Poison Sleep (18 page)

Zealand sighed and rose. “I don’t kill without recompense.”

“Apparently you don’t kill even when we pay you half up front, judging by your performance with Marla. Besides, I just want you to throw a scare into this guy. He thinks he’s got me outsmarted, but I’m gonna show him otherwise.” She led him down the hallway.

“Is this a boyfriend who cheated on you, Nicolette?”

“Nah. Just a well-connected little fuck who owes me money and thinks he doesn’t have to pay. I picked him up on the street this morning.”

“I find this all so very interesting,” Zealand said. “Please just point me to the person I’m supposed to menace, so I can get back to my book.”

Nicolette pulled open the door to a windowless conference room, and Zealand looked inside to see a Hispanic man, perhaps in his late twenties, tied to a chair. He was wearing a summer-weight seersucker suit and he looked more bored and annoyed than frightened, which perhaps explained why Nicolette wanted Zealand’s help—the unknown was often more frightening than the known, and Zealand was very good at being scary.

Nicolette winked at him and swaggered in. “Hi, Rondeau. I brought a friend to meet you.”

Rondeau.
Zealand had never seen him up close, and so hadn’t recognized him, but this was Marla’s closest confidant and right-hand man. Zealand cleared his throat—unless they planned to kill this man, it probably wasn’t a good idea to let him discover Zealand’s identity. Word would surely get back to Marla, and any consequences couldn’t be good.

“He’s a little old to be a goon,” Rondeau said, eyeing Zealand without apparent recognition; good. “Unless he’s a
very
smart goon. What, is he your sugar-daddy, Nicolette?”

Nicolette put her hands on the arms of the chair and leaned in, putting her face close to Rondeau’s. “Maybe you haven’t noticed—I know you don’t keep up with current events—but I have you tied up, in a fortress, and you owe me a figure that’s fast approaching one hundred thousand dollars. So maybe you’d better try to be more polite.”

Rondeau belched in her face, and Nicolette stood up quickly. “If anything happens to me,” he said, “Marla will come down on you harder than a zombie apocalypse. She’ll be picking pieces of you out of her teeth two hours after I’m dead. Now, untie me before—”

“I wouldn’t
kill
you,” Nicolette said, not quite purring. “I know all about the
real
you.” She turned to Zealand. “That’s not his body, not really. He’s a
what,
not a
who,
a psychic parasite, a floating intelligence—if you can call that intelligence—who stole this body you’re looking at from a little kid years ago. Just like he’s stealing from me
now.
I guess it’s just his nature. He’s stuck in this body, but if it dies he’ll just pop out and steal another one. Maybe mine. Maybe yours. So murder’s off the table. But maiming…” She reached under the table and came up with a big metal toolbox, ominously red. A cliché of a gesture, Zealand thought, but he appreciated the old standbys as much as anyone. He cracked a few of his knuckles by way of contributing to the general atmosphere, then surreptitiously scratched at the back of his hand. There was still a little patch of green there, and no matter how he scrubbed, it wouldn’t come off. He assumed—he
hoped
—it was just some persistent plant pigment that would flake away in time.

“Let’s see you throw dice with no fingers,” Nicolette said. She flipped up the latches holding the box closed.

“Marla—” Rondeau began.

Nicolette snapped her fingers in his face, startling him into silence. “You’re done hiding behind Marla’s skirts. I’m gonna take a finger or a toe for every thousand you owe me. And unless you’re a polydactyl…” She shrugged. “I’m gonna run out of digits. We’ll figure out market value for your eyes and ears and cock and balls and kidneys when the time comes. You can live for a
long
time on dialysis in my basement.”

“You
can’t,
” Rondeau said, as if trying to explain a simple physical limitation, like the laws of gravity or the concept of inertia, to a small child. “I’m protected.”

“Oh, it’ll be bad for me if word ever gets back to Marla that I touched you. But, see, she won’t ever know. I haven’t left a psychic signature on this box of toys—they’re new, just bought yesterday, and I won’t be the one using them on you. My friend here will do that. Hell, I’m even going to leave the room before he starts, so none of your little forensic bitch Langford’s investigative techniques will find
any
connection to me.” She patted his cheek. He did look a little more afraid now, and Zealand scowled and looked appropriately menacing.

