Down to the Bone: Quantum Gravity Book Five (17 page)

‘It’s all right,’ Max said quietly.

It was a while before Lila trusted herself to speak, longer before she trusted what she had to say. ‘Where were you?’

‘When I heard you? I can’t say. Far. Very far.’ Max let her hand be still but it remained steady.

‘Was it hard? To come back I mean.’

‘Yes,’ there was real grit in the word. ‘Very hard. I was almost . . .’ But then a noise of frustration, breath puffed out
between the teeth. ‘Oh every time I think about it I lose it! I was sort of going somewhere new but that’s all I can think
of. And if you’re going to ask me how I came back I just don’t know. I heard you and there was something to grab onto and
it pulled, or I pulled, and then . . .’ She puffed, giving up on an effort to explain it. ‘I woke up here, in bed. The house
was full of faeries and a right mess it was. Still is. You can see they don’t have much time for housekeeping or gardening.’

Lila focused on breathing, on not being distracted. ‘Did it hurt?’

‘Yes. No. I felt . . . dislocated. That I’m really not supposed to be here, like I’m out of place. I really do.’ She sighed,
a sad sound.

‘Do you remember?’

‘Yes. My life. I remember. Or do you mean dying?’

Lila didn’t know what she meant. ‘Do you remember that?’

‘Yes. I remember all my life up to the end. But describing the end is hard. I saw light. There was some kind of movement.
Everything that had been was falling. But I was still there, only not me any more, the stuff of the memories didn’t matter.
Shit, I can’t explain it and god knows I’ve wasted enough journals trying. There’s a Returner blogfest out there bigger than
the sea and I don’t think one of ’em has ever managed to say it.’

Lila breathed, counted, rested. She felt stupid and heartless but also wary, and guilty for that, but she couldn’t help it.
Now she was needy as well, but even that was partly calculated to discover if this was the real Max as she asked, ‘Are you
angry with me? Do you think . . . were you the first? Did I make all of these people return? Do you wish you were still . . . dead?’ She kept her eyes shut. It was better that way. She felt the air moving over the wet linen. That was good too.

‘Yes I damn well
am
angry,’ Max said in the mildest of tones as she leaned on the table and pushed back into her chair, making the legs creak.
She cracked her knuckles methodically, knowing Lila hated it, and took her time over every pop. ‘Fifty years and not even
a fucking phone call. And here you are looking barely a day older. Are you back as well?’

‘I wasn’t dead,’ Lila said, feeling the tabletop, the wood grain, focusing on it so that she didn’t have to feel all of the
reactions that were bubbling up inside her too strongly. ‘It really was only a couple of days for me. I just . . . skipped
it. Faery—’

‘Those little fuckers,’ Max said with quiet venom. She paused. ‘You’re not going to leap in and correct me? Tell me not to
abuse them in case they get all scary-wary?’ On the last two words she let her voice fall into a nursery sing-song.

Lila felt the kitchen move slightly, as though a tiny earthquake had happened underneath them. ‘I don’t—’

‘Yes, you always do and you always did. Leap in to defend, make sure nobody says boo. You were the peacekeeper.’ Max flicked
a hand through her hair, stuck out her jaw unconsciously.

Lila snapped. ‘Well you were the griefer. No boot so big you couldn’t stick it in your mouth at any opportunity.’

‘Yeah, because things needed to be said and nobody would say ’em.’

‘Nobody needed to say them with you around to do the job for them.’

‘People should wake up and face reality. They’re weak, cowards, hiding behind all that booze and junk and card crap and special
secretarial skills and nine to five.’

Lila bit her tongue for a second, trying to find a different response to her usual. They could have run through it all again,
but it felt very after the fact now, too late. If this wasn’t really Max, it was doing a fine impression. Her blood pressure
was sky high. She was surprised she could still feel riled. ‘Why unleash everything when it can’t do anything but destroy?
Why not wait for a better moment?’

As Lila had known she would, Max immediately understood it was the criticism of their parents that Lila referred to, and the
criticism of herself.

‘Because it’s poison,’ Max said. ‘There’ll never be a good time to let it out, never a better time than now, get rid of it
once and for all.’

Lila felt calmer, quieter; the storm course had been diverted for a time. ‘Do you believe in once and for all then?’

