming back with the whiskey. Chesney said, “It would be better if you let me handle this.”

Simon seemed to catch on. “More men with hammers?”

“She’s thinking shears,” Xaphan said.

Simon kept his eyes on the menu. Chesney ordered for them both, a steak for himself and lobster for the magician. Xaphan suggested he ask for a bottle of the restaurant’s hottest hot sauce, adding, “In this guy’s time, they liked grub they could really taste.”

Simon’s eyes watered when he tried the sauce on the lobster. Chesney had ordered them wine – the costliest on the menu – and the magician drained his glass to put out the fire. But then he said, “I could learn to like that.”

“Wait until you discover chocolate ice cream,” Chesney said.

The ancient man ate with gusto, following the lobster with a few more entrees from the menu. The day that he had relived so many times – although actually it had lasted only from mid-morning to late afternoon – had included no feasting, he explained. Finally, having consumed enough to choke a hog, in Xaphan’s evaluation, he politely asked Chesney, “Where may I vomit?”

“Are you ill?” Chesney said.

“No, just full.”

Xaphan said, “Those Romans used to upchuck so they could put on the feedbag again.”

“We don’t do that,” the young man said.

“I wish I’d known,” said Simon. He looked a little green.

“You can’t heal yourself?” Chesney said.

“I told you, I’m not ill, just full.”

Chesney turned to Xaphan. “Can you relieve his discomfort? Delicately?”

“Sure.”

A moment later, Simon said, “That’s even better than vomiting. Where’s the menu?”

“How about we go see a show?” Chesney said.

The other man acquiesced. As they left the restaurant, he said, “I suppose it’s too late for gladiators, isn’t it?”

“By about fifteen hundred years,” said Chesney. “But this place has singing, dancing, comedy, acrobats–”

“I passed an evening at the Palace once,” said Simon. “In Caligula’s time. He had this trained donkey, and there was a senator’s wife who–”

“We have nothing like that!” Chesney said.

“Actually, boss,” said the demon, “there’s a place a couple miles from here–”

“Enough!” In the main concourse, he saw a placard mounted on an easel next to a wide archway, and said, “Perfect! We’ll go see the magician!”

Simon’s face said he didn’t expect to be impressed. The prediction turned out to be accurate.

The stage magician was billed as Charles Darnay. He was a slim young man with lacquered black hair and a sparkling suit who spoke with a distinctly French accent. The room was terraced, with four levels of tables leading down to a circular stage. Chesney led the way to an empty table near the front. A waitress immediately arrived and took their order. Simon leaned back in his chair and watched the performance, his chin elevated and his eyes half closed.

To Chesney, the act seemed seamless and smooth. Items suddenly appeared in the man’s hands and disappeared just as quickly. He produced a pair of doves from a handkerchief and a flash of fire from an empty hand, then stood his attractive female assistant on a bench behind a curtain she held up herself – but when the cloth fell she was nowhere to be seen.

The audience applauded. Simon said, “Huh!” in a tone that conveyed no respect. Darnay turned his head sideways and sent him a cold look.

The assistant reappeared from the wings, bringing two chairs. She and Darnay set them up a few feet apart, their backs facing each other. Then she stood while he made mystic passes before her eyes, which closed. She toppled backwards but he caught her in his arms and lifted her until her neck rested on one chair back and her heels on the other.

Simon blew air over his lips and crossed his legs. He shook his head as if at some grand folly.

Darnay gave him another sideways look that was sharp enough to cut flesh but continued with his act. His fingers caressed the space above the woman’s rigid, supine form. Then he lifted his hands, palms down, and as if she were a puppet on strings, the assistant rose slowly into the air.

“Pah!” said Simon, and turned away in a pantomime of supreme boredom. To Chesney, he said, “This you call a magician?”

The man on stage bristled, but went through with the rest of the performance. Lowering the woman to the chairs, then standing her up and awakening her from the trance. He bowed, she bowed, the band that had been playing accompaniment blew a fanfare, and the audience clapped. But the applause was none too loud; certainly, it was not loud enough to drown out Simon’s comment to Chesney: “Piffle! The fellow’s a mere mountebank!”

The band played Darnay’s exit music and the assistant left, but the man remained on the stage. The room grew quiet with expectation. “Perhaps,” the man said, “Monsieur can do better?”

Simon turned back towards the stage, raised one eyebrow. He cast his gaze over the audience, saw an old couple at one of the tables on the top level. The right corner of the man’s mouth drooped and he had a cane with a three-toed end.

Simon rose and approached the couple. He asked the man, “What happened to you?”

The man replied, but it was difficult to make out the words, his speech was so slurred.

His wife said, “Stroke.” Chesney couldn’t imagine a sadder word more sadly said.

Simon nodded. “Stand up.”.

It took a few seconds, even with the cane, for the old man to get to his feet. Simon looked him up and down, then reached out and touched the short gray hair on the left side of the man’s head. “Done,” he said.

