Closing Doors: The Last Marla Mason Novel

by T. A. Pratt

  “Oh, yes, I have a sense about these things.” Cinnamon started to reach out for Marla’s face again, then lowered her hand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched you without permission. I’m usually more careful about consent. I just felt so drawn to you, this instant connection.... I wonder if we knew each other in a past life?”

  Reincarnation was also mostly bullshit, except when it wasn’t: people who really, sincerely believed they would come back as someone else sometimes did, returning to the afterlife only briefly before disappearing to ensoul another body. “I guess anything’s possible,” Marla said.

  “Your aura is so deep, it practically has texture—I can see you’re an indigo child, just like me.”

  “Uh... Indigo...”

  “The star children, the crystal children, you know? Empathic, intelligent, strong-willed, resistant to organized structures of authority, and imbued with mystic abilities, sometimes.”

  “Mmm, I’m not so much empathic, and I don’t mind organized structures of authority as long as I’m the one who has the authority.”

  “Oh, no, that’s no good.” Cinnamon shook her head, wide-eyed. “We have to radically decentralize our lives and learn the importance of relying on inner strength instead of expecting others to be strong for us. We can’t change our life experiences, after all, only our reaction to those experiences.”

  “Right.”

  “Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from the insight of wise teachers and guides. I had a spirit guide for a long time, but then I helped her move on to the next world—it was a very moving ritual. It’s like my guru taught me....”

  Cinnamon talked without pause, and without any need for encouragement, and what she talked about was almost entirely bullshit of a very particular new age woo-woo variety. Marla was literally a pagan deity, and knew for a fact that magic was real, and she still had no patience for the kind of pseudoscientific mishmash that Cinnamon blithely spouted. It was all crystals and ancient wisdom and monomyths and herbalism and fairies and angels and auras and everything else all at once.

  Marla was tempted to snatch Cinnamon down to hell, to blow her mind and shake her certainty, but after about fifteen minutes of monologue, during the story of Cinnamon’s visit with an actual Mongolian shaman, not those people who just called themselves shamans in acts of crass cultural appropriation, Marla couldn’t stand any more, and she stood up. “You seem like a good person,” she said. “You volunteer, you help people, you’re more thoughtful and not as blithely racist as a lot of woo-woo types are. And you know what? You’re not wrong about there being more to the world than most people see. There are secret spiritual dimensions all around us. You’ve got a lot of details wrong, but that’s not your fault. You’re trying to put together a puzzle with half the pieces missing, and a bunch of the pieces you do have are from other puzzles entirely.”

  “What are you—”

  Marla held up her hand, and then wildly improvised. “I was sent to interview you, to see if you were ready to learn the true secrets of the world. You’ve probably noticed: you can make the wind blow. You can make creatures of the forest and the air come to you. You look at people, and know things about them. That’s because you’re a natural magician, Cinnamon. You’re not the only one. There are people who can help you become what you’re meant to be. You’ll be visited, soon, by a sorcerer, who will prove their power by showing you acts of magic, and offer to teach you the truth about the world and your powers. Would you like that?”

  Cinnamon frowned. “I’ve been around, Marla. Plenty of people have tried to scam me and take my money. I’m not an idiot.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if you were stupid, Cinnamon.” Cole’s algorithm wouldn’t have flagged someone like that. It had flagged someone who annoyed her, but that was as much on Marla as anyone else. “Look.” Marla took a step backward, and vanished into her own shadow on the sand, pulling the shadow in after her. She walked around underneath the sand—how she did that didn’t really matter; space was negotiable for deities—and emerged from Cinnamon’s own shadow. “Hi.”

  Cinnamon didn’t shriek, or scream, or run away. She just said, “Wow. Can you teach me to do that?”

