The Last Hot Time (21 page)

Doc parked the car in front of Ginny's building. As they went up the front steps, Ginny slipped in the fresh snow, and Doc caught her. He had a brief, wild thought of carrying her inside, but he didn't; just kept his arm around her shoulders all the way in. Ginny locked the door behind them. "You remember when I said there was too much suspense in my life?"

"Yeah?"

"Maybe I was wrong."

He found himself unbuttoning her blouse before she had quite pulled him into the bedroom. He had heard it wasn't difficult, after the first time. It was easier. He still seemed to weigh too much— the dinner was only part of that.

It wasn't that there was any difficulty. She seemed pleased, and that alone was enough to make him feel good. But something wasn't quite there: the Wild Hunt didn't ride, and he knew that she knew it. Still she sighed happily, and laughed, and held him all night.

Still, he knew what was locked up in his thoughts, and hoped desperately that she did not.

M

londay night the usual poker crowd met at the Rush Street Grill. They sat over Flats Montoya's wonderful burgers with an uneasy quiet; Doc kept thinking of the Hopper painting, the diner at midnight. It was a relief to go back to the poker room, where quiet and blank looks were part of the game.

The Fox's game was way off form, and it threw everyone else's play off as well. After an hour, Kitsune tossed in her cards—an ace flipped upright—and said, "That's all. Good night, everybody."

Carmen said, "I'll get the box."

"Just say I'm tapped." She hurried out.

Stagger Lee counted Kitsune's chips. "Everyone agree we'll hold her share out?"

They did. "Who'll see her first? Lucius?"

"I'll take it to the Mirada. Shaker can hold the stake."

After another hour the raid alarm went off, and everyone went through the ritual of tossing in and covering up.

It wasn't the usual Copperbutton squad. It was Rico and Linn, with two very worried-looking Coppers trailing behind.

"Hello, Officers," Flats said. "Can I offer you something hot on a cold night?"

"Don't you love it?" Rico said. "Everybody here's the Welcome Wagon. Linn."

The elf went to the table where Doc and company were sitting. He looked at the people, then took a lens-shaped blue crystal from his belt. He gave it a snap of the wrist and it hung, spinning, in the air above the table, casting an electric-blue light. The tabletop turned transparent, showing the bucket of cards and chips beneath, the sitters' legs, a glimpse of their leg bones. Linn snatched the stone from the air with an easy movement and a tight little smile. He tucked it away.

Rico said, "The stuff that passes for cop work around here."

Carmen said, "We've got a seat open, Lieutenant. Maybe you'd like to sit in? There's room for two."

"Maybe some other time, honey."

"You mean that?"

"Yeah. I mean that."

"Look forward to it."

The police went out. The patrons dug into their pie and brandy.

A burst of gunfire came from the front of the restaurant, and a long crash of glass. Someone screamed. Stagger Lee, with a completely artificial calm, said, "Somebody's wa\ off script."

Doc was on his feet by instinct, grabbing his bag. "Keep do**, dammit," Lucius yelled, and Doc dropped into a booth-high crouch.

Just as he got to the front room, there was a brilliant white Hare from outside, and the front of the restaurant blew in. The shock

knocked Doc down; he huddled for a few breaths against debris and any second detonation, but the booth wall had protected him well enough. He got up.

The room was smoky, and smelled of hot metal and burning. People were groaning, but not screaming now. There was some blood, but no immediately apparent critical cases. The front windows were pretty well demolished, and the oak front door was a jagged strip of bare wood.

Lieutenant Linn came in, breathing mist. His white wand was out, floating between his open hands; a black nimbus of negative light surrounded it. He looked at Doc, who went outside.

Rico was on the sidewalk outside, sitting up against the front of the building. Her left leg looked chewed, and her mirrorshades hung broken from one ear.

Doc snipped away her trouser leg, sponged blood off. The wounds were fairly minor; no heavy bleeders, bones intact. He got some dressings on. "You should be okay. Got any drug allergies?"

"Yeah. To needles. Go ahead, kid."

"People usually call me Doc."

"Yeah. Shit, that's cold."

"That's thorncast salve. It'll pull any fragments out. Did you hit your head?"

"Other end. Linn saw the bikes coming, got a ward up. Any sign of our so-called backups, Linn?"

Doc was conscious of Lt. Linn standing behind him, but missed any reply. He looked at Lt. Rico's pupils: they were even, but dilated. He pulled off her glasses—carefully, around a bad bruise on her cheek—shone a light on one eye.

"Watch it! Those used to be Night Owls."

"Sorry."

" 'S'okay. Doc."

"Lieutenant Linn, would you help me get her inside?"

Linn picked Rico up, carried her in to a bench. Doc saw to the other injured. Through some combination of luck and Linn's spell, nobody had caught a bullet or major fragment.

There was no question of going on with the games. The place cleared out quickly. Carmen left with Stagger Lee, and then it was

just Doc, Lucius, Rico and Linn, and Flats, who brought out real coffee with Kahlua and cream.

"You said they were on bikes?" Doc said.

"Did I say that? I must have been delirious."

Doc glanced at Lucius, who raised an eyebrow and half of his mouth.

Flats said, "How about you, Linn? You ever talk?"

Linn shook his head.

"You gotta have something," Rico said. "When you're trying to do a job nobody wants done, by flaky rules, in a hostile country, among people who don't want you there in the first place, you've got to have some way of knowing who you are. That or go dinky-dau."

"What?"

"Crazy. Something my dad used to say."

Doc said, "You'll be sore for a while."

"I've been torn up before, Doc. I'll make it."

Doc nodded. "Take you home, Lucius?"

"Don't mind, Doctor."

"Hey, Doc," Rico said. "Thanks. And hey, Jake Lingle."

