Lady of Misrule (Marla Mason Book 8) (24 page)

“You don’t know that folding-of-the-Earth trick Elsie Jarrow used to do?”

Marla shook her head. “She studied – or ate the brains of – some weird deep desert witches to get that skill. Spinning the globe under your feet is a nice trick if you can do it, but it’s beyond me. I can call on my husband and take a shortcut through the underworld, but I hate asking him for favors – it upsets the whole balance of power in the relationship.”

Bradley laughed. “Giving your husband some power is more distasteful to you than potentially being ripped to pieces by many-angled monsters who dwell between realities?”

“Obviously. I’m surprised you don’t understand that. I thought you and Henry were married.” She sighed. “I mean, yes, I’ll call up Death and ask him to make a door for us, if that’s the only way, I’m not crazy.”

Bradley scrubbed a hand through his hair. “There might be another way, though. Let’s go to Fludd Park.”

•

Bradley hadn’t spent much time in the park since he did his apprentice training with the nature magician Granger, a wizard of slow wit but immense power. Bradley had been awfully fond of the big man. He stood for a while looking at the mound of lush grass that marked the place where Granger had died during the Mason’s Massacre, in this reality at least. Marla seemed to sense his need to take now a moment, because she didn’t cajole or rush him, and after a couple of minutes of contemplation, he linked arms with her and began walking toward the white-painted gazebo. It didn’t look like much, just a white wooden construction, but there were no beer cans, no graffiti, no cigarette butts, no used condoms. On some level, people could sense that this was a sacred place, and treated it accordingly. “Ready to see wonders beyond human understanding?”

“Just like I do every Tuesday?” Marla said. “Sure.”

They went up the steps into the gazebo, and stood in the center.

Nothing happened. Bradley cleared his throat. “Sorry, I’m not in full possession of my powers, gotta get the collective overmind’s attention.”

“Sure, that’s fine. No hurry or anything.”

Bradley concentrated on opening a conduit, then had the strangest feeling he was being stared at. He tipped his head back, looking up at the gazebo’s ceiling.

An immense eye, the blue of tropical waters, gazed down at them.

Marla looked up, too, and barked a laugh. “Behold the Eye of Bowman, huh?”

The eye blinked, and everything went black and bodiless. Sparkles, fireflies, and golden glitter spun through the darkness, whirling and then stopping, an incomprehensible constellation. Other colors appeared, green and red and blue and white and yellow, and gradually an image resolved, built up one pixel at a time as the blackness was filled by dots of illumination. They stood – except they had no bodies, so they more simply floated – before a painting of a garden, with a farmhouse just beyond, and the railing of a white gazebo before them.

Weight returned all at once, and the painting became a three-dimensional reality: they stood in a double of the gazebo from Fludd Park, in the place at the still center of the multiverse that Bradley called home. Henry was in the garden, trimming rose bushes with a pair of clippers, and he raised one hand in a wave. Bradley felt a surging tug of longing in his chest so powerful it almost made him gasp out loud. Henry had died in his branch of the multiverse, too.

“Huh,” Marla said. “Very homey.” She leaned on the railing and waved at Henry, who smiled and then went back to pruning bushes. “The old Possible Witch, we just had to climb a ladder, walk down some hallways, like that. What’s with the pixelated fade-in?”

A voice behind them said, “Turns out, when the entry to your realm involves ladders and hallways, motherfuckers can just
walk in
. It’s a little harder to get to me.”

They turned, and the over-Bradley was there, sitting on one of the benches built into the gazebo, behind a small round wrought-iron table that held a full French press and two coffee cups. There was one empty chair, also wrought iron, with a cushion. He frowned, and another chair and cup appeared. “Sorry, damn, it’s hard to think of you as a separate person, Little B.”

“Don’t you start with that ‘Little B’ shit.”

Marla kicked one of the chairs, making it wobble. “I’d love to sit and sip and chat with you, oh overseer of all reality, but we’ve got a monster to chase.”

“I slowed down subjective time here, we’ve got a few minutes. Sit.”

They took their seats, and Little B poured them coffee, since in this company he was pretty obviously the low man.

“Good coffee,” Marla said. “Kona?”

“Nah, from one of the coffee plantations on the moon,” Bradley said. “In one of the weirder realities.”

