I went to work the next day at the proper time, despite the temptations of Richard, French toast, and maple syrup. I ate my last piece in the car on the way to work folded in half around the slatherings of butter and syrup. We moved the scaffold over to the next section of the upstairs lobby. Yvette brought some donuts, and she and the guys sang most of the day, once the sugar high kicked in. I found myself singing along now and again, when I wasn’t just staring at the wall and smiling. I took some ribbing, which I normally don’t tolerate, but that day I hardly noticed.
I resisted calling Richard from work at the noon break. He wasn’t supposed to be home anyway, since he planned to take the bus to the mall and buy himself some clothes. That night we were going back to see the sorceress Tamara, to see if she’d come up with anything in the meantime, and I was going to be sure we asked some questions about Richard.
When I got home from work, dinner was hot on the table, some kind of lamb stew with all kinds of unidentifiable succulent lumps in it. I love lamb. It’s in my nature to do so. After we ate, he had to show me all his new clothes, and this turned into a fashion show, which turned into a ritual of a completely different kind, and by the time I’d inspected everything he’d bought, including socks and underwear, we were both exhausted and, quite frankly, unfit to be seen in public. So we decided we’d hit Tamara’s the next night, and went properly to bed instead.
When I got home the next night, Richard was gone.
I didn’t think, even for a moment, that I’d been taken for a chump. Why would he have bothered to do the breakfast dishes if he was doing a bunk? Why was there dough rising on the stove, overflowing the bowl and all over the stove top? And, conclusively, why had he left all his new clothes, except the ones he’d been wearing that morning? He hadn’t even taken his snazzy new tennis shoes, but had gone out wearing his old boots. He had taken his jacket. His soul was gone.
His scent was faint on the steps—he’d gone out hours ago. Nonetheless, I had little trouble tracking him down Philadelphia, smiling at the tiny remaining scents on his new jeans, which he hadn’t washed since last night. On Greenleaf he’d turned right, toward the grocery store, which is what I expected. I’d already heard a couple of Richard’s riffs on food having to be fresh, not frozen, not prepackaged. He’d gone out to buy whatever was to go with the biscuits for dinner, and it wasn’t supposed to take long. Not longer than it takes bread to rise, anyway. Near one of the sidewalk coffee shops, the trace of Richard ended, and I picked up another scent, which sent me trotting back up the hill to get my car. I knew that one. And I knew where he lived. This wasn’t going to be hard after all.
When I pulled up in front the bungalow in Laguna Beach, I was tingling with pleased anticipation. After all, I’d played this scene before, and I’d come out the big hero, rescued the beautiful guy and taken him home to my bed—eventually. I scented Richard’s recent trace on the path, and this time I hopped the front gate, insinuating myself over the top of it and under the rose-tangled archway above in a suave undulation, graceful and with no loss of motion. I hoped Richard was watching. I trotted up the steps and knocked on Thomas Fallahan’s front door.
His friend Chris opened it. I saw him recognize me and, in the same instant, try to close the door in my face, but my foot was already there. I was hyped up enough that when I put out my hand and pushed open the door, he backed up fast and I breezed in right past him.
The elegant leather-and-wood living room was the same, except the candles were gone. The couch was right-side up and back in its place before the fire. I looked around curiously. There had been one distinct addition to the décor: garlic wreathes. In all the windows. Hanging over the door. With silver crosses hanging from them. Some of them were big. I had to laugh.
“That’s a myth, you know,” I said, pointing at a particularly heavily decorated window. I wandered over to it, grabbed the garlic skin and made it crackle, dangled the cross in my fingers. Old. Kind of pretty, in fact.
“Oh,” said Chris, and swallowed. He still stood near the open door.
I wandered over to the bedroom, glanced in. It was dark and there was no one in there. I looked at him quizzically.
“He’s not here,” he told me warily.
“Who’s not here?” I asked. “Tommy?”
“He’s not here either.”
“That’s okay,” I told him cheerfully. “I’m not here for him. I came for…” What had these guys called him?
“Stan’s not here.” Chris supplied the name for me. “They left.”
I wandered around the living room, thinking. “They left. They were here, but they left. What was—Stan—doing here in the first place?” I turned and faced him, not trying anymore to seem friendly. Not trying anymore to pretend I wasn’t right out of his worst nightmare.
