Lila's hair blew in the wind and battered at the sides of her unnecessary sunglasses. She'd always wondered why your hair blew forwards if you were in a convertible and Malachi's vintage ‘65 Eldorado was no exception. Now she could know why, complete with a detailed moving graphic of airflow dynamics, almost as soon as she could wonder. She was glad she'd turned off the AI. It spoiled things indefinably—too much information when the interesting part was the experience, and not the explanation…She sipped from their shared Diet Coke and rattled the ice as Malachi took the huge boat of a vehicle up to a stately sixty on the autoroute. There was nothing technological about the car. It was like a kid's toy, all huge steering wheel and big numbers with plastic indicator needles. She liked it more than she could say, and it had a ride like a sofa lost at sea, made worse by her uneven loading of its suspension. Above the wind noise the sound of Malachi's favourite girly-funk tracks on the stereo were almost lost.
“We're going to my place first,” she'd said. He hadn't baulked, just turned the car out of the office lot and taken the bay road instead of the bridge. He knew her address. Driving there was a lot like it used to be, she thought. They could have been cruising back for pizza and movies after another long day training. She pretended it was so and ignored the throbbing pain in her ear and the green density in her chest as if they were the results of a minor accident.
The Eldorado, pearly green and shiny, dwarfed pretty much every other neat and zippy little personal car on the highway. Lila felt herself whale riding, moving in a world set to a different kind of scale and speed. The car turned into her driveway with a head-rocking shimmy as it met and danced over the curb, then silently stopped before the main door. The sprinklers were out on the apartments' grass, fanning the green with diamonds. Lila got out of the creaking leather seat and turned to face Mal.
“I'm just gonna get a few things. I won't be long.”
“Want me to wait here?” Meaning, did she want him along as wing support.
“Nah. I'm good,” she said, lying with a clear conscience. “Be a few minutes.”
He nodded like he was supposed to and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as Pink sang shocked about the state of people's hearts. “…they knew better, still you said forever…”
Lila's building let her in with a near silent click of the lock. Inside the atrium it was cool and perfumed. A faery mistlamp gave off the comforting smells of home. She ignored the waiting lift—at this time of day most of the people here were at work except Mary the escort, who was at work too, only usually at home. Up one floor and turn to the back garden view, past the public patio terrace with its maintained barbecue and serviced jardinette, its fragrant flowers, its executive vistas across the Lower Bay and Steamboat Pool. Government stipends paid for a lot, at least they did if you were a hotshot experimental cyborg who had to be compensated for the loss of a lifetime.
Her door was the second on the right. She didn't feel a thing as she opened it up. The only hint that something was wrong was the way that the air felt as the door moved in, like it pushed a little against her because it was already moving into the rooms from another place. She felt the guns in her hands open up and arm. They were a little noisier, or was it her imagination? They were a little slower.
Over the scent of baking biscuits, cinnamon, and ocean came the slightest tang of lemons. Wild magic, and its bearer, looking for trouble.
Allow me.
Tath spilled from her skin with the ease of a lover falling out of warm sheets. Lila was uneasily comforted by his familiarity and strength as he clothed her in his aetheric body and his glamour and she shrank within, the hidden iron hand inside the velvet glove. For some reason she wanted to cry.
Tath's senses were better suited by far. In an instant he was relaxed with the aura of a fighter who knows it's only a second away. He withdrew once he had discovered the facts and animated her from the centre, her trusted puppeteer for those moments where she was out of her aetheric depth. She wanted to hug him.
Aloud he had her mouth speak his voice, “Come out. Nobody's playing and I see you already.” With her legs he strode into the living room.
A dark shape, like a curled giant cat, undid itself from the Persian rug and stretched out. Its colour shifted as it moved in a bewildering change of purples and lilacs, blue and white. Besides the colour the shape altered too. As it rose it showed long tail and wings unfurling, long neck and horsy head with fans, big eyes, long arms, hugely powerful body naked and shining with natural sheen. And then, as it straightened on two legs, it became much more like a man, absorbing all its natural demonic form and smoothly morphing into a handsome, slim-hipped white guy in his early twenties, silver haired and blue eyed and wearing pale blue clothes that came out of nowhere, wrapping themselves around him in strips of cloth like lovers' arms which became the fabric of a beautifully cut shirt and trousers.
Tath handed back, the perfect tag-team buddy. Lila lowered her guns. “Teazle?”
The young man bowed his head a fraction, amusement giving him an endearing monkeyish grin. “Clearly you expected someone else.” He glanced at her guns.
