Poison Sleep

by T. A. Pratt

  “Lorelei is a very spiritual person.” He removed a bagel and a plastic knife, and began sawing ineffectually at an onion bagel, bits of mauled bread flying. “You slept with Joshua last night, didn’t you?”

  “I’m sorry, are you asking me about my personal life? Don’t we have a rule against that?” Marla took a tomato basil bagel from the bag and slipped one of her daggers from its wrist sheath to neatly halve it. She felt vaguely guilty for using a weapon as a utensil, but she wasn’t about to hack away with plastic like Rondeau was doing; style counted for something.

  “No, there’s no rule.” Rondeau had given up on cutting the bagel, and was now tearing it into bite-sized chunks and dipping them in a container of garlic cream cheese. “You’ve told me you don’t want to hear about my personal life, but you never said I shouldn’t ask about yours. Of course, you never had a personal life before, except for the incubus, and no offense, but that’s practically masturbating. And, wait, you still don’t have a personal life, because Joshua works for you, so I guess this is a business thing? Isn’t that sexual harassment or something?”

  “I never said I slept with him.”

  “It’s so weird to see you being coy. And in a good mood. Both of those. Weird. Weird energy.” He dipped a chunk of bagel and took a bite.

  “If you double-dip that, Rondeau, so help me, you’ll never eat again, except maybe through a straw.”

  He grunted, chewed, and swallowed. “Still, it doesn’t seem right. Dipping the pen in the company well.”

  “The what in the what, now?”

  “Shagging the help! Did you buy juice? I need a drink. I’m not used to eating great big wads of bread first thing in the morning.”

  “No juice. Make coffee. Weren’t you the one begging me to hire a nineteen-year-old with flexible morals as my p.a., so you could shag the help?”

  “That’s different. I wouldn’t have been her boss. It would’ve been a tender understanding between coworkers, not a weird power-dynamic thing. So—did you sleep with him?”

  Rondeau was her closest friend, and he was in no moral position to judge, so…“Yeah. I did. Last night.”

  “I knew it. You’ve been stuck to him like a bug on flypaper since you hired him, so I figured it was inevitable. Was it great? I know he’s a lovetalker and all, but damn, I’d sleep with him, and I only like boys on special occasions.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty great. Until someone tried to assassinate me.”

  Rondeau whistled. “In flagrante delicto? Shitty timing. Anybody we know?”

  “That renegade slow assassin, Zealand. As for who hired him, I dunno, but I’ll find out. I need to call a meeting. Where’s Ted?”

  “In your office. He’s been working since, like, six this morning.” He rolled his eyes. “Just like every morning. The guy’s dedicated. Hey, Ted!” he called.

  Ted emerged from her office. “Oh, Marla, sorry, I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Eat a bagel,” Marla said. “Then I’ve got a bunch of work for you to do.” Almost being killed last night had been a wake-up call. Sure, she wanted to explore this thing with Joshua, but she did have business to attend to, and she was willing to admit—at least to herself—that she’d been shirking her work a little bit in the glow of new romance.

  Ted sat down with them and Marla talked while he ate. “I need a conference, ASAP. Lunchtime is fine, I guess. I need Hamil here, and you, Rondeau, and Langford, and Dr. Husch, too, but she can be on speakerphone, and this guy named Kardec, I’d like him here in person, you can find his number—”

  “I have it,” Ted said. He had a little personal electronic organizer—she vaguely recalled him asking for the money to buy one—and he was jabbing away at it. “I entered all the business cards on your desk here, I remember seeing his because the name was so unusual. Should I tell them it’s about any particular business?”

  “Tell ’em it’s a matter of life and death. And I guess make sure there’s some food here for us to eat. We’ll have the meeting in the special conference room downstairs. I’ll show it to you later.”

  Ted nodded. “May I use your office to make the calls?”

  “Knock yourself out,” she said, and Ted departed, carrying a bagel with him.

  Marla cocked an eyebrow at Rondeau. “So what do you think of Ted, now that you’ve had some time to get to know him?”

