The Jennifer Morgue l-3

by Charles Stross

  "Go to bed," she repeats, a trifle more forcefully. "I haven't eaten yet. Don't tempt me."

  I beat a hasty retreat back through the casino. On my way out, I go through the side room where they keep the slot machines. I pass Pinky — at least, I'm half-sure it's Pinky — creating a near riot among the blue-rinse set by playing an entire row of one-armed bandits in sequence and winning big on each one. I don't think he notices me. Just as well: I'm not in the mood for small talk right now.

  Damn it, I know it's just the effects of a class three glamour, but I can't stop thinking about Ramona — and Mo's flying in tomorrow.

  6: CHARLIE VICTOR

  I MAKE IT BACK TO MY HDTEL ROOM WITHOUT BETTING lost, falling asleep on my feet, or accidentally looking at the screen saver. I slump in the chair for a while, but there's nothing on TV except an adventure movie starring George Lazenby, and it'll take more than that to keep me awake. So I hang out the DO NOT DISTURB sign, undress, and go to bed.

  I fall asleep almost instantly, but it's not very restful because I'm in someone else's head, and I really don't want to be there. Last time this happened, the fifty-something engineering salesman from Dusseldorf trapping off with the blonde call girl was just sad, and a bit pathetic on the side; this time it feels dirty. I (no, he: I struggle to hold myself aside from his sense of self) work out daily in a gym round the corner from the casino before I go in to work, and it's not just pumping iron and running on a track — there's stuff I don't recognize, practice routines with odd twisting and punching and kicking motions, somatic memories of beating people up and the warm sensual excitement that floods me when I stomp some fucking idiot for getting in my face. I've had a call from the customer, and I'm about ready to go off work and go looking for the merchandise he wants, when this blonde American princess comes out of the salle and what do you know, but she's giving me a come-on? She's lost the rich nerd she showed up with, and good riddance; guess I'll have to take her home and that means ... yeah, she'll do. Two birds, one stone, so to speak. Or two stones, in my case. Mind you, she's a customer — I'll just have to be discreet. So I smile at her and make nicey-nice while she giggles, then I offer to buy her a drink and she says, "Yes," and I tell her to meet me over the road at the Sunset Beach Bar so I can show her the town. She heads off, shaking her booty, and I go and get squared away.

  Time to do another line of Charlie in the John.

  Checking out, walking over the road I get that thrill of arousal. I'm on top of the world again with cold fire coursing through my veins, like the time in the village near Bujumbura when Jacques and I caught that kid stealing and we — the memory skids away from me as if it's made of grease, only an echo of the blood and shit-smell of it and the screams lingering in my ears — and I get the hot tension again, like lightning seeking a path to earth. Sex, that'll help.

  Long as she doesn't make a fuss.

  She's waiting for me on a bar stool, legs crossed and face hopeful. Plump cheeks, lips like throttled ... I let my face smile at her and order her a drink and make chitchat. She smiles sympathetically and asks me questions trying to find out if I have — hey! She's worried I might have a regular girlfriend, the stupid cunt, so I explain that no my Elouise died in a car crash two years ago and I have been mourning since.

  She's so stupid she laps it up, asks me lots of questions and sounds concerned. I figure I'll drop her off with the rich guy's pilot at Anse Marcel tomorrow: but first we'll have some fun together. I act coy but let her draw me out because half the bitches want to be fucked hard by a stranger, they just have to convince themselves he's sensitive and caring at first to get over their inhibitions. After a while she looks at me slack-mouthed like she's already dripping, and I figure it's time. So I ask if she wants to come back to my place and she accepts.

