'I don't trust her,' Wal says. No surprise there, that's Wal's standard response, though it's been proven remarkably accurate.
'Where were you?' I ask.
'Stuck to your arm,' he says, looking more than a little chagrined. 'She stopped me, I don't know how. But she did it well.'
I grin at him cruelly. 'Ah, so there are things, very useful things, she could teach me.'
Wal slaps me across the face with all the force of a handful of tissues. 'You shut your mouth.'
He actually looks hurt.
A dim hooting comes from the city of Devour – like a parliament of malevolent and fractious owls. Bells ring and, all around us, the dead whisper their brittle, final whispers before drifting out of hearing and further into the Deepest Dark.
The air chills. Both of us feel it. I don't have my coat anymore, but Wal is the only one who is naked.
He shivers. 'I don't like this place.'
He's not the only one.
6
'I can't believe I'm going to be late!'
Most of my clothes are in piles in the bedroom. But my suit, one of eight I own, hangs in the wardrobe. A Pomp never leaves their suit on the floor. Never. And I'm RM now, I have to set the standard. I slip into it like a second skin. It's Italian, and cost me three weeks' salary – and that's my current salary. This meeting with Cerbo is formal; tracksuit and jumper just isn't going to cut it. Lissa watches, then hits me with the most deafening wolf whistle. I can't understand how she finds this body attractive. OK, maybe a little, I do work out. And the suit looks pretty fine. But still, I feel my cheeks flush at Lissa's scrutiny.
I knot my tie, straighten everything, and even I have to admit that I look good.
Though not nearly as lovely as Lissa. I want to be back in bed with her. We never seem to spend enough time together. A moment apart is an ache in my chest. Tim might be right, new love and all that. But I never felt this intensely for Robyn. And Lissa is the only woman I have ever pursued to Hell.
'Maybe I should call off this meeting, spend the morning with you. You're not working till late, I've seen the schedule. We could…'
Lissa appears to give this some serious thought. 'No, Tim would kill you, and me. Not after all we've done trying to get you engaged with the business again. The Moot's a week away. You've got to – stop that!'
She doesn't push me away, though, as my lips brush her neck. Then – I feel her body stiffening with the effort of it – she does, and I'm backing off the bed, away from the intoxicating smell of her. 'You'll crush your suit, or, at the very least, stretch the front of those pants.'
'Oh.' I look down. 'I see what you mean.'
And I'm blushing once more. Lissa grins at me wickedly. I straighten my suit again.
Yeah, new love. Such new, new love.
'How do I look?'
'You're the bomb,' she says.
'The bomb?'
Lissa laughs at me. 'Just get out of here. Or your cousin will have an aneurism.'
'How's the hair?'
She squints at me. 'Still thinning.'
'I hate you.'
'No, you don't.'
I kiss her again, and then I shift to Number Four.
It's another body punch of a shift. I miss my office by about fifteen metres. End up at the reception desk. Lundwall blinks at me.
Number Four. This is Australia's Pomp Central, and the major node in the southern hemisphere's Underworld-living world interface, which makes the architecture interesting in a multi-dimensional kind of way. Outside one part of the building, Brisbane is in the middle of a boiling, sweating summer. And outside another part, Hell is going through a rather mild spring. The seasons rarely correspond. In here, the air is loud with the hum of air-conditioners and the creaking of the One Tree.
Phones ring throughout the office. People are working busily and trying hard to ignore me and my clumsy entrance. I get the feeling that Tim has been doing a fair bit of storming around this morning. Tim is great at his job, but you don't want to get him mad. He says it doesn't help that I'm so casual about the whole thing. Well, I think we balance each other out perfectly.
But I would think that.
I stumble over to Tim's office and open the door without knocking. He's stubbing out a cigarette when I appear and looks guilty.
'Gotcha,' I say.
'What if I was having a wank or something here?'
I smirk. 'Hardly. If you had to choose between smokes and masturbation there's no contest.'
'Ah, your deductive capabilities astound me, Holmes.'