The old man’s eyes widened. The slack corner of his mouth drew up to where it ought to be. He stood straighter, firmer. “What did you do?” he said, his voice clear.

Simon looked over at Darnay as he answered. “Magic.”

The man on the stage had gone pale with anger. “Bullshit!” he said, all traces of a French accent having fled. “A cheap publicity stunt! Who’s the old coot, your daddy?”

Simon’s attention was drawn back to the elderly couple, because the old woman had seized his hand and was kissing it. And now her husband leaned in and whispered something to the magician. Simon listened, shrugged, then briefly touched his hand to the crotch of the old man’s trousers.

The old fellow’s eyes went wide again for a moment. Then he seized his wife’s hand and said, “Come on, Betsy! Back to the room!” Pulling her behind him, he went out the doorway to the concourse at a flat run. The three-toed cane remained teetering behind.

The audience couldn’t settle on a common response. Some applauded, some muttered to each other, some watched to see what Darnay would do.

The stage magician opted for all-out war. “You son of a bitch!” he said, in what sounded to Chesney like a distinctly Texas accent. He stepped down from the stage and came up through the terraces toward Simon, his fists balled. The magician regarded him coolly and said, “The trick with the fire in the hand, can you do it with your head?”

“I’ll show you some fucking tricks!” said Darnay, pushing aside a chair and preparing to jump up onto the terrace where Simon waited.

“Because,” said Simon, “I can.”

He gestured with one hand and Charles Darnay’s shining dark hair burst into flame. The stage magician howled in pain. He unballed his fists and beat at the flames with both palms, but without noticeable result, except to set the cuffs of his sequined jacket on fire. Meanwhile, the audience decided on a collective response built around screaming and rushing for the exit.

Darnay was making a hoarse sound and continuing to slap his head. Chesney concluded that magic fire was more difficult to extinguish than the regular variety.

“Xaphan!” he said. “Put the fire out and get us back to the room! Now!”

An instant later, Chesney and Simon were back in the suite. Xaphan arrived a moment later. The rules of demonic interaction with Creation did not allow fiends to move from one place to another on Earth. Xaphan had to route via the toehold in the outer circle of Hell. The demon took the opportunity to acquire a fresh cigar and a tumbler of rum.

“That was fun,” it said. “Now what?”

“I’d like some more of that,” Simon said, indicating the liquor. “The bourbon kind. And maybe I’ll try the burning stick.”

 

In preparation for steering W.T. Paxton toward the governorship, Blowdell had leased office space and hired staff. Once he disappeared and the staff found no one to sign their paychecks, the place emptied out. The furnishings were still there, as well as some of the equipment, though the departing employees had helped themselves to computers and other resellables in lieu of wages. Blowdell’s private lair, secure behind heavy locks, had remained inviolate.

His office contained a couch and its own washroom. The break room kettle, coffeemaker, and miniature fridge were still there, though someone had appropriated the microwave. Blowdell got one at a discount store, along with boxes of packaged food whose preparation required only boiling water. He had used to enjoy eating. Now, even though his digestive system had been returned to service, he had no interest in how food tasted. It was only fuel. Sometimes he didn’t bother to soak the pressed dried noodles in water, but chewed them dry while he sat at his empty desk with its speakerphone.

To begin with, he had altered the part of the spy program that would send him a nightly package. Instead, he had reprogrammed the listener to contact him the moment it heard one of the keywords. But after a few hours of sitting and waiting for a call, he had again revised the system so that, unbeknownst to the Paxton household, the line was always open. Blowdell now spent eighteen hours of every day sitting and listening to the audio feed that captured the life of Poppy Paxton. During his brief intervals of fitful sleep on the couch – never more than twenty minutes – the computer listened for him.

Poppy’s was now a sadly diminished life, a routine of feedings and cleanings, of being woken and put to bed – all of which, added together, took up less than an hour a day. The rest of the time was spent in silence, the young woman sitting and staring. Her father had engaged a physical therapist who came in three times a week to try to help her keep some muscle tone, but the effort was not being rewarded. Blowdell could sometimes hear the physio swearing under her breath as she struggled against her patient’s passive resistance. Once he heard the therapist whisper to herself, “God, how I hate working with catatonics!”

When the Paxtons were all tucked in for the night, Blowdell rose from the chair. He hadn’t slept at all in Hell – who could? – and the experience had done something to his brain. He believed he now often slept, if it could be called sleep, with his eyes open and even with his body active. After months in the underworld, the reality he had returned to was much like a dream. Now he wandered the night streets, sometimes encountering others who preferred to live their lives in darkness. Some of them thought they were predators and Blowdell their prey. He taught them otherwise. It was invariably a final lesson; he still retained the strength and speed that Melech had given him.

Often, he would walk over to the Paxton mansion and loiter there, on the off chance that his nemesis might also be drawn to the place. So far, that hadn’t happened, but Nat Blowdell had always cultivated the political virtue of patience, and a season in Hell had refined that quality to its essence.