Chris had his back practically against the wall. He shook his head. “It wasn’t my idea. Honestly.”
“Why don’t you tell me—right now—what Tommy was doing in my town, and what he’s doing with—Stan.”
“A guy came here—friend of Tommy’s, I’d never seen him before. He wanted to know where Stan was. Tommy’s—he’s pissed about the other night. You scared him or something.”
Or something. I smiled my not-nice smile, remembering. “Yeah.” I remembered, too, Richard coming out of the shower, smelling of sweet unguents, his fine body flushed, and his eyes troubled. “And so?” I prompted.
“This guy, this friend of Tommy’s, he said if Tommy brought Stan to him, he’d…” Chris’s eyes left my face. That keyed me up even more.
“Oh yeah?” I asked him. “He’d what?” I walked casually over to Chris until I stood just within reach. “He’d what?” I asked him, softly.
He put his hands out in front of him, as though to ward off what was coming. And I hadn’t done a thing yet! “Look,” he said, “this has nothing to do with me. If I tell you—everything—could you just go away and…”
My eyes dripped sympathy; I’m sure they did. “And not hurt you?” I took another step forward. “Why don’t you tell me every little thing you know, and then hope that puts me in a really nice mood. How about that?” I took another little step forward and ran my finger down his arm. His biceps were taut. He watched what I was doing with an expression bordering on horror, as though my finger had grown tentacles. God, I enjoy respect! “Go ahead.” I gave him a little poke. “Start talking.”
“Listen,” he said, “this was all Tommy’s idea. He’s been ranting and raving ever since you were here last time. He was really upset. I’ve never seen him like that.”
“No?” I asked. “’Cause usually he’s just a sweet, gentle nice guy, is Tommy. Wouldn’t hurt a fly, right?”
Chris shifted. “Okay. He wanted to get back at Stan. And then Marlin came over and said if Tommy brought him Stan…” I looked up, letting my finger dig into his arm. He winced. “He said he’d take care of him.”
“‘Take care of him?’”
Chris gave in. “He said he’d see to it that Stan regretted ever leaving this house. He said Stan would regret ever being born, and for a long time.”
I thought about that. I wondered if those guys knew what Stan was. If they didn’t, then this didn’t sound so very bad. But if they did… I felt myself growing. Funny, I didn’t feel more than ordinarily angry. This was new. This was about… lying in bed beside Richard while he fed me bits of pizza from his fingers and said things that made me laugh. It was about straining against his strength for my joy and his, all thoughts dissipated, all desires known. And the long night I’d spent, his head on my breast, his breathing slow, his scents and mine mingled into a new one, intoxicating, that I could still taste at the back of my throat. It was about love. I felt very strong.
“Where are they now?” I asked. Even my voice sounded different. There was a level of menace in it I had felt before but never managed to convey.
Chris was white. He leaned away from me. “I don’t know.” He looked sideways at me and added, “I could call his cell but he said something happened to it.”
That’s right. Something had. I was smiling now, the smile with a whole lot of teeth in it. I said, “All right. I will deal with him in good time. Right now, you can tell me, who is this Marlin person, and where do I find him?”
He didn’t even hesitate. A short time later I was charging up the freeway as fast as one ever goes on the 405 at six at night, heading north past the airport. That is to say, I was going very slowly indeed. And cussing a lot. I distracted myself from road rage by remembering the scene as I’d left it in Tommy’s living room. I’d given Chris’ arm a sisterly pat and told him that if I ever saw him again, he’d be very, very sorry. Likewise, he should tell Tommy that he’d better pack his stuff and go, because he had messed with something of mine, and I knew where he lived. And then I’d taken a run around the room over the furniture. My, how the stuffing had flown! Like snow, with bits of leather and shreds of draperies, and over all, the smell of crushed garlic, everywhere. Sometimes I think I’m just a puppy at heart. With very strong teeth.
It took me an hour and a half to get up to West Hollywood. When I finally found the place Chris told me Marlin lived, I parked down the street and walked back along the two sides of the building I could get to. I got no sense of Richard anywhere. I didn’t see Tommy’s bike. The apartment on the second floor was dark. The glass door in front was locked, and when I knocked, no one came to open it. I found the carport behind the building that corresponded to the apartment number, but it was empty. No luck.
