Something More Than Night (36 page)

The raging migraine returned. It brought friends. Molly hugged herself, fought a rising tide of nausea.

If Anne was right—and the woman knew her detective stories—everything Bayliss had told Molly since the very beginning fit the elements of a noir detective novel too closely to be anything other than deliberate. This wasn’t a coincidence. And it explained everything: his wardrobe … his sexism … the ancient diner in his Magisterium … even why Bayliss spoke like a character in an old movie.

Or, more correctly, book.

He’d cobbled together a storyline and a persona from a bunch of different detective stories. The affectations were just a side effect of that. Bayliss had absorbed the tropes of noir fiction and turned them into a framework for the tale he presented to Molly. To the extent that he held to the outline even when it blatantly contradicted the facts.

But why go to all this trouble? What did it achieve, turning himself into a hard-boiled detective pastiche in an archetypal story? Hell. Why adopt any persona at all?

What if …
Another chilling thought. She’d never stopped to wonder why the angels were as relatable as they were. Why did some of them have any human characteristics at all? She suspected part of it had to do with cultural imprinting, or perhaps perceptual expectations carrying over from her human days. But what if the angels were far more alien, more inexplicable, than she had blindly accepted? Maybe Bayliss didn’t know how to be even remotely human, much less how to interact with somebody like Molly. Perhaps he’d had to work from a template merely to have a basis for interaction. Maybe they all did. But Bayliss also needed a model for the evolving situation he wanted to convey. And for some arcane reason, the travails of an old-time gumshoe fit the bill.

And she had bought into it. She had accepted everything he told her, not realizing that he was reading from a playbook written before she was born. Bayliss had been lying to her since day one. And not just overlooking or omitting certain details, the stuff she’d called him on several times, but flat-out lying.

She didn’t dare believe a single thing he had ever told her. She had to throw out everything he’d ever said.

Which meant she didn’t know anything.

20

A FOOL (ALMOST) RUSHES IN

Not since Jericho had I seen a worse case of the jitters. When I walked the mean streets of the Pleroma, it seemed every joe and jane I passed had a raging case of floating anxiety disorder. If Gabby’s death had put the Choir on edge, the popcorn proliferation of Nephilim had been the final shove. Things were tightest close to the mortal realm, where the weakest members of the Choir slid down the ontological gradient of METATRON’s binding to rattle the floor with their nervous tics like a concert in the subbasement of the Pleroma. But that overarching sense of anxiety cast a long shadow. Even farther out, in the metaphysical suburbs where the sensible cars and respectable glamours could be found, it wasn’t all canasta games and dinner parties. There was a strong front blowing in; we felt it in our guts. In weather like this, even the Seraphim lock their doors. Smart eggs hunker down to ride out the storm.

Not me, though. I needed words with two dumb onions.

The first of the defeated Cherubim was a blurry fractured thing. I couldn’t see it well without a lot of squinting. Molly’s ambush had yanked the goon apart—no mean feat, that—and now it was too busy feeling sorry for itself to zip its two halves together correctly. They didn’t quite fit together, like the reflection in an imperfectly fixed mirror. What a drip. Just looking in its direction gave me a headache, so I opted to talk to its partner instead.

I thought I’d seen it all. But I’d never seen a Cherub with a black eye. That must have taken some doing because they don’t even
have
eyes, the dumb lugs. Just flames. Chalk up another point in the twist’s column. The poor sap held a steak to its battered face. It made the joint smell like a Fourth of July cookout. All we needed was some potato salad and tub of coleslaw.

After all, the fireworks were coming soon enough.

“One monkey,” I said. “The two of you working together couldn’t croak one lousy monkey.”

“She was supposed to be alone.”

“It wasn’t supposed to matter. What a sorry wrecking crew you turned out to be.”

“Sorry, boss.”

“How’d she do it? How’d she get the drop on you cream puffs?”

They told me how flametop clobbered them using sleight of hand and sheer moxie. I whistled. What an item. I knew how to pick them. She was perfect.

Steak-face said, “If you wanted us to fight you shouldn’t’ve made us wear those monkey suits. You didn’t hobble us when you sent us into her Magisterium.”

“Yeah,” said steak-face’s blurry pal. “She was no problem then.”

“We should go find her, do it right this time,” said the first Cherub.

