Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (45 page)

 
          
It
was
half past eleven
when Colin let himself into the apartment. Claire was fast
asleep, wrapped in a quilt and curled up in Colin's big leather easy chair. The
phone was nestled in her lap like a sleeping cat.

 
          
As
Colin shut the door, she roused.

 
          
"Oh,
Colin." She looked at her watch. "You're back early."

 
          
"I
don't suppose I even need to ask if there were any calls?" Colin said, taking
off his ancient topcoat and tossing it over a chair, dropping the newspaper on
top of it.

 
          
"Not
unless you count an opinion poll and somebody trying to sell you the
New
York Times,"
Claire said, setting the telephone back on its table and
unwinding herself from the quilt. "Oh, and a wrong number
—
but I think they figured
that out for themselves; they hung up in the middle of a sentence." She
got to her feet and stretched. "How was your dinner?" She paused, and
looked at him closely. "Colin, you don't look well."

 
          
"I
got some disturbing news tonight. You remember Toller Hasloch?"

 
          
"Ugh."
Claire made a face. "How could I ever forget? Such a
charming
man
—
and
such
a way with
the ladies. Don't tell me you ran into him tonight, Colin. I'd been hoping he
was dead."

 
          
"Not
quite. Apparently he's practicing law in
New York
now . . . and his law firm
was one of those bidding on the Rhodes Group library."

 
          
"Brrr."
Claire gave a not-entirely-theatrical shiver. "Well, I hope you aren't
going to tell me he got it. Tea? I think I could use a cup before hearing all
the gory details." Claire strode off to the kitchen, and in a few moments
Colin heard her moving around between stove and refrigerator.

 
          
He
wandered around the room, nipping on a few more lights, and then picked up the
paper. He skimmed through it
—
Apollo ij
was still heading for Earth without incident, the Watergate
conspirators were moving closer to trial
—
and tossed it aside. Its
contents seemed to have no bearing on his life.

 
          
By
then Claire had returned, carrying a large tray. Colin moved a pile of papers
and she set it down, using a large ottoman as a makeshift table. There was a
plate of Christmas cookies on the tray, and Colin raised an eyebrow.

 
          
"Oh,
you know how it goes," Claire said. "This time of year you can hardly
escape a few Christmas cookies. Last week I got
two
fruitcakes, so I
squirreled one away here for emergencies."

 
          
"Or
at least for whatever emergencies can be addressed by a serving of
fruitcake," Colin said, selecting a cookie for himself.

 
          
"You'd
be surprised," Claire said placidly. "Most of life's crises can be
settled with a good meal, a stiff drink, and a hot bath. Toller Hasloch,
however, does not fall into this category. So he's practicing law in
New York
? I wish I'd known before I
moved here, then. But what does he want with a bunch of books? He never struck
me as much of a reader, somehow."

 
          
"Not
the reference library, but the case histories," Colin said. "And in
any event, he didn't get it."

 
          
"There
must be more to things to put that look on your face. What else?"

 
          
"I
think," Colin said slowly, "that he's practicing a little more than
law. But if he is, what he's doing is very well hidden. In the last six weeks I
think you and I have hit up every single Left-Hand practitioner in
Manhattan
and the boroughs, not to
mention selected locations in
Westchester
and
Long Island
, and we haven't heard of anything even remotely similar to
that bad patch back in
Berkeley
."

 
          
"
Thule
Gesellschaft."
Claire pronounced the word
as if it were the name of a loathsome disease. "You'd think we'd have
gotten a
hint
if he were up to his old tricks."

 
          
"You
would, wouldn't you?" said Colin musingly. "I suppose that means he
isn't, but that's something I'm not willing to take on faith. As soon as this
John Cannon thing is settled, I'm going to make it my business to deal with
Hasloch personally. I may not be allowed by my oaths to interfere in the lives
and destinies of ordinary people, but perhaps an exception can be made for
Hasloch."

 
          
"Why
don't you ask Can ..." Claire's voice drifted away as she sat with a
teacup poised halfway to her mouth. Her eyes had taken on a faraway look.
"Cold. So cold. Oh, Colin, why didn't you tell me?"

 
          
"Claire?"
Colin said, very softly.

 
          
"They've
gotten Lucille," Claire said. Though her voice was still her own, her
manner
of speaking had changed, until Colin could almost visualize John Cannon
sitting in front of him. "Colin, you've got to save
—
" Her voice broke off.
"Save ..."

           
Claire stopped and blinked, her eyes
focusing. "Save what?" she asked in her normal voice. "Did I
just nod off here?"

 
          
"Not
quite," Colin said. "I think someone was using you to deliver a message."
Someone who passed through the wards I have set about this place as if they
didn't exist.