I’m a good hunter, but there has to be something to hunt. I walked up the street, keeping an eye on the place, willing Marlin to arrive with Richard in tow, and Tommy, conveniently for me, riding shotgun. Nothing. A couple of guys walked their dogs along the street, bringing home the shopping. When they passed me, and a glance showed me the coast was clear, I changed, just long enough to let the pets get a whiff of me, and turn, shrieking and howling, tangling their leads and yanking their owners into the street. I changed back the same second, before the guys saw me, and had a good laugh watching them try to get untangled and recover their bags. I don’t usually do things like that. Just when I’m annoyed.
The next building up was a bookstore. A tall, thin, bearded man stood in the doorway, watching the guys finish comforting their pooches and walk away. I stepped past him into the bookstore, consciously waiting for his comment, since he might, after all, have seen something. He gave me a long steady look through deep-set, humorous eyes, and then followed me back inside. I was close enough to him to scent that it had been a long time since he’d eaten meat, which explained his hollow look. He went behind the counter and asked absently if he could help me find anything, and at the same time sat back down to his radio and his stack of open books.
“Nope,” I said, avoiding another of his long, steady glances. “Just looking.” I positioned myself behind a shelf, which gave me a good view of the building and the front window of what Chris had told me was Marlin’s apartment. The bookstore guy put on a pair of glasses but watched me over the top of them, so I stopped checking out the window and looked at the books in front of me. New Age Psychology, the shelf in front of me said. Gods, what a lot of books. I picked one up at random and rifled the pages.
The storefront bookstore had a wall of windows on the street side. I wandered along, peering over the four-foot row of bookshelves to see which vantage point gave me the best view of the apartment across the street. I worked my way along past Mysticism and Healing to Self-Help, pretending some intensive browsing as I went. The bookstore guy must have thought I was a basket case.
The rows of bookshelves marched in lines all the way to the back walls, where the shelves went from the floor to the ceiling. There, a ladder ran on a track along the walls, so you could climb up and browse the top shelves. The counter stood to the right of the entrance, lined in front with cardboard boxes full of books. I wandered over there and looked down at them, while trying to glance out of the front door. The bookstore guy took off his glasses and looked up at me.
“Those aren’t for sale yet. I just got those in.”
I nodded and turned away.
“Anything I can help you with?” he asked. I thought he sounded sarcastic. I mean, I’d been in there almost half an hour already. I turned around, but he’d already put his glasses back on and was gazing down at his stack of open books. There sure were a lot of them.
I went back along the shelf on its other side, this time with my back to the windows, but turning every time I picked out a book, opened it, flipped a few pages and put it back, stifling equally the dust that threatened to make me sneeze and the sense impressions of the people who had previously handled the book, or stood where I was standing. I was about to peruse the whole front shelf over again from its other side, when the bookstore guy called out, “I generally close at nine. Can I help you find anything particular?”
I thought, what the hell. “Do you know Marlin? He lives in that building there, second floor?”
“Yes,” he said, surprising me so much I turned to face him for the first time. “He’s in here a couple of times a week. Not on a Tuesday, though. He gets together with his group on Tuesdays.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, starting for the door. “What group is that? Where do they meet?”
He smiled at me. He was older than I’d thought at first, probably in his fifties. His cavernous face and eyes lit up now he was smiling. He wore faded jeans and a dark green flannel shirt, and short, old boots that had walked up a lot of distant roads. “The Thunder Mountain Boys? It isn’t a group you’d want to drop in on, believe me.”
“Yeah?” I said, challenged. I canted my weight onto one leg and folded my arms. “You think they would offer a threat to a girl like me?”
He stood up, looking serious now. “I think they would eat you for breakfast, puppy dog.”
I was so taken aback I didn’t move while he lowered the blinds over the front door, turned the sign around that said they were Open to Sorry We’re Closed. He came towards me, holding out his hand like you would to a dog to sniff and make friends. When I didn’t move, he changed it into a gesture inviting me to the back of the store. “I knew you were coming,” he explained.
All right, that intrigued me, but it wasn’t what I had come for. “When will Marlin get home?” I asked.
