Going Under (6 page)

"Strangely enough, no. Look," Lila made a can opener from the same finger, then a socket wrench, then a screwdriver, then set it back to a finger, blowing on it because it was suddenly hot from the changes. A silver nimbus of agitated metal elementals shone briefly around her hand and then sunk back into the matte black illusion of a leather glove. Her hip twinged with an ache, like an old athlete's joint sensing oncoming bad weather, and she frowned. She'd been ignoring small pains for a month, but there was no denying they were related to her new party tricks. She kept silent about them because worrying about it privately and suspecting the worst seemed better than coming out with it and having the worst formally confirmed by medical. Her own stupidity sometimes amazed her.

"I'm thinking it didn't used to do that." The faery stared unhappily at her hand and then his eyes narrowed in speculation. She flexed her fingers and put her hand down.

Lila gave him a slow, thoughtful nod. "You're right. I was definitely much more like a robot with rubber gloves on a year ago. Now I don't even need to bother requisitioning gloves. Or, come to that, boots and stockings."

Malachi raised his eyebrows, "Does it do other colours?"

Lila imagined her hand wearing a red glove. The black became muddy brown and then mottled, as if cancerous. She went back to black quickly. "Seems I don't have the hang of that. Or it doesn't like it. Maybe it's a goth technology." She hesitated. "I don't really like to dwell on why it will do some things and not others."

They shared a glance of profound discomfort and worry and then both looked away at the same moment. Lila felt strange again, as she had with Madame when she had showed the demon the same thing, and she tried to forget that just now she had referred to parts of herself in the third person, as if they weren't really her at all. A shudder tried to get going in her back but she didn't let it show and instead it closed on her spine with a cold grip-the fear she didn't want to know about that kept on screaming silently "What if it's alive? What if it's not you but something else? Was it always like this? Did they know when they remade you? Or is it something made lately, in Alfheim, because of Zal, in Demonia ... what is it? Whose is it? Why? Didn't Spiderman once have this kind of trouble and look what happened to him ..."

No, she didn't want to give in to that kind of fear. That was a luxury reserved for people who feared something they could actually flee from.

Tath sighed an elfin sigh-long, soft, and so eloquent you could have sent it to a debating competition as an irrefutable speech on the folly of human nature. Lila imagined herself giving him a kick in the pants and sent it as a mental image, but he was impervious to taunts.

Meanwhile, "On the plus side I don't have to bother with two hours of medical and maintenance every night," she said, attempting to be breezy and failing.

"You still go back for ammunition, medical gear, or downloads?"

It was a good question. She didn't know the answer since she hadn't used up any supplies since her last trip back to the Agency. In one of the wardrobes a large unopened holdall contained a field-base's worth of spares. Of the duels she had fought during and since the wedding she used barehand and blade techniques to be on the safe side. She didn't know what rounds were fatal and nonfatal to demons, and anyway, getting out a missile or bomblet seemed unsporting and not in the spirit of ritual mortal combat. At least the demons seemed to agree with her. None of them had made an attempt on her life with anything more accurate or long range than a single hand crossbow.

"The Al processes go up almost a hundred percent when it happens," she said because it was all the hard information she had.

A voice said from her ear, "Yeah but even that's been going down lately. I keep telling ya to change into something interesting like a speedboat and give it something to worry about but do you listen?" Thingamajig crawled out of his hiding form as a ruby, jewelling Lila's ear, and stretched out on her shoulder to stare at Malachi with proprietorial interest. He was slightly hunched and stroked the backs of his own hands, eyes narrowed, like a villain in a pantomime.

"He must be an interesting third party in bed," Malachi said. "Unusually quiet today."

"I've got a name, you know," the imp said sulkily, slumping back into his recent despondent state.

"Yeah, when you know what it is give me a call," the faery replied.

"Myeh," Thingamajig turned his back and buried his face in Lila's hair, aiming his small rump directly at Malachi and briefly emitting a fart of yellow flame.

