In Your Dreams (6 page)

Melze clicked her tongue sympathetically. ‘They always were a bit – well, self-centred.'

‘As a gyroscope,' Paul replied. ‘I always liked your parents better than mine. At least, yours always seemed pleased to see me.'

Melze shrugged. ‘And what about your uncle, the one who was always away travelling in exotic places?'

Paul had to think for a moment. ‘Uncle Ernie? Haven't heard from him in years. I assume he's still alive, or someone'd have told me, but we lost touch ages ago.'

‘It's a pity when that happens,' Melze said. ‘I mean, there's times when it's a bit claustrophobic, having a close family like ours, but at least we stay in touch.'

They chatted about families for a while, until he'd quite forgotten who he was talking to; and then, quite unexpectedly, it was five to two, and there was only just enough time left to get back to the office.

He left her at the front desk and wandered back to his room, thinking,
All this and dragons, too.
Dragons, on the other hand, were probably something you could learn how to cope with, given time and patient tuition.

After all that, it was hardly surprising that Paul found it extremely difficult to get his head around the office procedures manual that afternoon. At the best of times, he'd have had problems coming to terms with stuff like—

For a fully grown urban dragon
(draco vulgaris Robinsonii)
in a built-up area, the Pest Control (Residential & Commercial Districts) Regulations 1964 Schedule 2, paragraph 2(i)(b) mandates the use of a tungsten or depleted-uranium projectile of at least 0.577? diameter not exceeding 800 grains avoirdupois in weight with a muzzle energy of not less than 3,000 ft/lbs. Exploding projectiles are forbidden under the 1964 Regulations except where their use has been expressly authorised in advance by the proper officer of the appropriate area directorate; authorisation will only be granted where at least two of the following criteria obtain—

—and with all the other stuff on his mind, the book might as well have been written in Sanskrit for all the sense he could make of it. At least the boredom was reassuring; it was hard to be freaked out by anything so excruciatingly dull. A few things stuck in his mind: for instance, under the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1979 as modified by the Supplementary Regulations Order 1981, it was illegal to kill a vampire by driving a wooden stake through its heart between February 1st and November 22nd unless you held a valid extermination licence issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, and a qualified veterinary surgeon had to be present to ensure that all procedures were carried out humanely and without causing undue suffering to the vampire. On the other hand, the owner or tenant of farmland was entitled to snare unicorns by means of virgins or other approved devices, providing that he could prove that they'd caused damage to growing crops or standing timber.

Half-past five was running late that day. When the clock on the opposite wall eventually condescended to get there, Paul slammed the book shut – he'd have to finish it off at home, but there was a copy (
Sophie's; remember her?
) at the flat – and practically sprinted for the front office; not that he had any reason to get there before anybody in particular went home or anything, but— He heard someone call his name, and stopped. He recognised the voice, even though he hadn't exchanged more than a few words with Judy di Castel'Bianco since his interview. She spoke with what sounded to him like an American accent overlying something else he couldn't quite place. Back when Mr Tanner had told him what the various partners in the firm actually did, he'd said that she looked after the Entertainment Sector. The letters after her name on the company letterhead apparently stood for Queen of the Fey, whatever the hell that meant.

‘Mr Carpenter,' she repeated, materialising out of her office like a Starfleet away team. ‘I was wondering, could you spare me a moment?'

Oh well
, Paul thought; and then,
Never mind, there'll be other days.
‘Sure,' he said, trying to sound polite.

She was looking at him. Her eyes, he noticed, were large and a very light blue, almost silver.

‘You're not in a hurry, or anything?' she said.

‘Um, no. Not at all.'

Judy di Castel'Bianco was silent for a moment, studying him intensely, like a cat watching a mouse. ‘If you're concerned about getting out of the building after the door is locked, I do of course have a key.'

‘Great,' Paul said helplessly. ‘Fine.'

Another second and a half of intense scrutiny; then: ‘If you'd care to follow me,' she said, and disappeared. For a moment, Paul was rooted to the spot. Then it occurred to him that she must've just walked round the corner and he hadn't been paying attention. He followed, and there she was, opening the door of the small conference room.