  “He’s been coming down and having a couple of drinks at night, helping me close up the club, so we’ve hung out. I guess he’s all right. I mean, given that you picked him totally at random off the street, you could’ve done a lot worse.”

  “Eh, I had a good feeling about him. And anyway, random is safest. If we’d actually put out an ad and interviewed people, there would’ve been spies, moles, maybe even assassins, the way things are going.”

  “So it’s like a double-blind hiring process,” Rondeau said. “You don’t know who you’re going to hire, and they don’t know they might be hired, so everybody’s surprised.” He shook his head. “I guess that actually makes sense under the circumstances. Anyway, Ted’s been sleeping on the futon in my living room…weren’t you going to set him up with an apartment in your building? I mean, not to be inhospitable, but my hot water heater sucks, and since he’s up early and gets first shower, my ass has been frozen the past few days.”

  Marla chewed a mouthful of bagel, giving herself a moment to come up with an answer. She’d totally forgotten about Ted’s living situation. She hadn’t even thought about it. Maybe she was spending a little too much time with Joshua. It was just hard to think about doing anything else when he was in the vicinity. She swallowed. “Yeah, I’ll see about moving him in tomorrow, deal?”

  “Fair enough. You need me this morning?”

  Marla shrugged. “Be here at noon for the meeting, otherwise, I don’t think so. Why?”

  He waved the racing form at her.

  Marla sighed. “You’re still gambling?”

  Rondeau shrugged. “Yeah, you know. Here and there.”

  “Horse racing isn’t your usual thing.”

  “I had a run of bad luck at the other places. I’m trying to change up my games.”

  “What, you’ve been gambling at those joints what’s-her-name runs? Gregor’s dogsbody?”

  “Nicolette,” Rondeau said. “Chaos magician. It’s all craps and roulette and stuff in the places she runs, no poker or blackjack or anything where skill can help. She really digs games of chance, and she doesn’t even cheat, just draws energy from all the cascading randomness, you know? And she makes money, of course, some of which ironically ends up in your pockets as tribute, and maybe even gets paid right back to me in salary, who knows. But my luck was pretty lousy last time I tried one of her joints, so I’m switching things up, like I said.”

  “Horse racing is basically random when you don’t know anything about it,” Marla pointed out. “And you don’t know, unless you’ve been studying and I haven’t noticed. Maybe you should consider poker?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Marla. It’s not like I have skill. At least when I lose at craps I can blame a cruel or indifferent universe. If I lose at poker, I gotta blame myself, and that plays hell with my self-esteem.”

  Marla laughed. “Well, go to the off-track betting place down on 9th, don’t go all the way to the track, I might need you.”

  “You mean I don’t get to enjoy the unparalleled beauty of watching large herbivorous mammals run in circles?” Rondeau said. “I’m crushed, because that’s where the real thrill is for me.” He stuffed a bagel in his jacket pocket, waved, and ambled off.

  Marla perused the tattered remnants of the newspaper Rondeau had left scattered on the table—it was just the usual sorts of bad news, nothing she needed to get upset about, and her people had thus far succeeded in suppressing reports of the weird shit Genevieve had caused. Marla had let that stuff go on too long. Being distracted by Joshua was understandable, but not excusable. She went into her office and dropped onto the c
ouch. Ted was sitting behind her desk, just hanging up the phone. “It’s all arranged,” he said. “Hamil, Langford, and Kardec will be here at 12:30, and Dr. Husch is scheduled for a conference call.”

  Marla raised an eyebrow. “That quickly? What, didn’t any of them give you shit or argue with you?”

  “No. Were you expecting them to?”

  “I guess not,” she said thoughtfully. If she’d made those calls personally, every one of them would have pestered her with various questions and demands, but since she had her assistant, someone with no authority, do it, they’d just said okay. This was working out better than she’d expected. Still, she needed to get to know the guy. She should have sat Ted down for a serious talk two days ago. “Good work. So, Ted…now that you’re hired, maybe it’s time I actually did an interview. How’d you wind up living on the streets?”