“I’ll have to take a tour of those realities sometime. I’d be nice to feel less weird by comparison.”

They drank coffee in silence for a moment. “It was a good idea,” the over-Bradley said. “Trying to lock the Outsider up. It worked once before, after all – somebody stuffed it in a hole and covered up the hole, centuries ago. I wish I could see into the past, let me tell you. I’d love to know what they did. It’s pretty clear our mistake was locking it up in a place full of stuff it could
eat
.”

“Well, you live and learn. Any idea where the Outsider is now?” Marla said.

“I don’t want to look at it too closely, because it’s powerful enough now to look
back
,” Bradley said. “After eating a god, it seems to have developed a sense for them – and for meta-gods like me, too, probably. If it saw me, and figured out a way to get here, it could get
everywhere
, especially if it ate me first and took on some of my power. But I can figure out where it is anyway, even without direct observation. It wants to eat more gods, so I think it’s going to head for the nearest one it can find.”

“Which is?”

“You remember Reva?”

Marla nodded. “He’s a meddling busybody, like most gods, but not a bad guy.”

“This is the god of exiles, right?” Bradley said.

“Exiles, the displaced, refugees, expatriates, anyone who can’t go home again, yeah,” Marla said. “You think the Outsider is going to try to eat him, Big B?”

“It’s a working hypothesis. Reva’s in San Francisco right now, ministering to all the homesick newcomers who moved in during the latest tech boom, I guess. It just so happens you’ve got a friend in the city who can give you aid and comfort in your search for the Outsider, too.”

“So open up a portal or whatever,” Marla said. “Don’t get me wrong, the coffee’s great, but I’m a
little
bit anxious to take care of this monster before my branch of the multiverse rots off.”

“Can I give you a little advice about how to kill it first?” he said.

“Because you know more about killing stuff than a goddess of death? Absolutely. Let’s hear it.”

“As the Outsider takes on additional ontological weight, it adapts itself to the structure of our reality. It’s taking on more power by eating people and monsters and gods, but it’s also taking on some of the
weaknesses
of people and monsters and gods.”

“Marzi made it bleed,” Little B – damn it, he was thinking of himself that way now, in this context at least – said.

“Exactly. As it becomes less alien, it gets better at manipulating things in our reality – but it also becomes more vulnerable to damage in our reality.”

“So kill it just like you’d kill any
other
god,” Marla said. “Got it.”

“Yeah, there’s that. I’m honestly not sure it can die, exactly, not as we understand the term. Being trapped under Death Valley for centuries might have weakened it, but it sure didn’t kill it.”

“So we have no idea what we’re going to do when we find it, but we’re going looking for it anyway,” Little B said.

“Godspeed,” the over-Bradley said.

“What other speed could I possibly go?” Marla said, and then reality changed around them.

Little B in the Big City

“How have you been, Marla?”

“Oh, fine,” she said. “The toads that rained down are eating a lot of the locusts, and with this plague of darkness, you can’t really see all the blood.”

“Ah. That well. How can I help you?”

“We’re looking for a monster,” Marla said. “Except at this point we’re pretty sure it just looks like a person.”

The small, white-whiskered old man sitting in the velvet armchair across from them nodded thoughtfully. “Ah,” he said. “A person. That narrows it down. There are only about eight hundred and twenty-five thousand of those in San Francisco. Closer to seven million if you consider the Bay Area as a whole. Can you be any more specific than ‘a person’?”

Marla shrugged. “We heard it was in a body that appears male, so that cuts the options in half, except it’s probably a shapeshifter, so never mind. It’s not very nice. It seems to literally gain power from killing people and eating them, or consuming them in some way that might as well be eating them.”

“It’s eaten at least one god,” Bradley offered. “So far.”

“That’s... alarming,” Cole said. “Why not summon an oracle and ask it for the whereabouts of your target?”

“Oh, we’ve been there,” Marla said. “Without success. Something about this thing resists divination. Which didn’t stop us trying again when we got to the city, just in case. We went to an alley in the Tenderloin and Bradley talked to something that looked like the ghost of a three-legged dog. You ever play with a Magic 8-ball? ‘Reply hazy, try again later.’”

