Lady of Misrule (Marla Mason Book 8) (29 page)

“Well, sure,” Bradley said. “No wonder he doesn’t want you around. You made him, so you could unmake him.”

Rondeau frowned. “I could?”

“He came out of your
brain
, man. You literally conjured him, or at least gave this particular shape to some lurking primal force, endowed it with sentience and consciousness. So it follows that you’ve got the power to dispel him, too.”

“How the hell do I do
that
?”

Bradley shrugged. “I dunno. Do some research, find the right spell. Or just summon up an oracle and
ask
it how.”

Rondeau groaned. “Just thinking about doing all that makes me tired. Having your power is too much for me, B. I liked it better when I was just a simple psychic parasite with a knack for causing bursts of magical chaos. That was a
manageable
kind of magic. This shit... nah, fuck it. The Pit Boss did me a solid, got rid of Regina Queen, held up his end of our deal. He’s not screwing with me anymore, so I’m not screwing with him, either.”

“Seems silly to worry about it, since the whole multiverse might get destroyed in a day or two anyway,” Bradley said.

“Yeah, about that. When do we leave for Felport? I could’ve just
stayed
. Though it is nice to be back in my suite for a minute.”

The door to the hallway swung open, and Marla walked in.

Regina Queen came in behind her, as regal and ice-faced as ever, dressed in her long fur-lined cloak.

Rondeau whimpered and jumped over the back of the couch, crouching behind it.

After a long moment of silence, Marla said, “Rondeau, come out from behind there.”

He stuck his head up. Regina looked at him with infinite amusement. “What the fuck is she doing here?”
Marla shrugged. “I asked her along to help us deal with our little problem in Felport, that’s all.” Something about Marla was strange – she looked a little taller, and her voice was slow, laconic.

“Marla. She’s...” He shook his head.

“She
is
an unrepentant mass murderer, Mrs. Mason.” Pelham said, as if pointing out that she had a bit of spinach in her teeth.

“She wants to redeem herself,” Marla said. “Ain’t that right, Regina?”

“Oh, my, yes.”

The temperature in the room dropped noticeably – and Marla reached over and smacked Regina on the arm. “None of that. Behave, or its back to the pit with you.”

The cold snap abruptly stopped.

“Am I missing something?” Marzi said.

Regina looked the woman up and down and smiled frostily. “Oh, my, yes, dear. You probably miss almost
everything
.”

“Wow.” Marzi whistled. “That’s some fancy new kind of a bitch you’ve got there, Marla.”

Regina hissed, and icy fog puffed out with her breath. Marla smacked her again, and Regina flinched, then looked ashamed. “I will wait in the hallway.” She turned and swept out of the room.

“Marla.” Bradley cleared his throat. “Asking for Regina Queen’s help... isn’t that a little bit like asking for a rattlesnake’s help to kill a spider?”

“Strange bedfellows and shit, B.” Marla dropped onto the couch where Rondeau had been. “I went to the Pit Boss and told him I needed Regina, and after a little chat, he agreed to hand her over.”

Something clicked in Rondeau’s head. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “You threatened the Pit Boss with
me
, didn’t you? Told him you’d teach me how to un-summon him? Right? Send him back to my id or the spectral ether or wherever he came from?”

Marla shrugged. “You use the carrots and sticks you’ve got on hand. I figure making a monster of molten rock who runs Las Vegas a little bit scared of me is good, even if I have to use
you
to scare him.”

“Yeah, great, but what if he decides to
murder
me? Remove the threat?”

Marla waved a hand. “Oh, I told him his life might be tied to yours, that if you die he might cease to exist. He’s gonna be looking out for you, actually. Though I did have to dissuade him from putting you in a medically-induced coma with round-the-clock medical care, keeping you alive and out of danger forever, which is what he
wanted
to do.”

“Oh, good. Now I just have to worry about Regina killing me for throwing her in a volcano.”

“She’s harmless. We did a circle of binding. I’m not an amateur here, Rondeau. Promises were made, the unbreakable kind, and she was willing to make a lot of concessions in exchange for me letting her out of the hellish pocket dimension where she was trapped. Regina won’t hurt you, or any of my people. She’ll help us with the Outsider, and then she’ll fuck off back to the frozen north. She’s got some crystal palace up there full of ice golems or something, who knows. Having her up there’s actually good for the whole climate change thing – she’s keeping at least some bits of the polar ice cap from melting. I’m being a responsible steward of the Earth, here.”