She put them away and flexed her hands, feeling a moment's pain in her shoulder, but it was gone almost before she knew it. “I expected to find my house like I left it. Cut to the chase. I have to leave.” She would have been pleased to see him, even as an intruder, at some other moment, she was surprised to realise, but now she didn't have the inclination. She walked past him to her bedroom and opened up the wardrobe, looking for something she could wear that wasn't military issue and that would cover her up from neck to ankles. Everything in it looked strangely foreign, like they were someone else's. With annoyance she began to fling things onto the bed.
Teazle followed her, his presence like a vibration on the end of her nerves, but what sort of vibration she wasn't sure. Right now it felt like irritation.
“I'm here to give you service,” he said without a trace of humour.
Lila snorted, throwing a bizarre ginger-toned two-piece suit out with astonishment she had ever thought it was suitable for anything. She used to wear it to business meetings. The idea made her shudder now, the idea of all those serious faces, telling her how it had to be and what she was to do, how she was going to live—all worked out. And she would be there nodding seriously too, taking it all in and inside she'd feel like she was dying out and hoped it didn't show in case they thought she was too weak. “I don't need it.”
“Yes, you do,” he said. “And even if you didn't I have to give it to you because I gave you the shadowkin.”
“I could have given it back,” she said.
“But y'didn't. And it was no fair gift. It was a test.”
“Nice,” she said. “And I failed. Not your problem.”
“I failed,” he said. “So, I'll take all this down to the garbage and then…”
Lila spun around and spat, “Get this through your thick head. I don't want you, in any way. Not now and not ever. You're free. I absolve you. Get lost and play your sick jokes on someone who gives a shit.”
His eyes widened and his mild expression altered to one of interest. “No. I know the demon that hunts you and I know the shadow that stalks you. You need me. And you are Hellbound. The journey is sacred to us. Pilgrims will be looked after on the way. And I am champion of Demonia and what I say I do, I do. Here.” He held out his hand and slithering from his fingers, as if from the sleeve of a conjuror, a fall of dark blue cloth.
“Plain clothes will be fine,” she said, turning back to her almost empty wardrobe and staring in disgust at the shapeless, sexless corporate uniforms hanging there in white and black and grey and brown.
“Treat me as your servant,” Teazle said, moving up behind her. He gently touched her arm with his hand. “Made by enchantment but absolutely mundane.”
Slimy little trickster.
Lila suppressed a smile, but it twitched at her mouth. She looked down at the clothes.
“You lived here?” Teazle asked incredulously as she took them from him without a word and went to the bathroom. She heard the demon sniffing the air behind her and felt subtly violated.
He can smell me, Tath said and curled up smaller. Lila thought his green increased.
She took off her military blacks and automatically put the underwear into the washing machine, checking and packing the vest and combat pants with precision into her overnight bag. She was still fully gunned and most of the loads she was carrying were chambered and hot to go. She took a minimum of spare kit with her, fitting what she could into her dusty makeup case and throwing out dried mascaras and eyeshadows she'd bought but never used—who wants to draw attention to eyes hidden behind impenetrable shades? Their pastel colours spoke of contented secretaries, boyfriends, homes…she shoved them into the bin. Some moisturiser, a lipstick, a blush compact, she took those and tried to arrange them on top of the flat black-metal packs of explosive bullets and heavy jacketed grenade rounds, the cargo net and the colourful vials of the pharmaceutical spares. They didn't exactly cover it. She pulled a pink and orange sarong out of a drawer and tucked that across the top instead. Knickers and bras down the sides. Shoes she could wear since her boots were really mostly her feet anyway…they were three sizes bigger than she used to wear but you could still get a decent court style to fit.
She pulled Teazle's tailoring over herself, put the shoes on, and then took a gold necklace off the dresser and added that. The few charms it bore were all birthday and graduation gifts from her family. The old item had a familiarity that caught her by surprise. For an instant she felt almost authentic.
She looked at herself in the mirror. The long skirt and jacket were at once extremely conservative and, with their high collar and fine seams, deceptively sexy. The plunge front didn't help much. Her bra showed in the middle and it was too plain and the necklace was girlish and too small and tentative for that kind of jacket. Her freckles stood out, and the magical stains on her face and neck and hair blazed brilliant scarlet in the dim light. Her silvered eyes…she quickly slapped on some foundation, cover stick, and sunglasses. Better.
She was about to whistle out of habit, then remembered Okie wasn't there. An unopened box of dog treats had gone out of date on the dressing table but a few of his hairs were still there, beige and white. She picked them up and stuck them on her sleeve then took the overnight bag back out into the bedroom and saw Teazle standing with all her clothes in his arms. He was fooling about with the mirror, looking into it and altering himself. “You need a hairdresser,” he said, not taking his eyes off himself as he stuck out his tongue—thick, pointed, and blue—examined his teeth, and then sighed.
