Midnight Lamp (16 page)

‘I’ve always had the gift,’ volunteered Anne-Marie, uneasily. ‘It needs the right light, but I see the colours around people, and it tells me things. When I’m making medicines, if I’m meant to heal that person, I feel somethink pass from me, I mean, through me, into the spirits of the herbs. It’s not
all
wicked.’

Fiorinda gave her a pitying glance. ‘Not all of it. Just the sort that works.’

‘One idea in fusion theory says all the weird phenomena are big number artefacts,’ murmured Verlaine. ‘We reached a critical mass point, with the billions of people, and the globalization of everything, and that’s what flipped us. The Zen Self route was opened by tech advancement, which is closely related to population size. The Rufus O’Niall route was opened by the explosion of the global audience, which also needed tech advancement—’

‘Techno-utopia, the Dark Ages,’ said Chip, balancing these imaginary choices on his palms. ‘Or, hey, a
third way
! Previously impossible hell-dimension! We could give it a name. We could call it Fiorinda’s Hollywood Conjecture!’

Sage gave him a hard stare.

‘Sorry.’

‘So, this is what you’re going to tell the President?’ said Rob, trying to sound businesslike. ‘That his weapon-mongers have recruited a global megastar with a strange, nasty reputation—?’

‘I’m sure there are one or two of those around here,’ muttered Felice.

‘I’m not going to tell the President anything,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I don’t talk to Presidents. I don’t think it matters what Fred Eiffrich knows. I think this is ours: or at least mine. I didn’t come here for any reason except to find the Fat Boy candidate. If you want to help me, that would be good.’

‘Fiorinda,’ Dilip sat up. ‘Whatever you say: but what do you want us to do? We’re minor players here, we have no contacts, no clues.’

‘I know how it sounds, but we’re not completely helpless, DK. The bear said
kill me
. It could have been a challenge or a cry for help, but it tells me
we were summoned here
to Hollywood; and not by Harry Lopez. The candidate will be someone we know, someone we meet, someone who gets involved with us-’

‘Would you recognise them?’ asked Dora, ‘Are there signs?’

‘Like I recognised my own father, you mean? When he turned up wearing Fergal Kearney’s body?’

‘Auras can be disguised,’ put in Anne-Marie, wisely.

‘There are no signs,’ said Fiorinda. ‘It doesn’t have to be a man, it doesn’t have to be someone with an evil reputation, and the Committee can forget about evidence connecting this person to the blood sacrifices. It just has to be someone with superb access to the big feeding trough.’

‘And a motive,’ said Chip. ‘Some reason why they’d be prepared to do this.’

‘No motive. Or none we’d understand.’

‘But what if we nail him for you?’ asked Allie. ‘What then?’

‘I’m hoping it will be obvious what to do when the time comes, but meantime you’ve all got to be very careful. One thing we know for sure is that committing effective magic makes you crazy, and the more you do it, the crazier you get.’

‘I’m still hoping Fiorinda’s wrong,’ said Ax, into a lengthening silence.

Sage nodded. ‘Me too. Everything Fee says makes sense, but there could be other explanations. Equally screwy, but not so drastic.’

‘Well,’ said Ax. ‘That’s it. You won’t see the Celtic murders getting media coverage, and we’ve been told to keep our mouths shut, so whatever we do in the way of investigating, it has to be discreet. Meanwhile, weird as it may seem we’re supposed to be promoting movie. Frankly, I find the whole idea ridiculous, but it’s our alibi, and I suggest we can also make it work for us. I can’t tell you how shit I feel, that you wasted those years, and came out of the blood sweat and tears with nothing—’

This roused them, startled and indignant.

‘
What-
?’

‘
Ax
, how can you say that?’

‘
Nobody
thinks like that!’

Shit, thought Ax. Why did I start? This is not the moment… ‘Okay, but I never intended to leave you lumbered, when I quit the dictatorship. There comes a time to move on, folks, and here you are in Hollywood. You should make the most of this chance.’

Dilip said, ‘No!’: lay back and looked for his ghost-ripples.

‘All we got to do is stick together,’ said Smelly Hugh.

Allie sighed. ‘I’m exhausted, it’s nearly three am. Shall we go to bed?’

Felice stood by the windows of the master bedroom in the Snake Eyes suite, staring out. Rob sat on the end of the bed: head bowed, hands clasped between his strong thighs. The morning sunlight glinted on his rings.

