Immortal at the Edge of the World (4 page)

“So do I.”

Chapter Two

The succubus Indira once asked me how I had managed to live for so long. At first I thought she was talking about my longevity, as if that was a thing I could explain. But that wasn’t what she meant. What she meant was, how had nothing killed me yet, accidentally or otherwise?

I told her I was just lucky. She said she was more prepared to believe just about any answer I gave her, from a friendly god staying the hand of death to a magic charm protecting my body, but not luck. Nobody, she insisted, could possibly be that lucky.

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I was always pretty sure that on the day I finally left this world it would be because of a gun or an arrow, or whatever the next long-distance lethal weapon someone thinks of inventing will be. I have adopted a fine set of survival skills that come very much in handy when I’m within range to evade or otherwise counter an assault, but there isn’t a lot I can do about a high-powered rifle from fifty paces, especially if I don’t know the sniper is even there.

By the way, and without going too far off on a tangent, this world got a whole lot crazier the easier violence became for everyone involved. For most of my life, to kill someone meant getting close enough to get blood on your clothes. Most times one was using something sharp at close range, and most times the consequence was seeing the insides of another person and hearing them die in pain, and basically being okay with that. Now there are triggers and buttons and switches, and killing another person doesn’t necessarily involve even being in the same room with them. Guns may seem less barbaric than swords and knives, but the only difference I can see is in ease of use.

Anyway. I am just as capable of dying from a gunshot as I am from a well-swung sword, the difference being I might have a chance of defending myself against a swordsman. With a gun, my best chance is to be someone nobody would want to shoot.

I am asked on occasion why I don’t take a more public stance, why I tend to stick to the shadows and keep private and let other people be the kings and conquerors and CEOs and senators. This is one of the reasons. The less important I am, the less chance there is that someone would want to blow my head off from a distance.

So the shots at the limo were a surprise. Almost as big a surprise as Tchekhy’s shop exploding.

Dugan the driver was puzzling over the same sort of questions, albeit from a much smaller base of knowledge. His first act after getting us away from the scene before fire trucks and police arrived was to duck us into an underground public garage. It was the kind of place one went to complete drug deals and talk to government informants off the record, but it was also exceptionally difficult to shoot into from the street.

“You aren’t hit?” he asked for the fourth or fifth time.

“I’m not,” I said. “You?”

“No, no. My car door’s fucked up . . . excuse me . . . shot up, but I’m okay.”

“I’ll cover the door,” I said. I know next to nothing about insurance, but I was pretty sure if he wanted his to foot the cost of the door he’d have to file a police report first, and nobody wanted that.

He nodded. “Can I ask you what just happened back there?”

“Don’t know. Like I said, nobody was expecting me.”

“Fine, but that wasn’t random either,” he said. “Neither was your friend’s store blowing up.”

“You’re right, it wasn’t. Can you get me back to the hotel?”

“Sure. But not in this car. I’m gonna put in a call, get us another ride.”

“It drives okay.”

“A black stretch limo with tinted rear windows and two bullet holes in the right rear passenger side door was just at a scene where a crime took place,” Dugan said. “And don’t tell me that wasn’t arson we just saw. Now I don’t know what your friend was into, but I’ll bet my right . . . I’ll bet anything that there’s at least one body in that fire, whether it’s him or not. So in the interest of protecting my client, I’d rather there isn’t an obvious trail leading from that scene to the hotel.”

“I like the way you think, Dugan,” I said.

He shrugged. “This is why people like me drive people like you around, and as long as you don’t get into trouble while you’re in one of my cars, people like you will continue to pay me to do that. Can I ask you one question?”

“Sure.”

“Did you have anything to do with that fire?”

“Would it matter to you if I did?”

“No, sir. Just want to know is all.”

“I didn’t. And if I did, I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to go watch it happen. I would have hired someone like you to go watch for me.”

He smiled. “Let me make that call.”

*
 
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I made it back to the hotel a couple of hours later without any further assassination attempts. Dugan was compensated amply for everything, and I was back in my large top-floor suite and all was right in the world again—except that basically nothing that had happened after I left the bank had made any sense at all.

There was one thing I was pretty sure of: Despite being on the other side of a door that had been perforated by a marksman’s bullets, I didn’t think I was being targeted. Not because it was particularly difficult to fathom someone wanting to kill me but because a hired assassin would have to be possessed of psychic powers to have set up a nest in that exact spot. (And oracles notwithstanding, there is no such thing as psychic powers.) I wasn’t kidding when I told Dugan nobody was expecting me. I had only decided to stop by Tchekhy’s while I was on the elevator to the basement from Heintz’s office. Further, an assassin with that degree of foresight probably wouldn’t have missed the shot. Twice.

I made my way past the room’s vast picture window and to the wet bar. The view was the sort that took one’s breath away, especially the breath belonging to someone who never imagined mankind would be able to build anything so tall, but I had spent most of the previous day gawking at the city and now the bar was of far greater importance. As I tossed some ice into a highball glass a familiar buzzing caught my ear.

“Hello, Iza,” I greeted.

“H’lo,” she answered as she flew past my line of vision.

Iza is a pixie. She’s only a few inches tall, but if she were human-sized she’d probably be the most beautiful human I had ever seen, and not just because pixies don’t wear clothing. Usually, Iza lives in my island home, but before I left for New York she more or less demanded I take her along. Not sure why.

Pixies aren’t very bright, but they are loyal, and are almost always a better option than talking to oneself in the mirror.