“I don't want a posse going everywhere with me,” she said angrily. “Put them down and just go.”
“Posse?” the demon asked and glanced at her ear. “An imp is negative posse. Is there more?” He kept hold of the clothes. In front of him the doors opened themselves to the kitchen. She heard her entire couture set go down the rubbish chute. She wished she cared but she knew it wasn't worth the fight. Nothing in the apartment felt like her. Without waiting for him she went out and back down to the car.
Malachi turned as he felt the bag land in the backseat and looked over his own shades at her. “Lookin' good.”
“Spare me,” Lila said. “Drive.”
A big white object landed on the hood with a thump. Both Malachi and Lila jumped back at the sudden appearance of Teazle, in his demon shape.
“Groupies?” Malachi asked, though his smile was grim and he bristled visibly, hands clenching on the wheel and gearshift, locked in place. A bead of sweat appeared at his temple.
“Get off!” Lila stood up, reached over the windshield, and swatted at the big, skinny creature with her hand. She didn't manage to connect.
Teazle leapt with froggy speed and morphed in midair, landing in time for his ghostly dresser service to kit him out once again. He smiled and gave Malachi the honour of a male-to-male solid fuck you glare.
Lila sat slowly down and stared straight ahead though nobody was in any doubt that she was addressing Teazle when she said, “I don't have time for this shit. If you want to help me, protect the rest of my family from whatever the hell is going on. Otherwise get out of my way or I'll put you out of it for good. Mal—drive.”
Malachi pushed his shades back up his face and returned Teazle's look with interest as he lazily spun the wheel and took the car in a sweep backwards around the demon. He rested his free arm on the seat back and took them back to the road in a cloud of dust, sparkling with black motes.
In Lila's ear, in a voice only she could hear, Teazle whispered, “Your servant.”
What the hell was wrong with all these people?
She closed her eyes and let the wind mess up her hair.
“…I'll be so much better, I'll do everything right, I'll be your little girl forever…” Pink sang.
“Stop at the store,” Lila ordered. “I want cigarettes.”
“You don't smoke.”
“I'm starting.”
“You know…” Malachi said, with nervous fey wisdom.
“Finish that line and you will eat this car,” Lila promised him honestly.
He didn't even pause, bless him. “Menthol or lite?”
“Whatever,” she said.
At the store parking lot Malachi promised to do the walky-talky necessities, and she let her head fall back against the rest and closed her eyes, bathing in the warm sunshine. Hearing the ordinary Otopian birds, traffic, and voices was a relief after Demonia's raging beats. A stream of metadata from her AI about all her missed calls and urgent messages and so forth blurted from the one bit of her insystem she couldn't turn off where work placed its most important information. It was annoying that the damn thing always reset every time she set foot back on home turf or came close to a port where Otopia Tree was active, but once she'd let it pass unanswered it went onto a sleep cycle for another hour.
She relaxed and thoughts of Zal drifted into her mind. Her reluctance to log into the Tree fought briefly with her longing to hear his voice and lost. She linked in and placed a call. When there was no answer all the sad weight of the day became crushing. Flat, she listlessly dialled for Poppy, hoping he had just disconnected and was maybe with the band or somewhere easy to get hold of.
Poppy's automatic answer system came online, the recording of her bright tones quite saccharine and nauseously perky, “Hi! Poppy can't answer your call right now because she has gone back to Faery for a short stay and for the May Queen Festival. Don't panic! Poppy will be in Otopia from Thursday morning onwards to do whatever you like and to return to the stage for another sellout show of all perfect No Showy goodness! Next stop Transylvania. For other dates in Bohemia call Jolene…”
Lila hung up. She wasn't sure she could face Jolene's Angel of Death act if something else had gone wrong with the band's schedule. Viridia and Sand—she didn't feel she knew them well enough to call. She phoned Luke, the bass player. He answered, muffled and half asleep.
“Shanny, listen baby, I was…”
“This is Lila Black. I was looking for Zal.”
There was a moment of silence and then, “Oh,” surprised but, she thought, relatively pleased. “Hi. Um…he and the DJ had a fight and he's gone for a few days…it's kinda sad because she came back looking for him yesterday but he's not in the Tree. I think Jo said he'd gone home for some personal thing.” In the background a girl's voice murmured something mildly complaining.
Home? “Thanks, Luke.” She hung up, and then added, “Have a good day.” Home? But why? She'd been a bit disappointed he hadn't magically appeared in Demonia but assumed he was finally taking something moderately seriously and keeping to the tour dates in Otopia. Sorcha hadn't said anything about a visit…but then she remembered. Adai had come because she knew Zal was going to be at the house in Bathshebat by now. Luke made it sound like he left a while ago. So where the hell was he?
