The Rhino tilted his head, sharply, blank eyes staring at nothing. "My word? You would trust this?"
"Yeah," I said, and realized, as I did, that I meant it.
The Rhino was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded and said, "Until they are dealt with and for twenty-four hours after."
Because he didn't want me pitching him into the pokey if we managed to survive. Understandable. "No rampaging while you're here, and you leave town peacefully after. Deal?"
He nodded. "Done."
I picked up his glass and got him some more water, and a glass of my own. Then I gave him his glass, clinked mine against it, and we drank in silence.
Suddenly, rap music with a lot of bass and someone chanting "Unh, unh, unh-unh yeeeeaaaaah" blared through the room.
"What is that?" I asked.
The Rhino tossed off the rest of the water, set the glass aside, and said, "Is me." He fumbled a bit at the rhinoceros hat, then patted his legs and chest before saying, "Ah," and ripping open a panel in the gray-armored suit I had never seen before. The sound of Velcro tearing scratched through the room, and the music got louder as the Rhino produced a little cell phone from the hidden pocket. It looked grotesquely tiny for his enormous, blunt hands. He put it to his ear and said, "Da."
His jaw clenched.
He held the phone out in my general direction. "For you."
Well. That couldn't be good.
I took the phone and put it to my ear. "Da," I said in my best growling Russian accent. "Ivan's Pizza Shack. Ivan take your order."
There was a moment of puzzled silence, and then Mortia's cool, quiet voice asked, "Is this the spider?"
"If it isn't," I said, "he's going to be upset when he finds me running around in his tighty-whities."
"Your kind," she said, "are irritating in the extreme."
"Oh gosh," I said. "Now I'm going to blush, you sweet talker. We can go on like this, but I should warn you that your credit card will be billed at two ninety-nine per minute."
Mortia's voice got colder. "Spider. I grow weary of you. Listen well, for I will not repeat myself, nor make this offer again."
I let my tone get harder. "Speak."
"The Metro Used Auto Center in Flushing. Twenty minutes before dawn."
"Why?"
"Because it is more convenient to meet you there than to expend resources upon my optional initiative."
My stomach fluttered and felt cold. "Which is?"
"Look out the window to your left."
I froze for a second. Then I turned my head, just enough to see out the window.
Mortia crouched on a four-inch-wide windowpane across the street, on a level with Aunt May's place, balanced easily on her heels. She had a phone to her ear, and the wind blew her hair and coat around her in a fashion every bit as chilling and unsettling as Venom on a good day. She stared at me, at my partial profile, with the emotionless patience of a shark waiting for a bleeding seal to weaken.
It was scary.
I turned sharply away before she could see any more of my face.
"Meet me there," she said. "If you do not, I will kill you where you stand."
"You think you'd get away with—"
"Whether you escape or die," she continued, "my staff will detonate the explosive charges currently planted on the building in order to cover our tracks. There are, at present, nearly fourteen hundred people in your building. Including one hundred and twenty-six children."
At which point, the fear vanished, replaced by raw anger.
"And if I meet you?" I asked.
"Then I will withdraw my staff and the threat to the innocent."
"How do I know you won't blow up the building anyway?" I said.
"I have no interest in the residents. Only in you. "Vbu have five seconds to decide."
"I don't need one."
I snarled. "I was planning on pounding you to scrap in any case. See you there." Then I hung up on her, turning enough to watch her indirectly.
Her eyes glittered, a weird and somehow insectoid sight, and then she leapt from the ledge in a flicker of black cloth and white teeth, and was gone.
I leaned down and put the phone back into the Rhino's hand. "What does she want?" he asked.
"A beating," I said.
Tough words.
But the bottom line was that in all probability, I'd be dead by the time the sun rose once more.
Chapter 18
I WENT INTO THE BEDROOM and shut the door behind me. Mary Jane took one look at my face and went pale.
"Peter?" she whispered.
I sat down slowly on the bed while she hovered over me.
"The thing is," I heard myself say, "you've got to feel the traffic around you. You've got to have your eyes watching other people, making sure some idiot isn't about to turn in front of you. The laws, the lights, changing lanes, all of that really isn't hard at all. Most people can drive while they're half asleep and stand a reasonable chance of arriving safely anyway. You just have to keep an eye out for the idiots. It's the idiots that mess up an otherwise decent system of transportation. As long as you know you've got your eye on any potential morons, it's a lot easier to feel confident about the rest of it."
She shook her head, lips pressed tightly together.
"It's like listening to music, You know it when something starts going wrong. You know how it's supposed to sound, and when you hear that first difference, that's when you know you've got to look sharp. Or like science. You know what's supposed to be in a given environment, and when something changes, you can see it, see what caused it. It's the same on the road. You listen for the change in music. You watch for the active variable. That's really all there is to driving, MJ."
She sat down with me. "Peter. You're scaring me."
"I just… I just don't want you thinking that this driving test is something big or complicated. It's simple. Sometimes the simple things aren't easy. But it isn't anything that's going to stop you for long. You'll beat it."
She took my face in both hands and made me look at her. "What happened?"
I told her about the Rhino's blindness and Mortia's phone call.
"So. I guess we'll have this finished by dawn," I said.
We sat together in silence for a minute.
"I have to go," I said. "If I don't…"
Mary Jane gave me a quiet smile. Then murmured, "Yet do I fear thy nature; it is too full o' the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way."
"What's that mean in English?" I asked her.
She kissed me. "That I love you."
We held hands for a while. Then she said, "Can you win?"
"Not that it matters," I said. "But I think so. If I could figure out how."
"You always do," she said.
"Yeah," I said, without really meaning it. "Maybe something will come to me."
"Well," she said quietly, "you'll need some dinner. And to get some sleep, if you can."
Sleep. Right.
"Come on," she said. "You'd better introduce me to our guest."
"MJ…" I said.
"He's our guest, Peter. Didn't you invite him to stay? Offer your protection to him? Didn't he agree to a truce?"
"Yes," I said. "But…"
"Then he's probably hungry, too. I'll see what I can put together." She stood up to leave.
I touched her wrist and said, "Just, uh. Be careful of him. All right? Don't go within reach of him. I'll move him to the couch."
"Where is he now?" she asked.
"Um. The kitchen floor."
"Oh,
Peter, for goodness' sake."
"I'll move him," I said. "As long as you promise to be careful."
"All right," she said.
"Oh," I said. "One more thing…"
* * *
"I am curious," said the Rhino as he sat on most of Aunt May's couch, with a cup of hot tea. The Rhino hat occupied the leftover space beside him.