  “I can’t teach you anything—” Because I would strangle you if I had to spend more than half an hour with you “—but I can make sure you are taught. I’m not a guru. More of a... talent scout. You have to be willing to let go of a lot of your preconceptions. I hate to tell you this, but indigo children are bullshit, auras are mostly bullshit, crystals are nice decorations and can be useful as objects of focus but they don’t have any inherent magical qualities, and, well, lots of other stuff is all wrong, too.”

  “I just want the truth.” Cinnamon dropped to her knees at Marla’s feet. “I’ll cut away anything that’s not the truth, and accept whatever is revealed.”

  All right, so Cinnamon wasn’t hopeless—she rolled with this revelation better than Marla would have in her place. Still, there was no way Marla could spend eternity with this woman. Cinnamon just had too much fervor, and it wouldn’t be any less irritating if she was fervent about things that weren’t bullshit instead. “You’ll be visited,” Marla said. “Probably in the next few days. Then your, uh, journey to true enlightenment can begin. Take care.”

  Marla vanished into her shadow... and re-emerged much farther down the beach, out of Cinnamon’s sight. She concentrated, and a phone appeared in her hand. She called Cole.

  “Marla! How did the date go?”

  “Cinnamon has a lot of potential, but none of that potential should involve me. I can see her good qualities, and I get why the algorithm flagged her, but we would not get along. You should make some calls and see if anyone needs an apprentice in this part of the world, because she’s brimming with power and talent. Finding out about real magic might make her less irritating, even.”

  “I’ll do that. I’m sorry she didn’t work out. Do you want me to cast a wider net?”

  “I can’t imagine going on another date anytime soon, honestly.”

  “Are you leaning toward Jarrell or Lauren, then? Or do just plan to choose some human through other means?”

  “Mmm... I like Lauren a lot, but Jarrell is already an adept, you know? He’s been to the underworld, and it freaked him out a little, but he didn’t lose his shit. He’s also less attached to the mortal world.... I think I should offer the position to him.”

  “Is that what your heart says, or your head?”

  “I literally cut my heart out when I gave up my mortality, remember?”

  “You know what I mean, Marla.”

  “Yeah, yeah. My heart and I haven’t really been on speaking terms since my husband died. I’m still pissed at my heart for letting that hurt me so much. If Jarrell is willing, I think he’s the right pick.” As for Lauren... well. Maybe Marla could have an affair. There was nothing to say her supernatural marriage had to be strictly monogamous.

  “Very good,” Cole said. “I hope it works out.”

  “Me, too. It would be nice to get on with my eternity. How’re things going with our black sand problem? My demons seem to be kicking ass, based on the weird subliminal reports I received.”

  “Bradley has dispatched various trustworthy, or at least effective, operatives to track down the infected. Pelham granted him the ability to travel in shadows, so they plan to round up all the infected and bring them here to my lab. I’m not sure what to do with the sand once we’ve extracted it—”

  “Right, of course, I’ll send a demon or two to help you. Just put them in with the infected and the demons will convert the sand to primordial chaos, easy peasy.”

  “Do you think it would be wise to keep a sample of the sand in isolation, for further study—”

  “No. No, no, a thousand times no. That stuff’s too dangerous. Promise me, Cole. Once the operation is done, and we know we’ve got it all, we destroy every single speck, even the bits in your detectors. Okay?”

 
“Yes, you’re right. As you say.”

  “Great. Ring my bell when it’s all done, all right? I’ll sleep better knowing the sand has been eradicated. Not that I sleep anymore.” She said goodbye.

  So. What now? She should probably go find Jarrell, and formally ask him to be the Bridegroom of Death.

  Something made her hold back, though. What Cole said, about the head and the heart... she didn’t sleep, but before she made this big of a decision, maybe she should do whatever the equivalent of sleeping on it was.

  Once it was a reasonable hour in Amsterdam (and very late in San Francisco, where Cole was still collecting black sand detectors), Marla instantiated a body on the footbridge where she’d kissed Lauren. She conjured up a phone and sent a text.