Lucius said, "Yes, Lieutenant, ma'am?"

"I read your column all the time. Nice to meet you."

"Thank you very kindly, Lieutenant."

"Don't get killed."

Lucius snapped a salute. They went outside, their shoes crunching on broken glass.

"So which way's home?" Doc said.

"Drop me at the Mirada. I've got to give Shaker the Fox's stake, remember?"

"Yeah." Doc thought about Kitsune's behavior, about speaking of it. But he didn't. Instead he said, "Who's Jake Lingle?"

"Famed local reporter, from the real gangland days. The Ca-pone boys shot him dead one day."

"Oh."

"There was a rule back then, never shoot three sorts of people: cops, judges, and reporters. Too much hear, you see. And what do you know but that Jake's paper raised a row that eventual!) did

help bring Al down." He turned his head. "You know Capone's Four Deuces club—that was the street address, two-two-two-two— was just over there a couple of blocks."

"You will be careful, won't you, Lucius?"

"I haven't gotten to the punch line yet, Doc. Jake Lingle, mob martyr, was taking fifty thousand Depression dollars a year from Capone. It's an ill wind, eh, Doctor?"

He let Lucius off at the club, knowing that things were no better than they had been a week ago. Maybe worse.

and the house barber had restyled his hair to conceal the wound and Doc's chopping.

That afternoon Doc went to Patrise's office, intending finally to ask what the lead mining was for. Once there, however, in the glare of light on wood and metal, with Mr. Patrise—who had never wronged him, never, so far as he knew, lied—seated calmly at a side table, reading an old leatherbound book, Doc choked on the question. He managed to get out, "There's something—I have to know. About, well, magic, I guess.. .."

Mr. Patrise shut his book. "Are you afraid of the sources of power?" He stood up, sat against the edge of his enormous desk. "Do you think that someday you will open a door, like Bluebeard's wife, and find the sort of place you saw under the streets?"

"I just want to understand."

"I know that," Mr. Patrise said gently, "and there is nothing more becoming to want. But would you ever be satisfied with an answer? I could give you all the keys I have, and you could still suspect I had left out the one key key. Now Bluebeard, on the other hand, gave out the master key first thing.

"Here is something you should recognize, Hallow: the True Blood is psychically bound to dominant modes of thought—in plainer words, slaves to fashion. This once was part of their power, when their culture was all the culture on Earth, and we huddled under trees because the sun and the rain made us afraid. The Truebloods said to the hominids, Do things in the way we tell you, and we did, because they were more frightening still."

"Trees," Doc said. "Elves are supposed to be tree people, in the old stories."

"Congratulations, Hallow," Mr. Patrise said, with what sounded like real pleasure.

"Eventually the Truebloods went away, and after—oh, who knows how long—we started to forget that they had been real. But we kept the inspiration: we continued to do things by rules, whether or not the rules made sense, to act as the group did, even when the group was insane, to enjoy making a pattern and watching the crowd squeeze into it. In time we technologized the process, industrialized it, networked it. It was, if you like, our magic."

Doc said, "And when the Truebloods came back?"

"They were bewildered at first by what they saw. There are hints that they did not recognize us as human—they thought we were some otherworldly species that had colonized the Earth.

"As anyone may in such a circumstance, many of them panicked. That led to the fires. To open warfare, in many places. Eventually you will learn about that. . . about Asia, and Africa, and the Silent Zones."

Why will IP Doc thought without saying.

"I often wonder," Mr. Patrise said, "what they saw in television that made them decide it must be erased utterly. Not that any of this saved them. They could not simply impose their rules on a race that changed its hemlines and heroes with the turn of the seasons. They were no longer the arbiters; they were just one more designer label. And as I said at the start, they were vulnerable themselves to the mass demand, as are all societies that rule by code and force. They began to ride motorcycles, pose with guns, wear stiletto heels and wide-shouldered suits and four-in-hand neckties. They can no more fight this than humanity can, so they must try to do it better than we do."

Mr. Patrise tilted his head, just slightly, and fixed his eyes on Doc's. "Suppose I told you that you could have any of them you wanted: a Highborn, Rhiannon or Stane Belle, the Kings of Elf-land's daughters, on their knees in front of you, dressed in spider gauze and cold iron chains, begging you to—"

"Stagger said the cold iron thing doesn't work," Doc said, trying to keep the image from getting any clearer.

Mr. Patrise looked surprised. It was not a typical expression for him. "Stagger Lee is a fine technician, but he will never be a great enchanter. Do you know why, Hallow?"

Doc almost said no, then waited. He had the feeling Mr. Patrise really wanted an answer. "Iron . . . doesn't have power over the Truebloods. But some of them believe it does."

"As I was saying, Hallow . . . they can be bound. Even b\ us. And why should that matter so?"

"I don't know."

"Because they are not mortal," Mr. Patrise said, his voice dead calm. "We are. Whatever we choose to be in life, that life ends. Whatever our condition, however hateful the ser\ iee we are yoked

to—one day it will end, and we know it. Not so for them."

"All right," Doc said, his throat tight, "but, it's still not something I want."

"What you might desire and what you might do are two different things, Hallow. But I think you mean what you say. Making it very important that you know such power exists." Patrise went to a service table behind the desk, poured two small glasses of brandy. He handed one to Doc. "The first night we met, I told you to wait a while and ask me if I knew you. You haven't asked."

Doc sipped the drink and said nothing.

Mr. Patrise rolled his brandy glass, took a swallow. "There will be a party for the winter solstice—dress-up, naturally. Will you be sure to tell Ginevra that she is invited, and to visit Boris for a fit-ting?"

F

or days before the solstice party the staff were hanging ribbons, holly, ivy—"No advance warning where the mistletoe goes," one of the maids said happily—and setting out candlesticks.