Max’s chair’s front legs thumped down onto the floor with a bang. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘One shot, one chance, one life, one go.
If you don’t do what you have to, then nobody will. You can feel as sorry and as mad about it as you like, won’t make a blind
bit of difference. I didn’t
live waiting for you. I lived with what I’d got. I didn’t waste my time dreaming and pretending.’

Lila let these cuts pass without comment. ‘Did you see them on the other side? Mom and Dad?’ This time her quiet question
created a pause of intense silence. She could feel Max beside her, fixed in place, not even breathing.

‘No,’ she said finally. ‘I didn’t see anything. I felt that they’d gone before, ahead, long gone. That’s all. So if you were
hoping for angels and white wings and heaven and bells and everybody waiting with a chorus of harpers then no. Just some feelings.
Nothing else. Or I don’t remember. And then I was back. And I called you and I waited and waited and waited and finally here
you are, asking all the questions like usual, doing the interrogations, making sure who’s been naughty and nice.’

‘You’re pissed at me.’ Lila couldn’t but feel this was justified.

‘Yeah. Calling and making me wait. That’s bad manners. Not for the rest if that’s what you’re thinking. The little fuckers
told me you’d been swindled and I couldn’t expect you to come back. I tried to hang around but . . .’ She thumped the table.
‘Anyway, I had a life. It was okay. I enjoyed a lot of it. The only part that I didn’t like so much was keeping this place
on.’

Lila’s curiosity raised its head. ‘How come?’

Max paused and Lila felt her weighing her words. ‘Well, how can I put it? If you give a faery an inch they’ll take a mile
and then another mile when you’re not looking. The place was like a dosshouse. I got sick of it and kicked them out. They
didn’t like that too much. I was going to sell up and move away, start again. Strangely however, no matter how long the house
was on the market, it never found a buyer. Then they came back offering riches.’

‘Riches?’

‘Gold, to be exact. Spanish doubloons to be completely precise. They didn’t want to buy, they wanted to rent with no questions
asked. I could stay on, they’d look after everything. How nice is that?’

‘It’s faery nice,’ Lila said knowingly, pronouncing faery to rhyme with very.

‘Yeah, like – fuck you, Max, after your kindness, now you’re our creature. Fuck you faery much.’ She sighed. ‘I took the money,
obviously. It’s not like cooking for a living round here makes top buck and anyway I’d met someone by then.’ She paused. ‘God,
it was a long time ago. I thought the money would make life easier, even if I
did have to stay here waiting for you. And you know what? It really did.’

Lila slowly sat up, feeling like she had to drag her too-heavy head from its rightful resting place on the table. She stared
groggily around, at the room that was basically unchanged since the day she left, give or take a few items, and that looked
every one of its sixty faded years. She didn’t need to make a tour of the rest of the house to guess it was in much the same
condition. So much for faery housekeeping, she thought, and then wondered if that had been their plan all along, to keep it
unchanged until time destroyed it or it was forgotten. ‘They’re gone.’

‘They had to quit when I died.’ Max followed Lila’s gaze around. ‘I left it to Carolyn. She didn’t have an agreement with
them.’

‘Carolyn?’ It was so weird, thinking of Max having partners she never met, never knew, a whole lifetime.

‘Carolyn Cochado. We didn’t get married but I left her plenty of money and the house. Yeah, partly to spite the little fuckers,
but mostly so she’d have somewhere after I was gone. But I guess she decided to leave. She must have remembered you though,
or known something in the last few years. She let Mother Hubs back in to look after the place when she left.’

Lila remembered the housewifely faery who had greeted her on the day of her return to Otopia, proud to show her the unchanged
mausoleum of a house in all its ratty filth. It was almost too much to take in, but the trail wasn’t ended.

‘Where did she go, is she still alive?’

‘I guess so. She was Hunter Chosen and they live a long time. Probably still looks early forties; she didn’t age much.’

Lila looked out of the grimy window into the overrun shrubs of the back yard, the silent kennel. ‘Didn’t you call her?’

‘No, and you won’t either, so forget it.’

There was a conviction and a kind of desperation behind the words that made Lila decide to drop the subject for another time.
She looked around, more carefully this time, but she didn’t see any pictures or glyphs of new people. The place was virtually
a museum. It was giving her the creeps. She didn’t know how Max had stood it for ten seconds let alone the weeks she’d been
here.

‘Can you leave?’ It wasn’t a simple question and they both knew it.