  We walk — it's only three blocks — and she doesn't bat an eyelid at the rubbish and the locked shutters. I show her upstairs and unlock the door, and when I turn back to pull her inside she actually gropes me! Normally they get cold at this point and start making excuses but this is going really smooth. I'm hard, of course, and when she kisses me I get an arm round her and start hiking up her skirt. The Rohypnol's in the fridge and it'd be more sensible to slip it to her first, then add a geas on top for safety's sake, but what the hell, she seems willing enough. This one really does seem to want a rough fuck — shame for her she doesn't know about the customer but those are the breaks. I pick her up and carry her inside, kick the door shut, then dump her on the bed and jump her. And the funny thing is she lets me, she doesn't fight, and my heart is in my mouth pounding away between her legs, wet meat, warm meat, it's like she doesn't even know the father says it's wrong to do this beat my meat it's not ever this easy and I can't let her talk afterwards even though she's biting my shoulder and sucking me, and oh father my chest hurts — I open my eyes and stare at the hotel ceiling until my pulse begins to slow. I'm engorged and erect and freezing cold on the damp sheets, and I feel as if I'm about to throw up. "Ramona!" I croak, my larynx still half-paralyzed with sleep.

  **The fucker just flatlined on me!** I can't feel his mind anymore, but he's lying on top of her, still twitching spastically, and I can taste her desperation and fear. **He must have had a dodgy heart, done one line too many. Finish me off, Bob!**

  **What — ** I realize I've been holding my penis and yank my hands away as if they're covered in chili oil.

  **Finish me off! Please!** I can sense her succubus now, coiling like a black vortex of emptiness behind her conscious thoughts. There's nothing human about it, nothing warm — it's like death itself, not the small oblivion of orgasm but its complete antithesis, freezing and vacant, a hunger for life. It needs filling, it's searching for a sacrifice and she'd set her eyes on Marc but he checked out early and now — **It needs a little death to go with the big one, and the longer you wait the hungrier it gets.** She sounds breathless. **If you don't give it one it'll eat me, and you may think that would be a good thing but in case it's escaped your attention we're entangled — **

  **But I — ** I want Mo, don't I? Don't I? Mo isn't hiding behind a glamour. Mo doesn't eat people like a fuck-vampire.

  Mo isn't a drop-dead gorgeous blonde, she's just Mo, and we're probably going to end up getting married sooner or later, and I feel guilty and frightened because Mo won't understand what Ramona wants me to do.

  **But nothing!** I can sense Ramona's arousal and, behind it, a canker of upwelling fear. **Jesus, Bob, do something, please help me here ...!** She's helpless and small before the emptiness of her hunger, and Mo isn't here, and neither is she. I feel the empty hunger, and I try to wall it out, but Ramona needs me. She's teetering on the edge of an orgasm, the hunger is waiting for her, and if she meets it alone she won't come out the other side alive. I can't not do it.

  Can I?

  **I'm not cleared for sex magick,** I tell her, gritting my teeth. But she sends me a touch-sense picture of herself: the warm weight on her chest, Marc's head lolling, the turgid stretch of her vulva occupied by a dead man's dick, a delicious sense of proximity to catastrophic nothingness, teetering on the edge of a cliff — and I clutch myself and begin to spasm wildly because I'm still massively turned on from the overspill of her sex. The sense of doom recedes immediately, and then something I wasn't expecting happens — Ramona comes, taking me completely by surprise.

  She goes on and on and on until I'm almost ready to scream for mercy. Finally the waves of sensation finally begin to slow down and recede, leaving her panting and pinned beneath Marc's cooling cadaver. A warm afterglow floods her with life. I can feel her reveling in it.

  **Thank you,** she says fervently, and I can't tell at first whether she's talking to me or to the dead serial rapist. **If you hadn't joined in, it would have had me for sure.** The corpse's head lolls on her shoulder, a drop of spittle dangling from his mouth. She reaches up and shoves it aside. **Was it good for you, too?** she asks, and tenderly kisses his soft, unresponsive lips.

&n
bsp; My skin crawls. **You enjoyed that a whole lot,** I tell her before I bite my tongue. But it's too late.

  **You enjoy eating, too, but pleasure's not the only reason you do it,** she snaps. **And don't tell me you didn't enjoy this.** I cringe at her anger: What will Mo say when she finds out? It's not sex — no, it's just having a simultaneous orgasm with a consenting adult, my conscience jabs me. Oh hell, what a mess. I gingerly sit up and shuffle towards the bathroom and a late-night appointment with the shower.