The dopes. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

I said, “Listen, you thickheaded palookas. What do you think would happen if you went down to Earth for a spot of redemptive violence? If you started traipsing around the mortal realm, bumping off monkeys, letting everyone see you in your true forms?”

“She’d get what she had coming?”

“She’d be sorry? Real sorry?”

Oh, brother. I reminded myself that I hadn’t hired these goons for their brains. Maybe it’s the constant heat of holy fire from their faces making them feverish. Slow.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And how’s about METATRON?”

There was a pause while that sank in. “Oh,” said steak-face. “That.”

“Yeah. That.”

“You want we should go back and finish off the monkey now?”

“Nah,” I said. “I’ll handle it. You two lick your wounds. They must be medium rare by now.”

I’d been ready to rub out Molly’s girlfriend then and there when I had the chance. But as much as flametop liked to question everything I said and did, she still wasn’t getting the big picture. If that cluck didn’t start doing the math sooner than later, I’d have to hire a skywriter. So it was a golden opportunity when she practically pushed that dish of a librarian into my open arms.

And besides, we could spare a stiff or two. I’d worked a little slop into the system. I wasn’t born yesterday.

*   *   *

On my way to count the Nephilim, to verify the other PI recipients had been pinked, I ran into an old acquaintance. Can’t say it was a happy reunion.

“Bayliss,” it said. “ssilyaB,” it said.

“Think you’ve got me confused with somebody else.” I pushed past, but not without tipping my hat. “Sorry, guy. Sorry, doll.”

The Virtue raised two arms to block my passage. One lead, one gold. I sighed and, keeping one peeper on that bobbing scorpion tail, plastered a happy grin on my kisser.

“Hey, now I recognize you. Lose some weight, did you? Long time no see. You’ve been a stranger, eh?”

“We seek you,” said its feminine aspect.

“You avoid us,” said its masculine aspect.

“Seek me? Don’t you kids have better things to do with your time? You should get a hobby.”

“We did as you asked.” “.deksa uoy sa did eW”

“Can’t say I remember that.” I danced out of the Virtue’s reach, making for my apartment. “I’d love to stick around while you flap your gums about it, but I have a hot date with a lulu of a chess problem.”

“We hold your promise. Payment is owed.”

“Nuts to both of you. I’m no chiseler. Just quit squawking until I get back on my feet, how about?”

“Payment is owed.” “.dewo si tnemyaP”

“Yeah, yeah. Payment. Enough with the broken record.”

You’d think that given everything else I was doing, this penny-pinching sourpuss would give me a break on the tab. That’s gratitude for you. But I let it slide. I’m a generous soul.

And besides. The way I figured it, all the old tabs and debts would get erased soon enough.

*   *   *

I returned from my errands to find an angel making coffee in my kitchen. So much for that second lock I put on the door. I couldn’t wait to get out of this neighborhood. It had seen better days. So had we all.

“Please,” I said, flinging my hat over the hilt of the sword in my umbrella stand, “make yourself at home.”

Uriel said, “In this dive? Not likely.”

She had coffee grounds and soul fragments strewn all across the counter. If I hadn’t known better I might have thought she’d been struck with a recurrence of the quotidian ague while filling the percolator. But then Michael and Raguel always were the tidy ones. I decided against sharing my trick with the comb; a lousy cup of coffee was the least she deserved for breaking in to my digs again.

“Not that it ain’t a pleasure, but what can I blame for this visit?”

“There’s some concern,” said Uriel, “over an apparent lack of progress, Bayliss.”

The percolator gurgled its assent. What a sad little toady it was. It didn’t even have a dog in this fight. But they had a point, the Seraph and the machine.

“Yeah, yeah. The monkey’s taking it nice and slow.”

“Too slow. And we’ve been patient.”

“
You’ve
been patient? What am I, chopped liver?”

Uriel rummaged my cabinets for a cup. I pointed. She snagged one. “Nevertheless,” she said. “We’re eager to see the end of this.”

As if I wasn’t. That was rich. What a joker. She knew how to make a gag. I told her so.

“Cool your jets, sister. What’s a few more days on top of a million millennia?”

“Every extra attosecond runs the risk METATRON will take an interest.” She poured herself a cup, took one sip, made a face, dumped the coffee down the sink. I wondered how many souls went down the drain just then. “The Thrones are getting suspicious.”