What little comfort had remained in the afternoon vanished like mist on the wind. She sat up and opened all her ports to the Tree, maximum bandwidths, security bypasses installing. Within seconds she could view camera feed of his arrival in Illyria at the airport and his transit to the hotel. She could see his room, his room service bill—pretty hefty, nothing too unusual…a deck of cards…She speed viewed the day she left, looking at the hotel lobby, the activity records of the doors Zal used. She saw Malachi walk in, take off his coat, ask the receptionist something, and head to the elevators…There were no feeds in the rooms, obviously, and as far as she could tell he didn't leave by the door that day. Zal was not recorded as having left the hotel, at least not checked out, but his activity there stopped about three hours after Malachi's arrival. Then, nothing.
She phoned Jolene. “Hey, it's Lila.”
“Oh, thank goodness. I suppose Zal is with you, is he?”
“Uh, no,” Lila said, feeling a cold ball beginning to form in her stomach. “I was hoping you'd be able to tip me where he'd gone.”
“I assumed he was with you.” The sound of Jolene's tight-lipped anxiety snapped right across all technology and made Lila's nerves ring. “He swanned off the day before yesterday, insisting he had to go to Demonia. Clearly that was a lie, but then I thought so at the time.”
“But he said that's where he was going?”
“For what it's worth.” Jolene managed to sound both royally pissed off and pleased at the same time. Lila didn't bother to wonder about the reasons.
“When I find him I'll tell him you're worried,” she said and cut the call.
Malachi sat back down, an open brown paper grocery bag on his lap. He shut the door. Lila turned to him and took off her glasses.
“You didn't mention you went to see Zal.”
Behind her eyes huge flashing messages were instructing her to report to Delaware immediately, to return to the offices, to debrief, to download. She dropped out of the network and closed down the AI once more. There was too much to explain and too little time to try.
Malachi sighed and his shoulders slumped, “I woulda,” he said. “But there was all this other more important stuff I had to tell you first.”
“He's missing.”
“Nah,” Malachi said. “He was going to see you.”
“Yeah, and?”
“So, he's probably doing something first if he didn't catch up with you. It's only been,” he shot his right cuff and looked at his watch, “forty-eight hours.”
“Since what?” Lila demanded. “Since you took a trip all the way to Illyria to see him in person. Why?”
Malachi drummed his fingertips on the wheel and stared ahead before turning to face her. “I was worried about you.”
She stared at him, checking his inscrutable orange cat eyes for signs of deceit but she didn't see any. He looked grim, and vaguely preoccupied. “And what happened?”
“We played cards. Talked. He seemed to think you could handle anything.”
“But you didn't.”
He took a deep breath and his chin dropped as he fixed her with a blinkless gaze. He was deadly serious. “Li, you're not long out of rehabilitation. The last month has been full of major shit and for some reason you and Delaware are about the only people who don't seem to notice that you're generating one mother of a psychic wake. Probably ‘cause you and she are fighting for the lead role in Cleopatra, Queen of Denial. The only reason the turbulence isn't killing you is that you run so damned fast. But you can't keep the speed up, baby. You just can't. All of us adepts can feel your pain.” He glanced at the red jewel in her ear. “Even Zal can't do it. You're going to crash and I don't want you to burn.”
“I…”
Malachi cut her off without hesitation. “Nah, you're just doing what most people would do. The interesting question here is why Delaware is doing it too. I never had much feel for her. She's got the aetheric sensibility of haddock. It's in her interests to make sure you succeed. But instead she overrules Williams and Silly the elf, and everyone else in sight. You have to wonder about that. Except, you're kept too busy with all this distraction and that suits her fine. Nothing was nicer for her than the moment you hooked up with Zally and gave her a primary link into one of the biggest and oddest mystery people in the seven worlds. Without that she'd have had to hire an entire division just to follow him around.” He nodded and soberly held out the brown paper bag to her.
She grasped it as she stared at him. Her mind was turning over what he'd said, slowly, like looking at a fragile jewel and suddenly noticing it was much more complicated than you thought. So many faces. “Six,” she said automatically. “Worlds.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I was thinking of Samurai.”
She looked at him a moment longer and saw that his frank, flat gaze meant that he knew perfectly well what he'd said, and meant it, then noticed the bag was cold. She opened it and saw a pint of mint-choc-chip ice cream and a wooden gnome spoon (see it here, see it there, things taste better off faery-ware!).
