The Administration Series (149 page)

Warrick's flat was empty. Toreth stood in the darkened hallway, feeling the first twinges of irritation. All he'd wanted to do was surprise Warrick, and he was tired enough that being thwarted felt unreasonable.

Then he looked at his watch. Of course — he'd stupidly forgotten the time difference. Warrick was still at SimTech, that was all.

This time he called Warrick's admin first, to check. No point wasting another journey.

"I'm afraid Doctor Warrick left three-quarters of an hour ago."

Toreth clicked his tongue with frustration. "Do you know where he is?"

"He has a dinner scheduled, but I'm afraid I can't give out the address without — "

"Forget it."

Toreth cut the connection and stood for a moment, frowning. Then he deliberately smoothed the expression away. A small setback in his homecoming plans, that was all. He had plenty of ways and means at his disposal.

Carnac.

Of all the people in the world, it would have to be fucking Carnac.

Toreth stood in the entrance of the restaurant. He'd waved his ID to get in — it wasn't the kind of place that admitted men in casual clothes. Now he wished he hadn't bothered.

Carnac and Warrick, together. They were both in profile, intent on their conversation. Toreth stood, watching, time passing without him realising it, until Warrick laughed and shook his head. Carnac reached across the table and patted Warrick's hand. Warrick shook his head again, but he was still smiling.

Were they talking about him, Toreth wondered? Were they talking about what they were going to do later?

Then Carnac looked round and Toreth's heart skipped a beat. Caught spying — how humiliating. However, Carnac's gaze passed blankly over him, eventually focusing on a waiter. As the socioanalyst beckoned the man over, Toreth stepped back towards the door, out of sight, to wait until the bastard looked away again.

On second thought, he kept backing until he reached the door, then pushed through it and strode out onto the street, wanting nothing more than to put distance between himself and the little tete-a-tete.

Bastard. Five fucking days away (five not fucking days away) and fucking Carnac was back. Had he known Toreth wasn't there?
How
had he known?

Then it hit him. Sara's comment, the coffee-room rumour. So obvious, with this last piece of evidence in place.

He'd been walking without really noticing where he was heading, and now he turned and went into a bar without noticing which one. He noticed the drink, though, although not for very long, before he ordered the second one, and the third one with it to save time.

Carnac. Of all the people it could have been. He downed the second drink and slammed the glass back onto the bar. Fucking Carnac.

Warrick, fucking Carnac.

Even through closed eyelids, the light was painful. Toreth dragged his arm out from under the sheets and laid it across his eyes. Slightly better.

Faint sounds of movement in the room but, thankfully, they stayed faint.

On a scale of one to ten, with one being 'I had a few drinks last night' and ten being 'someone please shoot me now', the hangover rated an eight. Maybe a nine — that would depend on what Warrick said when he noticed Toreth was awake.

Soft footsteps halted nearby.

"Warrick?"

A light laugh — male, but definitely not Warrick.

"No, my dear, I'm afraid not. Although I envy him exceedingly if you always wake with his name on your lips."

Oh, Christ. Where the hell had he ended up? Only the smell of coffee finally enticed him to open his eyes.

Not, by the look of it, a hotel room. Nor his own room, thank God, although he'd never been sufficiently far gone to take anyone back home. On the other hand, it wasn't the kind of room he wanted to wake up in with such a grim hangover. It was huge, high-ceilinged and brightly lit. Every centimetre of the walls and ceiling was painted in trompe-l-oeil — very good, but very unsettling.

There was no theme, no consistency. There were a dozen or more different styles of interiors, with startlingly realistic windows onto even more varied exteriors. It left him unsure exactly what was real and what wasn't, with the exception of the man smiling at him. He was very real, and Toreth temporarily forgot his hangover and the bewildering room.

Nikoletta was attractive, but the young man beside the bed was undoubtably one of the most beautiful human beings — male or female — that Toreth had ever seen: bottomless, liquid dark eyes; thick dark hair, curling to shoulder length; pale skin with a hint of Indian colouring. He wore a lemon silk robe patterned with tulips in a slightly paler shade, somehow managing to invest it with unquestionable elegance.

It was a measure of how bad the hangover was that Toreth even noticed the steaming mug the man held out towards him.

He struggled into a sitting position — or at least into a more or less vertical slump against the gold-embroidered lavender satin headboard — and paused to recover. "Who the fuck are you?" he asked once the pounding in his head had died down.

The man smiled, unfazed by the tone. "Think of me as a guardian angel. Or call me Paul. As you wish."

Once Toreth had taken the mug the man strolled over to a nearby small couch and draped himself over it, cat-elegant.

Toreth took a mouthful of the coffee — wonderfully thick and tarry — and tried to think. The latter part of the evening was a blur. The last thing he remembered was going into the kind of bar he'd never consider approaching while sober, or even normally drunk. He must have managed to get through the rest of the evening without mentioning his employer, though, as he couldn't feel any bruises or stab wounds.

When he looked up, the coffee-providing angel was watching him with a fascination that Toreth felt was probably unwarranted. He must look like shit. He studied the man in return and decided that his first guess had been wrong — he was nearer Toreth's own age than he'd thought initially.

Toreth ran his hand through his hair, trying to straighten it.

"How do we feel?" Paul asked.

"Absolutely fucking awful, but worse than that."

He laughed. "Regretfully, only to be expected."

Something needed clearing up. "Did we fuck?"

"Alas, beautiful creature, no, we did not."

Toreth felt obscurely relieved that he hadn't broken his resolution. Not that it mattered, if Warrick was —

Don't think about that. He felt bad enough already. "So what the hell am I doing here?"