"Can you turn into a speedboat?" Malachi asked.

"No. When can I meet your strandloper?" Lila asked.

"Soon as," the faery said. He returned his cup to a side table and straightened his coat. "I have to be getting back. A few matters ... well, you'll see."

She guessed that his stiff formality was a signal to her that what ever was bothering them in Otopia was particularly irritating. He was usually so relaxed, this businesslike attitude was the equivalent of some other person's major anxiety attack. So she nodded agreement and gave him a reassuring smile, hoping it didn't seem to eager. On top of everything else she was fighting hard not to admit that going along with the Demon code of marry-to-payback might have been a mistake. Visions of having to live with Teazle and Zal forever danced regularly through her head like a tacky vaudeville show. But she didn't want to think about it. The Ignore file in her brain would just have to get to gigabyte sizes.

"Before you go. I wanted to ask. Do you know anything about this?" Lila reached into her neckline and pulled free the faery necklace with its spiral. The other was tangled up and came with it, but it was the spiral she held forward.

Malachi glanced at it, almost nonchalantly although his wings gave a sudden flick and discharged about a pound of coal dust into the air in a glittering black cloud. The sooty bits spun and danced, forming curious storms. They would not sink down but circulated around him, globulating as if they wanted to make forms but couldn't decide what. A tang of citrus flavoured the air suddenly. Lila recognised a local magical sink forming, her conviction boosted by Tath's sudden nudge as the aether made him alert. The spiral tingled between her fingers as if it had been attached to a small battery and a tendril of white metal energy stretched cautiously forward from her fingertips towards it, but did not make contact.

"Is that the one the eachuisge singer gave you?"

Lila recognised the strange sound as the official faery name for Zal's backing singers-water horse fey. "Poppy. The annoying one. Yes, her."

"Is it now?" Malachi had become almost somnolent, his eyes glazing with a look that was focused into the never. He stepped forwards with his usual grace but slowly and raised a hand up towards the spiral, stopping when he was inches away. "When did she give it to you?"

"She gave it to Zal to give to me actually, before he tried to come here and ended up in Zoomenon instead. He gave it to me when he got back."

"So he carried it while he was there ..." this was a statement, not a question and Lila didn't say anything. Malachi's expression was serious, his gaze drifting idly, it seemed, down to the spiral, though he kept his faraway stare so that he was both looking and not looking at it. "I'm supposing she didn't say why or what it was for?"

"A good luck charm," Lila said, repeating what Zal had said, although he'd been so casual about it she never thought it was more than a bit of decoration with some faery twirl set on it, the kind you could buy for a few pounds at any fey roadside caravan or truck stop. They were magical items, of the only kind available in Otopia under the present laws, and usually held a petit-glamour of some kind, such as adding a little brightness to the eyes or, in the case of the famous Faeryware, enhancing flavour in food.

"Aye, it was lucky for him to survive more than a few hours in Zoomenon, locate the only source of organised energy in that world, free a lot of ancient ghosts from millennia of torment and in so doing discover the one shameful secret of elven history that would give him proof that the shadowkin and the elves of light are blood relatives. So it was. Lucky indeed." Malachi said quietly and let his hand drop without touching the spiral. Motes of carbon flirted with touching it and rebounded, as if repelled or frightened. He shook his head and broke his own trance, "Have you ever tried losing it?"

"No, why would I?"

"You should ask Poppy where she found it."

For the first time in a long time Lila thought of Zal's kidnapping-faeries had been involved in that, though it was an elven plot. She was about to mention it when Malachi said, "And the other one? That's not a faery thing." His gaze was fixed on the talisman, narrowed.