“I’ll tell her you did it,” Rondeau said. “You think I won’t?”

Nicolette snorted. “My friend here knows a lot about
brains,
Ronnie. Once he’s done hurting you, he’ll put a needle right here”—she tapped the inside corner of his eye—”and
shove.
Ice-pick lobotomy. Old school. Then he’ll poke a few more holes for good measure, maybe break your spine when he’s done hurting you, too. You won’t be telling anybody
anything
. I know you don’t really think with your brain—your mind is a cloud of weird particles, or a persistent resonating field, or something like that—but try using that body you inhabit when its brain is all fucked up. You won’t be able to keep from shitting yourself, let alone talk to Marla. And Gregor tells me he’s pretty sure you can’t do the body-switching thing at will, that you’re stuck in this body until it dies, and like I said, we’re going for a fate worse than death here. So toodles. You guys enjoy getting to know each other.”

Zealand considered his options, annoyed that Nicolette hadn’t given him more time to prepare. He could spend a fair bit of time rattling the toolbox, selecting implements, and presenting them for Rondeau’s terror, drawing out the suspense in hopes that Rondeau would break before it became apparent he was in no real danger. At least, not from Zealand. He wasn’t about to actually
hurt
Rondeau. He was an assassin, not a torturer. That was part of why he’d left the slow assassins in the first place—their focus on psychological torment struck him as fundamentally distasteful.

Nicolette started toward the door, and Rondeau drew a breath—though whether it was to shout defiance or beg for mercy Zealand didn’t know, because Gregor flung open the door just then. “There you are—” he began, and then saw Rondeau. He went very still. “Rondeau,” he said, and then turned stiffly to Nicolette. “Please tell me this is some consensual sex game, and
not
that you have the chief sorcerer of Felport’s closest associate held hostage.”

Nicolette looked down, scowling, and Rondeau began to grin.

“It’s personal business,” Nicolette said. “He ran up a bill at some of my gambling parlors, and he won’t pay.”

“Nicolette, you
know
better,” Gregor said. “Untie him.” Nicolette flipped open the toolbox and took out a knife—
that
made Rondeau flinch—but she only used it to cut the ropes that bound him to the chair.

“There are proper avenues for conflict resolution when it comes to collecting debts from those in the employ of prominent citizens,” Gregor said. “I swear, your love for chaos can be most
vexing.
” He bowed to Rondeau, who was ostentatiously straightening his suit. “Do convey my apologies to Marla for any inconvenience your detainment may have caused her.” He narrowed his eyes. “Since you work for her, I’m sure she understands the problems that headstrong assistants can cause. I’ll escort you out.
You
stay here,” he said, jabbing his finger at Nicolette. He put a solicitous arm around Rondeau and led him away.

“Ouch,” Zealand said after a moment.

“Nothing like getting dressed down by your boss in front of a victim to put some piss in your cornflakes,” she said, sounding surprisingly cheerful. “But it’s okay. Next time I snatch up Rondeau, and take him someplace my boss doesn’t visit, he’ll
know
I’m serious, and he’ll sign the deed of his nightclub over to me quick-snap.”

“Mmm,” Zealand said. Was Nicolette really getting so worked up over money? Property? That was disappointing. He’d always hoped sorcerers would have more rarefied interests.

Gregor stormed back in. “Hey, boss,” Nicolette began, but he backhanded her sharply across the face, knocking her back against the conference table. Gregor was not a large man, and Zealand wondered if he’d put some magical wallop behind the strike, or if he was really just
that
pissed.

“Stupid wretch,” he snarled. “You know what a delicate time this is for me, that the auguries point to Marla as my downfall, and you bring her
best friend
here?”

Nicolette pushed herself back up. Zealand attempted to look unobtrusive. So Marla was prophesied to be Gregor’s doom. That explained why Zealand had been hired to assassinate her. He’d assumed the reasons were merely political.

“Sorry, boss,” Nicolette said. “I thought I was allowed to pursue my own business however it suited me.”

“Don’t be deliberately dense,” Gregor said, smoothing his hair, which had come disarrayed in the violence of his entrance. “You
do
have that freedom, when it doesn’t interfere with
my
interests. We—” He appeared to notice Zealand for the first time, and frowned. “We’ll discuss this later. Come. We need to visit our friend in the basement.”

