In Your Dreams (22 page)

‘Chicken,' Mrs Tanner's mum jeered. ‘You don't know how lucky you are. Most men your age, they've got really scary stuff to contend with: mortgages and pensions and commitment and the patter of tiny feet. All you've got to worry about is dragons and the Fey.'

She dropped Paul off in the street outside his flat, and he managed to stop her following him in without using actual violence, which was progress of a sort. It was only when he'd kicked off his shoes and flopped down on the sofa that he began thinking about some of the things he'd seen and heard that evening. Somehow, the absence of Sophie was worse than ever; he wanted to shout at her for the things she'd said, or burst into tears and snivel, but he couldn't. When he climbed into bed and turned off the light, he felt for a moment as though he was back in the dungeon cell; except that this time he was alone. He stuck it as long as he could, then switched the light back on and looked round for a book. Unfortunately, the only one he could reach without getting out of bed was the copy of
Beowulf
that Benny had lent him, and he really wasn't in the mood. He got up and made himself a cup of tea; no sugar left, and the milk had things floating on the top.
Some hero
, he thought.

Some time after two a.m. he fell asleep on the sofa and dreamed restlessly about three-headed dogs and maroon Volkswagens, and a hospital ward full of sleeping children who wouldn't wake up.

Chapter Seven

‘M
r Carpenter,' said Countess Judy. Delivered with the full force of the eyes, the most devastating modulation of the voice, it should have been enough to freeze him like a packet of sweetcorn. It explained why the Fey were reduced to fighting civil wars, since no external enemy would dare take the field against them. It was the Goddess in her triple aspect as Headmistress, Unapproachable Ice Princess and Aunt. It didn't work.

‘But you can't just leave them there,' Paul protested, so loudly that they could probably hear him in the corridor. ‘You've no idea what that place is like—'

‘Actually,' she said, ‘I have. I've been there myself.'

That was enough to shock him into silence. ‘Oh,' he said, after a brief toe-curl of acute embarrassment; then he rallied and continued: ‘In which case, you know how really, really bad it is in there.'

‘Exactly.' Apart from her mouth, the Countess didn't move at all. Come to that, Paul could never remember having seen her blink. Not once. Like a painting. ‘Which is why I sent you to rescue Mr Shumway. And now,' she went on, calm as a sea of mercury, ‘you tell me that you were captured and barely managed to escape. Since you are the only member of the pest-control team still at liberty, we would seem to have run out of options. I take it that you're not volunteering to try again.'

She had him there; because, he realised with a pang of shame, nothing on earth would make him go back. The full force of it had only hit him when he'd woken up that morning; it had been dark, and for a split second when he opened his eyes and couldn't see anything he thought his rescue had just been a dream and he was still down there. He'd been so scared, he hadn't been able to move for about fifteen seconds.

‘Well, it shouldn't be up to me,' Paul said, defensive as a child who knows it's in the wrong. ‘I'm only a trainee, I haven't got a clue how you're supposed to go about breaking out of magic dungeons. But you, and Mr Suslowicz, and Professor van Spee—'

Still Countess Judy hadn't moved. At any other time, that would've been enough to freak Paul out on its own. ‘You should know by now,' she said, ‘that heroism is entirely species-specific. Humans can be heroes; so, under certain circumstances, can dwarves, like Mr Shumway. Giants, goblins and the Fey, however, are explicitly excluded. On account,' she added, with the ghost of a smile, ‘of being officially classified as creatures of darkness; in other words, the enemy. That rules out Mr Suslowicz, Mr Tanner and myself; and Professor van Spee is four hundred and sixty-two years old, and suffers from chronic asthma. It's you or nobody, Mr Carpenter. I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do. Mr Shumway knew the risks; likewise Mr Wurmtoter, although I notice you haven't mentioned him. In case you'd forgotten, he too is missing in action. As for Ms Wurmtoter – your car – she was a fully qualified practitioner before her transformation, and doubtless entirely aware of the perils of her chosen career. Professionals, Mr Carpenter, all three of them. We should honour their sacrifice and move on.'

