Grim Tides (Marla Mason) (34 page)

“So I’m not dead,” Marla said. She nodded toward Jarrow. “How about her?”

“Oh, yes, she’s gone. The body is, anyway. The poor dear expired just before I froze this moment. You lived longer than your twin – but then, your will has always been greater than just about anyone’s.”

“Okay,” Marla said after a moment. “Here’s the thing. I’m not done living yet.”

Death closed his eyes. “Marla. Marla, don’t. Don’t ask me to restore you to life. Because I’ll have to refuse you, and – ”

Marla shook her head. “I’m not that big of a bitch. But listen. There’s actually a mythological precedent for what I’ve got in mind. Let’s take a few minutes and haggle, what do you say? Marriage is about compromise.”

After Crapsey finally managed to overpower Pelham and tossed him in the fish pond, he rushed up the beach, but it was too late: there were two dead bodies under the trees. Holy hell. Marla had gone through with it. She’d enacted what the comic books called the ultimate sacrifice: given up her own life to save the lives of others.

Though when it came to saving the lives of others, a pissed-off, disembodied Elsie was a hell of a lot more dangerous than one with a physical form to keep her contained and distracted. Basically, Marla was a shit tactician. Unless she’d just lost the will to live, and figured unleashing a bodiless Elsie as she died was a nice final “fuck you” to the universe. Crapsey could get his head around that as a motivation, at least.

The air above Jarrow’s bled-out body was shimmering now, and beach sand began to swirl up and around and accrete into the shape of a female form. The whirlwind that was Elsie’s consciousness picked up a quantity of the blood-soaked sand and sculpted that into hair, and a pair of red lips, but still: she was just sand. The beach-golem walked toward Crapsey, and when she spoke, her voice was all rasp and dryness. “I’m hollowed, I’m scooped, I’m uncooped, I’m free as a bird, free as a murder, I’m shadows swallowing the moon, I’m a flock of swallows, I’m starlight, I’m starlings, I’m all out of spoons, I - I - I - I – ”

Crapsey backed away. Being close to Elsie right now was probably like pitching a tent next to Chernobyl. He had enough problems without bone cancer. The sand figure kept walking, leaving bloody footprints. “You, Crapsey, yes, you’ll do...
your
body, yes, why not, as good as any, oh, the music I could make singing through your throat, the great workings I could work through the workings of your wonderful jaw...”

Crapsey swallowed. To have his own body stolen was a fitting enough fate, but really, as punishments went, it was a litle too on the nose. “Elsie, you’re not thinking straight, it’s because you don’t have a brain anymore to think with. You’d burn through this body in minutes, and then we’d
both
be shit out of luck, and I wouldn’t be around to help you anymore – ”

“But you can
taste
things, get down and lick the salt from the sea, roll around in the warm sand, blood is pumping in you, I will take you, I will stretch time like bubblegum, I can live a lifetime before your bones turn to spun glass and black goo, shh, open wide, give us a kiss, kiss me again, kiss me like you did before.” Her red mouth opened, and a tongue made from a fragment of kelp poked out.

Crapsey wanted to run, but it would be like running from the moon crashing into the Earth, wouldn’t it? Maybe it would be better to stand his ground, pretend to be brave, take his last breaths as a man unpossessed by an insane chaos witch, look at the ocean –

The surfers had paddled in closer, and now they were doing something out on the waves, chanting some rhythm, and the waves seemed to be crashing in time with their chant. That couldn’t be true, of course, it had to be the other way around, but it really did seem like the
surfers
were conducting the symphony of surf and tide...

Elsie reached out with one grainy hand, caressing his cheek, and she had
eyes
now, made of bits of bright seashell, and those inanimate fragments were somehow still merry. Everything was a lark: life and death and dancing back and forth across the line between the two. She stuffed her fingers in his mouth, sand on his tongue, and when he tried to pull away she seized his jaw and began squeezing. He bit down, but her hand was hard as concrete. There was a trigger word, wasn’t there, something that would make his jaw activate magically, become strong enough to bite through diamonds and mithril and adamantium, but even if he could remember the word, he couldn’t
say
it, because she was trying to climb into his body through his fucking
mouth
–

Then her sandy body began to come apart. Her bloody hair streamed away first, and then she lost one of her nacreous eyes. Her grip on his jaw went limp, and suddenly his mouth was just full of sand, instead of a
hand
, and he stumbled back, spitting, trying to clear his mouth. Elsie swayed in confusion, looking at the hand-less stumps of her arms, as more and more chunks of her body began to blow away – but the grains of sand were flying
against
the prevailing wind, out toward the ocean, rather than in toward the shore.