“Okay,” Nicolette said, all unfazed again. “Just let me get some oatmeal cookies.” She patted Zealand on the arm. “Thanks, Z. You make a good hatchet man.”

They left, and Zealand started to go to his room. He paused by the door, thinking. Gregor and Nicolette were going to the basement. This was a very tall building, and he was very high in it now. They might well be gone a long time. He had no prevailing
need
to snoop, but it was in his nature to gather intelligence. And he
was
curious about one thing—Reave. The strange mushroom-white man he was, supposedly, meant to battle. He crept up the hallway toward Gregor’s office. The leaded glass door was locked, but even Zealand’s feeble lock-picking skills were up to the task—Gregor trusted in other means of defense, and considered his whole building an impregnable fortress. Once you were inside, getting around was easy.

Gregor’s office was illuminated only by the sunlight beyond the tall windows, looking out on the cold clear city below. There was no sign of Reave. Zealand closed the door behind him and went toward Gregor’s desk. Maybe there were papers, documents, e-mails, something to indicate the nature of his relationship with Reave, and, more important, information about the strange woman who’d spoken to Zealand in that
other
place.

He’d rifled through one filing cabinet without success and had moved on to the second when the stain on the back of his hand began to itch abominably. He scraped at it with his nails, but they were clipped too short to provide much relief, and the itch was maddening, so intense it made his eyes water and his bowels tremble in sympathy. He lifted his hand to his mouth and
gnawed
it, scraping his teeth across the green stain, and that provided some measure of relief, at last.

A sudden shadow fell across the room, and Zealand looked up. Had a cloud gone over the sun, or—

He turned to the windows. A black tower rose beside this building, where no structure had been a moment before, its bulk blacking out the light. Zealand went to the window, slowly, and put his hand against the cold glass. The tower was made of cracked black stone, tall, vast, and—he was no student of architecture, but still—almost ludicrously phallic. It seemed to swarm with shadows, and the occasional windows were only arches revealing slightly lesser darkness inside. The balconies looked small and likely to crumble away, railings topped with twisted figures that might have been gargoyles carved crudely in coal. He remembered a snatch of Genevieve’s hurried words—”
He lives in the black tower. He marshals nightmares.”

This was sorcerers’ business. But the tower was so
ridiculous,
like the comic-book idea of a dark lord’s keep. It was the architectural equivalent of those idiots who put on long black trench-coats and dark glasses and think the wardrobe makes them into badasses, when actually becoming a badass required working very, very hard. Gregor’s fortress was a modern skyscraper with reasonable functions, doubtless magically enhanced, but still. Zealand couldn’t help but think Reave’s castle was the fortress of someone with an overdeveloped sense of the dramatic. What the hell were the ordinary people down there on the street
thinking
in the face of this apparition?

His hand had stopped itching. But now it pulsed, strangely warm, and when Zealand held his hand before his face he saw the green had spread across the back of his hand, tendriling up to his fingers and around his palm. “What the hell,” he muttered, and then the light burst in on him again, the tower abruptly vanished. He shaded his eyes against the onslaught of sunlight, blinking reflexively.

“It’s almost there,” came a grating voice at his back.

The door hadn’t opened. Zealand would have heard it. More sorcery. He turned to see Reave, with his long shiny coat, his soft-boiled-egg features.

“Before long, it will achieve immanence. We just need to stabilize certain conditions.” Reave smiled. His teeth were yellowed, and bits of something leafy and green were stuck between them.

“Do let me know if I can be of service,” Zealand said. Without thinking about why, he kept his green hand in his pocket. The itching was gone, but the warm pulse was intensifying. Something to worry about later. Had he caught some strange disease in that other place? “I’m between jobs at the moment, and my rates are competitive.”

Reave sniffed. “I suppose we might let you guard a door, later. Once we’ve got something to lock up behind it. Now run along. You aren’t supposed to be here.”

“I love your coat,” Zealand said, utterly deadpan. “Wherever did you find it?”

“In her dreams,” Reave said, and flicked his hand toward the door. “Go away. Wait to be useful.”