Closing Doors: The Last Marla Mason Novel

by T. A. Pratt

  Marla stepped into the sea and let herself drift down. Beneath the glimmering surface, it was all bubbles, in every color and none, some the size of houses, some no bigger than a pea. The afterlives floated around her, and Marla, being the ruler of this place, could peer into those worlds as she passed by, if she wished. She often did peek in, curious about the near-infinite variety of human imagination on display for her, but right now, she was on a mission. She plunged down, down, down to the bottom of the sea.

  The lowest depths looked different at different times, but for now, she found a cracked plain of sand, with a single still pool of clear water at the center, a dozen feet across and shimmering. She could summon primordial chaos at will, but that pool was the true source, the inexhaustible font of formless chaos to be shaped by those with the will and skill to make the reality of this place conform to their wishes. Which meant the gods of the underworld, or their chosen representatives.

  Marla opened her hand. The hair she’d plucked from Crapsey’s head was there on her palm, a single greasy strand with a bit of skin at the follicle end. Marla dropped the hair onto the surface of the pool, where it floated for a moment, and then, in defiance of intuitive physics, sank.

  She focused her will. This would have to be done delicately. She didn’t want to make another Crapsey—it was bad enough there was one of them in this world. She just wanted his genetic template.

  A shape bobbed to the top of the pool: an adult human body, naked but unscarred, eyes staring and blank. Marla decided it was beneath her dignity to haul the body out of the pool, so she silently summoned one of her demons to her. The one that appeared was small, bandy-legged and red-furred, with a goat’s head and bat wings. “Yer Majesty.”

  She pointed. “Help that thing out of the pool, would you?”

  The demon gave a heavy, put-upon sigh and dragged the body out of the pool, splashing primordial ooze around in the process, until the empty vessel rested on the sandy ground. The body breathed, and blinked, but there was no spark of life there: no soul. Perfect. It looked like a younger and more innocent version of Rondeau, if he’d gone easier on the booze and drugs, and like a less muscular and bulked-out Crapsey. After a moment’s thought, Marla said, “Hmm,” and knelt to pluck a hair from the new body’s head. She had a fleeting thought of photocopies of photocopies, each generation a degradation of the last, with lost information and a corresponding loss of quality and fidelity—hadn’t there been some terrible movie about clones-of-clones, each generation becoming more degenerate and depraved? That was stupid, though, at least in this case. This was more like copying a digital file (except of course for not being anything like that at all; metaphors were necessarily limited): this was a perfect genetic copy, and copies made from it would be correspondingly identical, because she was the one doing the copying.

  Gods knew Rondeau could use the insurance.

  Once her work was done, and she’d dispatched more demons about their errands, she rose up through the primordial sea with the goat-headed creature beside her. He had Rondeau’s new body slung over his shoulders like a weird fleshy stole, and every once in a while his bat wings flapped, like they had anything to do with his flight. “You’re Muscles, right?”

  “Muscles Malone.” The demon couldn’t keep a hint of pride from his voice: the Queen of Hell had remembered him! Though Marla could at least potentially remember everything now, unless she made an effort not to.

  “You helped out with that whole thing with Elsie, and with the New Death. And you’ve been assisting Pelham when I’m away, right?”

  “Sometimes I’m his valet.” He pronounced it to rhyme with “mallet,” in the British drawing-room comedy way.

  Marla nodded. “Something’s different about you now, though.”

  “Upgraded. New wings.”

  Her demons had bodies made of chaos, and the ability to shape that chaos, to some extent, as necessary. The power was useful for conjuring up pitchforks or extra heads or whatever the situation called for. Marla’s servitors possessed sort of rudimentary one-use souls that provided them with personalities, because mindless automatons were boring to have around the place. The demons (which included the psychopomps) didn’t get afterlives, but they were immortal unless they were destroyed, and even if they did get destroyed, she could restore them, if she wanted. Muscles had served her well enough that she’d decided to grant him continuity of consciousness for the foreseeable future. He was respectful, but firmly vernacular, and never fawning—a lot of the demons were awed when their creator took notice of them—which suited Marla’s taste more than obeisance did. Muscles was all right.