“Worry about it later,” he suggested, starting the engine and backing them out expertly. Without asking the directions he drove the way to her sister's apartment—the long way, through the country park drive. Lila ate the ice cream, careful not to drip any onto her new suit. When she was done she threw the spoon into the grass at the roadside, ready for the gnomes to collect, and crumpled the empty carton and bag in her hand. The car drew to a stop. They were there.
She fumbled her shades and put them back on her face, pushing them right up close to her eyes. Her hands didn't shake but she felt like they were. In a flash she remembered the first time she'd seen them. They were so convincing she hadn't known they weren't hers until she reached out to pick up a glass of water and shattered it. Her hand closed into a fist and it didn't open until a doctor with a portable keyboard came and plugged something in behind her back. She'd thought he plugged it into a wall socket. Later she discovered he'd plugged it into her spine. It took a few months to get the calibrations right.
“I can't do this,” she said, mostly to herself. As far as her sister knew Lila had gone to Alfheim on a work trip over a year ago and never returned. Nobody who knew her had seen or heard from her since. The reasons for that had always seemed so good—make sure you're better, make sure you work, make sure of this and that…don't want to get their hopes up and then…Lila, you can be our best agent…you have no choice but you can be it. And then don't call because what to say? She felt like they belonged in a different universe to the one she moved in now. She wasn't allowed to talk about any of it. What could possibly explain it, then? And the guilt was overpowering, crushing, because of course she should have called them to say she was alive the moment she was able to speak. How could she have said that she didn't want them to see her like this? They'd treat her the way they always had, and she'd want to kill them, because she was nothing like the same and their presence would be an eternal reproach—you left us and now you refuse to turn back. She'd be there, but she wouldn't. The Lila they knew didn't exist any more. It was easier now to live without them. She'd often thought about them dying—that it would be better. No more worry about them and knowing they couldn't think about her any more. They were dead and that era was over, dead with them. And she was free.
Where was Zal?
“Want me to come up with you?”
She shook her head mutely and put the balled up paper back in the door side pocket before pulling the ancient handle and getting out. As she straightened a sleek black car drew up in a spatter of gravel and hissed to a halt beside them in the lot. The door opened and Cara Delaware got out: perfect black suit, black shirt, black glasses, sleeked hair drawn clear of her face, perfect lipstick, killer heels. She looked about five degrees cooler than the surrounding air. Her door closed with a soft whisper behind her. Cara walked forward with a professional smile, her hand held out to shake.
“Welcome back,” she said, warm and friendly with that hint of viper overtone that Lila had always admired. You knew where you stood with Cara. Nowhere.
Lila pushed the Eldorado's door closed and enjoyed its heavy slam. “What're you doing here?” She didn't take the hand which was withdrawn calmly.
“At such a difficult time I felt it was only proper the agency offered you full support. It can't be easy.” She glanced at Lila's clothing with what may have been a hint of envy and more than a hint of mild disapproval.
“Nothing's been easy,” Lila said. “But I'm fine. I've got Malachi.”
“Ah yes, Malachi,” she stepped around Lila and leaned her hands on the Eldorado's hood. “Now that I'm here to take care of things you can return to your investigations at the office.” Her polite textbook words did nothing to hide her order.
Lila bristled with loathing. “I want him around.”
They were interrupted by the door opening. Two dark shapes rushed out of the gap, across the porch, and down the steps, barking. They barrelled straight for Lila for a moment and then both stopped and hesitated, sniffing and looking, their heads to one side, then the other, tails wagging uncertainly, lips twitching.
“Rusty! Buster!” Lila crouched down instantly and put her arms down, hands to the floor in let's-play position. She was so grateful and happy to see them for that minute she didn't care about Delaware or whatever reason she'd chosen to show up.
At the sound of her voice they dashed forward, confident they'd been right the first time.
“Hey dogs! Hey boys!” Lila stroked heads and ruffled ears as the two ancient retrievers bashfully licked her face and wagged themselves off balance in apology for their moment of nonrecognition. She felt the softest glimmer of a strange kind of feeling from Tath inside her chest, something so unusual from him she didn't know it at first, until she realised it was the same fleeting sensation she had right then, amid the hearty bustle of thrilled-to-bits dog buddies: happiness. From behind them inside the house a figure appeared, running a few steps and then pausing…
“Lila?” Maxine's amazement was held back a fraction, waiting to break out. Her voice was tight and creaky, the sound of someone who's been crying too much.
Lila looked up, a smile on her face from the enthusiasm of the dogs, and Buster buffeted her with his nose and knocked off her glasses.
Maxine gasped and her hands flew to her mouth as she took in the sheer silver surfaces of Lila's eyes. “Oh my god! What happened?”