Other than the ashtray heaped with cigarettes, Tim's room is as neat as an anally retentive pin. I'm more than a little envious of his work ethic. His inbox and out are emptied throughout the day and there's a well-marked year-planner on one wall. Seven days from now, on the 28th of December, the Death Moot begins. He's circled that day, and the two that follow it, in thick red marker. I've a year-planner somewhere under the mess on my desk.
This was once Morrigan's office. Tim hasn't changed it that much, apart from the photo of Sally and the kids next to his keyboard – I bought him the frame. He's even using the same daily desk calendar, the one with the inspirational quotes. Everything from Dorothy Parker to Sun Tzu is in there. He and Morrigan shared a deep commitment to work, a fastidiousness about everything in their life, and a love of beer, though Tim has never tried to kill me. But the way he's looking at me, maybe that's all about to change.
Then the pain of the shift hits me in a residual wave.
Tim waits politely until I finish dry heaving before he starts taking strips off me. 'Jesus, mate! Could you at least have a shower before coming to work?'
I shrug. No point telling him how hard it was to leave Lissa this morning. Then I see the bandage on his left hand. 'Not like you to be out with the Stirrers. Was it a hard stir?' Sometimes a Stirrer will require more blood than usual to stall it.
Tim shakes his head. 'I wish, it'd mean I was out of the office more. No, the door's being particularly demanding today.' Number Four may be the only place that demands – well, not so much demands, but takes – a blood sacrifice of its staff on entry. RMs are exempt, most of the time, something I'm pleased about. For me, it's usually only a tiny pricking of the thumb, and weeks may go past where it asks for nothing. I wonder if the ferocity of Tim's sacrifice has anything to do with the massive portent I spent part of last night cleaning from the bathroom.
Tim throws me a small spray can of deodorant. I manage to catch it before it hits my head. Then he hurls a pack of breath mints. Not so lucky with those, they skitter all over the desk. I scoop up a few of them.
'I'm guessing you didn't clean your teeth before you headed over here,' Tim says.
'You guessed wrong. Anything else?' I pop a handful of mints into my mouth, regardless.
'Oh, I haven't started yet.' His hands rest on his hips. 'You cut it this fine again, and you can find yourself another Ankou.'
'Where am I going to find one as good as you?'
'Exactly. Which is why you are never going to do this again. Now, I've been thinking about this Death Moot -'
'Is Cerbo here?' I interrupt.
'Not yet. Wonder of wonders, we've actually got five minutes.'
'Good. I had a meeting with Suzanne Whitman last night.'
'And you have only told me this now because…?'
'Look, it was late. I didn't want to wake you. At least you can sleep.'
'Still having trouble, eh?'
'Shit, Tim, I've been whingeing about this for a month.'
'Pardon me if I've been too busy to notice.' And as if to prove his point, his mobile starts ringing.
He looks at it. 'It's only mildly urgent,' he says. 'I'll call them back.'
Tim slips his phone into his pocket and smiles at me. 'Now, this is interesting, really interesting. If the US RM is so keen to negotiate, the others can't be too far behind. What did she want?'
'She said she wanted to help.'
Neither of us successfully choke down the laugh that follows.
'Said I could do with an ally.'
Another snort.
Tim checks his watch. 'We'd better get to your office. Cerbo will be there in a minute.' We walk past the desks of Pomps and the hallway that sits in the middle of the office, the one that leads directly to Aunt Neti's parlour. She's baking scones or muffins or biscuits; the smell drifts down the hall. Probably expecting a visitor. I can't help wondering who.
My office is a bit stuffy. I switch on the lights and the aircon. It's your basic sort of corner office, except for Brueghel's painting, 'The Triumph of Death' against one wall (not a copy, the real thing, all those skeletons bringing on the apocalypse, herding the living to Hell) and the throne, of course.
I drop into the throne, and my region immediately grows more vital around me. The beating hearts, the creaking tree.
Sitting in my throne I feel what Tim's reports can only tell me. We're stretched painfully thin. My Pomps are struggling out there. It might be a picture of industry in the offices, but it's little more than a veneer painted over chaos. I've been ignoring this for far too long.
'We need more staff,' I say to Tim.
