I have visited the Contague digs under a range of circumstances. A man could live comfortably there. He could also go in and never be seen again.
Belinda told me, "He won't go anywhere before he's ready." One pallid finger, tipped by a long carmine nail, tapped the windowsill.
I nodded.
A patch of something lay there, glistening. Something drying out. It reminded me of the trail left by a migrating slug.
I whispered, "Send me a pound of salt."
She might have been Belinda Contague but she was a girl. She didn't know about salt and slugs. Puzzled, she said, "All right."
The healer announced, "I've done what I can. He won't die. But he will be a long time getting back to normal. He may have been stabbed with cursed blades."
That smelled religious, which made no sense. Morley had enemies who would happily poke him full of holes if they could get away with it. They weren't religious wackos, nor were they so abidingly nasty as to go after his soul as well as his life.
Belinda concluded, "Must be a woman." No man was that vindictive.
"I don't know what's been going on in his life. I see him only when we stop in at the Grapevine after a show. You know my situation."
"I tried to talk to Tinnie. I wanted her to know what's happening."
I didn't like her tone.
"I was polite and respectful, Garrett. She was not."
I really didn't like her tone. Tinnie could get hurt. "She's really insecure. ."
"I just tried to explain the situation. She didn't endear herself. It wasn't about her."
Almost certainly my dearly beloved had failed to become more intimate with fierce pain primarily because she was my dearly beloved. Could she be made to understand that anymore?
Tinnie couldn't have changed that much. How could she? She was brilliant. She understood the real world. She had shared its harsh realities with me. She could figure things out. She had discovered, years ago, that Tinnie Tate was not the center, fulcrum, or favorite child of the universe.
I had this chill like it was midnight on the boulevard, and I was fixing to whistle my way past the graveyard.
I had an epiphany. "We're seeing symptoms, not the disease."
Belinda grunted, more interested in watching slime dry.
I stopped worrying about my troubles and checked my pal. His color and breathing had improved. He looked ready to wake up.
The round cultist went away. Belinda and I looked at each other. We wore big, goofy grins.
I went right on having trouble believing there could be anything but business between her and Morley.
14
We were alone. The three of us. Morley fought the good fight, trying to escape his nightmares. I wandered my own realms of fear, where my ill-defined love for a friend might have cost me everything else I held dear. Belinda sat beside me on the cot. We leaned back against the door. She was so far gone off somewhere else I wondered if she could get back. Maybe she was trying to find Morley so she could lead him home.
She blurted, "I didn't get there in time."
"What? Where? In time for what?"
"Raisin's Bookshop. In time to round up Two Step Timmy."
No point correcting her. Her heart was in the right place, though maybe oddly shaped, hard, and cold.
"Made a run for it, did he?"
"Straight to the Al-Khar. The tin whistles beat me there."
"They get more efficient by the day. Hard on both of us."
"A few still appreciate a generous tip."
"Good to know. You get anything interesting?"
"Two Step said his interlocutor was a woman."
"Damn. Look at you. You been taking a class? Interlocutor?"
"Oh, yes. Look at me. Damned near as smart as your ratgirl."
"I'm too tired to squabble. I've got redheads on the brain."
"You'd salivate if you met this one. If Timmy told the truth."
Not many guys lie once they're inside the Al-Khar, and the truth is the only key to getting out.
"No more redheads."
"I'm talking red hot, not red hair. Young and with a flair for show. Two Step says she wore skintight black leather."
"You naughty girl."
"Not me, dolt. Not anymore. I sag in too many places to make it work."
Golden-tongue Garrett conceded, "I know that." And he didn't even realize he'd stepped in it.
"Oh, yes. That's why I love you. You say the sweetest things."
"I wish your whole species would dispense with that stuff. Can't talk about the damned weather without it turning into. ."
"Can it, Garrett. What Two Step said could mean we have a bigger problem."
"I'm listening."
"The one witness to the attack on Morley told me that a well-assembled girl in skintight black leather directed the creatures who stabbed him. She had about a cubic yard of bushy blond curls. The girl Two Step met was a short-haired brunette with intense brown eyes. The blonde, no telling about the eyes."
"Creatures?"
"Men in tight wool costumes with big gray eggs for heads."
"You didn't bother to tell me before?"
"I couldn't tell you what I didn't know then."
I got that. "Go see Puddle and Sarge. They might know what he was into." She didn't respond. I had just said something dumb. I guessed, "They didn't know anything."
"You are correct, sir. Morley walked out of the Grapevine after the late play rush. They never saw him again. And that was all they knew."
I had no trouble believing it. That was Morley Freaking Dotes, total individualist. "I guess all we can do is be patient and hope he gives us something when he wakes up."
"You're a screaming genius, Garrett. I'm so glad Morley and I have you for a friend."
"I am a special kind of guy."
15
The sun was up when I awakened. So was the queen of crime, in a good mood despite being caught in the inelegant process of riding a chamber pot. She pointed. "Look there."
"What am I supposed to notice?"
"We closed the curtains and the window."
Oh.
The curtains had been pushed aside. The window had been raised four inches. And the sill glistened with more dried slime.
"I never liked the kind of window that slides up and down."
"I don't know why I woke up when I did. I don't care. But when I did I saw what looked like a python oozing through the crack. It was about a yard in. I guess it was headed for Morley."
I eased over, studied the window close up. That allowed her some dignity at the same time. "A big snake? Really?"
"Not exactly. You saw real giant snakes when you were off in the islands. You probably wouldn't have been impressed. But that's what it looked like to me."
"It went away once it realized you were awake."
"After I hit it about twenty times with your club."
The woman was gorgeous and brilliant and evil, but she was no connoisseur of personal-use nonlethal defensive instruments. I carried nothing so mundane as a club.
"Why didn't you wake me up?"
"I hollered. You didn't even roll over. Then I was busy slamming the slime out of that damned thing."
"You should've poked me with the stick."
"I was distracted. I didn't think of that." And that was right in character. She hardly ever asked for help, even when she had no choice. This thing with Morley was a wonderment.
"All right. Tell me how it happened. In order. Exactly."
"I told you. There was this snake thing. I pounded on it till it pulled back. The shiny stuff is what it left. And, yes, I know we have to move Morley now because we can't totally protect him here."
Morley made a noise. I thought he wanted to say something. I was wrong. He had a problem with phlegm.
"That's a good sign, isn't it?"