In spite of all that, Fixx took a look at the card, even though in that moment he knew exactly what it would show. The sanctioned operative flipped the latch and the Korvette’s gullwing door rose.
The thief jerked in shock as he realised the car was occupied. “Oh. Shit.” He blinked and skipped back a few steps as Fixx got out. “Hey, uh. This isn’t my car!” He faked a frown. “What a silly mistake!”
Fixx handed the tarot card to him. “Here. This seem familiar?”
The kid read the name on the bottom, eyes narrowing. “Knight ofWands. Huh. He kinda looks a little like me. ”
“How ’bout that?” Fixx grinned. “Yeah. Curtain’s going up now.”
There were footsteps coming and they turned to see a group of men in spaciously cut suits approach at a run. All of the new arrivals were carrying guns, and they exchanged confused looks at the sight of the black man and his car.
“Hold it, Ko, you little punk!” snapped one of them. “You brought this on yourself!”
Fixx raised a hand. “A moment, gentlemen. If you’ll just allow me…” He drew the bones from his pocket and scattered them across the Korvette’s bonnet. The op bent low, examining the turn and placement of them. He glanced at the youth. “Ah-yuh.” In a flash, he gathered the bones back up again. Papa Legba had told him what it was he had been waiting for.
One of the men came close, reaching out a hand. “Keep out of this-”
Fixx broke his gun arm and the enforcer’s pistol fell at Ko’s feet. As the kid scrambled for it, Fixx punched the triad gunsel off balance and bounced his head off the Korvette’s roof.
The other men opened fire, and Fixx cut low, the SunKings leaping into his hands. The boy was letting off wild shots, doing the best that he could. Fixx went for short, controlled bursts from his silver pistols.
Close misses keened off the bulletproof windscreen and the dirty concrete. Fixx drilled each enforcer in turn, going for disabling hits when he could, outright kills when he couldn’t. The kid, this Ko, emptied the revolver and then ducked in cover behind the car.
Fixx shot the last man in the leg and strode back to the Korvette, reloading as he went. Mercifully, no stray shots had gone into the vehicle’s electronics. The op took his seat and opened the passenger door. “So,” he said conversationally. “You need a lift.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’ll take my chances, thanks.”
“No you won’t. You’re smarter than that.”
The youth gingerly got in. “I’m Ko,” he coughed.
“Joshua Fixx.” his hand. “Pleasure.”
Ko still had the tarot card. “You, uh, want this back?”
“In a while.” The sports car growled into life and raced away.
Fatigue engulfed her in a slow, warm wave, drawing Juno down on to the bed and into the cool embrace of the silken sheets. She had a brief moment of sense-memory, there and then gone, just the quickest taste of Frankie’s musk upon her lips; she wanted to hold on to it, but it disintegrated beneath her scrutiny, the way that ancient paper became dust when you crushed it in your fingers.
Was it daylight outside? She couldn’t tell any more. After all the travelling, every rootless moment of motion inside and outside, she had gone beyond a point where she could reckon herself against a watch. She lived on Juno Time now, where every hour was Me O’clock, her needs fulfilled as long as she never stepped outside of the bubble. And why would she? Out beyond the safety zone that dear old Heywood and the nice men at RedWhiteBlue granted her, well, she knew there were people there who loved her, but there were also the scary ones. The ones that posted dead animals to the fan club, or sent her emails of themselves wearing clothes of hers that her maids had stolen to sell on iBuy.
Still. At times she felt the urge bubbling inside her, the need to go and walk in the real world without legions of cameras and men whose only jobs were to plot and scheme over the content of her every breath, her every move. She could get out if she wanted to, really wanted to. Juno knew a way.
She shifted and felt the bed move with it, gently closing around her. She blinked, trying to shake away the dark shades hovering at the far edges of her vision, there in the pools of inky shadow behind the hotel suite’s curtains, or in the places where light didn’t fall beneath the furniture. Her mouth was suddenly arid. She felt… she felt… She felt wrong somehow, uncomfortable no matter how much she moved, as if it were her skin that fitted her wrongly, not the cloying touch of the silk.
The woman kicked at the bedclothes with sudden violence. She wanted them off her, but they refused to budge. Juno rolled over and pulled. The bed shifted back with tendrils of gossamer material and dragged her down. Juno opened her mouth to cry out, but her lips, her dry lips were stuck together.
Outside the window there was the sound of cats yowling, the whispering of voices that came from placid porcelain faces, hidden eyes under unmoving masks. Juno flailed for the edges of the bed and couldn’t find them. Her hands sank into pools of brilliant blue capsules, glittering candy-coloured shapes that tingled when she touched them. The dusty interior of her mouth craved them, begged for the refreshing bursts of fluid inside. Invisible hands. Know zen. Bubble in the stream.
The room had become dark while her mind was elsewhere. The curtains, thick and heavy brocade flapping in a pre-storm breeze, they came open now and then to show her glimpses of a distant green mountaintop, and beyond it a purple sky lit by silent lightning. Where was the thunder? Why wasn’t there any thunder?
Juno pushed very hard at her lips and forced a word out of her mouth; it came apart in fragments, blue and black and green and yellow. She spoke in colours and not sounds, rainbows of light erupting. It made her cry.
Balling the slick sheets in her grip, Juno forced her way up. Her eyes would not close, no matter how hard she tried to seal them. By chilling inches, the contents of the room began to haze over and change, turning from wood and paper and cloth into glass and glass and glass. Everything had edges like razors, all of them pointing inwards to scrape at her eyes.
Mirrors. Everywhere there were mirrors. Talking mirrors that screamed and cried or made sounds that could have been songs.
And here came the shapes again, the moving things in the shadows under the glassy madness. The Angels of Pain. The serpents and the worms, and over her head, somewhere in the rafters kilometres above, a dragon made of dark jade, watching. Waiting for something. Waiting for her to sing to him. The Lord of Bliss ready for her to serenade…
Juno forced herself up and curled her hands around her naked, shivering form, fighting to shake off the dream; but it clung to her like a film of oil, coating every surface, reflecting pieces of her life back at her.
Ocean Terminal, the screaming crowds. The upturned faces in the Hyperdome. Outside the Yuk Lung tower. Heywood’s hands around her throat…
She choked, her back arching with pain; and suddenly she saw that moment, watching it unfold from a place behind the frosted door in the upper deck of the limobus, the lights of the Lantau Expressway flicking past outside. She observed…
Herself? Juno Qwan, behind a pair of Minnuendo sunglasses, the Inverse Smile chapeau, the Dior dress, the Westlake pumps. Her face taut and morose. Juno Here watching Juno There, detached, an observer.
The Other Juno is irrational and she’s making high-pitched noises that could be words, but she sounds like she’s underwater. Other Juno reaching for a bowl of the gorgeous blue pills, so many of them. Heywood stops her, there’s a blur of motion and those Minnuendos, a two thousand yuan limited edition from the Fall Catalogue, they fall from her face as he strikes her with the base of his hand.