Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9) (27 page)

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At six, everyone arrived. Rondeau had a spread waiting for them, including all their favorite foods: crème brulee for himself, crab cakes for Pelham, black-and-blue steak for Bradley, chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes for Marla, and a big messy sausage-and-vegetable egg scramble for Elsie; he’d guessed about the latter and gone for something mixed-up and chaotic. He even got lemon pudding for Genevieve, on the off chance, though she didn’t appear. He presented the dishes with a flourish and a bow. “Elsie said some crap about us dining in Hell tonight, and I thought, fuck that, let’s dine in
Vegas
. Who goes to Hell hungry?”

“Just don’t get overly full,” Elsie said. She was wearing a dramatic white dress, the sort of thing an evil fashion magazine editor would wear in a movie. “The toilets in the underworld are simply not to be spoken of.”

“Like in that Bosch thing, the Garden of Earthly Delights,” Bradley said. “The beaked devil in the night chair, eating a guy and pooping out another guy.”

“We might literally see that. I peeked into the afterlife of a very guilty art historian not long ago and saw exactly that tableau.” Marla picked at her chicken fried steak, prepared almost exactly the way her favorite diner in Felport used to make it. Rondeau’s gesture was thoughtful, but she couldn’t help but think of condemned people on death row getting the last meal of their choice. “Skully said something about Bosch as an inspiration before he kicked me out, too. Expect to see an environment drawing heavily on the classics.”

“But you need fear no devilish beak!” Elsie produced a pillowcase from somewhere and began pulling out helmets and passing them out. “Marla stole these from a god’s workshop. They’re the hoity-toitiest of haute couture in the area of godly, uh... millinery. Put them on and the New Death won’t be able to eat your brains quite as easily.”

Pelham put on his helmet, of a modified Spartan design (the actual Spartans wouldn’t have included so many ornamental curlicues) without hesitation, and Bradley and Rondeau made noises of surprise when it shimmered and vanished. Rondeau reached out and thumped Pelham on the head with his knuckles. “Do you feel that?”

“Regrettably,” Pelham said.

Elsie gave a heavy sigh. “These helmets protect against
mental
attacks. And attacks on your perception of reality.”

Rondeau put on his bucketlike knight’s helm, and Bradley his golden ornamental helmet, feeling their own scalps after the helmets vanished. “Weird.”

“Do I get one?” Genevieve emerged shyly from one of the suites, one foot pointed behind her, like she might retreat at any moment.

“Certainly.” Marla took the last helmet, an ivory one that looked like something a comic book supervillain would wear, and took it to her old friend. The helmet flickered in Genevieve’s hands, giving way to the imposition of her own reality, changing into a fedora and back. She looked at it for a long time. “Hmm. It shields me from the outside, but doesn’t inhibit my insides turning into outsides. That’s good.” She put the helmet on, and it faded to translucence before vanishing. “I am garbed for war. Do we go soon? I don’t like being in the world like this for too long. I get distracted and things start to turn into birds when I don’t mean them to.”

“Birds are okay,” Elsie said. “You should try beetles. God loves them. Darwin said so.”

“One time Genevieve turned my TV into a lemon,” Rondeau said.

“
That
was deliberate,” Genevieve said. “You contacted me for a frivolous reason.”

Rondeau held up his hands. “It’s mea culpas all the way down, ma’am. Happy to have you on the team, by the way.”

“If everyone’s done eating, we should go,” Marla said.

“If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly,” Pelham murmured.

“That’s the benefit of a classical education, right there,” Bradley said. “A quote for every occasion.”

“My thing about beetles was classic.” Elsie’s remark was generally ignored.

Marla turned to face her cohort. “Since we’re getting all Shakespearean, this is probably the part where I should do my St. Crispin’s Day speech. You know I’ve always been long on action and short on eloquence, and it turns out, getting a spark of the divine hasn’t made me any more articulate. But I’ll do my best. We’re going to attempt something that might be impossible, but if anyone can do it,
we
can. I’ve known some of you longer than others, but I’ve known you all for a while, and I know all of you well.”

She tried not to think
last words
, but it was hard. Maybe best to proceed like they were, though. There was no telling what awaited them in Hell. “Rondeau, you like to play at being the world’s laziest fuck-up, but you’ve got more heart than a dozen decks of cards, and even when I’ve been furious at you, you’ve always been my best friend. You’d die for me and I’d kill for you, and maybe even vice versa.”