Paul's anger didn't shrivel away, as it would normally have done. To his great surprise, it crystallised into cold, hard determination, and he hid it in the back of his mind, where even the Countess couldn't see it. ‘All right,' he said. ‘I see. Fine. I'm sorry for coming barging in here like this . . .'

A very slight shrug, maybe one and a half degrees per shoulder. ‘That's quite all right, Mr Carpenter. Your reaction was entirely understandable and shows a laudable concern for the well-being of your colleagues. We pride ourselves on our team spirit here at JWW. And now,' she said, ‘I must ask you to put your recent experiences behind you. As will be obvious, the loss of our pest-control department and our cashier places us in a most unfortunate position. We shall, of course, start advertising in the trade journals for suitable replacements; in the meanwhile, however, I'm hoping very much that you will agree to mind the store, as I believe the expression is.'

It took a couple of seconds for that to sink in. ‘Me?' Paul whispered. ‘Do the heroism
and
be the cashier? But I can't. I don't know how—'

Countess Judy raised her hand. ‘My partners and I have every confidence in you,' she said. ‘Mr Shumway was of the opinion that you were competent to practise as a pest-control operative, or else he'd never have released you early from your in-service training programme. We shall, of course, not undertake any major new commissions in that department until a full-time replacement has been found. However, I shall expect you to service all existing contracts in the interim, and deal with emergencies for our regular clients. As for the cashier's job, I appreciate that you will require an assistant; I thought perhaps that our new receptionist, Ms Horrocks, might be suitable. She has broad experience of office procedures, according to her résumé, and I'm sure Mr Tanner's mother would be prepared to cover for her on reception. I'm aware that officially she's on maternity leave, but if she's fit enough to break into the dungeons of the Traumburg, she ought to be up to sitting behind a desk for a week or so.'

The outright refusal died on Paul's lips like a microwaved slug. Working with Melze, the two of them together . . . Admit it, he told himself, it'd be fun. It'd be – well, like old times, when he was sharing an office with Sophie, and that had been enough to make him want to get up and go to work in the mornings, even though he knew perfectly well that what awaited him there was weirdness, goblins, bewilderment and fear. And Sophie – as he admitted it to himself, he squirmed – Sophie had never been half as much fun to be with as Melze, she'd never really been his
friend
– On the other hand, even he wasn't so naive as to think that Countess Judy would suggest something that he'd like without some ghastly, exploitative ulterior motive. On the third hand (pretty soon his train of thought was going to have more hands than Shiva, but what the hell) did that matter? Did it hell.

‘All right,' Paul said. ‘Yes, I think that's a great idea. After all,' he added, ‘it's only going to be for a week or so.'

‘Maybe a little longer,' Countess Judy said softly. ‘Clearly we'll be taking our time, making sure that we find the right people. You can't rush really important decisions, like who you're going to be working intimately with for the foreseeable future.'

Paul looked up and stared at her, then looked away in confusion. She had a way of saying
intimately
that made him feel like a twelve-year-old boy trapped in a changing room with thirty extremely tall strippers. ‘Um, yes,' he said. ‘I think you're absolutely right there. So, let's do that. Fine.'

There was triumph and malice in her smile; not bad going, to fit so much into something so small. ‘Perhaps you'd do me a favour and sound Ms Horrocks out on the idea,' she said. ‘Though I'm sure she'll have no objections.'

Well yes
, Paul thought, as he hurried down the corridor towards the front office.
Yes, I've been suckered into doing two difficult, horrible jobs, for no extra money. And yes, she was blatantly obvious about it, using Melze to bribe me with. Cool.

(And Benny? And Monika, and even Ricky Wurmtoter, who was as weird as a blenderful of hummingbirds but who'd always been sort of nice to him? He shooed the thought away with the fly swatter of fatalism; if Countess Judy reckoned nothing could be done for them, she ought to know. They'd just have to stay there; locked away, along with Sophie, in the dungeon in the basement of his memory where he stashed all the inconvenient guilt.
I can't believe I'm doing this
, he told himself; but himself was remembering the last time he'd had lunch with Melze, the way she licked crumbs off the corner of her mouth, and thus wasn't in the mood to listen.)