'Lissa's doing the best she can,' he says irritably. 'It's not exactly easy to advertise for Pomps. There's a whole bunch of stages that we have to steer people through. I think it's remarkable that we have as many staff as we do.'
'We've got to do better.'
'You could take a more active role. That might help,' Tim says sharply.
'I'm doing the best I can,' I say, mimicking his tone.
Tim groans, shakes his head. 'How about a unified front?'
'Yeah, how about it?'
'Sometimes you piss me off, de Selby.'
I grin at him. 'That's what family is for.'
'Maybe that's why I decided to become a Black Sheep.'
'Nah, you can't escape it no matter what you do. As long -' and I stop myself there. I was going to say as long as there is family left, but there isn't that much family remaining. There are some things neither of us are ready to joke about.
I'm almost relieved that Faber Cerbo shifts into the foyer at that moment. Apparently Ankous can do that, if their RM is sufficiently skilled. Morrigan could, and it didn't seem to hurt him, either, the prick. Cerbo's appearance is presaged by a slight pressure in my skull. His heartbeat, a sudden addition to my region, is loud – like you'd expect from an Ankou – even louder than Tim's, and at a steady sixty beats per minute.
I glance at my watch. He is exactly thirty seconds late, and I can't help feeling that Suzanne is making a point. Lundwall – heartbeat ninety-three bpm, up from seventy, now that Cerbo has appeared at his desk – leads him into the room.
Faber Cerbo, like any self-respecting Pomp, is in a suit. We all are, here. As though Death was truly like any other business. Well, we can pretend. The real reason is the vast number of funerals we attend and morgues and mortuaries we visit. In those places a suit makes you virtually invisible – even in Brisbane on a forty degree day. Unlike Tim and I, Cerbo is wearing a hat, a bowler. That, and the pencil-thin moustache, make him look like a mash-up of a British accountant from the thirties and the filmmaker John Waters, and are completely at odds with his Texan accent. I've never liked wearing hats, they mess up my hair. But it suits him, somehow. Gripped in his left hand, his nails coated with black nail polish, is a brown leather folder.
Cerbo doffs his bowler, and rolls his shoulders. Bones click with the movement.
I don't get up from my throne, in fact I make a point of swinging back on it, looking as casual as I can. After all, here I am in the seat of my power, so to speak. It is poor form to neglect it.
I nod at Cerbo and gesture to one of the chairs in front of the desk. He gives a swift and slightly mocking bow – well, I think it's mocking, and if I can't be sure, the odds are high. My rise to RM was something of a shock to a lot of people – myself included – and I'm not treated as seriously as I could be. But then again, it fits into my tactic. Just grin and let them think you're stupid.
Tim shakes his hand. Cerbo gives him a warm smile then sits down, so lightly it's as if he's hardly sitting at all. He puts the folder on the table.
'My mistress says she met with you last evening, Mr de Selby.' He gives Tim a pained look, and Tim nods sympathetically. I wonder what Ankous say about their bosses when they're not around. Hell, Morrigan ran over Mr D with an SUV. Maybe we push them to it.
'Yes, we had an interesting chat.'
'Unfortunately, since I have not been appraised of your chat,' another pained look in Tim's direction, 'I can only tell you what it is that I was briefed on, and hope that our topics of conversation are in some way sympathetic.'
He opens his folder, extracts a single sheet of paper, and slides it towards me, pushing aside a half-dozen unopened envelopes, a Mars Bar wrapper, and a scrunched up packet of salt and vinegar chips. We all jump back a little when a cockroach scurries out of the chip packet. Tim whacks it with a packet of envelopes, misses, and the insect's off and running towards a distant corner of the room. Tim glances at me. OK, so I need to clean up a little. Cerbo doesn't say a word (his pursed lips and raised eyebrows are enough) and deposits the sheet of paper in front of me.
The number 10 is written across the sheet in black marker.
I look from it, to Cerbo, then to Tim, then back to the paper. I shrug. 'And this means what? You're shifting to the metric system?'
Cerbo gives out a rather theatrical sigh, as though it's painfully obvious what the number represents. 'That, Mr de Selby, is the number of Pomps Ms Whitman is willing to add to your ranks from her own.'