  They emerged from the sea and walked across the dusty plains of the underworld on a path of rounded white cobblestones that were probably the tops of buried skulls, because if Marla didn’t specifically concentrate on shaping the landscape, it defaulted to a sort of “death metal album cover” aesthetic. This part of the underworld was an immense cavern, so large it seemed to have a night sky, though the only stars were the streaking souls and their attendants. There were jagged black mountains off in the distance, riddled with caves. Occasionally monsters emerged from the mountains, stray bits of chaos animated by who knows what—her own random thoughts? Rogue or degraded souls? Usually she sent demons to deal with the beasts that got too aggressive, but sometimes she fought them herself, because you could take the woman out of the monster hunt, but you couldn’t take the monster hunter out of the woman.

  She got bored with walking and edited the landscape, bringing the palace from the middle distance to right in front of them. Her home looked like an immense black marble tombstone today, a blunt rectangular marker, void of character or embellishment. It didn’t even have a door until she waved a hand and an opening appeared. Muscles followed after her as she strode along a short corridor that led directly to the throne room, and its pedestal, where Pelham and Bradley still waited.

  “Hey, it’s B and Pelly,” Muscles said. “Aw, no. Rondeau got killed? I liked that guy.”

  “Place the vessel carefully on the floor, Muscles, and then you can go about your business.”

  The demon shrugged and did as he was told. “Take care, and good luck with... whatever this is.” He bobbed away, floating a few inches off the ground.

  Pelham and B stared at the body. “Whoa,” B said. “That’s... wow. How did you make that?”

  “Plucked a hair from Crapsey’s dumb head. If I’m going to bring Rondeau back, I might as well put him in a reasonable facsimile of his old body.”

  “That’s brilliant,” B said.

  “He will no longer possess his formidable psychic powers,” Pelham said.

  “You say that like it’s a bug, and not a feature,” Marla said. “Those abilities never did him much good. They mostly caused him trouble.”

  “True, but his abilities were useful to you on many occasions, Majesty.”

  Marla shrugged. “Yeah. I asked a lot of Rondeau over the years. More than I should have. But... I’m getting close to being done asking anybody for anything.” In truth, she shouldn’t be meddling to this extent—she was way too sentimental about the vestiges of her life as a mortal—but the thought of her old friend trapped in a rotting brain was too abhorrent to allow. After this, though... Rondeau would have to take care of himself. She could make sure he was well equipped to do that, though.

  Marla turned to B. “Tell Rondeau I’m going to crack the seal around his body, and let him out. Tell him he’ll find a suitable vessel nearby. All right?”

  B nodded, closed his eyes, and stood in silence for a moment. “Okay. He still thinks I’m a hallucination, but he won’t be totally shocked when the time comes.”

  Marla went to Bradley, put a hand on his shoulder, and smiled. “Thank you for this.”

  “Of course. The world without Rondeau would way too dull. But once this is done, you and me, we should really talk.”

  Marla nodded. “I know. Someone tried to kill you. Two assassin
ation attempts within my closest circle of confidantes is... pretty troubling. Is there an imminent threat to your life, do you think?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve been with Cole, and his security is about as good as it gets. Not as good as yours, admittedly, but you know.”

  She nodded. “Okay. You shouldn’t stay here. Even with a nice empty body waiting for him to inhabit, Rondeau might still freak out and latch onto you, like a drowning person pulling their rescuer under to die with them. I’ve got to send you home. I’ll be in touch soon, though, okay? I have a... thing... tomorrow that needs my whole attention, but I’ll come when I can, all right?”

  B nodded. He put his hand on Rondeau’s forehead, had a moment of communication Marla couldn’t hear, then said, “I’m ready.”

  Marla summoned a cloud of shadow to envelop her old apprentice, and when she dispelled it, B was gone. She did a quick scan of the underworld to make sure there were no living people around—she’d sealed up most of the connections from the mortal world to this one, but ambitious sorcerers or desperate souls with natural magical talents could sometimes find their way in, and she didn’t want Rondeau taking any of their bodies by mistake. The field was clear, though.