He stopped by a door at the back marked Office—Private. “I don’t know. He’s a ritualist. Lately, he and his group have been meeting more often, and for longer. We all have work to do. We are all doing everything we can to defeat the same enemy.” He opened the door behind him and motioned to me. This time I followed him. In the back of the store, if I had to kill him or anything, no one would see anyway.
Behind the door a curtain covered the entrance. Both the doorway and the curtain were loaded with wards. The ones on the doorway gave out a strong impression that the door was locked, and never opened. These parted as he passed through the door. The wards on the curtains were more complex, but before I could tease the sense out of them, the guy swept the curtain and the wards aside together and pronounced, “Come in.”
He loaded the phrase with a weight of meaning, but as soon as I stepped past him, I was too distracted to try and analyze it. I walked into a square, windowless room filled with a low sweet ringing sound that I almost couldn’t hear, and smelling of dust and books and—strangely—water. I looked around quickly. The walls were lined with bookshelves, only three feet high in here, but filled with books, mostly thick and brown with age. There was a futon in one corner, neatly made up and, against the wall in the corner opposite, well-lit by an antique standing lamp, was a desk on which stood a big silver bowl half-full of water—but that wasn’t what I smelled. I was distracted again by the sound, the low mellifluous ringing, and then I saw them: small golden bowls spinning where they balanced on slender wands. These were full of water, too, water that was swirling as the bowls swirled, and filling the room with that scent. Spinning, balanced where they spun, and not stopping. Impossible—unless… I turned to him as he walked past me into the room. He took a stance in the middle on an ancient Persian rug from which wafted scents so curious and appealing I wanted to bury my nose in it. I slapped away that distraction as he lifted his hands and stood there, quite still, his eyes closed. The little bowls slowly ceased spinning. One by one they dropped off the sticks that had held them and fell, ringing, onto the bookshelf or onto the floor. The sticks fell after them. Nine of them, one after the other, and the ringing stopped.
He opened his eyes, turned to look at me. “I’m Darius,” he said. “I am a geomancer. That’s how I knew you were coming.”
The scent of water changed. I picked up the nearest bowl, which wasn’t gold anymore, but brass, and smelled it. Nothing. And it was quite dry.
I held out the brass bowl. “How did you…?”
He took it from me and laid it gently on the shelf. “Trade secrets, and a lot of practice. Sit down?”
There was only one chair, the one at the desk, a heavy ancient wooden armchair. He pulled that out for me and when I sat down he folded himself up on the floor on the rug.
“How did you know…?” I didn’t want to spell it out in case he’d only made an inspired guess, but people almost never spot me. Even if they see me, they make themselves believe they didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It’s one of my favorite human traits. He’d shocked me with that “puppy dog” remark.
“I saw you in the water,” Darius leaned back on his hands, looking up at me. “Sometimes, when I see things, I know things too. So I knew you would be coming to my shop. And then of course, you pulled that stunt outside. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t already know.”
I looked past him, embarrassed for a second. Honestly, sometimes I think I should do something to control these mad impulses of mine. What the hell.
He went on. “I knew what you were—are. And I know you are in the fight against the World Snake. We are required to meet because I have information for you, and through me you will learn something that you don’t yet know you need to know.” He grinned at me suddenly, which put unexpected crinkles in his long face.
“All right,” I said, sitting back. “Tell me.”
“Ah,” he replied, “but it doesn’t work that way. Would that it did.”
“All right then. How does it work?”
He shook his head. “Try this. You ask me questions, and I’ll see if I can answer you.”
That was easy. “Where’s Richard?”
He looked at me blankly.
I tried again. “Marlin has him. I want to know where he is.”
He got to his feet like one of those stick men refolding itself and went to the desk. He bent over the large bowl for a moment in silence, then stirred it with one hand, once, twice. He stared into the water again. After a moment he stood up and shook his head. “Richard? I can’t see anything. Maybe you could tell me about him?”
What could I say about Richard? A glint of his eyes in the half-light came into my mind, together with the memory of what his hands had been doing at that moment, and the gentle, quizzical smile on his face while he did it, and I felt myself blushing. Damn. I got up from the chair, walked over and looked at the bookshelf opposite. More books. “Well,” I said, “he’s a demon.”