“How can you not be attached to the girl who ripped off your jaw when you were a kid?” Rondeau said.

Marla turned her head. “Pelly, you came to me as an employee, but it didn’t take long for you to prove yourself the bravest man I’ve ever known, willing to lay down your life and your sanity for the things you believe in, and now I’m proud to call you a friend.”

“It is an honor to serve alongside you, Mrs. Mason,” Pelham said.

“Bradley, you were my first, last, and only apprentice, and I was a terrible teacher, but you were an amazing student—and more than that, you became a better brother to me than my actual brother could ever be.”

“Maybe that’s why Jason doesn’t like me,” Bradley said. “Metaphysical sibling rivalry.”

Marla looked at Genevieve, who ducked her head. “Gen, when I first met you, I thought you were my enemy, but then I realized you had more generosity of spirit, more basic human kindness, than anyone I’d ever met. You made me want to be a better person. I don’t have a sister, but I wish I did, and I wish she was you.”

“We can say so, and it can be so,” Genevieve replied.

Marla faced Elsie, who looked at her coolly, and with a sort of detached curiosity. “Elsie Jarrow. First you were a sick person I had to keep locked away for the safety of the world. Then you were an assassin, doing your best to kill me, and an enemy I defeated at a greater cost than I realized at the time. Then you became a dragon, gnawing at the roots of my world, yet another monster for me to slay. Except, instead, I gave you a part of myself, and it’s possible—just possible—that we both became better for it.” She paused. “You’re also dangerous and terrifying and I’m afraid you’re going to stab me in the kidneys when we get down to Hell, just for the lulz.”

“I won’t
now
, not when I know you’ll be expecting it.” Elsie smiled. “You’re somewhere between my midwife and my mother, Marla, but we both know I have all the loyalty of a spider to its ten thousand children, which is to say, not a whit. I still say the world is more interesting with you in it, and there’s no higher compliment I can give.” She brandished Night’s Plutonian Sword. “Before the stabbings commence, do you have an actual plan?”

“Something like one,” Marla said. “We’re off to overthrow the god of Death. Weirdly enough, this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to do that... but it’s going to be a lot harder this time. Our goal is to cause enough trouble to get Skully himself to come for me. Then Genevieve will try to trap him, Elsie will hit him with a pickaxe, and I’ll... work my magic. The rest of you are support staff. I don’t know what the New Death will throw at us, but Rondeau and Bradley have the psychic sphere covered, and Pelham is pretty much panic-proof, so just keep any demons or Boschian weirdo-monsters off us. There’s no point in making a more detailed plan than that, because the terrain could literally change around us. If we fail, billions of souls will suffer for eternity. So. No failing. Are we good?”

“Fate of the world shit,” Rondeau said. “Always it’s fate of the world shit with you.”

“I wouldn’t show up for anything less, darling.” Elsie brandished the blade in a more-than-usually terrifying way. “Can I stab now?”

“Stab away.” Marla picked up her battered leather bag, with its precious cargo, and slipped the strap over her shoulder. “Start with me.”

“Yay!” Elsie shouted, and plunged the blade into Pelham’s heart. His eyes widened an instant before he disappeared.

“Uh,” Bradley said. “A little warning would be –”

She stabbed him next, then spun and slashed the blade through Rondeau.

“Elsie!” Marla grabbed her elbow. “I said start with me!”

“Sorry, sorry, I got linear time all
backwards
again.” Elsie stabbed Marla, and winked when she did it.

Hell Is Some Other People

The transition was instantaneous, and not at all painful. One moment Marla was in Rondeau’s suite, and the next, she was in a grove of twisted black trees, under a sky where, instead of stars, burning embers glowed. The trunks of the trees enclosed the bodies of damned souls, faces twisted in anguish, and the branches shook and rattled. Marla was conversant enough with her Dante to know this was his Wood of Suicides, with the souls of those who’d killed themselves entombed in bleeding trees where vile harpies roosted, and shat, and pecked. Skully really had embraced the classics.