 

“So here’s the deal,” Chesney said. “We’ll take you out of here,” – he gestured to Simon’s marble-floored room and ancient Rome out the window – “and we’ll set you up in our world so you can live decently. In return, you will heal a young woman whose memories had to be edited.”

“Why did they have to be edited?” Simon asked.

“She saw things, terrible things, that she shouldn’t have had to see.”

“Who did the editing?” Simon looked to where the demon hovered to one side of where Chesney sat on one of the couches. “That?”

Xaphan inclined its head.

“Huh,” said the magician. Then, “What else?”

“Nothing else,” said Chesney.

Xaphan leaned down toward Chesney’s ear and said, “Uh, boss?”

“What?”

“I don’t wanna be a kibitzer, but you ain’t doin’ this right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, look at him.” Chesney did. The demon had stopped time so he could intervene. Simon’s face had frozen just as a micro-expression of deep distrust had flashed across it. “He thinks you’re tryin’ to pull somethin’. You ask for a little, then when he bites you gazump him.”

“Gazump?”

“Once he’s in, the price goes up.”

“I see. What do you suggest?”

The demon said, “This kinda thing, the traditional set-up is three wishes.”

Chesney thought about it. It rang true. He turned back to Simon and time started up again. “I can see it’s no good trying to fool you,” he said. “The fact is, we’re going to want you to perform three acts of magic. The first one is healing the young woman.”

Simon looked at him sideways. “And the other two?”

“We’re not sure, yet.”

“Will they just involve healing damaged minds?”

Chesney shrugged. “Probably. My assistant can do just about anything else I need doing.”

“Will you require a contract? Satan wanted a document.”

The statement took the young man by surprise. “You did a deal with Hell?”

Simon snorted. “Not likely! Would you?”

“Not the kind Satan likes,” Chesney said. “But he offered?”

The magician glanced at the demon then appeared to make up his mind about something. “My sense of you is that you have been telling me the truth, your choice of assistant notwithstanding. So I will reciprocate.”

He raised his hands to clap for the slave, then thought better of it. “Could we have some of that strong drink?” he said.

Chesney said, “Xaphan.” A glass of whiskey appeared on the couch beside the magician. As the man reached for it, Chesney said, “Make it on the rocks.” His comix hero, Malc Turner aka The Driver, liked bourbon on the rocks.

Simon poked at the floating cubes. “It’s ice, isn’t it? I saw some once at a Poppea’s house in Pompeii. It had been brought down from Vesuvius packed in sawdust.” He sipped the whiskey and his lean face registered pleasure. “A very fine effect.”

He sipped some more, then said, “Where was I? Ah, yes, the offer. Well, there’s not much to tell. He went to each of us – me, your friend from Nazareth, and the other one – and offered us the world. I could be emperor, he said. And I suppose I would have been, except that I would have been beholden to him – and what good would that have been? Even Yeshua was not too naive to turn him down.”

He sipped some more of his whiskey, reflecting. “I see it now, of course. The great book, the story. It all makes sense.” His head nodded upwards. “He had come to a point where the story could go one way or another. He tried out different characters: Yeshua, me…”

He noticed that Chesney was leaning forward, listening intently. Simon’s expression had been that of a man recollecting past events; now it sharpened and he became very much in the here and now.

“You’re waiting for me to say the name, aren’t you?” he said.

Chesney had never been good at disguising his feelings. “You said, ‘the other one.’ Who were you talking about?”

Simon’s eyes narrowed as he assessed the young man. “Why don’t you ask your demon?”

“Xaphan, do you know who he’s talking about?”

The fiend consulted its store of knowledge. “No,” it said, “I don’t.”

“Is it another ‘wild card’?”

“Could be. Or it could be I don’t know cause the Boss don’t want me to. Or…” Xaphan’s weasel brows drew down with the unaccustomed effort of thinking. The fiend indicated the magician. “He’s sayin’ the Boss was makin’ offers that him and your buddy turned down. If there was another wild card at the same time, and that guy took the offer, that would make it a personal contract between the mug and the Boss. For sure I wouldn’t know nuttin about it.”

Simon had heard none of their exchange. Chesney told him the demon didn’t know.

“Hell keeps secrets from itself?” the magician said.

“They don’t do a lot of trusting,” Chesney said. “So who was the other wild card?” Then he had to have Xaphan put an understanding of playing cards in Simon’s head.

“Interesting,” the other man said. “I want to try some of those games.”

“They’re less fun if you cheat,” Chesney said. “Now what about the wild card?”

Simon regarded him speculatively for a long moment. Then he said, “Do you know, I believe I will keep that information to myself for the time being.”

“Why?”

“Because it may be useful to me to know something that you don’t. Just in case it turns out that you want something more than three healings.”

“I assure you–”

“No, you do not,” said the magician. “At least, not yet.” He drank some more of the iced bourbon. “But I think we have enough common ground to get started, don’t we?”

Chesney looked at his demon. The pinstriped shoulders went up and down. “It ain’t a perfect deal,” it said. “But what deal is?”