"I found you in the street." Paul's voice lowered, sharing a distasteful secret. "Lying in the street, if the truth be told. Naturally I realised at once that higher powers had guided me there in order to render assistance to a fellow soul in distress. And while you told me many wonderful things, your address was not one of them, making you a creature of mystery as well as enchantment. So I brought you home with me."

He smiled, showing perfectly even, white teeth. "And here we are. If your enquiry was more metaphysical in nature, I'm afraid I must confess myself unable to help."

Pretty much what he'd imagined. "Thanks. That was, uh, very kind of you." Oddly, he felt more obliged to make some kind of a conversation than he would have done if they had fucked.

Paul brushed the thanks aside. "I woke you because you seemed like the kind of vision of loveliness who nevertheless has to suffer under the yoke of paid employment. And even though it's Saturday, when not even the meanest beast ought to toil in the fields . . . "

It took Toreth a moment to free the question from the tangle of flowery decoration. "I, er, yeah. I do have things I need to do. I'm a para-investigator."

Paul's already enormous eyes widened dramatically. "But how awful!"

Toreth blinked. "Sorry?"

"A dangerous job.
Dreadfully
important and public-spirited, of course, but so dangerous. Someone so exquisite shouldn't have a dangerous job."

No reply came to mind. Toreth had been complimented on his looks plenty of times before. Just never so . . . extravagantly.

"But no matter. There — " Paul waved a languid hand, silk whispering. "I never heard any such thing. However, if you are to make it to this frightening job you don't have, should you, perhaps, be leaving?" He leaned forwards a little, smiling again. "Although I assure you that nothing would delight me more than the happy prospect of your continued presence in my humble bed."

"No, I do have to go. Can I use your shower?"

"I see no reason why not — since you already have my heart. I shall summon a carriage for my prince while he avails himself of the facilities."

Paul glided out of the room. Toreth downed his coffee, then went in search of the bathroom.

It was also huge, richly tiled in turquoise and gold, and with an underwater seascape painted on one wall, populated with muscular fishtailed men and silver-scaled women who could have been mermaids if they'd looked in the slightest bit maidenly. One of them was fucking an octopus. The shower was big enough for a rather wet orgy, and the bath was one of the largest Toreth had seen outside the sim. He spent a while poking unselfconsciously through gilded cupboards, impressed by the variety of jars and bottles.

He set the shower temperature to as hot as he could stand, the water flow to fast, and the spray to stinging needles that soon started to wash away the worst of the hangover. He'd been in the shower for a couple of minutes when the glass door to it opened.

"All arranged, my foundling. Taxi in fifteen minutes."

Leaving the shower door open, Paul went to lean on the scalloped sink and watched Toreth with a faint smile and open appreciation. Water splashed onto the floor, but as it wasn't his flat Toreth didn't care. He carried on washing, taking a little longer than was strictly necessary since he had an audience.

"Exquisite," Paul murmured, then began to recite.

"I can love both fair and brown;

He whom abundance melts, and he whom want betrays;

He who loves loneness best, and he who masks and plays;

He whom the country form'd, and whom the town;

He who believes, and he who tries;

He who still weeps with spongy eyes,

And he who is dry cork, and never cries.

I can love him, and him, and you, and you;

I can love any, so he be not true."

He stopped, and sighed wistfully.

"What's that?" Toreth asked.

"A disgraceful transgendering of a delightful work by one of the greatest poets of the English tongue — John Donne." He tilted his head as though expecting a response, then sighed again. "No matter. The work bemoans the rise of unnatural constancy and praises the manifold joys of rampant infidelity."

Toreth had never taken much interest in poetry and, with a thumping headache, he didn't feel like starting now. "I'd rather do it than read about it."

"Wise words, beauteous one."

As Toreth stepped out of the shower, Paul picked up a towel. "Please — allow me."

So Toreth stood in the steamy room while Paul dried him gently, thoroughly and silently, then he went back into the bedroom and dressed.

He'd had less strange mornings after. Or mornings not after, in this case.

On the doorstep to the apartment building, Paul stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm. With Paul a step above him, Toreth had to look up.

"I know I shouldn't even attempt to impose myself on you while you are in such a fragile condition, angel. However — " With a flourish, a small rectangle of lemon-yellow plastic appeared between his fingers. "Were you to call me, you would find me speechless with rapturous ecstasy at hearing your voice again."

Toreth took the card. "Okay. And, er, thanks."

"The pleasure, my love, was entirely my own. I shall remember you always." The melting smile again. "Or for at least a week. But do call, at any time, if you would like to remedy the tragic omission of last night."

He must have looked blank, because Paul laughed, then kissed his own forefinger and placed it briefly on Toreth's lips.

"Fucking, dear heart. Fucking."

And the door closed, leaving Toreth alone except for the waiting taxi.

The sheer strangeness of the morning — and the subduing effect of the hangover — meant that when he arrived in the office around ten o'clock and Sara cheerfully informed him that he looked like he'd been having fun, he didn't snarl at her. Instead he grunted something noncommittal, dropped the chocolates on her desk, and went into his office to brood.

Unfortunately, there was too much to do to allow a really good sulk — Sara had already found much of the information he wanted, and he had a job to finish, whatever Warrick was doing with his spare time.

He'd barely read through the list of files when Sara came in with two coffees and a plate of biscuits. She handed him his cup and then pulled up a chair, obviously settling in.

"Did I get everything you wanted?"

"Yes."

Her eyebrow went up at his tone. "Nice time in Athens?"