‘Sweetheart,’ said Felice, ‘Listen to me. Before Dissolution,
you
were the guy, and Ax Preston was the country boy, friend of ours. There were choices Ax made, that you would not make. I loved you for it, I love you for it now. You are a rare and righteous soul. But we got to get away from the Reich. We have
kids
.’

‘I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to talk about it now.’

‘The fuck,
when?
’ Her voice rose, controlled but furious. ‘When the fuck else? We at home, you always with the fuckin’ brothers, never ARE with me. My house is full of guns! Fucking yardies, white desperanto gang boys, and do you think that’s going to last? There’ll come that knock on the door, one dark night!’

Keep your head down, he thought. When two people lose it at the same time, it’s carnage. That strange expression,
Fat Boy
, jarred on his mind, and he felt that Fiorinda’s bleak conviction was working on F’lice too. You have to trust Fiorinda, she always knows. Sometimes with a shock you remember the world that was, and you know you can’t stand any more of this unbelievable shit; but you have to. Close your eyes and pray.

Dora and Cherry, in the next room, had been been with the babies: Felice’s daughter Ferdelice, and Mamba, Dora’s little boy. How they envied and despised Anne-Marie, who had left behind
six kids
behind, ranging from young adult to infant, without a qualm. To hold a child in your arms, b-loc, is like holding a dream.

Dora wiped her eyes. ‘We can get them over.’

They couldn’t hear the fight, but they knew it was happening: trouble in heaven. They didn’t need to hear the lines, they knew them all backwards.

‘Chez, are you really thinking we should stay? Would they let us stay?’

‘Why not? We have marketable skills.’

‘Are you kidding? The USA has a shortage of black musicians?’

Cherry got down on the rug beside sister Babe and hugged her. ‘Listen, Dor. I would never, never quit the Reich, but
Ax is not coming back to us
, he good as said it, and we can’t survive in London without him. It’s the end.

They had given Dilip the watchtower, a square turret above the upper floor. DK always liked to be high. He sat in the lotus, as easy to him as breathing, and watched the analysis of his blood. He had been sero-positive for seventeen years, no, longer. So many returns to life, so many respites, but oooh, this time I’m going down. The figures were not so bad, he had seen worse: but he knew.
For the sword outwears its sheath, and the soul outwears the breast.

Ram Ram, Ram Ram. I am dying.

Allie Marlowe paced her room. I am thirty four years’ old. She had to talk to someone, but she was too proud to knock on DK’s door. That’s over, we were just fuck-buddies for a while. She stared into the open closet: comforting herself with good decisions. The silver tunic, I thought that wouldn’t work, but it does. My antique red leather Gucci jacket, which I love more than my life.

Am I shallow?

Fuck it.

She knew she would find Sage in the dance studio. Ax was there with him. She stood at the door, watching. Sage was teaching Ax a routine that was doable, but challenging for the non-dancer. They moved together, absorbed in each other, and in the music she couldn’t hear.
Name that classic video
, she thought, with a pang for Bridge House days. We were in all kinds of shit, but we were happy then… She slipped off her shoes. Sage would kill her if she walked into his temple with shoes on.

‘Hi.’

‘Got to go,’ said Ax, at once. ‘Things to do. Later, Allie.’ He left, with a brief smile. Sage gave her another, and went on dancing: a beautiful, irritating sight-

‘
Sage
, can you please switch that off and talk to me?’

He dropped out of it, came and sat crosslegged beside her on the sleek blond floor; and then she didn’t know what to say.

‘Sage, why didn’t you want the Heads to come over? I know you told them not to come.’

‘My band. Mm. Well, they have lives, families. An’ it can be annoyin’ trying to be with Ax and Fee, and with the lads, at the same time. Didn’t feel like it.’

Allie did not like Sage Pender. By now she loved him, closer than a brother, but she would never
like
him. He was too big, too good at everything, too childish. Too alpha-male, basically. Yet in ways he’d become the only one of the three that she could talk to—and ironically it had happened when he was supposed to be the casualty, the invalid.

‘How is he?’

‘He’s good. You’ll see little glitches, and he still doesn’t want to play electric guitar, he thinks he’s lost his edge. But it’s psychological now, he’ll get past it. For someone who had a mouldy hardware sliver yanked out of his head with rusty pliers, he’s fantastic.’

‘I didn’t mean that, well maybe I did. He’s not coming back to us, is he? Maybe not ever coming back to England.’

Sage looked at her compassionately. ‘I don’t know. Maybe not.’

She thought of him carrying that dog-eared postcard around with him.

‘What about Fiorinda?’

‘She’s fine.’