Darius let out a snort, lifting his hands. “Well, no wonder. I’m not going to see a demon in the water. They don’t show up like that.”
“He’s human—I mean, he has a human form.”
“Yeah, nevertheless. You’ll have to ask me something else.”
I folded my arms. Was he trying not to be helpful? I said, “Tell me what you know about demons. All I know is what Richard told me, and hey, you never can tell.”
He sat on the edge of the desk. He looked at me intently, like this teacher I once had used to look when I’d failed to live up to his unreasonable expectations. “Did you summon this demon?”
He was beginning to piss me off. “No, but he’s mine now. He says. Then this guy, Tommy, that he used to go with, he came and picked him up—I think he was on the way to the store—and his friend Chris said Marlin wanted him, and that he would make Richard sorry that he was ever born. Except, he wasn’t born.”
Darius listened to this without expression. When I finished he asked, “What do you want this Richard for?”
“What do you mean?” I said. “I mean, he’s mine, and anyway, I don’t think he wanted to go with that guy—Marlin.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” Darius interrupted, “that the demon was sent to distract you from your true mission?”
“Huh? I mean, come on.”
“Our fight is with the World Snake, isn’t it?”
I shrugged. “I only heard about that last week. I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to do about it.”
“The demon told you of it,” he said, as though he knew already. “Did he tell you how to fight it?”
“He told me,” I said, remembering, “He said that before the World Snake, the Eater of Souls will come. And he says that may be the greater danger of the two.”
“Right,” Darius said, disgusted. “And why is that?”
I thought back. I was starting to not like this guy. “I don’t know.”
“You do know,” he insisted.
I shrugged. “Richard’s scared of it.”
“Is he?” His voice was growing milder with every question. It made him sound sarcastic. “And does he have a soul to be eaten?”
I felt the color rise in my face as I realized several facts weren’t adding up, which made me feel stupid, which made me feel embarrassed, which made me feel angry, but I said, without missing a beat, “Yes, he does.”
“Does he?” Darius said, in honest wonder. “Well, that changes everything.” He thought a moment, and then nodded to himself. “I’ll have to find out more about demons. The only ones I’ve known so far are treacherous, lying bastards.”
“Have you had one?” I asked, curious. “One that was yours?”
He shook his head. “No. Thank the Spirits that be, I have not.”
“Then you don’t know much about it, do you?” I said.
He laughed at that. “All right. You’ll have to find your Richard on your own. I don’t think that’s my province. I seem to be the clearinghouse for information on our prime enemy. I put groups in touch with one another, I take questions, and if I can’t find the answers myself, I find those who can. I marshal our resources. I know already that you’re going to be one of our most important ones.” He added in a murmur, “Maybe the most important one.”
“Yeah?” I was still thinking about how to find Richard. “What can I do against the World Snake that all you power-raisers can’t do?”
He looked surprised. “Well, for one thing, you’ll be able to sense where it is. Won’t you?”
I thought about that. He was right. If it was nearby, if it was that big and that powerful, I’d know. So I nodded.
He nodded back. “That’s useful to all of us. You’ll begin at once, of course.”
Huh? “Begin what?” I asked.
“Seeking the Snake. We don’t know where it is. We need that information. We need you to do this for us.”
“Do what?”
“Quarter the city. I’ll give you some numbers you can call in to, to tell where you are and what ground you’ve covered, and some other numbers in case you sense the enemy. You can’t begin too soon.”
“Now just a minute,” I protested. “I never said—”
“You are with us?” he asked, sounding as reasonable as any adult sane person can who has just said something totally unbelievable.
“Look, I may be with you but—”
“Good,” he said. “I’ll get you those numbers.”
I followed him across the room. “Now hold on just a minute!” He turned back to me with mild, enquiring eyes. I stood my ground, not letting his quietude disarm me. “I am in this fight. But I am in on my own terms, and I will do it my own way.”
“But you just said—”
“I’m not finished! This is my city. But I am not your hunting dog. I am not running around this whole stupid basin sniffing for your stupid Snake. At least not until I find Richard. Now tell me what Marlin is doing with him.”
Darius smiled. “Well, we know it’s not a virgin sacrifice, don’t we?”