Song of Susannah (17 page)

Dat she do,
Detta mused.
She
ack
like a Mommy, she wrapped around it root and branch, you right bout dat much.

But maybe, Susannah thought, that was just her nature. Maybe once you got beyond the mothering instinct, there
was
no Mia.

A cold hand reached out and seized Susannah’s wrist. “Who is it? Is it that nasty-talking one? If it is, banish her. She scares me.”

She still scared Susannah a little, in all truth, but not as much as when she’d first come to accept that Detta was real. They hadn’t become friends and probably never would, but it was clear that Detta Walker could be a powerful ally. She was more than mean. Once you got past the idiotic Butterfly McQueen accent, she was shrewd.

Dis Mia make a mighty pow’ful ally her own-self, if you c’d get her on yo’ side. Ain’t hardly
nothin in the world as pow’ful as a pissed-off Mommy.

“We’re going back,” Mia said. “I’ve answered your questions, the cold’s bad for the baby, and the mean one’s here. Palaver’s done.”

But Susannah shook off her grip and moved back a little, out of Mia’s immediate reach. In the gap between the merlons the cold wind knifed through her light shirt, but it also seemed to clear her mind and refresh her thinking.

Part of her is me, because she has access to my memories. Eddie’s ring, the people of River Crossing, Blaine the Mono. But she’s got to be
more
than me as well, because . . . because . . .

Go on, girl, you ain’t doin bad, but you
slow.

Because she knows all this
other
stuff, as well. She knows about the demons, both the little ones and the elementals. She knows how the Beams came into being—sort of—and about this magical soup of creation, the
Prim.
As far as I ever knew, prim’s a word you use for girls who are always yanking their skirts down over their knees. She didn’t get that other meaning from me.

It occurred to her what this conversation was like: parents studying their new baby. Their new chap. He’s got your nose, Yes but he’s got
your
eyes, and But my goodness,
where
did he get that hair?

Detta said:
And she also got friens back in New York, don’t forget
dat.
Least she want to
think
they her friens.

So she’s someone or something else, as well. Someone from the invisible world of house demons
and ill-sicks. But who? Is she really one of the elementals?

Detta laughed.
She say so, but she lyin bout dat, sugar! I know she is!

Then what is she? What
was
she, before she was Mia?

All at once a phone, amplified to almost earsplitting shrillness, began to ring. It was so out of place on this abandoned castle tower that at first Susannah didn’t know what it was. The things out there in the Discordia—jackals, hyenas, whatever they were—had been subsiding, but with the advent of this sound they began to cackle and shriek again.

Mia, daughter of none, mother of Mordred, knew that ringing for what it was immediately, however. She
came forward.
Susannah at once felt this world waver and lose its reality. It seemed almost to freeze and become something like a painting. Not a very good one, either.

“No!” she shouted, and threw herself at Mia. But Mia—pregnant or not, scratched up or not, swollen ankles or no swollen ankles—overpowered her easily. Roland had shown them several hand-to-hand tricks (the Detta part of her had crowed with delight at the nastiness of them), but they were useless against Mia; she parried each before Susannah had done more than get started.

Sure, yes, of course, she knows your tricks just like she knows about Aunt Talitha in River Crossing and Topsy the Sailor in Lud, because she has access to your memories, because she is, at least to some extent,
you—

And here her thoughts ended, because Mia had twisted her arms up behind her and oh dear God the pain was enormous.

Ain’t you just the most babyish cunt,
Detta said with a kind of genial, panting contempt, and before Susannah could reply, an amazing thing happened: the world ripped open like a brittle piece of paper. This rip extended from the dirty cobbles of the allure’s floor to the nearest merlon and then on up into the sky. It raced into that star-shot firmament and tore the crescent moon in two.

There was a moment for Susannah to think that this was it, one or both of the final two Beams had snapped and the Tower had fallen. Then, through the rip, she saw two women lying on one of the twin beds in room 1919 of the Plaza–Park Hotel. Their arms were around each other and their eyes were shut. They were dressed in identical bloodstained shirts and bluejeans. Their features were the same, but one had legs below the knee and straight silky hair and white skin.

