by Tim Waggoner
I looked at Deacon. “That’s impossible. You know something about everything.”
Then Deacon did something I’d never seen him do before. He drew a dusty bottle from beneath the counter, along with a pewter mug that looked as if he’d picked it up at a Renn faire. He pulled the cork out of the bottle with his teeth and then poured something that looked like hot tar and smelled like rotting fish into the mug. He started to put the cork back in the bottle, reconsidered, and put the cork on the counter. He then downed the mug’s contents in a series of massive gulps that made me think of a predatory animal swallowing large chunks of meat. Watching him made me feel queasy, and, when he finished, he drew the back of his hand across his mouth and almost slammed the mug down on the counter.
“That’s what’s got my undies in a bunch,” he said. “I should’ve heard something. A whispered insinuation. A stray rumor. A half-baked theory.”
“So we’re talking about an individual – or more likely a group – who is extremely powerful and well-connected,” Jinx said.
“If it’s a group, it would have to be a small one,” I said. “It would be easier to keep the details of the operation secret that way.”
“And they would have to be feared,” Mordacity added. “Otherwise, their street-level sellers might be tempted to turn on them – for the right price.”
“And none have,” Deacon said, pouring himself another mugful of the foul tarry substance. “I’d know.”
This time he only downed half the muck in one go. Watching him do it still nauseated me, though.
“Who has that kind of power?” I asked.
“Wrong question,” Jinx said. “Who has that kind of control?”
“Good point,” I admitted.
We all fell silent then and drank our various libations while Deacon moved off to serve other customers. Eventually he returned, finished off his latest mugful of swill, and poured himself another.
After a time, Mordacity said, “The Lords of Misrule? They’ve recently regained their strength.”
“I’m not sure the Lords themselves made a comeback so much as the Fata Morgana did,” I said. “The attempt to merge dimensions was primarily a solo project with her in charge.”
“She used pharmaceutical research to further her plans,” Jinx said. “Perhaps she was behind the initial appearance of shuteye years ago, and now she’s returned to the trade after we foiled her last scheme.”
“I suppose it’s possible.” But no one had seen the Fata Morgana since we’d stopped her. She was currently Number One on the Shadow Watch’s Most Wanted List, and there was a hefty reward for any information leading to her capture. But so far no one had turned up to collect.
Deacon finished off a third mug of his disgusting drink and belched. Whatever the damn stuff in the bottle was, it smelled even worse on the way back up.
“Why don’t you go ask her?” Deacon said. “She’s sitting right over there.”
Six
Deacon pointed to a table where a woman sat by herself. She had a martini glass in her hand and half a dozen empties sitting in front of her. I hadn’t noticed her among the crowd before this, but, now that Deacon had pointed her out, I took a closer look.
She was the right age – early fifties – and she had the right build: tall and thin. Her long hair was blonde, and she was dressed like Cecelia Kauffman, the Fata Morgana’s Day Aspect: blue blazer, slacks, and black heels. But she was significantly thinner than the last time I’d seen her. She no longer wore glasses, her hair was an untended-to rat’s nest, and her clothes were wrinkled and in desperate need of a good dry cleaner’s attention. No wonder I hadn’t recognized her when we’d entered. But now that she’d been pointed out to me, I knew it was her.
Without a word, I rose from my stool, walked over to her, drew my trancer, and placed the barrel against her right temple.
“Hello, Audra.” Her voice was rough from too much alcohol, and she seemed completely unconcerned that I was holding a weapon to her head. Her nonchalant attitude pissed me off. I was trying to be intimidating, and the least she could do was look a little nervous.
Behind us, Deacon Booze cleared his throat loudly.
“You shouldn’t drink that nasty stuff if it’s going to gunk up your throat,” I said, without taking my eyes off the Fata Morgana.
Deacon wasn’t amused. “No weapons, Audra.”
I had no idea what Deacon would do if I didn’t listen to him. One day I might need to find out, but that day hadn’t come yet. I holstered my weapon.
“Sit down,” the Fata Morgana said. “Have a drink with me.”
Her words were over-enunciated, a sure sign that she was more drunk than she was willing to let on.
“I think you’ve had enough for you, me, and half the bar.” But I slid out a seat across the table from her and sat. No way in hell was I stupid enough to sit next to her.
Her eyes were bloodshot, and her makeup was sloppy. Too heavy in some places, too light in others, and she’d definitely been coloring outside the lines.
“You look like shit,” I said, in my usual tactful way.
The Fata Morgana gave me a slightly lopsided smile, raised her martini glass to me in a salute, then gulped the contents down in a single swallow. She put the empty down with the others and signaled for another.
I wasn’t sure what to say next. The Fata Morgana is one of the most ancient and powerful Incubi who’s ever existed, but I’d first come to know her as the psychologist who’d manipulated and exploited Russell and me, as well as others like us, when we were children. To say I hated her would be a massive understatement. And yet, I couldn’t help feeling a small measure of sympathy for the once near-godlike woman sitting before me. She’d been brought low, and she looked it. And, although Jinx and I had been the ones to do it, at that moment I didn’t feel especially proud of the result.