  They met for lunch. “I wasn’t sure I’d hear from you again,” Lauren said. They were in a restaurant with dark wood and cushy padded booths, nestled together in a corner. Despite the short notice, Lauren looked spectacular in a glittery top and lipstick so dark and red Marla couldn’t take her eyes off it.

  “Yeah, I’m crap at texting and stuff, I know. But I’ve been thinking about you. A lot.”

  “What about? Specifically?”

  “Lots of things. Just now, your lips.”

  She smiled. “Not my boobs? Usually it’s my boobs.”

  “I’m capable of holding multiple trains of thought simultaneously.” Being with Lauren was just so relaxing. Jarrell made more sense as a consort, it would be an easier transition for him, but.... “Not to shift away from the sexy flirtations, but, ah... you know how you said you wanted to help people? Make the world a better place? What would you give up to make that happen?”

  Lauren sipped from a tall glass of beer. “Mmm. It depends, I guess, on how much help I’d be doing.”

  “You do a lot of traveling to other parts of the world for your work, but what if you had to, like, permanently relocate?”

  “What do you mean permanent? No visits home?”

  “Let’s say visiting would be... tricky and infrequent.”

  “Are you going to offer me a spot on a ship to Mars? I get a little claustrophobic, is the only reason I ask.”

  Marla smiled. “No, I wasn’t thinking about the stars, just... gauging your willingness to change your life.”

  “You’re hot, Marla, and smart, and you have a very lady-in-control vibe that, let’s say, really interests me, but I’m not quite ready to run off to Tahiti with you.” She tapped her glass. “Let me have a couple more drinks first.”

  “Ha. Fair enough.”

  “What’s on your mind, Marla?” Laura’s voice was all sympathy, her eyes full of interest and compassion.

  “My life is... extremely complicated. I like you a lot, already, and I’m just trying to figure out how you might fit into that life.”

  “Let’s figure that out together, then. Maybe we’re meant to drop in and out of one another’s lives from time to time. Maybe we’re meant to have a fling and never talk again. Maybe... something else. How about we concentrate on the getting-to-know each other part before we worry about where we’re going?” She extended her hand across the table.

  Marla took Lauren’s hand, curling their fingers together. Oh, hell. If she dropped a bunch of supernatural truth on Lauren, it would totally change the nature of their interactions, and this was nice as it was. She’d didn’t want to be a long-term liar, so she’d have to either quit seeing Lauren entirely, or tell her the truth eventually, but did it have to be right now?

  “So, interesting fact,” Lauren said. “My parents are off on a little trip to Bruges, and our house is totally empty.” She squeezed Marla’s hand. “Any interest in helping me fill it?”

  “In the interest of getting to know each other, how could I refuse?”

  They got to know each other a lot better. They both liked what they found.

  A few hours later Marla was on her back in Lauren’s bed, with Lauren curled up against her, head on her chest, snoring faintly and adorably. This had been Lauren’s childhood bedroom, and there were still vestiges of her youth everywhere, mostly in the form of maps and pictures torn from National Geographic pinned up on the walls, and wooden shelves overflowing with books on all subjects.

  Lauren was a good soul with an insatiable mind and she was good in bed. But she was also so much a part of this world—her family, her work, her lust for life. Marla was comfortable throwing herself into her work, and had a misanthropic streak that made withdrawal from the world a tolerable idea for her, but would Lauren want to spend a fraction of eternity in a place populated exclusively by the dead? Could Marla even ask her to?

  Jarrell was the more solid choice. Cole’s algorithm had chosen him, and he actually understood what he would be getting into, at least as well as any mortal could. He didn’t make Marla’s heart beat faster, but so what? She was talking about spending centuries, maybe millennia, with her consort. The thrill she felt with Lauren couldn’t last forever. Lauren seemed like she belonged in the world, she was of the world, and how could Marla take that world away from her?