She was answering the phone when he got there; she looked up and smiled, then carried on telling whoever it was that Mr Tanner was out of the office at the moment but would call him or her (or, since it was Mr Tanner and possibly a personal call, maybe it) right back as soon as he returned. Paul stood fidgeting, unable to decide on the exact choice of words; and as he waited, it suddenly occurred to him that maybe Melze wasn't going to be thrilled to bits and pieces at the thought of being stuck in the cashier's office all day, or at the prospect of working (
intimately
) with him. Hadn't thought of that; and neither, now he mentioned it, had Countess Judy. But it was a possibility, a distinct possibility—

‘Hello, you,' Melze said, as the phone clicked back on its cradle. ‘Haven't seen you to talk to for ages.'

She was smiling, and the warmth in her eyes hit Paul like a chocolate bullet. He'd seen smiles like that (mostly aimed at other people; pointed at
him
usually only when he was asleep) but this one was right up close, you could toast muffins over it. ‘Been busy,' he mumbled. ‘Bloody work, you know. How are you getting on?'

She shrugged. ‘It's all right, I guess. I mean, everybody's really nice and I'm not rushed off my feet and stressed out, it's okay. But – well, it can get a bit boring sometimes. I'm not complaining, but it'd be nice if there was a bit more to it, you know?'

Paul gawped at her for at least two seconds before he managed to figure out how his voice worked. ‘Odd you should say that,' he mumbled. ‘How'd you fancy helping me out in the cashier's office?'

She squeaked. ‘Great,' she said, ‘I'd really like that.' Then she frowned, very slightly. ‘What're you doing working in there, though?' she said. ‘I thought you were supposed to be learning about glamour and stuff.'

‘Change of plan,' he croaked. ‘Benny Shumway's – on holiday for a bit, so I'm covering for him; and Countess Judy thinks I could use some help, which is absolutely true—'

Melze's eyes sparkled; they were saying, ‘Thank you for choosing me,' and of course he couldn't tell her otherwise without sounding totally rude and ungracious. ‘Fantastic,' she said. ‘Who'll be doing reception instead of me? Oh, let me guess.' She twitched her nose. ‘Old Red Eyes is back.'

Mr Tanner's mum, who'd snatched Paul out of the dungeons of the Fey; he really ought not to snigger about her behind her back. He sniggered. ‘That's all right, isn't it?' he said.

‘Absolutely,' she said. ‘Rather her than me. When do I start?'

Melze was good at it, too, though Paul was hardly surprised at that. She knew which box file the pink requisitions had to go in after they'd been stamped, and how to reconcile the green inter-office transfers with the end-of-day printouts, and which forms to use to record unused second-class stamps left over at the end of a VAT quarter. When he'd asked her how the hell she knew about that, she just grinned and said, ‘Magic.'

Paul spent the whole of the morning in the cashier's office. He justified it to himself by saying that he was hiding there, in case some client turned up downstairs wanting a dragon slain or a vampire staked; but he'd never had much luck with lying, least of all with lying to himself. Just spending time with her was wonderful, in a way that being with Sophie had never been. He felt relaxed, unguarded, happy; he could almost be himself and not have to worry about how woefully inadequate that made him feel.

At five to one Melze shut the ledger he'd ostensibly been explaining to her (though the flow of information had been going in entirely the opposite direction) and said firmly: ‘Lunch. Not that Italian sandwich place. I'm buying.'

‘Fine,' he murmured. ‘Where were you thinking of?'

She pursed her lips slightly. ‘Didn't you say there's a great little Uzbek place just round the corner? The one you went to with Mr Wurmtoter.'

‘Yes, but—'
Yes, but it's fiendishly expensive and really crowded, you haven't got a hope of getting a table unless your grandfather booked one for you on the day your father was born, and I can't remember offhand where it is, either—

‘I like Uzbek food,' she said briskly. ‘Let's go.'

Paul led the way to the best of his recollection, until eventually Melze grabbed his sleeve, took him back the way they'd just come, and kept going until they got there. As he'd anticipated there was a queue almost out into the street, but she swept on past it, straight to a corner table, where the head waiter was waiting to take their order.