  He visibly tensed for a moment. Then he removed his glasses and began rubbing the lenses with a handkerchief. Marla wondered if he’d taken his glasses off so he couldn’t see her as well. “I made some mistakes, and had a run of bad luck.”

  “Was it booze? Rondeau said you’ve been coming down for a drink or three every night, and I was just worried. If it was booze, well, there are things we can do to help you cope with the cravings, you know? No need to let it get out of hand.”

  “I’m not an alcoholic. I’ve never had an addictive personality, except for chess. Well…” He shook his head. “Listen, I’ve been meaning to ask you a few questions, about what exactly your business is, and—”

  “You start paying me, and I’ll feel moved to answer your questions,” Marla cut in. “And if you’re not comfortable working for me without those details, well, hell, I’ll miss you, but there’s the door. If you want to continue working for me, though, Ted, I do need some answers. It didn’t matter at first, because I figured there was a good chance you’d just try to steal all the money out of the cash box downstairs and disappear into the streets. But you stuck it out, and you seem to be serious about doing the job and doing it well, so I need a little info. Not your life story, just the pertinent parts. What did you do before you wound up sitting on Dutch Mulligan’s grate?”

  He put his glasses back on. The expression on his face was somehow simultaneously shamed and defiant. “I was a high-school math teacher.”

  Marla twirled her finger. “And?”

  He shrugged. “I was fired. My wife divorced me. I had to move into a tiny apartment. My savings ran out before I could find a new job, and when I couldn’t pay rent, I was evicted. I’d been on the streets for a few weeks when you found me and I fully expected to either die of hypothermia or be murdered in an overcrowded shelter. You saved my life, and I’m grateful, but—”

  “Why’d you get fired?”

  “Marla, I really need—”

  “Answer me, Ted. Or do I have to make a couple of calls and find out from someone else?”

  “I slept with one of my students,” he said miserably.

  “How old?” It was an important question.

  “She was seventeen. I’m not a pedophile. It was inappropriate, wrong, I know that, but I’m not a child molester, despite the things they said about me.”

  “Well, judging by the stuff I see on the Internet, you’re not in the minority for lusting after hot teens, but how stupid are you? I’m not exactly reassured about your good judgment. Was it some cheerleader who wanted an A in Algebra, or what? Did your brain get too overheated from the presence of all that teenage girlflesh?”

  “It wasn’t like that. She wasn’t a cheerleader. I was an advisor for the chess club, and she was a member. Brittney. She’s very good at the game, already nationally rated, quite brilliant, really, and we fell in love, I thought it was love….” He sighed. “But, yes, it was stupid. We talked about running away together when she turned eighteen. But…we didn’t wait until that happened to explore the physical side of our relationship. She told one of her friends, who then told Brittney’s parents, and when they confronted her, she admitted it. And that was that. Neither my bosses at school nor Brittney’s parents wanted publicity, so no charges were filed. I just ‘resigned.’ My wife divorced me, of course. That’s all.”

  “You still talk to the girl?” Marla asked.

  He shook his head. “She went off to college this fall. She sent me one letter, to say she was sorry for everything, she’d always remember me as her first love…. Well, she’s young. I should have known better.”

  “Okay,” Marla said after a moment. “No fucking underage girls on my watch, okay? They slip into the club from time to time, so before you get cozy with anybody you meet down there, you make damn sure they’re legal. And if I find out there’s anything more to your story than what you told me, we’ll have words. Otherwise, though, we don’t have a problem. You did a stupid thing, and you paid for it. Just don’t do another stupid thing, and we’re cool.”

  “Thank you, Marla,” he said, looking down at the desk. She felt a little bad for dredging up his shame, but she’d needed to know.

  He’d given his true confession. Maybe it was time for hers. “You wanted to know what I do for a living. What do you think?”

  Ted looked her in the eye—that impressed her—and said, “Well, you have an office above a nightclub. You go to visit associates who work in warehouses. You sent me to fetch your car from a bad part of town. You keep peculiar hours. It’s hard not to draw…certain conclusions.”