“This thing, we call it the Outsider, is too strong already, and trying to get stronger. Since my usual skillset failed, we’re falling back on other lines of inquiry. Have you heard anything that might point us in the right direction? Any mysterious deaths or disappearances last night or this morning?”

Cole stroked his neat little beard. “I had a report earlier today about a shapeshifter. I’ve had trouble narrowing down its location through divination – and as you know, that’s one of my strengths. I assumed my failure was because its form is so malleable, but it could be your monster. The city is woefully short of battle magicians since Susan Wellstone’s tragic demise and the defection of many of her people to neighboring organizations, so I haven’t tasked anyone to track the creature down yet.”

Marla nodded. “Good thing I’m here, then.”

“I will give you what information I have.” Cole sighed. “I do wish you had more time to talk. Especially Bradley here. I never thought to see him again.”

“Well, he’s not
exactly
the Bradley who was your apprentice,” Marla said.

“I know,” Cole said. “But he’s close enough to stir the pain of his loss.”

“I worked with your counterpart in my universe,” Bradley said. “I miss you too.”

“You’re a couple of sappy sons of bitches,” Marla said. “We’ve got a monster to hunt. Give us some leads.”

Cole examined a piece of paper. “There have been four deaths in the past twelve hours or so, all by drowning – two in bathtubs, one in a pool, and one in a toilet, of all things. All the victims were new to the city. Our population is booming now, with many new jobs in the technological sector opening up, and our population is swelling. “

“Huh,” Marla said. “So young brogrammers move here, get good jobs, pay three grand a month for shitty studio apartments, drive up rents, price out longtime residents, the usual churn. Right?” Marla shook her head. “Running a city is rough even when things are going well, isn’t it?”

“Indeed. I assumed the shapeshifter was a local sorcerer, angry about the changing face of the city, trying to make a point or warn people away... but perhaps it’s your monster instead?”

“The Outsider is more about eating people than drowning them,” Bradley said.

“Yeah, but our theory is that the Outsider is trying to track down the god of exiles and eat
him
,” Marla said. “If he’s killing people new to the city, he’s killing
Reva’s
people, right? That’s the sort of murder spree that might get a god’s attention.”

“I knew this Reva was in the city,” Cole said. “Though he hasn’t visited me personally.”

“Of course not,” Marla said. “San Francisco’s the home of your heart. You’re not one of his constituents.”

“Why not try to find Reva directly?” Cole said.

Bradley shook his head. “Same thing – the oracle was no help there, either. Gods are tricky to find. Usually
they
find
you
. Though if Marla prayed to him, maybe...”

“I
am
a god,” Marla said. “I can’t go around praying to other ones. That sets a terrible precedent. Give us the details on your drownings, Cole, and we’ll look into this thing. It’s a start, anyway.”

They said their farewells and went out into the hallway. Marla’s brow was furrowed, her brain working something over. Bradley flipped through the thin dossier Cole had given him, all those death, and – “There’s a survivor.”

“Huh,” Marla said. “This I gotta see.”

•

The victim sat in his tiny one-room apartment in the Mission, jittering in a high-end office chair and intermittently gulping at an energy drink. He was bug-eyed and wild-haired and his shirt was turned inside out, but Bradley couldn’t tell if that was typical of his nature or an expression of his recent trauma. He
did
know he was sitting on a dirty futon and there were piles of dirty clothes and take-out boxes everywhere, and it was pretty gross. Marla looked right at home, of course. “Look, Mr. – Lin?”

“Uh, yeah. Andrew. Call me Drew. Everybody calls me...” He looked around, seeming to notice the mess for he first time. “Sorry to make you come here, I know it’s, uh, but it’s just, I’m kind of jumpy about going outside...”

“You met a girl last night and she tried to drown you?” Marla interrupted.

Drew blinked at her, then looked at Bradley, who shrugged affably. “That’s right, yeah.” Drew spoke slowly, frowning, and he was probably trying to remember why he’d let these people into his place, why he was talking to them at all, but before he could go too far down that road, Bradley gave him another little psychic nudge, and he snapped back into focus. “Right. So, look, I went to MIT, I’d never been on the West Coast at all, not even to visit, but I’d heard about San Francisco, how cool it was, how hip, how everything was happening here, you know? Also how it never snows, which after all those years in Boston, that’s pretty great by itself.”