"Sarasilien gave it to me. Just a token," she mumbled, knowing that it was the only thing keeping all the magical adepts in her proximity from discovering Tath. She had no idea what magic the old elf had used to make it, even though she'd seen it done. It had seemed a trivial thing, but then again, Malachi had more than once hinted that a big song and dance routine was just that when it came to the magical arts; a great spell or a small one was the work of a moment and for true adepts no props were required. She hadn't entirely believed him, mostly because faeries liked slinging grandiose claims around, but now she wondered.

"The understatement there is so low I'm starting to feel that I'm back in the old country," Malachi said, straightening the hang of his jacket. Abruptly the clouds of scintillating black dust shot back onto his wings and skin, like iron filings to a magnet. "Next you'll be telling me your new family are just like regular folks. I'll be on my way. See you at the Agency." His amber gaze was direct, meaning she'd better be there soon and that he was wise to her attempts to omit important information.

"Sure," Lila said, showing him to the door.

As he turned to go he cast a last glance over the room, lingering on the huge rumpled bed. "A year since you first walked into Alfheim, huh? You've come a long way, baby."

"It's not what it looks like."

He nodded and she wished to hell he would stop being so serious, like he was her sad and wiser father or something. Her own father of course ... no, she couldn't even imagine beginning to explain this to him-"Hi, Dad. Here's my new husband. He's an elf. And a demon. Yes, both. I know, isn't it weird but yes, you can be both apparently. And this is my other husband. He's just a demon and we all live together, oh, and this is a dead elf I had a hand in murdering six months ago-no, he doesn't share the bed, just my body ... and this is Thingamajig. Demon? Uh, yes, well just an imp. Like a cat but more irritating. He lives next to my head. Yes, husband in THAT sense of the word. Want some help opening that beer?" And then she wouldn't be able to say any more because she would literally have died of embarrassment.

The faery turned and looked down into her eyes for a moment. "You don't need to defend yourself to me," he said. "I just want you to be safe."

She didn't like the implication in that and before she knew it said, "You're not responsible for me. Don't think about it."

His gaze hardened with a flash of anger and then he laughed. "Telling a fey to be free is like telling water it's wet." His anger returned and hardened out into resolve. "I am what I am. And I say you are into things deeper and stranger than you understand. You run in without a second glance, yes, like the children the faeries love the best. No hesitation. A child of the heart. Wedded to demons. But you don't-"

"I do so know about them," she said, thinking of the Souk, the glamorous, deadly violence of every day.

"You know what they like to show you," Malachi said, suddenly more gentle so she wished he was angry again. "And we're the same. And the elves, and that's all." He glanced at her forehead and hair, where they were stained scarlet by the deadly magical energy which had destroyed her limbs.

"I'm not under any illusions," Lila insisted, angry in spite of knowing he was only being thoughtful. "I don't need protection. I'm not a little girl."

His look said he thought otherwise and she scowled at him.

"Sling yet hook," Thingamajig muttered from her hair. "I'd have thought you'd have more sense, faeryman. The lassie doesn't like to know what she knows."

"Spoken like a pro," Malachi retorted. He leant down and kissed the air next to Lila's cheek. "Tell the lads I said hello."

She closed the door after him and leant against it for a moment. It put her opposite the balcony and the huge sprawl of beribboned bas kets but all she saw was Malachi's deadly seriousness. She would never have believed he could be spooked by anything if she hadn't seen it for herself.

utting short her holiday was something Lila wanted to do about as much as she wanted a hole in the head, but on top of her burning desire to get the information out of Madame was the uncomfortable feeling she'd got from Malachi. Add to that the mention of a Strandloper and Zal's discoveries during and after his last visit to Zoomenon, and suddenly the idea of sitting around doing not much of anything was too annoying to bear. She decided to leave as soon as possible and went to ready her backpack so she didn't leave anything behind her which the demons could tamper with, like artillery shells, bullets, or the slim vials of various biochemicals that were the precursor compounds for all the drugs and treatments she was capable of manufacturing. It was an intricate and methodical task that left her just enough time to bring her memories of the Mothkin out of storage in her Al module and into her mind. She read as she worked.