“You people are into some heavy shit,” Marzi said. “There are more magical motherfuckers in this room than I knew existed in the whole world.”

“Ha,” Marla said. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, darlin’. We’re gonna grab some food and some shut-eye, and in the morning, we’re attending a gen-yoo-wine council of sorcerous war.”

•

Rondeau sat out on the balcony late that night, smoking and brooding, looking at the never-darkening lights of Las Vegas. Regina Queen was
down the hall
, booked into another room, sleeping by herself, assuming she even slept. Marla insisted the bindings on her were sufficient to keep her from turning fugitive, but it didn’t make him feel too restful, having her so close.

Marzi came through the sliding glass door and sat down beside him. “Can I bum one of those?”

Rondeau nodded and handed a cigarette over, then gave her a light. “I didn’t think anyone from California still smoked. Apart from weed.”

“There are still a few terrible disappointments out there.” She drew in a lungful, then slowly blew it out. “I don’t smoke, usually, but I’m a little stressed. Just got off the phone with my boyfriend. He’s not real happy about me taking off without warning, going on a magical misadventure. He’s pretty supportive about things, but he says I should have talked it over with him first. He’s big on talking. Does have a point, though. I feel bad.”

Rondeau nodded. “That’s why I never make meaningful human connections.”

Marzi snorted. “So, you do this kind of stuff all the time? Magic, I mean?”

Rondeau hesitated. Explaining that he wasn’t human, but a psychic parasite of unknown provenance currently residing in his second stolen body, might be a little on the overwhelming side, so he just said, “Since I was a kid, pretty much. I met Marla when I was living on the street. She gave me a hand up, taught me some stuff. It’s a better life than I would have had otherwise, that’s for sure, but there are definitely periods of unrelenting terror.”

“Damn.” Marzi put her feet up on the railing. “Part of me is really curious. There’s a whole secret world out there, I know that – I helped kill a god, once, it’s not like I didn’t realize there must be
more
. But I’ve spent the last years trying not to think about it, to have a normal life, one focused on love and art. But am I living in a tiny room, when there’s a whole big mansion out there, if I just have the courage to step through the door?”

Rondeau nodded. “I should warn you, I’m pretty famous for making terrible decisions and giving terrible advice, but I will say this: if you get into sorcery and all, it doesn’t replace regular life. Regular life is still there. You drive places, you get drunk, you talk shit with your friends, you make out with people, you do your job – regular stuff. Like, you own a café – before I sold out, I used to run a night club. Sure, I’m a wizard, or whatever. But I still had to call in the liquor order. Still had to check IDs at the door. Still had to pay taxes, at least a little bit. Joining the magical community, it’s not trading one life for another life. It’s
adding
more to your life. It’s like if you had a really hardcore hobby, one that ate up every bit of your free time. Sure, it might piss off your loved ones a little, but it also gives you something to fill your hours.”

She grunted. “Man, I already draw comics. I need
another
hobby? One that’s more dangerous? I might as well take up alligator wrestling.”

He shrugged. “You gotta decide what to do on your own. Some of us, magic fills a part of our lives that would be empty otherwise. If she hadn’t found magic, I don’t know
what
Marla would be – except she’d probably be dead. She sure as hell wouldn’t be a part-time goddess
of death. But if you don’t have that kind of hole in your life, or if you’ve got love and art to fill it, shit. I can’t promise magic would make things
better
.”

Marzi flicked her cigarette butt over the railing. “I don’t know. Your advice doesn’t seem so terrible.”

He nodded. “You know, sometimes I even surprise myself.”

Marzi in the War Room

They all lined up in a line before the suite’s door, Bradley holding Marzi’s hand, her holding Pelham’s hand, Pelham holding Rondeau’s. Regina Queen refused to hold anyone’s hands, and scoffed at the suggestion that she close her eyes. “I fear nothing in this world or any other.”

“Hell can get a little warm, in places,” the Stranger said. “But suit yourself.”