  “Such as?” She was trying hard not to smile.

  “I assume you’re involved in some sort of organized crime.”

  “You’re half right,” she said. “People have described my job as half crime boss, half superhero.”

  “Superhero?”

  “Come on. Easier if I show you.” She rose and Ted followed her out of the office.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Roof.”

  He stopped walking, and she turned. “I’m not going to throw you off or something, Ted, gods. Come on. This’ll knock your socks off.”

  “Just let me get a coat—”

  “No. Come on.” She beckoned, and he came, reluctantly. She led him down a short hallway to the stairway that accessed the roof and sent him up ahead of her. He opened the door and stepped out onto the snow-covered roof. He hugged himself against the cold and turned to face her, breath steaming in puffs from his mouth.

  Marla shut the door behind them and looked up at the gray sky. Flurries of snow were coming down, not too heavy yet, but there was a storm expected in a day or two.

  “What are we doing up here?” Ted said.

  “Time to show you something cool,” Marla said, and snapped her fingers.

  The roof fell away. They rose into the air surrounded by a bubble of warmth—or seemed to. This was actually an immersive illusion rather than actual flight, but there was no reason to explain the distinction to Ted just yet. Ted screamed and reached out for her, and she put her arm around his waist and made a soothing noise. “It’s okay, Ted. I’m fully flight-rated. This is the superhero bit, you see?” She glanced at him, and his eyes were squeezed tight. “Come on, Ted, look around. It’s not a view you’ll get to see every day.”

  He opened one eye—that was a suitable compromise, she thought—and looked down. They stopped rising a moment later, hovering high enough that they could see the entirety of Felport below them, from the towering spire of the Whitcroft-Ivory building to the giant cranes by the port, the green-and-white swath of Fludd Park and the tiny houses where the students lived near Adler College, the bigger-than-it-seemed junkyard where the sorcerer Ernesto lived, the vast iron bridges spanning the Balsamo River. Felport was a dirty, asymmetrical jewel of a place, a city with a gridlike planned core surrounded by a messy improvisational sprawl, and she adored every back road and sewer grate and abandoned building of the place. “I’m a sorcerer, Ted. And my job is protecting Felport from the sort of problems you can’t even imagine. If I do my job right, you and all th
e other ordinaries who live here never need to imagine them. I figured if I just told you that, you wouldn’t believe me, but if I showed you…”

  He loosened his grip on her, though she didn’t take her arm away. He stared down at the gray morning city, where only a few cars were slowly navigating the icy streets. It was an illusion, but it was an accurate-to-the-millisecond illusion, so even if they weren’t actually flying, the distinction was meaningless. Except this way they couldn’t fall and kill themselves. They were really just still standing on the roof. “What kind of problems do you protect us from?”

  “Well, there was an evil sorcerer with an army of birds once. Another nutcase wanted to raise a monstrous old god from the waters of the bay. An incursion of creatures we might as well call demons came up through the sewers last spring. A serial murderer—the Belly Killer, remember that, it was in all the papers?—who the police couldn’t catch, because he had magical powers. That sort of thing.”

  “I’m a man of science, Marla. I know that sounds like something from a movie, but this…I don’t know how I can accept this. Sorcery?” He shook his head, but still stared down, captivated. “I can see my old house from here,” he said after a moment.

  “If it helps, don’t think of it as magic. Think of it as bleeding-edge science. There was a time when electric lights would’ve been evidence of supernatural power. Nowadays you can talk to people on the other side of the globe, instantly—make a claim like that a few hundred years ago and you would’ve been killed as a witch. Scientists are capable of splitting apart atoms and releasing incredible destructive energies. Sounds a whole lot like magic to me. Don’t even get me started on biotech, or the weirdness of modern physics. Yeah, what I do looks impressive—hell, some of it is impressive, and hard as hell to pull off—but if it helps you, just tell yourself I have access to a world of science beyond your understanding.”

  “But…it’s not science. It’s not replicable. It’s not something anyone can do.”