  “All right, Pelly. Here goes.” Marla summoned her terrible sword to her hand. It was one of the most powerful artifacts in the world or under it: a blade capable of cutting through almost anything, including ghosts, magic, and selected abstract concepts. In the hand of a god, there was almost nothing the blade couldn’t destroy. It was, in fact, a literal extension of her power, with a spark of divinity at its heart. There could only be one such sword at any given moment, and this one was hers.

  She changed the sword into a silver jeweler’s hammer, and tapped, gently, on the center of Rondeau’s forehead. The exposed skull splintered, but more than that, the powerful magical shell holding his true self inside shattered. Something rose up from the cracked bone, and Marla slowed her subjective time sense and tried to get a good look at it. She could barely perceive the parasite, even with her extraordinary senses, but it seemed like a cat’s cradle made of spiderwebs, or—like Crapsey said—a bit of dandelion fluff, moving and shifting and reconfiguring before her eyes. The thing was bigger than a snowflake, but not by much. That was Rondeau’s essential self, then: a refugee from another universe, with no memory of its origins, trying to do its best to survive in a strange land, and somehow learning about friendship and laughter and love.

  Marla let her time sense return to normal, and the psychic parasite flickered, then dove down into the naked body on the floor, disappearing into its skull. A moment later, the body opened its eyes and gasped, like someone who’d just taken a shot of adrenaline to the heart, then sat up and stared around wildly. He focused on Marla, gazing up at her, seemingly dumbstruck.

  “Rondeau?” she said. “Is that you? Are you in there?”

  He leapt to his feet, rubbing at his bare ass. “Damn, Marla, this marble floor is cold.” He looked down at himself. “Holy. What. This is me, my real original body, my old brain, whoa, this is like coming back to your childhood home or something. How did you do this?”

  “I’m a god. I did god stuff.”

  “Marla, I, whoa, I thought I was going to be stuck in that bag of bad meat for all eternity, that it was the full-dark express to Wormsville for me, that I was going totally Our Town to hang out in a coffin forever.” He wrapped his arms around his torso and shivered. “I’d give you a hug, and you, too, Pelham, but you always get weirded out when I start in on the naked hugging.” He glanced down. “For the record, about all this, I’m just cold, okay? When you were making me a new body, Marla, why didn’t you, you know, embellish things a little? Give me a little confidence boost? A little touch-up? You could have made my dick bigger, is what I’m trying to say.”

  Marla rolled her eyes, and it felt so good to roll her eyes at him again. “You’re a big enough dick as it is, Rondeau. Pelham, maybe conjure some clothes for him?”

  Pelham made a few mystical passes with his hands—hardly necessary, but he enjoyed the theater of it—and a tasteful gray suit appeared on a hanger, along with socks and a pair of boxers. Rondeau took the clothes and dressed himself, utterly unselfconscious. “This is wild. My old body! No more seeing into people’s brains or summoning oracles! Hmm... this body is way less gay than Bradley’s. I’d forgotten about that. I’m pansexual again. This is like going from vegetarian to omnivore, the whole buffet looks appealing again—”

  He went on in that vein, much to Marla’s amusement, and as he buttoned up his shirt, she said, “I’m glad you’re in good spirits. I’ve got some bad news, though. The Pit Boss... he didn’t make it.”

  Rondeau looked down and sighed. “Yeah. I’d wondered. We knew his existence was tied to me, that I could, in theory, banish him, just like I made him in the first place. Did he... you know... suffer?”

  “I was with him at the end. He didn’t seem to be in distress. More annoyed, and worried about you.”

  “He was a sweet kid, for a giant monster made of rocks and fire. What about the chick who stabbed me in the neck? You can tell me if she suffered. I won’t mind.”

  “The Pit Boss dropped her in an imaginary volcano full of real lava. I think she was a dupe, though, possibly mind controlled. I’m not sure.” Marla rubbed her forehead. She didn’t get headaches in her divine form, but this reminded her of getting headaches. “And, really, I shouldn’t even investigate your murder. I’m pushing my limits by meddling this much.”

