“I said that I hoped that this was the case. Very well. Promise me on whatever you hold holy that you will not use this charm unless your life is in danger.”
“I swear on my mother’s grave.”
The caoineag shuddered. “Very well.”
And so she recited:
Then Jay repeated the words after her, nodding when he had it. The caoineag reached out an imploring hand. It was slim and pale, the nails short crescents against the flesh.
“Only in an emergency, John. Remember.” Jay nodded. He looked around.
“Even if time passes differently here, I’m not ready to head back. Are we safe to stay?”
“Until the moon passes full you may return the way you came.”
“Then let’s look around.” Dubhe tugged at his ear.
“How about a banana?”
“She beat you, the bitch!” Phecda said, flickering in and out her silvery tongue.
“Did she?” Death said, more calmly than might have been expected. “I had wondered into what realms Ayradyss had vanished, for I knew she had not come into my keeping. Now I know—and I believe that another will know as well.”
“Another?”
“Her creator—the one who made the Nymph of Virtu, the Angel of the Forsaken Hope, the Mermaid Beneath the Seven Dancing Moons to fight his battles in the days of the Genesis Scramble. He must have thought her lost, her programs decaying among the detritus of my Fields. Now, he may know other.”
“Ah, ssso,” hissed Phecda, pleased.
“And claim her for his own,” Death laughed. “And I will claim her son as I had ever intended.”
“So it goes on…”
Death touched the button on the unit that had been John D’Arcy Donnerjack’s tribute to him. Politian’s Orpheo surged out, the only unbroken sound among the broken business of entropy.
Link Crain knocked on the door to Desmond Drum’s office and hearing the acknowledging grunt walked in. Before Drum switched his newsreader off, Link caught sight of a lurid account of the riot at the Elshie celebration. Even days later, the newsies hadn’t tired of dwelling on the events, complete with suppositions as to what this might mean for the future of the Church of Elish. Link had filed his story (“Caught in the Crush”), collected his eft, and otherwise distanced himself from the events. He had bigger things to concern him.
Seeing who his visitor was, Drum grinned. “Hey, Link! How’re you doing, kid? Learned not to stop bullets with your arm?”
“Knew that before. Shame the guy with the gun hadn’t been told.”
Drum chuckled. “You look grim, Link. What’s wrong?”
Link took his usual seat in one of the comfortably battered chairs in front of Drum’s desk.
“I have a confession to make. Afterwards, I might want to hire you for a job.”
Drum’s eyebrows rose to his hairline. He gestured for Link to continue.
“First of all, Drum, I’m not who you think I am.”
“You forget, kid. I researched you.”
“You researched Lyle Crain—alias Lincoln Crain.”
“Yep, and I found Alice Hazzard.”
Link nearly fell off of the chair.
“You knew? How? I was so careful!”
“Careful for Virtu, Link. You made a bit of a mistake when you kept living with your mother.”
“I had my own address in the building!”
“You did, but I checked and noticed that the bills were sometimes paid by Lydia Hazzard rather than Lyle Crain. Since the two apartments were next door to each other, I asked a few questions. I’ll admit that at first I thought that Lyle was Lydia’s lover. Then I learned that Lydia had a daughter about the same height and general build as Lyle. I watched and I never saw the two together and well…”
“You hinted at this back when we met, didn’t you?”
“When I mentioned your actual age? Yep.”
“I feel really stupid.”
“Don’t. You did a good job. Most people don’t look at what is going on in Verite anymore. The eft trail from Lydia’s account, though—that was sloppy, kid.”
“I ran short of my own money. Mom offered to help. I guess I should have had her put the funds in my account.”
“Even better would have been to have her give you a bank draft and then you transfer that to your account.”
“Yeah.”
Link/Alice sat staring at her shoes for a few moments.
“So, what do you want me to call you, kid?”
“Call me?”
“We’re still working together, aren’t we?”
“We are?”
“Why not? Daimon wanted you for your research talents, for your interest in the Elshies, for your young, idealistic fervor. None of that has changed.”
Link grinned, relieved. “Then call me Link and I’ll maintain the persona for work, just like always.”
Drum nodded. “Good choice. A rich kid with a weird history would have trouble doing investigative work.”
“You know about my history?”
“Only that a major virt tour operation authorized their insurance company to pay a large out-of-court settlement to Alice Hazzard to be kept in trust by her mother Lydia until Alice’s eighteenth birthday. You’ll apparently be a multimillionaire in a couple of years. I didn’t dig any further. Those documents are sealed tighter than I wanted to go.”
Alice frowned. “I can’t tell you about it. I don’t really know all the details, but something happened to my mom when she was pregnant with me. She asked for the majority of the award to be given to me since she had plenty of money through her parents and grandparents.”
“That’s right, your family is Hazzard Insurance, isn’t it?”
“Yeah… Good thing Mom isn’t a snob, or I’d never do anything but go to the right schools.”
“She seems like a nice lady. Is she single?”
“All my life. She won’t even say who my father is. I think she still holds a candle for him, though.”
“That’s a nice, old-fashioned phrase.”
“That’s how she is about him. When the subject comes up she gets all dewy-eyed and pink. It’s rather sweet.”
Drum took out a bottle and poured them each a shot. He shoved one across the table to Link.
“Gift from one of my grateful clients. Now, tell me about this job you want me to do for you.”
Link shifted uneasily, sipped from her glass. It was a liquor of some sort, deceptively strong beneath the sweetness.
“I want to find Jason MacDougal—the fellow who helped us during the riot.”
“I remember him—in a somewhat cloudy fashion. Good-looking boy, dark hair, dark eyes?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s the problem? You have a name and a description. I’m certain that you should be able to locate him.”
“So was I. He even mentioned that he lived in Scotland. However, apparently, there is no Jason MacDougal in all of Scotland who answers that description and was in New York the day of the Elshie riot.”
“Strange.”
“Yes. Apparently, even in the middle of the riot, he had the composure to give me a false name.”
“Well, you did the same to him.”
“A nom de plume.”
“Nitpicker.”
“I want you to find him for me. He saved both our lives and I feel I owe him something.”