“Don’t you mess with me!” Mia panted in her ear. Susannah could feel a fine, tickling spray of saliva. “Don’t you mess with me or with my chap. Because I’m stronger, do you hear?
I’m stronger!
”

There was no doubt about that, Susannah thought as she was propelled toward the widening hole. At least for now.

She was pushed through the rip in reality. For a moment her skin seemed simultaneously on fire and coated with ice. Somewhere the todash chimes were ringing, and then—

—she sat up on the bed. One woman, not two, but at least one with legs. Susannah was shoved, reeling, to the back. Mia in charge now. Mia reaching for the phone, at first getting it wrong-way-up and then reversing it.

“Hello? Hello!”

“Hello, Mia. My name is—”

She overrode him. “Are you going to let me keep my baby? This bitch inside me says you’re not!”

There was a pause, first long and then too long. Susannah felt Mia’s fear, first a rivulet and then a flood.
You don’t have to feel that way,
she tried to tell her.
You’re the one with what they want, with what they
need,
don’t you see that?

“Hello, are you there? Gods,
are you there? PLEASE TELL ME YOU’RE STILL THERE!
”

“I’m here,” the man’s voice said calmly. “Shall we start again, Mia, daughter of none? Or shall I ring off until you’re feeling . . . a little more yourself?”

“No! No, don’t do that, don’t do that I beg!”

“You won’t interrupt me again? Because there’s no reason for unseemliness.”

“I promise!”

“My name is Richard P. Sayre.” A name Susannah knew, but from where? “You know where you need to go, don’t you?”

“Yes!” Eager now. Eager to please. “The Dixie Pig, Sixty-first and Lexingworth.”

“Lexing
ton,
” Sayre said. “Odetta Holmes can help you find it, I’m sure.”

Susannah wanted to scream
That’s not my
name!
She kept silent instead. This Sayre would like her to scream, wouldn’t he? Would like her to lose control.

“Are you there, Odetta?” Pleasantly teasing. “Are you there, you interfering bitch?”

She kept silent.

“She’s in there,” Mia said. “I don’t know why she’s not answering, I’m not holding her just now.”

“Oh, I think
I
know why,” Sayre said indulgently. “She doesn’t like that name, for one thing.” Then, in a reference Susannah didn’t get: “‘Don’t call me Clay no more, Clay my slave name, call me Muhammad Ali!’ Right, Susannah? Or was that after your time? A little after, I think. Sorry. Time can be so confusing, can’t it? Never mind. I have something to tell you in a minute, my dear. You won’t like it very much, I fear, but I think you should know.”

Susannah kept silent. It was getting harder.

“As for the immediate future of your chap, Mia, I’m surprised you’d even feel it necessary to ask,” Sayre told her. He was a smoothie, whoever he was, his voice containing exactly the right amount of outrage. “The King keeps his promises, unlike some I could name. And, issues of our integrity aside, think of the
practical
issues! Who else should have the keeping of perhaps the most important child to ever be born . . .
including
Christ,
including
Buddha,
including
the Prophet Muhammad? To who else’s breast, if I may be crude, would we trust his suck?”

Music to her ears,
Susannah thought dismally.
All the things she’s been thirsting to hear. And why? Because she is Mother.

“You’d trust him to me!” Mia cried. “Only to me, of course! Thank you!
Thank
you!”

Susannah spoke at last. Told
her
not to trust
him.
And was, of course, roundly ignored.

“I’d no more lie to you than break a promise to my own mother,” said the voice on the phone. (
Did you ever have one, sugar?
Detta wanted to know.) “Even though the truth sometimes hurts, lies have a way of coming back to bite us, don’t they? The truth of this matter is you won’t have your chap for long, Mia, his childhood won’t be like that of other children, normal children—”

“I know! Oh, I know!”

“—but for the five years you
do
have him . . . or perhaps seven, it might be as many as seven . . . he’ll have the best of everything. From you, of course, but also from us. Our interference will be minimal—”

Detta Walker leaped forward, as quick and as nasty as a grease-burn. She was only able to take possession of Susannah Dean’s vocal cords for a moment, but it was a
precious
moment.