She had a point. The bulls were zeroing in. It had been a little uncomfortable under the bright lights. Good thing Uriel had come riding to the rescue when she did. But things were too far along now for anybody to stop it.

“They can turn blue, the lot of ’em, for all I care.”

“We’ve already staged another attempted eviction.”

“Bread and circuses. Works every time.”

“We can’t keep it up forever.”

“Oh, brother. Like you’ve got it tough. I don’t recall you raising so much as a pinfeather when we were rounding up a volunteer for this job.”

“It was always your baby.”

Well. I don’t like to brag. I’m the humble type. But trust a wicked bird like Uriel to appeal to my pride. Pride was a sin, after all.

I reminded her, “Yeah, my baby. But it wasn’t cheap. And in the end nobody else wanted to assume the cost.”

That shut her yap. Uriel looked away. Even a lion can look chagrined from time to time.

“I miss him,” she said in a voice more quiet than the hiss of the cosmic microwave background.

“Me, too,” I said. “Me, too.”

An awkward silence crept up on us. She staked it in the heart, changed the subject.

“What happened to the Cherubim? I hear they came back with their tails between their legs.”

“Those roosters? Flametop pulled the old dipsy-doodle on them.”

Uriel flapped a half-dozen wings, like a trio of opinionated pigeons. “Would you give it a rest with the slang?”

“Sorry. Hard habit to break.”

“Anyway,” she said, “I find that difficult to believe.”

“Believe it. She’s no paper flower.” Uriel’s ox face snorted at me again. “What? Oh. Sorry. I mean, she’s tough. And she’s clever.”

Okay. So maybe I like to crow just a little.

“Not clever enough to piece things together.”

“Trust me. She’s getting there.”

By slow freight, said the scowl on Uriel’s human pan. The lion visage let loose with a growl.

I said, “She’s the naturally suspicious type. And believe me, I just sent her one dilly of a telegram.”

Uriel rolled her eyes, all eight of them. She asked, “So she’s back on track now?”

“Right now”—I glanced at my watch—“I figure she and dollface are having a swell little dustup. But once they talk each other off the ceiling that nickel will drop soon enough.”

“And will she do what we brought her here to do?”

I lit a pill. Tossed a smoke ring at Uriel. “Trust me. She never passes up a chance to take a swipe at me.”

*   *   *

“That son of a bitch. That unbelievable motherfucker.”

Molly ran fingers through her hair while pacing the tiny confines of Anne’s kitchen. Saint Elmo’s fire crackled through her hair, making it snap and writhe like Medusa’s asps. “That deranged piece of shit.” She reversed course at the refrigerator. “Sexist two-faced asshole.”

Anne said, “Molly.”

“Arrogant shit-faced prick. Smug, oily, self-centered dick-licking alcoholic.” About-face at the stove.

“Molly.”

“That duplicitous, cocky, goat-humping, weaselly backstabbing pervert.”

Anne opened a window. “Molly.”

“I’ll kick his ass. More than that. I’ll kill him. They can die, you know. Yeah. I swear I’ll take the Trumpet and—”

“Molly!”

Molly paused in her circuit, the unfinished rant piling up behind her like boxcars in a derailed train of thought. Anne looked frantic. “What?”

Anne said, “Just stop a second, would you? Look at what you’re doing to my apartment.”

She pointed at blistered fake linoleum left in the scorching wake of Molly’s halo. Fury had energized her
heiligenschein.
The apartment reeked of melted plastic. Molly tasted a dusting of dioxin on the air, released by the smoldering polyvinyl chloride. Chlorine atoms raked fractured atomic bonds across her tongue.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Some of us have security deposits, you know.”

Molly knelt. She ran a hand over the damaged floor as though she were brushing the wrinkles out of a bedsheet. It became whole and unblemished under her touch.

“Well, thanks,” said Anne.

“Uh-huh,” said Molly, remembering the cigarette burn Bayliss had left in the floorboards of her Magisterium. The cigarette burn she had repeatedly tried and failed to fix. The blemish he’d wrought on one of her safest, warmest memories. Jesus. Her dead body had still been steaming on the snow when that son of a bitch tossed a filthy fucking
cigarette
on Ria’s handiwork. She’d do so much more than kick his ass. She already knew where to find the Trumpet. Anne’s Plenary Indulgence contained a piece, and the rest was scattered through the Nephilim. She could reassemble it. All she had to do was—