  Marla also hesitated because she loved the way Lauren looked at her, and if she revealed her true nature, Lauren wouldn’t look at her that way anymore. Maybe it was better to keep this as a fling, and not get her heart involved at all—

  Marla groaned. Lauren stirred against her but didn’t wake.

  Crap. Marla was afraid, wasn’t she? She’d never dealt well with loss. She’d only been in love twice in her life, with Daniel when she was a teenager, and with the Walking Death. The first had been a white-hot crucible of teen lust and intense bonding experience; the second had been more careful, slow to grow, and ultimately more solid and lasting. Both had ended with the deaths of her loved ones: Daniel, driven mad by a magical trauma, had tried to suck out Marla’s life essence, and she’d been forced to kill him in self-defense. The Walking Death was murdered by the Outsider. The upshot was, Marla was not lucky in love, and there was at least the possibility of love with Lauren. If she chose Jarrell, who she could like and respect but probably never love, then she would be spared the pain of that kind of loss again.

  Marla had always been good at repression, holding herself aloof, being self-reliant, not needing anyone else, and there was definitely an appeal to that kind of future: being a hermetic thing unto herself. But the biggest thing she’d learned over the years, since her start as an apprentice in Felport, was that she couldn’t do everything alone. She was a person—or a god, whatever—in the world, not separate from it. Life was better when you let people in. Yes, you risked losing people and being hurt, but there was so much to gain.

  Soon Marla would have to withdraw from the mortal world, and turn her attention to deeper matters. She could feel the wheels of reality grinding and shifting and moving slowly but significantly out of balance—because she didn’t have a consort to share her work, and because she was spending too much time with large chunks of her consciousness wandering the Earth. The damage to reality had started when she first became Death’s consort and refused to relocate to the underworld full-time, and it wasn’t getting any better now that she was entirely on her own. The harm done to the cycles of life and time and reality weren’t insurmountable yet, but they were approaching a point of no return. Being the god of Death was a full-time job, and she was doing it part-time, still. Soon there would be plagues, and famines, and broken seasons. There would be hurricanes, and fires, and floods, all because she wasn’t keeping all the plates spinning properly. She shouldn’t even have dealt with the black sand—the mortal sorcerers of Earth should have handled it themselves—but her obligation to do Zufi a favor had given her an excuse to meddle.

  She was running out of excuses, though. Soon she was going to leave the world behind, retreat to the underworld, and put reality to rights. Did she want to spend whatever portion of eternity she had ahead of her with a genial colleague like Jarrell... or someone who drew her as strongly as Lauren did? One was probably fine, an
d the other was potentially extraordinary. The only reason to choose Jarrell over Lauren, ultimately, was the fear of feeling something real, and the danger of getting hurt. In other words, the only reason was cowardice.

  I am not afraid of things, Marla thought. I am what other things are afraid of.

  Lauren yawned, opened her eyes, and looked up at Marla. “Hello, delicious.”

  “Hey,” Marla said. “So, there’s something you should probably know about me.”

  Visitations

  “There shouldn’t be a door there.” Lauren, now dressed, stared at the red door with the glass crystal knob in the wall of her bedroom.

  Marla nodded. “And yet.”

  “I should really think I’m dreaming. Right?”

  “Probably. Most people would.”

  “But I lucid dream sometimes, and I know the tricks, ways to tell if you’re dreaming or not. You look at clocks, because clocks change a lot in dreams, and that clock—” She pointed at the wall. “—is totally consistent. Hold on.” She went to a shelf and pulled down a book, opening it up and scanning down the page. After a moment she closed the book and put it away. “I... books are unreliable in dreams, too. The letters move, or the sentences wander away. It’s almost impossible to really read something in a dream. But that book was fine.”

  “So we’re going with a preliminary assessment that this is reality?”

  “I’m a scientist, Marla. A doctor. You say there’s a whole secret reality of sorcerers and supernatural creatures, and you’re part of it. That is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence.”