 
          
Claire
looked around the room vaguely, as though searching for the messenger in the
corners of the ceiling. "There's no one here now," she pronounced
decisively. She drained her tea and glanced at her watch again. "Will it
keep, do you think, or should I try to call it back?"

 
          
Colin
hesitated. "Let me make a phone call, first."

 
          
Cannon
did not answer his phone, and after Colin had let it ring thirty times, he knew
that no one would.
"They've gotten Lucille
—
" the voice had said.
He tried both of Madame Lucille's numbers as well, but no one answered there,
either. He hoped she had taken his advice to leave
New York
, but knew in his heart that
she hadn't.

 
          
"I
think you'd better see what you can raise," he said grimly. There was only
one force he knew of that could pass through the wards an Adept set about
himself
—
that
of the pure spirit in the lands of Death.

 
          
"Nothing."
Forty minutes later, Claire shook her head decisively. She set the shewstone aside,
rewrapping it carefully as she did so. "I'm sorry."

 
          
"You
did your best," Colin said. "I'm sorry to have kept you so long. I'll
call you a taxi
—
I don't want you riding the subway at this hour."

 
          
"And
what about you?" Claire demanded suspiciously. She found her answer in
Colin's expression. "Not without me you don't, buster."

 
          
At
two o'clock
in the morning, all the windows of the buildings lining
Gramercy
Park
were dark.

 
          
Colin
wasn't entirely certain of why he had come. There was nothing he could do here,
and he certainly couldn't go banging on Cannon's door in the middle of the
night, demanding to know if he were all right. Cannon had not asked him to
intervene. Colin's hands were, in a sense, tied.

 
          
"Anything?"
he asked hopefully.

 
          
Claire
shook her head. "Just the usual residual nastiness you'll find on any city
street. What are you going to do, Colin?"

 
          
Colin
sighed, shaking his head wearily. "The only thing I can do
—
wait for a new day and start
over. Tomorrow morning
—
well, later today
—
I'll see what his publisher
can tell me. I wonder if Jock kept his final appointment?"

 
          
He'd
only been asleep for a few hours when the phone rang.

 
          
"MacLaren."

 
          
"Colin?
Turn on the radio to that news station," Claire said. "Quick."

 
          
Colin
sat up and quickly activated the clock-radio beside his bed. He kept the radio
alarm tuned to 1010 WINS; in seconds the abrasive tones of twenty-four-hour
news radio filled the bedroom.

 
          
"
—
and noted popularizer John
Cannon, dead today at age forty-nine.

           
Cannon, the author of several books
on the occult such as
The Devil in America
—
"

 
          
Colin
raised the phone to his ear again. "I heard," he said tersely.
Rest
easy, John Cannon. You will be avenged.

 
          
"When
I got home this morning I just couldn't sleep. There was a bit in the morning
paper, too, just a squib on the Obits page. They're calling it a heart attack.
I'll hope that's true. But I can't shake this feeling
—
sort of a vague nagging,
nothing concrete enough to act on
—
that there's someplace I
need to be. So I guess my work for today is to wander around and see if I
strike into it."

 
          
"Good
luck," Colin said. "I'll give you a call this evening and we can compare
notes. I'm going to see if John Cannon kept his last appointment."

 
          
As
he was dressing to go over to Blackcock, another phone call came. This one was
from Alan Daggonet, the owner of Selkie Press, reminding him that there was a
production meeting scheduled for this morning.

 
          
Reluctantly,
Colin headed uptown to Alan Daggonet's brownstone. His visit to Blackcock would
have to wait a few hours.

 
          
After
the meeting, Daggonet took him aside.

 
          
"I'm
afraid it's not good news, Colin, but I wouldn't be doing you any service by
holding it back. You know we've been in trouble financially for several years
now. ..."

 
          
"Is
this a pink slip, Alan?" Colin asked quietly.

 
          
Alan
Daggonet was the scion of an old
New York
family, and Selkie Press
had been his pet project for almost twenty-five years. But recession and inflation
combined had conspired to put book publishing out of the financial reach of
even a rich man, and Colin had been expecting news of this sort for months.

 
          
"Oh,
Lord no!" Alan said, appalled. "At Christmas? I'm not quite that much
of a Scrooge! No, we can make payroll for a few months yet, but come January
I'm going to be putting the press on the market. Not that I think there's the
possibility of a buyer, but disposing of the inventory may defray some of our
debts. And most of our authors are dead, so there
is
the backlist on the
asset side of the ledger. But I'm afraid that we're done for. Barring a
miracle, of course."

 
          
Colin
sighed, trying to take an interest in the problem, though his thoughts were
largely elsewhere.