Lila didn't really blame her. Dogs were creatures of the nose. People liked to look you in the eye and that wasn't really possible with her anymore. “Hey Max,” she said, straightening up with a big sister swagger she thought she'd forgotten. She was aware of Malachi getting out of the car behind her, and Delaware, closing in a step and then thinking twice about it. Rusty and Buster made happy noises, snuffling around her feet and examining her skirt hem for news of where she'd been.
Staring for another minute, Maxine came down the steps and glanced left and right at the other two, and the cars. Then with a moment of courage she decided to ignore both strangers and enveloped Lila in a tight hug. “Where did you go? What happened to you? Why didn't you call us? Where have you been?”
Don't notice, don't notice, don't notice, Lila thought as she hugged back and felt the fragile form of her always-too-thin sister. If possible she was even taller and thinner than Lila remembered. Her body felt soft and friable. Her face was grey and there were dark-brown half-circles under her eyes—still their usual hazel brown. She smelled of cigarettes and her breath was full of last night's wine.
“I was in an accident,” Lila said with the airiness of an almost utter lie and glanced sideways at Delaware. “I've been in hospital.”
“Buh…” Maxine let go and looked at the others with more unease, referring back to Lila for information with a face full of uncertainty.
“Oh, this is my partner, my colleague, from work, a friend, Malachi,” Lila said clumsily and quickly in an attempt to dismiss their presence, which she didn't want. “And this is my boss. She's come to pay her respects.”
Max shook hands with them both as if it didn't matter too much to her. Her eyes slid off their faces and into a distant nowhere with a greasy flatness that scared Lila more than anything that had happened to herself. “Fey,” Max said with a smile at Malachi that didn't quite make it beyond the corners of her mouth. “A lot of you were with the police. I never saw so many before. I didn't know…Liles worked with outworlders.” She finished her sentence as though she'd already forgotten the start by the time she got to the end.
“Max, you look awful,” Lila said rapidly, cutting off that line before it could go anywhere. “Can I come in? They'll stay outside. We need to talk.”
“Oh, sure.” Maxine shivered suddenly and clamped her arms around herself, hugging her ribs through her thin T-shirt, then, part way through going back to the house turned and said, “Can we go down to the beach instead? I hate being here. We can take the dogs. They need a walk.” Rusty and Buster rushed up to her at the sound of the word “walk” and bounced around for a few moments until their elderly legs had enough. They turned towards the narrow path that ran between the houses here to the road that led to the shore.
Max walked after them, stiff-legged herself, and Lila followed, glancing once over her shoulder at Malachi, who gave her a nod and indicated he'd wait in the car for however long it took. Delaware stood uncertainly, unable to enter the house or to follow. Lila was pleased but it didn't linger as she set off after Max and the dogs. Even without her assisted senses she was aware of the pale blue clapboard house behind them with its white-edged windows watching them go. They were always running out of it, along this sandy, grassy pathway, past where the expensive houses sat on bigger lots with beachfront views and crisp green gardens like giant bowls of salad, constantly cleared of sand by the eternal rain of sprinklers waving celebration fountains. Oh, she'd wanted one of those.
Ahead of her Max's shoulder blades stuck out at awkward angles. The T-shirt looked like she slept in it. A familiar, but forgotten, grinding pain started up in Lila's belly. She wanted to run and catch up, but at the same time she didn't. She didn't know what had happened, and she was afraid to find out. She walked faster and put a hand on Max's shoulder, pretending not to notice the flinch that happened under her hand. She put it down.
“You first,” they both said at the same moment and for a second their gazes met and they were grinning, like the old days, when that kind of thing happened a lot and they were hoping the other would come up with a better story, a better plan.
“You look like a Regency action figure,” Max said. “So, get well a long time ago?”
Lila absorbed the accusation and the observation and set her teeth. She wanted to get on with Max, not aggravate her, though it was hard. “About six months ago.”
“We didn't go anywhere. Still got the phone connected. Surprising really. How lucky that the government paid out so well on your insurance…” Max physically bit her lips together until they went white. Then she sighed. “That was the wrong thing to say. I was gonna save it until later but your sudden return from nowhere got me on the wrong foot.”
“You never needed time.”
“Hah, no,” Max said, “but the thing is, this time it's gonna be harder. I took your room and most of your stuff. You know. Missing means dead. And Mum and Dad, they were always such airhead optimists…” She stopped and put her hand over her mouth tentatively though there didn't seem to be more words to stop. They had reached the shoreline. The dogs bowled steadily over the sand, determined to enjoy themselves.
“Max, how long have you been like this?” Lila asked, trying to cut past the indirection and not notice how much she sounded like Dad. He'd never had the patience for a roundabout way of anything. He was slow, but direct. She wasn't slow.