I raise an eyebrow and lean across the desk, my elbow crunching down on the chip packet. 'And what is expected of me if I accept?'
Cerbo clears his throat, makes a little nervous gesture with his hands as though he's shooing away flies. 'Time, Mr de Selby. You are to give her your time. An hour for each Pomp. Ten hours, in total, of your undivided attention, before the Death Moot begins.'
'It's a generous offer,' I say.
Cerbo's lips curl in a grimace. 'It is more than generous. Ms Whitman doesn't want you to fail in your work. Power vacuums are something of a danger in this business.'
'And what do you think the odds are of that?'
Cerbo doesn't answer. 'I'll consider it,' I say.
I get the feeling that he was expecting a response, and an enthusiastically positive one, at that. But I'm not ready to answer, and Cerbo can tell. He's disappointed, and not all of that seems to be about going home to his RM empty-handed.
He dons his hat. Slips his folder beneath his arm, and stands. 'Don't be too long in considering it. That may be regarded as an insult.'
I nod. 'I am aware of that. Believe me, I've no desire to put anyone's nose out of joint. But this is my region, and I'll take as long as I need.'
He glances at Tim. Tim shrugs and gives him his most 'my boss is crazy' look. Cerbo sighs again. 'Good day, gentlemen.'
He shifts, and there's nothing but air filling the space he's left. The sheet of paper flutters on my desk, the Mars Bar wrapper falls to the floor.
'How the hell did he do that?' Tim asks enviously.
'I don't know.' I throw my hands up in the air, and the throne tips. Both it and me end up on the ground.
Tim laughs.
My face burning, I get to my feet. The chair looks very smug. Bloody throne. I drop back in it, heavily. 'You told me you'd do the talking.'
'Sometimes listening is better than talking.'
I want to say that he knows nothing of listening, that he knows nothing of the things I can hear, of the things bodies tell me – beating hearts and closing veins, the stealthy drift of a clot towards the brain. But I'm just not that petulant.
'You did good, I think,' Tim says. 'The game's started. Opening gambit, all that shit.'
'Whose game are we playing?'
'It was never
going to be ours, at the beginning. Someone else had to make the first move. We're too new. We don't even know what pieces we've got, or what the game is.'
'Ten Pomps. We could do with ten Pomps,' I say.
'But they wouldn't really be yours. They'd be doing her bidding.'
'But they'd know what they're doing.'
Tim gets to his feet. 'That's what worries me.' He glances at his watch. 'Shift change. Things are about to get crazy. We'll discuss this tonight, eh?'
'Yeah. Holding off until tomorrow is long enough to piss her off, but only a little.'
'Annoying people isn't the greatest tactic, Steve.'
I grin at him. 'You use what gifts you're given.'
'Oh, you use that one all right, and it's a rough instrument.' He closes the door behind him.
'I didn't get this job because I was subtle,' I say to the door. 'I got it because I was stupid.'
The chair beneath me shivers, as though it is dreaming. Three people die in a car accident. Someone clutches at his chest. His heart beneath races, shudders, halts. I look at the corner where the cockroach ran. There's been enough death already. I let it be.
I'm Death, not an exterminator.
7
With Tim and Cerbo gone I get to work.
Well, I try to.
First I pick up the chip packet and toss it in the bin. The chocolate wrapper goes the same way. I straighten a few papers, open some letters, but I'm not really reading them. I switch on my MP3 and listen to some Black Flag. Henry Rollins gets me in the right headspace today.
Complacency's a killer, Morrigan used to say. He should know. He used it to kill most of Australia's Pomps. But it took him down, too, in the end. He certainly hadn't expected me to win the Negotiation.
If I'm honest, neither had I.
Here I am sitting in the throne. An RM with all the responsibilities that entails. Staff beneath me, a region and a world to save from Stirrers, as well as a commitment to good returns for our shareholders.
I think about those ten Pomps and just how helpful they would be, not to mention Suzanne's knowledge. The black bakelite phone sits there. This is the sort of thing Mr D could advise me on. But I need to start making my own decisions. I'll talk to him this afternoon, once I work out exactly how I feel about this offer.
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