“Are there not realms of terrible ice in the underworld as well?”

The Stranger chortled. “You’re talking about Dante, now? Regina, that’s just infernal fanfic. Sure, there are probably icy parts of the underworld, but then, anything anyone finds unpleasant is probably down there
somewhere
. Let’s go.”

Marzi closed her eyes, the door clicked open, and she followed the tug of Bradley’s hand, pulling Pelham along after her. As before, she was hit with a rush of heat, and a profound sense of disorientation: the psychic GPS in her head basically glitching-out, informing her that she was
nowhere
and
no place
and
in danger
, and she gritted her teeth and rode it out. Pelham murmured, “Are we there? Is something happening?”

“Damn, you non-psychics are lucky,” Rondeau said.

“Slime mold,” a cold voice said. Cold, but not Regina’s. The Stranger’s? Sort of, but also
something else
. There was magic here
way
bigger than Marzi’s. “Cockroaches. Too much life. Out. Out. Get out.”

Bradley pulled at Marzi, and the disorientation lessened and then vanished, and when she opened her eyes, she was standing in what looked like a night club, with a dance floor and a DJ booth and a bar along one wall. The house lights were on, and half a dozen people were sitting or standing around a big table set up in the center of the dance floor. One of them, a youngish, sharp-featured woman with a bleached-white duck fuzz of hair, whistled. “Damn, Marla. Did you bring the entire rhythm section of the Polyphonic Spree with you? What a fuckin’ menagerie.”

The Stranger pointed people out. “Nicolette. You know Rondeau and Pelham and Bradley. That’s Marzi McCarty – she’s a low-level reweaver with experience fighting the Outsider, and some success with limiting his powers. I also brought Regina Queen, the ice witch.”

“Damn. I’ve heard of you, Regina. You’re Viscarro’s mom, right?”

Regina just sniffed, drifting around the club, peering at everything with obvious distaste.

“All right, she at least might halfway useful,” Nicolette said. “Ha. We three queens.” She snorted. “The Ice Queen, the Queen of the Dead, and the Witch Queen of Felport.”

“You’re more like the Lady of Misrule,” the Stranger said. “But you’ll have to do. What’s the plan?”

“The plan is, shut the fuck up, we’re getting a transmission here.” Nicolette walked across the dance floor, and the big screen over the bar flickered to life. At first, Marzi couldn’t make sense of the image, and then it resolved into something like a found-footage horror movie, a handheld camera jiggling around in a dark cavern of some kind. The camera spun around and focused on the dust-streaked features of a middle-aged man.

“Is that Mr. Beadle?” the Stranger said. “Where the hell is he?”

“Shush it,” Nicolette said. Marzi glanced at the Stranger, who scowled, her hand drifting toward the dagger in her coat. There were all kinds of politics here Marzi didn’t understand, but it was obvious these two women didn’t have much use for each other. This was clearly a “united against a common enemy” type of thing. Which was actually one of Marzi’s favorite kind of stories to write: the best arc of
The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl
was probably the one where Rangergirl and the tyrannical Aaron Burr joined forces to fight the Outlaw. There was a little more tension when you were living
inside
that kind of story, though.

“I found the fragments of the seal,” the man on the screen was saying. “I have reconstructed the symbols, and have transmitted them to Hamil’s team. They predate human language, though there are traces of a kind of proto-Aklo –”

“Save the etymological stuff for a scholarly paper, Beadle,” Nicolette interrupted. “Can those seals hold this thing, or what?”

“Hold it, yes. There’s no evidence to suggest how the ancients lured the Outsider
into
the vault in the first place, but if you can find a way to get the creature inside – yes, those symbols will hold it.”

“Whoa.” The Stranger stepped forward. “Beadle, are you in Death Valley?”

“Yes, Marla. Nicolette dispatched me straight away when she got your call.” He made a sour face. “I had to
teleport
– it was harrowing. Once I arrived I used forensic magic to piece together the magical prison your cultists destroyed when they released the Outsider. If we seek to hold the beast, after all, why not see how it was held before?”

“I... shit. I never thought to do that.”

“Of course you didn’t.” Nicolette shook her head. “You’re all about breaking shit, Marla. You’re crap when it comes to putting stuff back together.”