“This?” Max plucked at her shirt and ran a hand through her hair. She coughed theatrically and smiled at herself, cynically. “This is pretty new actually. Just since the day before yesterday.”
Lila was prepared to take it at face value. Max had never had much time for eating and the necessities of life. “Did you find them?” She almost winced herself at that one.
“Yeah. And I saw a thing too.” As if Max hadn't been a bad colour before she paled further and shivered under the hot sky. “It was right there in the room. Hm! D'you remember before the bomb? None of these things were real.” She sounded spacey and reached out for Lila's hand, finding it, then rejecting it out of spite, the way she had to when she didn't want to look weak.
Lila's heart ached but she knew any show of kindness would be wasted, until later. She stuck to the brute facts. Toughness was Max's preferred mode. “What did you see?”
“A great…big…” Her hands came up in front of her, holding an image for her mind's eye. She worked her jaw, lost for words. “Blue and white, like a huge dog, but with a snaky neck and it, oh, d'you remember those violet lights in nightclubs that made everything white shine? It glowed like that. Like it had negative light, or something. It was surrounded in that. It kinda looked like it wasn't really there. But it was. And it looked at me, Liles. It looked right at me, like I caught it doing something. I guess I did. It had these great, big, yellow eyes and a sort of snakey face. And then it faded right away. And there they were. Dead.” She gave a single burst of a laugh that wasn't remotely funny and then turned to Lila, cold sober. “But of course it couldn't have been there. I imagined it. That's what the police said. They said there had to be an autopsy because it was strange, but they kept asking questions about intruders, strangers, people. I said it wasn't people.”
“It was there,” Lila said, looking into her sister's eyes with conviction and what she fervently hoped was reassurance. She couldn't bear to imagine the strangeness of seeing what Max had seen, the horror, and then the days alone with only the questioners for company. She had to protect her, but part of that was the truth, no matter who wanted it buried or why. “It was there. I've seen things like that.” And she prayed it wasn't her doing. How could she say that part?
Max nodded, silent, and resumed walking along the dunes, stumbling here and there where the sand fell away beneath her, Lila reaching out, never quite grabbing her elbow because that would have been an end between them. The uneven ground was very dry. Lila sank deeply and slid now and again. Her hip hurt and the muscles that still attached to it twinged as she slipped once further before they made the tideline's smoother way.
“Is that why you're here? That woman. I saw her before,” Max said dully. “She came to oversee the…when they were taken away. She took stuff from the house. I wanted to go in the ambulance but she said no.”
Lila mentally drew a black line around Delaware and coloured it into a big, black block. “She's part of the government.”
“Thought you were a diplomat's secretary.”
Ahead of them Buster and Rusty snuffled around in the banked seaweed and driftwood. Their pace was slow, steady. They didn't look at each other.
“I was. She's part of the same department. His boss.” Which wasn't a lie. His boss in the secret service, not his boss in the foreign office. “I work for her now that he's retired.”
“And she made sure you didn't have a phone.”
Lila drew in a hissed breath between her teeth. “I was really hurt.”
“Weren't we all?”
They walked another hundred metres.
“You know, after you were gone a man came to tell us that you went into Alfheim and just didn't come back. It was all very hush-hush. He gave Mom and Dad a big cheque. Compensation. I always wanted to be in a spy thriller. Didn't you? Sure you did. Something happening to us instead of the good old ordinary way.” Max's voice had taken on a loathing tone. “Of course, they pissed it away. Mom's half was her big Making-It stake. Dad's was the vodka and the golf club and all that. We had garden parties. We had a big service for you. Horses, the works. Dad gave thousands to some guy who went looking for you. Never came back. I thought he was a con artist but they'd never let go of any hope.”
“What did you do?” Lila said quietly.
“Me? I worked at the Organic Café, making veggie burgers the hard way, throwing things in the juicer, putting in the hours. My girlfriend, May Lee, she met another girl, so I moved back home for a while. I saved up for a motorbike.” For an instant her posture and face lightened. “I walked the dogs. I went to tai chi and did all the good health shit. I wrote you letters at first. They all came back. Course, my friends helped me a lot. I'm going to move in with Addie and Ydel next week. They've got a duplex in the Heights.”
Their walk had taken them beyond the houses and the regular streets that opened onto the shore. They kept along, around the curve that led to scrappy woodland and the cliffs where the riptides were so fierce nobody swam.
Max was quiet for a while, but Lila sensed she was the one who got to ask all the questions, so she said nothing in turn, only kept her pace and felt the soft, receptive presence of Tath, who had been very quiet since her entry into Otopia. It never occurred to her he hadn't been here before. He wasn't about to intrude but he couldn't withdraw anymore. He just rode along.