  “Bless your meddling. I guess you’d have to bless yourself, what with your godliness? But it’s okay. I may not be psychic anymore, but I still know a butt-ton of magic, and better, I have a butt-ton of money, and, better still, I have people like B and Cole who can help me figure out what’s going on. You saved my ass, but I’ll try to look after my own ass from here on up. Did you, ah, lock me up in here again?” He tapped his temple with one forefinger.

  Marla nodded. “I thought you’d want me to.”

  “Yeah. I guess. I don’t look forward to being trapped in my brain again next time I die, it sucked, but I’m good at living in the moment, so—”

  Marla shook her head. “No. I don’t like that idea either, and since I should really get out of the whole mortal coil business, I decided to put some contingencies in place to solve your problem in the future. Come look at this.” She beckoned, and Rondeau walked after her, a little hesitantly, as if getting accustomed to his new legs. “You all right?” she asked.

  “Just breaking in the new wheels. I’ve spent a while in a body that was a little bit shorter, draped in an illusion that made it look the same height as this one, so there are some layers of cognitive dissonance to sort out.”

  They passed through an archway, into a room that hadn’t existed until Marla needed it to. Pelham gasped, and Rondeau whistled.

  The room was filled with dozens of floor-to-ceiling height cylindrical tanks, and floating in each one was a naked Rondeau-body. Rondeau walked among the rows of tubes, touching the glass, peering in, walking around. “Sorry. I don’t get to look at my own ass often, let alone fifty times. Marla, this is crazy. What is this?”

  “Someone’s trying to murder you. Until you figure out who it is, and stop them, it’s safe to assume they’ll try to murder you again. I can’t be grieving over your corpse every five minutes, so I tweaked the spell holding your essential self inside that body. Now, if that body dies, the bit of weird dandelion fluff that makes up the real you will be transported to this room, and you can take over the new body of your choice. There’s a button inside the tank, just hit it and the glass will slide open and you’ll be able to step out. Pelham can send you back to Earth.”

  “No shit. This is the best.” Rondeau grinned. “Who needs life insurance? I am my own clone army. Now I can try skydiving, race motorcycles, wrestle alligators—”

  Marla sighed. “Please don’t be reckless. Or more reckless than you usually are. We have work to d
o down here, and I don’t want Pelham sending you back to Earth twice a day every day.”

  “Killjoy.” Rondeau gave Marla a big hug and kissed her on the cheek. “Why the tanks, anyway? It’s very sci-fi movie in here, and it’s not like you did this with science.”

  She shrugged. “Your spare bodies could just be crammed into this room like sardines in a can, or stacked up like lumber, but a pile of naked Rondeau’s was too off-putting to contemplate, so I went for more a medical-oddity feel.” She paused. “Hey. I am really sorry about the Pit Boss. I know you guys were getting close.”

  “Yeah.” Rondeau slumped. “It sucks. He was the closest thing I’ll ever have to a son, unless I make a terrible mistake sometime, even if he was a lava monster crime lord. I’m gonna have to brush up on my coping strategies for grief. Drugs and alcohol are good for that, right?”

  “Take whatever medicine you need.” She turned. “Pelham, send him home, would you? I should really look in on the workings of my empire of shadows and bone and whatnot before my meeting tomorrow.”

  Rondeau said, “Oooh, who’re you meeting? Do you have a date?”

  “Not tomorrow. I’m meeting Zufi.”

  “Ah ha. She finally called in that favor? She knows how to choose her moment, huh? Mmm. I think Zufi is sexy again. That’s pretty nice.”

  Marla rolled her eyes. “When you get back to the world above, get in touch with Bradley, okay?”

  “For sure. I have to thank him for talking to me, and apologize for thinking he was a figment of my shattered mind.”

  “You should also compare assassination notes. Someone tried to kill him this morning, too.”

  “Damn. We don’t believe in coincidences, right? Sinister conspiracy it is. Won’t be the first time. Okay, Pelly. I’m ready to head upstairs.”