I poured some scotch over the ice in the glass, found a jar of olives and set a few out on the bar, and then sat down in one of the chairs in the lounge portion of the suite. Said chair was facing the window; the previous evening, after a large amount of alcohol, I had begun mentally tossing thunderbolts from that same chair. The view has this effect on a person. Or possibly just me.

Iza landed on the bar and began eating one of the olives. I could hear her munching. Pixies are loud eaters.

“Someone took a shot at me today,” I said.

“Shot?” Iza asked. “A picture?”

“No, with a gun. Like on television.” We had watched television for a year, she and I, before she realized there weren’t any small people hiding in the wall on the other side of the big screen TV’s glass. “Bullets.”

“Bullets bad.”

“Missed me, though.”

“I know. You here.”

“I don’t think they were aiming for me,”

“Okay.”

“I think they were aiming for the car door.”

“Door bad?”

“Well I don’t know. I don’t think the door was bad. It seemed like a regular car door.” It really helps enormously to already have a drink in your hand when talking to a pixie.

“Door good, people bad.”

“People bad?” I asked.

“Doors good, people shoot doors, people bad.”

“I understand.”

“Iza try small words.”

“Yes, I appreciate that. But I don’t think the person with the gun had anything against the door. He shot at it because it was in front of me.”

“Try to shoot you, then,” she reiterated.

“I don’t think so.”

“You confused.”

One of us was. It might have been me. “I’m still trying to work it out.”

“Okay.” Iza flew around the room a couple of times, which was her version of thinking. When she was done she landed back on the bar. “Door not bad, people not bad, maybe you bad.”

“I’m not bad.”

“
Somebody
bad.” Pixies ascribe to a fairly Manichaean worldview, I’ve learned.

“Actually that makes sense,” I said, because all at once everything did.

“You bad?” she repeated.

“Not that I’m bad, that I’m in a bad place. That I’m not supposed to be there. Shoot the door, because it’s the fastest way to get me to leave. The shooter knew what was going to happen next and didn’t think I should be there when it did.”
 

“What happen next?”

“There was a fire.”

“Fire bad.”

“Yes, fire is mostly bad nowadays. So are explosions. Whoever shot the gun knew the fire was coming because they’d set it.” I held up my glass to my tiny companion. She was still eating olives. “And so I know who fired the gun now.”

“Good,” she said. “All done thinking?”

“Yes. All done.”

“Now we go see Clara.”

I nearly choked on an ice cube. “Clara?”

“We go see Clara.” To emphasize the importance of this, Iza flew into my eyeline and stared at me. I was genuinely dumbstruck.

When I’d first moved to my private island with Iza, Clara had also been with us, and it’s fair to say Iza liked her a great deal more than she liked me. The problem was Clara had left me more than seven years ago, and while I knew exactly where she was, I wasn’t going there. And New York was not that place.

“Clara isn’t here, Iza, I’m sorry,” I said.

“New York!” Iza said. “Iza not stupid, Iza remember.” The first time I’d met Clara was in New York City, and Iza was there then, too.

“Not stupid,” I agreed. “I’m really sorry, Iza. I should have understood better when you asked to come. Clara isn’t in New York anymore. She’s in Europe. I wasn’t coming here to see her.”

“Open window, I find her.”

“I actually can’t,” I said. “These windows don’t open.” This was probably the saddest conversation I’d had in about a century, in case you were wondering. Once it was over I fully intended to polish off the entire wet bar.

“Windows made to open!” Iza insisted. “Windows stupid!”

“People can’t fly. The windows don’t open to keep anybody from trying to.”

“If people know people can’t fly—”

“It’s difficult to explain,” I interrupted. Explaining suicide to a pixie would take several days, after which I would end up killing myself.

Blessedly, we were interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Clara!” Iza said.

“I really don’t think so.”

I went to the door and checked. It was a woman, certainly, but not Clara. A very good-looking woman. My arm took over and opened the door before I had a chance to tell it to wait. Common sense dictates if someone has just fired a gun at you—even if it was just at your car door—the next time a stranger approaches, you’d best engage them in conversation from a safe remove. On the other hand, she was very pretty. And so I opened the door.

“Hello. Can I help you?” I managed to say. And then there was a blade at my neck.

“I’m here to help
you
,” said my guest with a slight smile.

Chapter Three

Hsu wondered how I was able to recognize him immediately for what he was. “There are only three rules when it comes to goblins,” I said. “Know how to recognize them, try not to anger them when they are armed, and assume that they are always armed.”

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There are a few circumstances under which having the sharp portion of a knife or sword against your neck can be considered a valid threat. You could be sitting down in a tall-backed chair. You could be pressed up against a wall. Your assailant could be behind you and pulling you against them. And really any other situation you can dream up in which you can’t for one reason or another go backward.

At the threshold of my suite, this was not the case. I had one hand on the door, so had I wanted to, I could have fallen backward while at the same time slamming the door. Even if the woman on the dull end of the sword succeeded in blocking this I’d have still been left with plenty of time to find my feet and maybe the nearest heavy projectile available. And I was pretty sure she knew all of this, too.

The woman in question was roughly my height thanks to an impressive pair of leather boots that looked to have at least three and a half inches of heel to them. Tucked into the boots were a pair of black denim pants, and going up from there I could make out what appeared to be a halter top beneath a calfskin jacket. Her skin was copper colored, her hair was jet black, and her eyes were slate gray.