‘Sage,
don’t bother
. I know she is not fine. Last night, when she was profiling the Fat Boy, I had the most horrible feeling she was talking about herself… I knew she was not “fine” before you all went to Cornwall, I think we all did. Her eyes had that look, the creepy, blank look I remember from the Fergal time. Did something happen? What went wrong?’

He picked up the ends of the towel around his neck, and wiped his face.

‘D’you think she’s better or worse now, than when you saw her last?’

She realised she’d been hoping he’d deny everything. Fiorinda isn’t nuts, Ax will soon be leading the Reich again, you’re imagining things. But no.

‘You and Ax don’t believe there’s a Fat Boy, I spotted that. So why did you
bring
her here? Why did you drag her into it, you heartless
bastards
. Are you out of your minds?’

‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘Better,’ she said at last, seeing that he was dead serious. ‘She’s better. She’s back with us again. But
Sage
, that doesn’t mean she should be in a situation where
insane magic psychopaths
are a constant topic of conversation!’

‘I don’t think there’s a Fat Boy candidate,’ said Sage. ‘If the Vireo Lake researchers are dabbling in black magic it’s because they’re idiots. They’ll get themselves shut down, an’ the werebears were some other kind of thing. But Fiorinda is convinced there’s a monster, and that she has deal with it. I’m not going to take her away from that, an’ Ax feels the same… And she could still be right. She often is. Have you thought about that? What if she’s right?’

Allie nodded. ‘Are you scared?’ she whispered.

‘No. I don’t get scared, I’m a bodhisattva, me… I could be
terrified,
Allie, and what would be the use? But if she’s right, at least she’s here, an’ who better? Now, may I get back to my workout?’

‘Don’t overdo it.’

He grinned. ‘I won’t.’

Between Allie and Sage, this last was an exchange of warm affection.

She met Fiorinda on the stairs, Fiorinda with the haunted eyes and matted hair. They looked at each other, and moved into a long, wordless hug.

They settled in. One afternoon Chip spotted something odd, behind the coffee table books on a bookcase in the upstairs gallery. He fetched Fiorinda, who was also at home, lurking down in the spa. She came at once, and tugged out a soft bundle that smelled of sour lavender and rot. The wrapping was red silk, scrawled with brownish hieroglyphs; folded and knotted around something that bulged and made a dark stain. Without a word, she headed for the nearest bathroom, the one Chip shared with Verlaine. He followed, and watched as she tore the packet into fragments and flushed it.

‘Is that all you have to do? That fixes it?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, preoccupied, rubbing her arms and staring down the toilet bowl. Then she turned on him, eyes blazing. ‘
No!
That is what
I
do, Chip. If you find anything remotely suspicious, you don’t touch it, you don’t even
think
about it more than you can help. You fetch me, or Anne-Marie if I’m not here—’

‘Hey, I
didn’t
touch it. I’m not stupid. When d’you think it got planted?’

‘At the reception, the day you moved in, most likely. It was harmless, hippy-dippy nonsense. Anything that gets into this house will be harmless, I think I can promise you. But
never
take a chance.’

‘What if it’s not recognisable? A charm doesn’t have to look like something out of a folk museum. It could be, er,’ he glanced around for inspiration. ‘Haunted hair wax, a hexed face flannel, spooked toothpaste, anything at all—’

‘Just be careful. Watch for things that look out of place.’

For years “magic” had been her private problem, with only her father to challenge her… She felt the horror leaking out of containment. If this world was real then it was getting polluted, not just the Fat Boy lurking somewhere close, but so many
stupid
little dribbles. So many fucking stupid
bastards
—!

She hurried to the Triumvirate suite, and locked herself in. Her hands were shaking so much she had trouble stripping her clothes off. I bet it was Billy the Whizz, trying to improve her chances. Why doesn’t Sage just fuck her? Why doesn’t Ax do Puusi Meera? She keeps coming onto him and I know she’s his type. Big tits, dark eyes, plenty flesh… The Few had no doubt spotted within minutes that the Triumvirate weren’t fucking, you can’t hide anything from them.
I hate my life
. She turned on the shower, full blast, wilfully greedy and antisocial: climbed into the tub and crouched under the torrent, scalding water pounding her head. Foul memories, thick and fast. She began to cry, in loud fury like a baby and once she’d started she couldn’t stop. She screamed and howled, flailing at the tub with her fists: until she was hoarse and her hands were sore. When she stopped, the roar of the water was enormous. She turned it off, and listened in trepidation. No one came running, thank God. She huddled there naked and lobster red, getting chilled.