Jamie shuddered, and Parker said, with surprising authority, “Come on, Keller, move your ass.”
She was all right, Parker was.
He ended the day where he’d begun it, in the BPI clinic. Mick was awake now, a little owlish still with the sedative and somewhere between mortified and furious at what Veronica Braggman had done to him.
The decon team had lifted the ill-wishing off Jamie, although it had taken them three tries before they were sure they had all of it, and somewhere else in the BPI’s sprawling bulk, that lady was doubtless being fingerprinted and tested and, Jamie hoped, fed.
“Ironic that she’s probably going to end up better off,” Mick said.
“ ’Less she goes to the electric chair.”
Mick shook his head. “She’ll be found insane, and they’ll put her in Leabrook.”
“You sound awful sure.”
“I was . . . well, I wasn’t in her head, exactly, but something like it. The reverse of it, maybe. She’s insane.”
“And four people are dead.”
Mick raised his eyebrows. “You sound like you think your halo’s a little tarnished on this one.”
“Fuck off, Mick.” He couldn’t leave—they wanted to keep him under observation overnight, and Lila’d had a fit about that, too—but he got up to pace. Up and back, the room not really long enough to accommodate his stride, but it was better than sitting still with Mick sneering at him.
“Jamie?”
He swung round to give Mick a glare, and maybe a piece of his mind, but Mick was looking at him wide-eyed, solemn and a little taken aback, and Jamie’s anger drained out of him.
“I’m sorry,” Mick said. “You wanna tell me what I did?”
“You were just being your usual charming self. I’m sorry. Shouldn’t’ve flown off the handle like that.”
“I don’t mind. Except you usually don’t. It’s more my speed, isn’t it?”
Jamie thought of some of the tantrums Mick had pitched and grinned reluctantly. “I just . . . she’s not a nice old lady, you know.”
“Parker gave me the highlights,” Mick said, rather dryly. “But I don’t see why that’s got your tail in a knot. You caught her, you know. Justice will be served.”
“Yeah, but she was right.”
“I’m sorry?”
“All those people walking past her every day. Probably most of them ain’t nice, either. Who says they have any right to good clothes and a warm place to sleep? Who says they deserve it more than her?”
“Nobody,” Mick said. He was eyeing Jamie cautiously now. “You still feeling like yourself, Keller?”
“It ain’t that,” Jamie said and started pacing again. “It’s just, how come she ended up the villain here?”
“Because she started killing people.”
“You said it yourself. She’s crazy. And she’s crazy because somehow she got fucked over and spat out in little pieces. Blame The Victim isn’t a nice game, Sharpton.”
“Nor is Pin The Blame On The Donkey.” Mick slid off the bed, gawky and angular in the clinic’s ugly gown. He approached Jamie slowly, put one bony hand on Jamie’s biceps. “Jamie, it isn’t your fault.”
“I know that. Nobody’s fault, really. Or everybody’s. Just another clusterfuck of modern life.”
“We do the best we can, instead of the worst,” Mick said. “That’s all we can do.”
“I know,” Jamie said, not turning to face Mick, because he knew the particular kind of courage it took for Mick to offer comfort and just how fragile that courage was. “I just hate it that that’s not enough sometimes, you know?”
“Yeah,” Mick said, his hand warm and heavy and vital on Jamie’s arm. “I know.”
Sarah Monette lives in a 106-year-old house in the Upper Midwest with a great many books, two cats, and one husband. Her first four novels were published by Ace Books. Her short stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, and Lady Churchillís Rosebud Wristlet, among other venues, and have been reprinted in several Year’s Best anthologies. The Bone Key, a 2007 collection of interrelated short stories, was re-issued last year in a new edition. A non-themed collection, Somewhere Beneath Those Waves, was published in 2011. Sarah has written three novels (A Companion to Wolves, The Tempering of Men, and the soon-to-be-published An Apprentice to Elves) and several short stories with Elizabeth Bear. Her next novel, The Goblin Emperor, will come out under the name Katherine Addison. Visit her online at www.sarahmonette.com.
The Case: A man who believes he’s sold his soul has, for ten years, received just what he bargained for: success. But now the decade is drawing to an end, he’s in despair, and needs some professional help.
The Investigator: Quincey Morris, occult investigator and great-grandson of Quincey P. Morris, who had a hand in destroying a certain Count Dracula in the nineteenth century.
DEAL BREAKER
Justin Gustainis
“You’re not an easy man to find, Mr. Morris,” Trevor Stone said. “I’ve been looking for you for some time.”
“It’s true that I don’t advertise, in the usual sense,” Quincey Morris told him. “But people who want my services usually manage to get in touch, sooner or later—as you have, your own self.” Although there was a Southwestern twang to Morris’s speech, it was muted—the inflection of a native Texan who has spent much of his time outside the Lone Star State.
“I would have preferred sooner,” Stone said tightly. “As it is, I’m almost . . . almost out of time.”
Morris looked at his visitor more closely. Trevor Stone appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He was blond, clean-shaven, and wearing a suit that looked custom made. There was a sheen of perspiration on the man’s thin face, although the air conditioning in Morris’s living room kept the place comfortably cool—anyone spending a summer in Austin, Texas without air conditioning is either desperately poor or incurably insane.
Morris thought the man’s sweat might be due to either illness or fear. “Are you unwell?” he asked.
Stone gave a bark of unpleasant laughter. “Oh, no, I’m fine. The picture of health, and likely to remain so for another”—he glanced at the gold Patek Philippe on his wrist—“two hours and twenty-eight minutes.”
Fear, then.
Morris kept his face expressionless as he said, “That would bring us to midnight. What happens then?”
Stone was silent for a few seconds. “You ever play Monopoly, Mr. Morris?”
“When I was a kid, sure.”
“So, imagine landing on Community Chest and drawing the worst Monopoly card of all time—one that reads Go to Hell. Go directly to Hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”
It was Morris’s turn for silence. He finally broke it by saying, “Tell me. All of it.”
The first part of Trevor Stone’s story was unexceptional. A software engineer by training, he had gone to work in Silicon Valley after graduation from Cal Tech. Soon, he had made enough money out of the Internet boom to start up his own dot-com company with a couple of college buddies. They all made out like bandits—until the bottom fell out in the Nineties, taking most of the dot-commers with it.