Today the room was L-shaped, its long side at right angles to the street. Judy di Castel'Bianco sat down at the head of the long, polished walnut table and nodded towards a chair on her left. As Paul sat down, it struck him that something was odd, but he wasn't sure what it was.

‘I'll get straight to the point,' she said, steepling her unusually long fingers on the table top. ‘First, I should mention that it's not this firm's policy to interfere in any way in the personal lives of members of staff; nor is it my place as a partner to pass judgement or anything of that sort. However, I'm aware that my decision to assign Ms Pettingell temporarily to our Los Angeles office may be having repercussions on your—' She frowned slightly. ‘Your relationship,' she said, and she spoke the word as if it were an unfamiliar loanword from a foreign language and she wasn't quite sure how it should be pronounced.

‘Actually—' Paul started to say, but apparently she couldn't hear him. She was looking past him; only just, a matter of fifteen degrees or so. It was as if she couldn't actually see him, but had a fairly good idea of where he was likely to be.

‘Obviously,' she went on, ‘if Ms Pettingell's assignment is causing any difficulties in your respective personal lives, I and we as a firm naturally regret that most sincerely. However—' She hesitated, apparently unsure about something. ‘If I may speak frankly,' she went on, ‘and please note that I'm making these observations in a purely unofficial capacity; I can't help but feel that this situation may actually be all for the best, in that the relationship' (the same slight stumble over the word) ‘in question was perhaps not entirely advisable, considering the interests of both parties. I don't claim any special insight in these matters, but you might care to consider the position in that light.'

Judy di Castel'Bianco stopped speaking and looked at him, as though they were in a play and she'd just given him his cue. Paul looked back at her, and wondered what the hell he was supposed to say. He hadn't noticed before how extremely high and sharp her cheekbones were. Who were the Fey, anyhow?

‘It's all right, actually,' he mumbled, ‘we'd just sort of, well, split up. I mean, it was her idea rather than mine, but I think we both knew we weren't, you know, going anywhere. I mean, I'd sort of got the idea that maybe—'

Mercifully, she interrupted before Paul could embarrass himself into a coma. ‘Fortuitous,' she said. ‘It would appear, then, that the situation has worked out quite well. Presumably it will be easier for you to adjust, if you aren't faced with the prospect of working closely with Ms Pettingell while coming to terms with the cessation of the relationship.'

It took Paul a moment or so to translate that. ‘Absolutely,' he said. ‘I guess we both need a bit of space,' he added. (That was what Sophie would have said.) ‘So, like you were saying, you've done us both a bit of a favour, really. So,' he went on, though he knew that trying to make awkward silences better by filling them with the first words that come into your head is like dowsing a fire with petrol, ‘no hard feelings, is about it, really. It's all just, um, perfectly fine.'

‘Indeed.' Now she was looking off to his other side, just a tad. ‘It's very fortunate that you feel that way. I trust I haven't offended you by raising the subject.'

‘Oh, no, no,' Paul said quickly. ‘Best to get it all out in the open, and, um, very nice of you to care, I mean be concerned.' How old was she? The line of her mouth was so hard you could've engraved glass with her lips, but her skin was as smooth as a sixteen-year-old's. ‘Um, was that it? Or—'

‘That's all,' Judy di Castel'Bianco replied. ‘Thank you for your time. If you'd care to follow me, I'll see that you leave the building without any problems.'

That made him wince, reminding him of the only time he'd been in the place after the front door was locked. That was, of course, the time he'd tried to rescue Sophie from the armed goblins who'd kidnapped her. ‘Thanks,' he mumbled, but she'd already left the room.

As he'd feared, the goblins were already coming out to play. He'd seen them once or twice since that first traumatic encounter, but the sight of them still made him want to find the nearest sofa and hide behind it. It wasn't any one thing in particular – the red eyes, the pig, ape, dog faces, the coarse brown and grey fur, the claws – more the overall effect of everything put together.