She looked down at her clothing, frowned, and changed into the raiment she’d worn when she went down to battle Elsie. Only her leather bag remained unchanged, and she slung it comfortably across her back. A rod of lapis lazuli appeared in her hand: not necessary to channel her power, but a useful prop, and it was enjoyable to point it at things and make them explode. Then she looked around for her friends.

Rondeau was nearby, talking to a tree that appeared to hold a pretty young woman. She gazed farther afield, and there was Genevieve, approaching from the outskirts of the wood, gazing up at the sky with a look of concern and concentration.

There was no sign of Elsie, Pelham, or Bradley. Had they been separated already? “Fall in, troops,” she called.

Rondeau turned toward her, and the moment his back turned, something dropped from the branches toward him: winged, with an avian body and claws, but the head of a woman, with long, scraggly hair, and a mouth that was somehow both beaked
and
fanged. The harpy squawked, and Rondeau spun, raising up his hands to ward off the attack –

A lemon fell at his feet. He stared at it for a moment, then looked up. “Guys. Guys, I just saw a harpy turn into a lemon. That just happened. This is going to be a pretty fucked up day, isn’t it?”

“You and your lemons.” Marla smiled at Genevieve. She’d never felt affection for anyone but Death when she was in the underworld before, apart from that interval when Elsie had stripped her divinity away. Bradley’s memory-restoration had integrated her mind, mingling her mortal sensibilities and her godlike perspective. She could feel the arctic cold of the Bride’s aloofness under the surface of her mind—assessing her friends only as potential tools to be used for her goals, to be sacrificed as necessary—but there still
was
a surface, and the capacity for human fondness. She’d been a little worried the Bride’s aloofness would take over when she returned here.

“I don’t know why it’s always lemons.” Genevieve shook her head. “I just like the smell, really.” She gestured, and the grove of suicides transformed, black trunks turning brown, black leaves turning green, and countless bird-women shrieking and howling, briefly, before they turned into lemons, too. A thoroughly convincing sun bloomed in the sky, banishing the blackness and embers, and clouds scudded past. They could have been standing in an Italian lemon orchard. Marla took a deep breath. The air smelled... heavenly.

“So where are the others?” Rondeau said.

Marla shook her head. “I don’t have my full awareness of the underworld, not with all Skully’s interference, so I can’t sense them. I saw Elsie poof Bradley and Pelham, though, so they’re down here somewhere, unless Elsie’s sword malfunctioned and sent them back to Pluto.”

“Or she
made
it malfunction,” Rondeau said. “Because she thought it would be funny.”

“I landed in a graveyard full of burning tombs,” Genevieve said. “I didn’t like it there, so I turned it into a carnival I liked as a child. Then I crossed a boiling river of blood before I found you here in the wood. The others might have simply landed farther afield.”

“With luck, we’ll find them. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I hope Elsie’s with them. I’d feel better if they had a god on their side, too.”

“I’m glad I ended up on your team, Marla,” Rondeau said. “Though I do wish I had a tommy gun or something.”

Gen started to gesture, but Marla touched her wrist. “Wish
harder
, Rondeau. You should get the hang of manipulating things here.”

Rondeau nodded, squinched up his face, and a moment later, a long-barreled black gun with a round drum attached appeared in his hands. “All
right
.” He looked the weapon over, then frowned. “Hey, this is just, like, a block of wood and metal. There’s not even a hole in the barrel, or any place to load the ammo, and the trigger doesn’t move....”

Genevieve clucked her tongue. “You either have to imagine
very thoroughly
, or you have to use your psychic powers to reach into the minds of those nearby who have a complete understanding of whatever you wish to create, and let their knowledge fill in the conceptual gaps. Here, when we are near so many of the dead, there is surely someone who knows the workigns of such a mechanism intimately....” She held out her hand, and a tommy gun appeared there. Her garb shifted, too: stockings, a tight skirt, a blouse under a gray suit jacket, and a fedora. Her hair went black, and a beauty mark appeared on her cheek.

“Gun moll Genevieve. I like it.” Rondeau gritted his teeth, and his own outfit shifted to a suit a forties mobster might have worn, with a fedora of his own. His gun subtly changed, too, into something functional instead of merely decorative.

“I’m not sure I like the outlaw theme,” Marla said, “but it’s good practice.” She looked around. “What happened to the souls trapped in the trees?”