I did my best to smile, but felt a little as if I was betraying Caz—not that I’d done anything or planned to, but this sudden emergence into a life of parties and fancy dress didn’t seem exactly in line with my mission, either. Still, it made a welcome change.
I just need to get the lay of the land, I told myself. I’m a spy, after all—an enemy agent. Nobody blames a spy for trying to blend in.
We were driven in a chauffeured car—Vera called it “the motor”—which was my first chance to see the vehicle that had run over me in front of the Terminus. It was long and low, but the front grille was armored like a train’s cowcatcher, so it was something of a miracle (if those were available here) that I’d survived the collision. The chauffeur was a thickset, nondescript man named Henri, silent as he opened the door for me and ushered me into the luxurious interior. He had a distinct, sickly odor to him, like formaldehyde. Also, I had stopped noticing the deformities in even the most ordinary looking citizens, but I couldn’t help noticing that Henri’s wide-set eyes were filmed over with milky cataracts. Not the most inspiring thing to see on your driver. Still, we zipped across town quickly and without incident. I was getting my first proper look at the Red City, and although we seemed to be traveling mostly through the richer neighborhoods, where wide streets were hemmed in by the tall walls of rich tower houses, there was still plenty of horror on display, a carnival sideshow of freaks and monsters staggering along the muddy streets. When we slowed at intersections clogged by heavy traffic—there are, of course, no traffic lights or stop signs in Hell—some of these street-folk looked as though they were considering approaching the car, perhaps to beg, perhaps with something more sinister in mind, but none of them ever did. A couple of times I actually saw someone pull a companion back, as if warning them that we were a bad target for whatever they planned.
“Sometimes when the fires are hot, the streets are simply unbearable,” said Vera, almost dreamily. “We are lucky, darling man, that the weather is mild tonight.”
“Mild” meant the heat and stench were manageable, but only because I was wearing a body made for Hell. Pandaemonium’s air felt so thick that I wanted to wave my arms as I walked to cut a path through it, and I never completely learned to ignore the acid stink. It was like standing over a boiling pot of urine.
Things were a little better once we were inside Vera’s friends’ house, a magnificent, shambling series of castle towers connected by horizontal branches like a coral formation. The angular rooms had been decorated in extreme rococo, gold leaf everywhere, fabulous wealth on display in every corner, but just in case I was tempted to forget where I was, the sculpture and paintings all portrayed brutal suffering, contorted figures and famous scenes of terror, including a detailed series of engravings of Joan of Arc being burned at the stake, which showed her body being eaten by flames even as she prayed and wept.
Other than the creepy taste in art, I couldn’t immediately spot anything hellish about Vera’s friend Elizabeth, another pretty young brunette, slenderer than my savior, who wore her hair piled high above her pale forehead. Her husband (or boyfriend—it wasn’t quite clear) Francis, did show signs of his citizenship: his bearded face and all visible skin were covered with bumps and pustules. It didn’t seem to matter to Elizabeth, who referred to him several times as “my great love” and “my only man.” They both wore Renaissance fashions that made my Victorian gear look quite modern, and their guests were dressed in clothes from at least a dozen eras, including styles I had never seen. If it hadn’t been for the obvious physical deformities of many of the guests, the whole thing would have looked like any old costume party. It was hard to reconcile the ungodly misery I knew lay all around us, and especially underneath us, with this cheerful happy hour gathering. In fact, for these rich demons it seemed more like an entire happy eternity of partying while the damned slaved for them. I should have been outraged, but I confess I was too worn out for outrage, and it was nice not to be running for my life.
What can one angel do, anyway? I thought. It’s been like this for thousands upon thousands of years. Blame God, not me.
One of the most disturbing guests was a man named Al, who had the look of a months-buried corpse, his eyes sunken and filmy, nose black with rot, and his suit covered in grave mold. Despite the unfestive appearance, he seemed quite at home, and at one point he leaned over to me and said in a confidential whisper, “You’ve fallen in with the best, lad. Couldn’t have struck better. Our sweet Lady Zinc is a wonderful woman.”
I smiled and nodded, but Al didn’t just look like a corpse, he smelled like one too, so I moved on.
I took a drink from a servant. It wasn’t all that much better than Riprash’s demon rum, but the glass was clean, and I could feel my demon body repairing the damage to my throat and stomach after each sip. The guests talked about many things, and as I moved restlessly from room to room I listened in on dozens of conversations, but I didn’t hear a single one mention anything about the past or their lives on Earth. Instead the talk was the sort of things rich people chatted about everywhere—the problem of finding good servants, gossip about their social set, and discussions of the best places to go on holiday. It was like hanging around with a bunch of rich fascists; after a while, I just stopped listening to the cruelty underneath the words and let it all wash over me. I did begin to feel a bit better about my chances of passing undetected, since they seemed like a pretty incurious lot. Nobody asked me a single question about my background or seemed to need any more information than that I was “Vera’s guest.” I was one of the crowd now, it seemed. The in crowd.
I found Vera and Elizabeth again in the main parlor, a candlelit room whose high ceilings were decorated with golden cobwebs. As we chatted, a young man who had been introduced to me earlier as “Fritz,” a handsome fellow in a military uniform, hurried up to us. Other than a ridiculously puffed-up chest under his military tunic, he was perhaps the most ordinary looking person in the room, at least by earthly standards, but there were a surprising number of demons there who looked nearly as human.
“Elizabeth!” he squealed to our hostess, “you’ll never guess who’s arrived!”
“Fritzi, my chicken, do you have to be so common?” Vera asked. “We’re gossiping.”
“Then I have something you’ll really like to gossip about,” he said, grinning. “The president himself is here.”
I turned, half-expecting to see Richard Nixon with a party box of wine coolers or something, but the figure coming through the door with a small entourage of lesser demons was unfamiliar to me, or so I thought, a tall, spare figure in a black tailcoat whose elongated face and sharp, curved nose made him look like a humanoid crow. Then I realized who he was. Even worse, he had actually met me in my Bobby Dollar body and might recognize me.
“Caym, the Grand President of the Council of Hell,” a servant announced loudly. This was the bastard who had run interference for Eligor at the big Heaven/Hell conference in San Jude, just before the grand duke tried to roast me like a marshmallow.
I couldn’t do anything but watch as that infernal raven, black eyes bright as blobs of oil, came toward us. Worst of all, he was looking right at me and beginning to smile.
I didn’t think it was a very nice smile at all.
twenty-three:
a long night at the opera
CAYM APPROACHED with a grin on his beaked face like the cat that ate the canary—except in his case it would have been the canary who ate the cat. My heart was pounding, and if hell-creature bodies could sweat I would have been dripping like a melting popsicle. I had only a couple of seconds to decide whether to run or stand my ground. If the grand president and his entourage hadn’t been between me and the front door I probably would have bolted, but I had already discovered that the rest of the sprawling house was a maze that I couldn’t navigate even with a compass, so I took a deep breath and waited.