But if goblins spooked Paul, it was nothing compared to the effect that Countess Judy seemed to have on goblins. They didn't seem to like her at all. As she rounded a corner with Paul in tow and walked into a small knot of them, busily playing toss-the-fire-extinguisher, they spun round, shrieked and scampered away in all directions. A small, rat-faced specimen they bumped into on the second-floor landing backed into a corner with its paws over its eyes, whimpering. Another jumped down a whole flight of stairs to get out of her way, landing painfully on one knee and crawling off like a wounded crab. Either the Countess didn't notice or she was so used to that sort of thing that it didn't occur to her to make any comment; but Paul couldn't help noticing that every time she came within fifteen yards of a goblin, her skin actually seemed to glow with a very faint blue light, which clashed horribly with her lipstick.

All in all, he was relieved when the front door closed behind him; in fact, he told himself, he could probably use a drink.

For once, the pub on the corner wasn't too crowded, and he was able to sit down at a table in the corner. Plenty to think about; in fact, the trick would be
not
thinking about most of it. For example: what made the Countess think that she was under some kind of obligation to explain, or even to apologise? That didn't strike Paul as being JWW's style at all; nobody had apologised or made excuses when he found out that he wasn't actually allowed to resign, on pain of being made to do horrible things to himself and others. Of course, it wouldn't have mattered anyway if he still had the Portable Door – he could be in Hollywood, California in the time it took to fish the Door out of its cardboard tube and spread it on the wall. But Ricky Wurmtoter had the Door now, so that wasn't an option; besides, there wouldn't be any point going, would there? It occurred to him to wonder whether Mr Wurmtoter had relieved him of the thing just in case he was tempted to go over there and make a nuisance of himself, hanging around in the front office while she hid out back.
Unlikely
, he decided. He felt sure that JWW had more efficient ways of stopping him from being a pest—

Pest. Pest control.
Yuck.

In the morning, he'd be reporting to Mr Shumway, assuming he managed to get through the rest of the stuff he had to read without falling asleep. A few days ago, he'd have thought it was impossible to imagine a situation where he'd actually be pining for the Mortensen printouts, or the long afternoons he'd spent staring at photographs of bleak Australian desert, scrying them for hidden bauxite deposits. Now, apparently, he was set on a course that would probably, at some stage, involve him in actual physical danger. After all, it stood to reason that if sorting out dragons and monsters and whatever called for the services of your Ricky Wurmtoters and Benny Shumways, warlike men whose time came expensive, then inevitably those buggers must be
dangerous
– teeth and claws and all manner of unpleasantness posing a severe risk to one's health. Paul wasn't sure he liked the idea of that, not one little bit. Up till then, telling JWW where to stick their job and risking the full force of Mr Tanner's warped imagination had been out of the question. But.

But there was a substantial difference between being magically compelled to wander up and down Oxford Street wearing nothing but a coat of blue emulsion, announcing to all the world that you're a little flower fairy, and actual definitive death. Although Paul was probably more afraid of Mr Tanner than of anyone else he'd ever met in his entire life, he was fairly sure that Tanner wouldn't go so far as to kill him dead if he refused to carry on working for the old firm. A dragon, on the other hand, or a werewolf or a gorgon or a manticore – if it came to a contest between himself and a dangerous creature, with death as the prize for coming second, he had a feeling that the smart money would be on the fire-breathing, scale-armoured, razor-clawed professional killer, not on Mrs Carpenter's little boy who came over all faint at the sight of needles. True, Benny Shumway was going to train him, but in his heart of hearts he felt that that probably wouldn't be quite enough. Groaning pallets stacked high with sows' ears aren't unloaded every morning at the gates of the silk-purse factory.

Paul frowned into the two millimetres of froth at the bottom of his glass. Officially, he no longer cared. He'd just lost the only girl he'd ever loved (correction: the only girl out of the hundred or so he'd loved who'd ever loved him back), and accordingly his life was without meaning and worthless, and any dragon who relieved him of it would be doing him a favour. Officially. In his heart of hearts, however, Paul wasn't quite so sure about that. And besides: what if the dragon didn't kill him outright but left him horribly chewed up and burned, blinded, imprisoned in a wheelchair, only able to communicate with the outside world by wiggling his ears in semaphore? Somehow he knew instinctively that he wouldn't like that at all.