“Dass raht, dahlin, dass raht,” she cackled, “he won’t come in yo’ mouf or get it in you’ hair!”

“Shut that bitch UP!”
Sayre whipcracked, and Susannah felt the jolt as Mia shoved Detta head over heels—but still cackling—to the back of their shared mind again. Once more into the brig.

Had mah say, though, damn if I didn’t!
Detta cried.
Ah
tole
that honky muhfuh!

Sayre’s voice in the telephone’s earpiece was cold and clear. “Mia, do you have control or not?”

“Yes! Yes, I do!”

“Then don’t let that happen again.”

“I won’t!”

And somewhere—it felt like above her, although there were no real directions here at the back of the shared mind—something clanged shut. It sounded like iron.

We really
are
in the brig,
she told Detta, but Detta just went on laughing.

Susannah thought:
I’m pretty sure I know who she is, anyway. Besides me, that is.
This truth seemed obvious to her. The part of Mia that wasn’t either Susannah or something summoned from the void world to do the Crimson King’s bidding . . . surely the third part really was the Oracle, elemental or not; the female force that had at first tried to molest Jake and then had taken Roland, instead. That sad, craving spirit. She finally had the body she needed. One capable of carrying the chap.

“Odetta?” Sayre’s voice, teasing and cruel. “Or Susannah, if you like that better? I promised you news, didn’t I? It’s kind of a good news–bad news thing, I’m afraid. Would you like to hear it?”

Susannah held her silence.

“The bad news is that Mia’s chap may not be able to fulfill the destiny of his name by killing his father, after all. The good news is that Roland will almost surely be dead in the next few minutes. As for Eddie, I’m afraid there’s no question. He doesn’t have either your dinh’s reflexes or his battle experience. My dear, you’re going to be a widow very soon. That’s the bad news.”

She could hold her silence no longer, and Mia let her speak. “You lie! About
everything!
”

“Not at all,” Sayre said calmly, and Susannah
realized where she knew that name from: the end of Callahan’s story. Detroit. Where he’d violated his church’s most sacred teaching and committed suicide to keep from falling into the hands of the vampires. Callahan had jumped out of a skyscraper window to avoid that particular fate. He had landed first in Mid-World, and gone from there, via the Unfound Door, into the Calla Borderlands. And what he’d been thinking, the Pere had told them, was
They don’t get to win, they don’t get to win.
And he was right about that,
right,
goddammit. But if Eddie died—

“We knew where your dinh and your husband would be most likely to end up, should they be swept through a certain doorway,” Sayre told her. “And calling certain people, beginning with a chap named Enrico Balazar . . . I assure you, Susannah, that was
easy.
”

Susannah heard the sincerity in his voice. If he didn’t mean what he said, then he was the world’s best liar.

“How could you find such a thing out?” Susannah asked. When there was no answer she opened her mouth to ask the question again. Before she could, she was tumbled backward once more. Whatever Mia might have been once, she had grown to incredible strength inside Susannah.

“Is she gone?” Sayre was asking.

“Yes, gone, in the back.” Servile. Eager to please.

“Then come to us, Mia. The sooner you come to us, the sooner you can look your chap in the face!”

“Yes!” Mia cried, delirious with joy, and
Susannah caught a sudden brilliant glimpse of something. It was like peeking beneath the hem of a circus tent at some bright wonder. Or a dark one.

What she saw was as simple as it was terrible: Pere Callahan, buying a piece of salami from a shopkeeper. A
Yankee
shopkeeper. One who ran a certain general store in the town of East Stoneham, Maine, in the year of 1977. Callahan had told them all this story in the rectory . . .
and Mia had been listening.

Comprehension came like a red sun rising on a field where thousands have been slaughtered. Susannah rushed forward again, unmindful of Mia’s strength, screaming it over and over again:

“Bitch! Betraying bitch! Murdering bitch! You told them where the Door would send them! Where it would send Eddie and Roland! Oh you
BITCH!
”