‘I don’t think so,’ Max said slowly and added, by way of explanation, ‘Faery gold.’

‘How far can you get?’

Max laughed with her dry, rasping half cough. ‘I can get anywhere, but I get to come back after a day or two.’

Lila didn’t question the last part. If the faeries wanted you somewhere, you got to come back whether you intended to or not.
She knew how it was.

‘How do you get away with calling them . . . what you call them?’

‘Same deal,’ Max said with the weariness of ages. ‘I guess. Or maybe Carolyn killed a few too many of them. They’ve got long
memories for little fuckers.’

But now Lila was convinced that this was her sister, and not something else. Faery gold and a deal made on Hoodoo terms was
binding beyond the grave, in realities humans didn’t ever see. To take the Hoodoo’s name in vain was to ask for a much shorter
existence, or to never have been born at all. This thought flickered and then something clicked in Lila’s mind like a small
light going on in a large, dark room. There, in the Hoodoo, was a power to alter fate, the past, to undo the done, to make
the impossible. It was deadly. It was not of any realm they knew.

She felt that even to think on it this much was to inexorably draw its attention to her and she dimmed that light, dimmed
it almost to nothing and let her mind turn from it.

They sat beside one another for a minute or two.

Max broke the silence. ‘Why are you dressed like a mad nun?’

‘Faery,’ Lila said, shaking out a sleeve to indicate Tatterdemalion’s status.

‘Weird. I didn’t know they came like that,’ Max said, fingering the sleeve rather roughly as if she didn’t think much of it
and cared less. ‘God, now I have to look at every object and start wondering about it. Just great. I suppose you don’t ever
take it off, send it to the cleaners?’

‘It comes off,’ Lila said. ‘Self-cleaning.’

‘Yeah so all this dirt and staining is smuggery. Figures. Never thought I’d see one of them get your ass over a barrel though,
ha!’ Suddenly Max was laughing. ‘It kinda suits you.’

‘I’ll remember that.’ For the first time Lila felt only a weary acceptance at Max’s statements. ‘I thought I smelled cooking.’

Max glanced around the room at the clean but deserted surfaces, cooker and oven. ‘Last of the glamour,’ she said with a sigh.
‘There’s sliced cheese in the fridge if you want it.’ When Lila’s silence went on
she added, ‘I don’t feel like it these days. Ennui of the undead. Go figure.’

Lila sniffed the last snot from her crying spree. ‘That should be a superhero. Ennui of the Undead.’

‘Yeah,’ Max gave a dry huff. ‘Special power: depression. Fills enemies with a sense of futility until they kill themselves.’

Lila felt her face smile as if it was doing it without her. ‘Nothing bothered me about the other worlds. Until this. I thought
I would be happy if you were back but I didn’t think you’d be housebound and—’

‘What? Lost and purposeless, out of my time?’ Max growled and sighed, her angers fading fast into disappointments and helplessness.
‘I guess nobody ever thinks about that. Never had to, since it wasn’t real.’

‘But there is an upside.’ Lila said it more in hope than conviction.

‘Yes. Another bite of the same old cherry.’ But Max still sounded weary. ‘Why did you call? How did you?’

‘It was an accident,’ Lila admitted. ‘Kind of. I felt it was time to move on. I should, you know, get over everything that
had happened and get on with things because it’s not like I didn’t deserve to be tricked into that fifty year penalty. I knew
the rules, or lack of them. I knew how it goes and I was careless and that’s why the Hunter was here so long and why I got
my delay. I bought it, really, with my stupidity.’

She felt Max’s hand fall on hers, ready to interrupt, but overruled it. ‘And I had this pen, sort of, which wrote things that
came true and I used it to write to you to say goodbye. Only, at the time I wasn’t able to mean it. I was wishing things were
back the way they used to be. It didn’t matter what word I wrote, it took my meaning, not the letters. It was a mistake. The
pen had so much power I didn’t know about. I think it . . . warped something very important, just because I wished you back.
And I don’t know if I can undo it. I don’t know if I want to, or ought to.’

She faltered and stopped, unable to continue.

Max on the other hand sounded interested for once. ‘So where is this pen right now?’

‘It went back to its rightful place,’ Lila said. ‘I think. Not here, that’s for sure. Doubt I’ll see it again and I don’t
want to.’ She remembered its other form, the sword, swallowing Sandra Lane whole. ‘It wasn’t what it seemed to be.’