“So, what have you and your clown prince been up to lately?” she asked. “Tilting at dragons? Slaying windmills?”
“Something like that,” I said. “How about you? Have you been sitting here drinking the entire time since we defeated you?”
I expected some kind of haughty display of bravura, but she simply said, “Yes.”
Her reply caught me off-guard. She went on, “I couldn’t return to the other Lords, not after being so thoroughly humiliated. And I especially couldn’t go looking like this.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Jinx approached the table. He brought with him a fresh martini for the Fata Morgana, placed it before her, and then took a seat.
“During our battle she depleted a great deal of her personal supply of Maelstrom energy,” Jinx said. “Until it’s restored, she’s stuck in one Aspect – this one – no matter what time of day it is or what dimension she’s in.”
The Fata Morgana nodded. She took hold of her new drink, but didn’t raise it to her lips. I had the feeling that she wanted something to do with her hands more than anything else.
“For all intents and purposes, I’m just as human as either of you are right now,” she sighed.
Mordacity hadn’t followed Jinx over. He remained at the bar, but he’d turned around on his stool and was watching us.
“Did you overhear us talking at the bar?” I asked the Fata Morgana.
“Yes. I wish I was the mastermind behind the resurgence of shuteye. It would beat sitting here swilling martinis day after day. You should see the size of the tab I’ve run up.” She shuddered and took a sip of her drink.
Maybe she was telling the truth. Or maybe her story was simply a cover for what she was really up to. Everyone knew her last plan had fallen to ruin, so it was only natural that she be depressed. But what better cover for a new operation? Who would suspect that this beaten woman, scarcely a shell of her former self, remained at full strength and had hopped right back in the saddle after she’d been thrown? One of the Fata Morgana’s abilities was the manipulation of perception. Once the sun set, she mi
ght still automatically transform into her Night Aspect, but she could make it seem to onlookers as if she hadn’t. She was a genius at manipulation, a maestro of deceit. How could anyone believe a creature who had no truth whatsoever in her?
But, strangely enough, I did believe her. And it wasn’t because I thought I was seeing a softer side I hadn’t known the woman possessed. It was because she had such a monstrously outsized ego that I couldn’t see her humbling herself like this, even if it were only part of a ruse.
“So you’re investigating shuteye,” the Fata Morgana said. “What’s wrong, Audra? Your usual drugs not doing it for you anymore?”
“What’s it like to have to rely on words as your only weapons?” I countered.
She smiled. “Words can cut deeply enough in their way.” She took a small sip of her martini. It seemed she intended to make this one last.
The man with the dreadlocks who’d given up his barstool for me now sat a couple tables over from the Fata Morgana. A lovely black woman with delicate features sat with him. She had a shaved head and multiple ear piercings. She wore a gray T-shirt with the words This Rent for Space on it, and jeans tucked into black boots. The ginger noticed me looking his way, and he raised his beer and smiled in acknowledgement. Once again, I wondered if we’d met before, and I raised my coffee cup to return his greeting, just to be on the safe side.
“What can you tell us about shuteye?” Jinx asked.
“What makes you think I’d do anything to help the two of you?” she said.
“Because whatever information you provide will inevitably lead us into trouble,” Jinx said, “which means there’s a good chance it’ll get us killed.”
He said this without any outward show of emotion, but there was a gleam in his eyes that told me more accurately than any clock could that sundown was approaching.
The Fata Morgana considered this for a moment, then she smiled in the way a hungry serpent might if it possessed the right facial muscles, and she began talking.
“When shuteye first appeared on the streets several years back, the Lords of Misrule looked into it. A drug that allowed Incubi and Ideators to sleep – or which would at least simulate the experience of sleeping – would be quite a moneymaker. And, of course, if the Lords controlled the supply and distribution of such a wonder drug, it would greatly enhance our strength. A prime consideration given how weakened we had become by that time. But, despite our best efforts, we could not discover who created the drug or who was ultimately responsible for manufacturing and selling it. We were able to locate a few street sellers, but there were far fewer of these than we expected. And, although we questioned them most vigorously, they could tell us little. They knew only the name of their immediate supplier, an Incubus called the Angler. We searched for him, but we were unable to find him. Everyone talked about shuteye, but we couldn’t find anyone who’d actually used it. Anyone who hadn’t died or gone insane, that is. Oh, we found some who claimed they’d taken it, but when we questioned them–”
“Which you did vigorously, I’m sure,” I said.
“Of course, and they all admitted they were lying.”
“What about the deaths from shuteye?” Jinx asked. “And those whose minds were damaged?”
Her lips curled back from her teeth. “Like poor Nathaniel Sawyer?”
My jaw tightened, but I managed to keep my mouth shut. I didn’t want to give the bitch the satisfaction of getting a rise out of me.
“We were able to verify those cases,” she said. “Just as the Shadow Watch did. There weren’t as many as the rumors suggested, but there were enough.”
“Were you able to get hold of a sample to analyze?” Jinx asked. The Shadow Watch had done such an analysis, but I figured Jinx wanted to find out if the Lords had learned the same about the drug as we had.