  **Hey, what about me?** Ramona complains bitterly, bracing herself to dislodge the drained husk of her prey.

  **I don't want to taik about it right now,** I mutter. I twist the shower dial, feeling dirty.

  **Typical fucking male ...**

  **Look who's talking! You're a real piece of work.** I turn the temperature right up until it hurts, then bite my tongue and stand underneath it. **You wanted to get into my pants, didn't you?**

  **Anyone ever tell you you're an asshole, monkey-boy? If I wanted you I'd have had you right there on the casino balcony, instead of nearly dying in a shit-hole.** She's working on getting her clothes back into a semblance of order. Marc lies on the floor beside the bed. She lashes out and kicks him hard enough to hurt my toes and I suddenly realize she's shaking with adrenalin, the aftermath of a terror trip.

  **Bastard!** She's really scared. That's my conscience talking; he's been beating on the door for the past couple of minutes but I've only just heard him over the racket in my head. Why wouldn't she be telling the truth? I swallow, forcing back stomach acid. She likes me. Fuck knows why.

  I force myself to come up with an apology. **Being scared makes me more of an asshole than usual.** It sounds weak in the silence afterwards, but I don't know what else to say.

  **You bet,** she says tightly. **Go back to bed, Bob. I won't bother you again tonight. Sweet dreams.** I wake up with the early morning light from the window as it streams in across my face. One of my arms is lying over the edge of the bed, and the other is twisted around someone's shoulders — What the fuck? I think fuzzily.

  It's Ramona. She's curled up against me on top of the sheets, sleeping like a baby. She's still wearing her glad rags, her hair a wild tangle. My breath catches with fear or lust or guilt, or maybe all three at the same time: guilty, fearful lust.

  I can't make up my mind whether I want to gnaw my arm off at the shoulder or ask her to elope with me.

  Eventually I work out a compromise. I sit up, slowly pulling my arm out from under her: "How do you take your coffee"

  "Uh?" She opens her eyes. "Oh ...hi." She looks puzzled.

  "Where am I... oh." Mild annoyance: "I take it black. And strong." She yawns, then rolls over and begins to sit up.

  Yawns again. "I need to use your bathroom." She looks displeased, and it's not just her eyeliner running: somehow she looks older, less inhumanly perfect. The glamour's still there, masking her physical shape, but what I'm seeing now is unfogged by implanted emotional bias.

  "Be my guest." I walk over to the filter machine and start prodding at it, trying to figure out where the sachet of coffee goes. My head's spinning — "How did you get in here"

  "Don't you remember"

  "No."

  "Well that makes two of us," she says as she closes the door. A moment later I hear the sound of running water and realize too late that I need to use the bathroom, too.

  Oh, great. There was the, whatever the fuck you call it, with the predator, Marc — and she needed me to — I try not to think too closely about it. I remember that much. How the hell did she get in here? I ask myself.

  I get the coffee maker loaded and go prod my tablet PC.

  It's sitting where I left it last night, with a clear line of sight on the door and window, and it's still up and running. I look too closely and the ward tries to bite me between the eyes but misses. Good. So then I go and inspect the other wards I put on the door by opening it and gingerly pulling in the DO NOT DISTURB sign. The silver diagram, sketched on the sign using a conductive pencil and a drop of blood, shimmers at me. It's still live: anyone other than me who tries to get past it is going to get a very unpleasant surprise. Finally, as the coffee maker begins to spit and burble, I check the seal on the window. My mobile phone (the real one, the Treo with the Java countermeasure suite and the keyboard and all the trimmings, not the bullet-firing fake) is still propped up against it.

  I glance up and down, then shake my head. There are no holes in the walls and ceiling, which means Ramona can't be here — the place is about as secure as a hotel room can be, stitched up tighter than Angleton's ass.

  "I don't want to hurry you or anything, but I need the toilet, too," I call through the door.

  "Okay, okay! I'm nearly ready." She sounds annoyed.

  "Are you sure you don't remember how you got in here"

  I add.

  The door opens. She's repaired her glamour and is every bit the air-brushed, drop-dead gorgeous model she was when I first saw her in the Laguna Bar: only the eyes are different.

  Old and tired.

  "How much of what happened last night do you remember"

  she asks.

  "I — " I stop. "What, do you mean after we met Billington? Or after I left the casino"

  "Did we leave together?" She frowns.