Max dug in her jeans pocket and got out some matches and a folded paper pack of cigarettes. She lit one and disposed of the match with an expert flick of her wrist that put out the flame and sent the stick into the piles of bladderwrack by her feet. The sea rippled softly. The dogs explored the grassy parts of the dunes that rose towards the woodland. Max jammed the cigarette in her mouth and her hands into her pockets, looking out beyond the cliffs. “Let's have it then. What could possibly make you want to abandon a cook, a gambler, and a drunk?”
Lila recognised the look she hadn't seen before in Max. Self-hatred. It rang a chord in her that was undeniably powerful. Her stomach churned. There was a sharp pain in her ear but the words were already on their way out under automatic. “Don't talk about Mom and Dad like that!”
“Why not?” Max was almost cheerful. The cigarette moved up and down between her lips like a judge's gavel. “It's the truth. Can see why you would. Hell, who wouldn't? We spent our fucking lives on this beach dreaming about getting rescued by pirates.”
“They had their shit together!” Lila roared, full of anger. “They got us out of Bella Vista. We went through school! We had a good time…”
Max laughed, her head thrown back, skinny neck and Adam's apple sharp against the blue sky. “We ran like there was no tomorrow. You got to be the one who got away. Nice white-collar job. So smart. Then your accident or whatever. And now you look like you dress on Berkeley Square and your boss in the government is here to smooth it over for you. Congratulations.”
“It wasn't like that.” Lila bit back tears with the hot teeth of anger. “I never meant to leave you…”
“We both wanted to, Liles. It's no big. So, what happened? Total the big man's car?”
Lila turned, her mouth full of poisonous things to say.
Keep going.
But she wouldn't. Max was only being that way because she was so hurt. Mom and Dad-they'd only been like that because they'd had it bad, tough starts, wrong decisions, bad luck…She could fix it, if she got a good job. And she had. If she got enough money, if she did the right things, worked hard, was a good girl. And she did, she had…
Max turned to face her, eyes full of a frankly undiluted fuck-you stare that was full of love and hate and, worst of all, jealousy.
“We…” Lila started, and stopped, because she wanted to say, We had a perfectly good childhood, but it wasn't true. “You…” You're just talking out of grief, but Max wasn't. “I…” I only did what anyone would have done and I never wanted to get away and leave you with them…but she hadn't, and she had. “I'm…” I'm a good person, not this self-serving bitch. But then again…
And then she stopped. She just stopped. Lila could not move or talk any more. It only lasted a moment but she realised inside it that what hurt about Max's spite was that she shared it, always had. Holidays were coming next year. Dad would stop drinking as soon as he could find some work. Mom didn't need to play cards except with the ladies who held bridge lunches on the terraces of the country club. She'd made their money and she'd stopped. Things were going to be better in the future. Real soon. Hard work at school, and then hard work in jobs, and then maybe something like a relationship with a house and more work and then the kids and some more waiting and hoping and wanting with the mysterious pain in the middle of things always there because nothing was Now and everything was on the line, all the time, and they lied, nonstop. I'm fine. It's great. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. They're only tired. My heart is not breaking. I'm fine.
In that minute all her anger went out. She took a breath and felt it leave as she breathed out. The whole thing. Gone on the wind and blown round the headland, towards Solomon's Folly, the place where she'd met Zal, where this journey had started. She looked at her sister, her tall, skinny, tomboy, brave sister, whose head was always partly cut off in family photos, who met her silver eyes hesitantly, not knowing where to focus her attention exactly, then looked away.
They were alone on the beach, beyond the curve of homes.
“Max, I gotta show you something.”
Max gave a short little nod of someone who can't do much lest they break, expecting another lie.
Lila took off her clothes. As they fell on the sand Max snickered and took her cigarette out of her mouth, “What's this? Going freaky on me…whoaaaaa!!” As Lila stepped out of her skirt in her knickers and bra she also let the simulated skin-colour of her metal prosthetics fade away. Where the simulated flesh covered her hands and forearms she allowed it to separate away and pulled it off, like gloves, to reveal the black and chrome metal of her true arms. She stepped back, making sure she had room, and then just cued up Battle Standard.
The familiar whine and snick of metal moving was quiet but distinct against the sound of the surf. Lila went from a five-foot-seven medium-build redhead to a six-foot-some mech warrior, limbs bristling with weapons, changing into weapons, her normal human motion altered into the soft, sinuous mechanoid movements calculated by her array of intelligent targeting and defensive systems. In constant, weaving motion, she was set for lightning reactions.
The cigarette fell out of Max's hand.