The Fata Morgana nodded and took another sip of her martini before answering. “We acquired a number of samples, and I tested them myself. Chemically, there was nothing special about them. They were little more than normal sleep aids, like the kind you can buy over the counter in any pharmacy on Earth. They did possess traces of Maelstrom energy, but the levels weren’t very high. Enough, perhaps, to intensify the effect of the drug to a degree, but certainly not enough to cause madness or death. I assume your people discovered the same thing when they analyzed whatever samples they obtained.”
“Yes. The assumption was that those pills were fakes that pushers used to scam buyers,” I said. “We assumed we never got hold of the real deal.”
“A natural conclusion, but an incorrect one,” she said. “We were exceptionally thorough in our search for shuteye samples, and each pill we obtained and tested gave the same results.”
Jinx frowned. “So shuteye is a drug that shouldn’t work as advertised, is essentially harmless, and which sometimes drives people crazy and kills them anyway.”
“Correct. Which is why the Lords of Misrule decided to forget about shuteye and turn our attention to other interests.”
“That’s it?” I asked. “You didn’t try to figure out why a seemingly harmless pill was having such deadly side-effects?”
“Why would we? The Lords are hardly altruists, my dear. Shuteye had nothing to offer us, and that’s all we needed to know.”
The Fata Morgana’s words frustrated me, but I had to admit that – at least from the Lords’ point of view – the attitude was understandable. All these years the Shadow Watch had believed they’d never obtained a true sample of shuteye to analyze, but, if what the Fata Morgana had told us was true – and I wasn’t dumb enough to automatically believe her – the pills they’d tested had been the real thing.
I was about to ask the Fata Morgana another question when I heard a soft skittering on the floor and felt a tug on my pants’ leg. I looked down to see a black-and-tan dachshund pulling on the cuff of my slacks. When she saw she had my attention, she let go of my pants leg and looked up at me with what I interpreted as a grim expression. Most importantly, her tail wasn’t wagging.
I looked at Jinx. “Trouble’s coming.”
He frowned, took a quick glance under the table, saw the dog, and then sat up straight once more.
“I see what you mean.”
We both drew our trancers and kept them on our laps, where they’d remain hidden by the table.
“Trouble?” The Fata Morgana swallowed the remainder of her martini. “It’s just a dog. A Chihuahua or something. I’ve never really been good at recognizing Earth animals. It’s probably someone’s pet. People bring all kinds of animals in here. Last week a woman brought in a pelican, of all things. I told her to take her dirty bird out of here, but she thought I meant it as a euphemism for something entirely different. Well, you can imagine her reaction when–”
“Please be quiet now,” Jinx said. “Or I’ll be forced to bite off one of your lips.” He smiled. “You can pick which one. I’m sure they’re both equally delicious.”
Jinx’s sudden nastiness was an indication that sundown was closing in fast. Jinx can be hardest to control when he first shifts into his Night Aspect. He bottles up a lot of insanity while in his Day Aspect and needs to let it out. This is never a pleasant experience for anyone unfortunate enough to be in his vicinity at the time.
Now that Bloodshedder had warned me, she skittered off, presumably in search of her master. I swept my gaze around the bar, but I didn’t see Russell at first. Then I noticed a guy sitting at a table close to the entrance. He wore a black suede jacket, a Bears cap, jeans, sneakers, and, to top it all off, a pair of sunglasses.
Smooth disguise, Russell, I thought. Then again, Incubi and Ideators were used to being around people who looked odd, day or night, so maybe his disguise wasn’t as bad as it seemed. No, scratch that. It was terrible.
Jinx saw where I was looking, took a quick glance at Russell, then turned to me.
“If he’s here, how much do you want to bet those assassins he warned us about are too?”
“No
bet,” I said.
I looked to Mordacity. He was still facing us, leaning back on his stool, elbows resting on the bar behind him. At first I thought he had no idea what was going on, but then he tapped his left index finger on the bar three times. His expression never changed and his posture remained relaxed, but I knew that sign well. It was one Nathaniel and he had used to silently communicate to the other that they were alert and ready for whatever came next.
I looked for Deacon Booze, but I didn’t see him behind the bar, and he wasn’t out among the customers either. I decided he’d probably gone into the back room to get something. That something most likely being a weapon. Nothing happened in his bar without him being aware of it.
Jinx and I could play this a couple different ways. We could sit here and wait for the assassins to make the first move, or we could get up and leave the bar and hopefully get out onto the street before they could attack. But the assassins would be expecting us to do one of those two things. Which is of course why we did something entirely different.
Jinx and I stood up.
“Could we have everyone’s attention please?” I said.
Everyone kept talking, laughing, and drinking.
Jinx pointed his trancer at the ceiling and fired three blasts. Plaster rained down on our table, and I was grateful he was still mostly Day Jinx. Night Jinx would’ve set his trancer to high and brought down the entire ceiling.
The customers became quiet after that. I nodded my thanks to Jinx.
“Sorry to interrupt your fun, but there is at least one assassin in here who wants to take out Jinx and me. Now, while I know that some of you wouldn’t be all that sorry to see us go–”
“We’d miss you, Audra!” someone called out.
Someone else added, “But Jinx can go sit on that hammer of his and take a spin!”