  "You don't — " I bite my tongue and stare at her. How did you get into my room? Maybe it's a side effect of destiny entanglement — my wards can't tell us apart. "I had some really weird dreams," I say then hold out a coffee cup for her.

  "Well, that's a surprise." She snorts then takes the cup.

  "But it doesn't have to mean anything."

  "It doesn't — " I stop dead. "I dreamed about you," I say reluctantly. I find it really hard to pick the right words. "You were with some guy you'd picked up who worked at the casino."

  She looks me in the eye calmly. "You dreamed about me, Bob. Things happen in dreams that don't always happen in real life."

  "But he died while you were in bed with — "

  "Bob?" Her eyes are greenish blue, flecks of gold floating in them, rimmed in expensive eyeliner that makes them look wide and innocent — but somehow they're deeper than an arctic lake, and much colder. "For once in your life, shut up and listen to me. Okay"

  She's got the Voice of Command. I find myself leaning against the wall with no definite memory of how I got here.

  "What"

  "Primus, we're destiny-entangled. I can't do anything about that. You stub your toe, I hurt'; I call you names, you get pissy. But you're making a big mistake. Because, secundus, you had a weird dream. And you're jumping to the conclusion that the two are related, that whatever you dreamed about is whatever happened to me. And you know what?

  That ain't necessarily so. Correlation does not imply causation.

  Now — " she reaches over and pokes me in the chest with a fingertip " — you seem a little upset over whatever it was you dreamed about. And I think you ought to think very hard before you ask the next question, because you can choose to ask whether there was any connection between your weird dream and my night out — or you can just tell yourself you ate too many cheese canapes before bed and it was all in your head, and you can walk away from it. Is that clear? We may be entangled, but it doesn't have to go any further."

  She stands there expectantly, obviously anticipating a reply. I'm rooted to the spot by the force of her gaze. My pulse roars in my ears. I don't — truly I don't — know what to do! My mind spins. Did I simply have a wet dream last night? Or did Ramona suck a serial rapist's soul right out of his body then use me for sex magick to keep her daemon in check ...? And do I really want to know the truth? Really?

  I feel my lips moving without any conscious decision.

  "Thank you. And if you don't mind, I'm going to un-ask that question for the time being."

  "Oh, I mind all right." A flash of unidentifiable emotion flickers in her eyes like distant lightning. "But don't worry about me, I'm used to it.
I'll be all right after breakfast." She glances down, breaking eye contact. "Jesus, stripy pajamas.

  It's too early in the morning for that."

  "Hey, it's all I've got, anyway, it's better than sleeping in a tux." I raise an eyebrow at her dress. "You're going to have to get that professionally cleaned."

  "No, really?" She takes a mouthful of coffee. "Thanks for the tip, monkey-boy, I'd never have guessed. I'll be going back to my room when I finish this." Another mouthful.

  "Got any plans for today"

  I pause for thought. "I need to touch base with my backup team and file a report with head office. Then I'm supposed to visit a tailor's shop. After which — " a ghost of a dream memory gibbers and capers for attention " — I heard there's a nice beach up at Anse Marcel. I figure I might hang out there for a while. How about you"

  I eat breakfast on a balcony overlooking an expanse of white beach, trying not to flinch as the occasional airbus rumbles past on final approach into Princess Juliana Airport. Midway through a butter croissant that melts on the tongue, my Treo rings: "Howard!"

  "Speaking." I get a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach: it's Griffin.

  "Get yourself over here, chop-chop. We've got a situation."

  Shit. "What kind of situation? And where's here"

  "Face time only." He rattles off an address somewhere near Mullet Beach and I jot it down...

  "Okay, I'll be over in half an hour."

  "Make sure you are!" He hangs up, leaving me staring at my phone as if it's turned into a dead slug in my hand. What a way to start a day: Griffin's found something to go nonlinear over. I shake my head in disgust. As if I haven't got enough problems already.

  I'm just about up and running on local time. Even so, it takes me a while to figure out my way to the address Griffin gave me. It turns out to be a holiday villa, white clapboard walls and wooden shutters overlooking the road behind the beachfront. The temperature's already up to the mid-twenties and rising as I trudge towards the front door. I'm about to knock when it opens and I find myself eyeball to hairy eyeball with Griffin.