Elsie began to laugh, and then to howl, and somehow even that howling was made part of the surfers’ rhythmic chant.

Crapsey didn’t know what the hell was happening, but he supported it whole-heartedly. He spat toward Elsie. “You’re coming apart! You’re going to pieces!”
“I know!” Elsie shouted. “Two-four-six-eight, look at me disintegrate!” She cackled again, and then her red lips blew away, and her face stopped even remotely resembling a face. Her human shape came apart entirely, and she became literally dust in the wind – though it was more like dust being sucked into an industrial fan.

The chanting from the surfers continued for another few minutes as Crapsey stared open-mouthed at the bobbing mages on their boards in the waves, and then their voices stopped abruptly. The waters churned and frothed wildly, great spumes of water shooting up into the air, geyser-like, as if the sea had been brought to a rolling boil and beyond. The wave-mages hung grimly onto their boards, rocking and riding out the fury, some of them leaving the water entirely and flying briefly into the air, but none of them went under. After a few moments, the sea’s fury subsided, and the next few lapping waves left pinkish, blood-tinged foam on the shore. The surfers started to cheer and exchange high-fives.

“What the
shit
,” Crapsey began, but then someone crashed into him from behind, knocking him facedown in the sand, and a sleep with the familiar cloying stink of magic pulled him down, as surely as an undertow drags unwary swimmers below the waves.

Marla’s eyes opened, and the world was blue; and then the world was Reva, and Pelham, and Rondeau, and –
Arachne
, of all people, pressing a woven bandage down to Marla’s throat and chanting, though when she did it, it was more like muttered singing. Marla tried to sit up, but Arachne disdainfully pressed a hand to Marla’s chest, and managed to hold her down. After a moment, the kahuna nodded. “I think she will live. Her body needs to be replenished – she will be ravenous, and she should rest, but if she does those things, she will not die.” Arachne stood up, sniffed, and said, “My obligation to you is now fully discharged, Marla Mason.”

“I thought you were done for.” Rondeau squeezed her hand, which no longer felt like a balloon tethered to her by a piece of string.

“Jarrow,” Marla croaked. She didn’t feel as bad as she should have – she also didn’t, apparently, have a slit in her throat anymore – but she still felt like she’d been dragged behind a horse over lava rock for thirty or forty miles. “Elsie Jarrow, is she – ”

“It worked,” a new voice said. Marla turned her head, and there was the kid from the surf shop, what was his name, French-y but not – right, Jon-Luc. He squatted down beside Marla, fastidiously avoiding the drying puddle of blood. “We caught Jarrow in the tidal forces, and pulled her consciousness into the sea.”

“
That
was the plan?” Rondeau said. “I thought you were going to return as a warrior Death goddess and stomp her into atoms?”

“That was plan B,” Marla croaked. “Plan A was dilution.” She gestured at Jon-Luc, her throat hurting too bad for her to explain.

“Marla talked it over with us,” Jon-Luc said. “And asked if we could make a trap. This woman Jarrow was poisonous, right? She was basically disembodied heavy metals or carcinogens.” He shrugged. “The ocean is
big
. A woman-sized dose of radiation and crazy magic, when diluted into the entire sea, is nothing. She might make a few fish sick, but her substance will become so watered-down as she spreads through the ocean, she won’t be a conscious entity anymore. Not that we
like
dumping more poison of any sort into the sea, but at this point, what’s another few parts per trillion?”

“What’s to stop her, like, taking over the body of a shark before she gets too diluted?” Rondeau said.

Jon-Luc looked offended. “We’re
good
, my crew. And we’ve got our own reasons to want Jarrow eliminated. She killed Glyph. We bound her up in all the orderly magic of the sea when we sprang our trap.”

“The sea is lovely, dark, and deep,” Reva said thoughtfully. “A symbol of order in its tidal regularity and predictable flow of currents...”

Jon-Luc nodded. “The ocean’s full of chaos too, of course, the ocean’s full of
everything
, but we can focus the sea’s power in a particular way, and we did. Jarrow will be hopelessly diluted before she can undo those bindings.”

“It’s like when she turned Christian Decomain into frogs,” Marla said. “He wasn’t killed, just
changed
, reduced to individual component parts that don’t communicate anymore, so they no longer add up to a whole. Jarrow’s still down there, she’s just... not Jarrow any more. She’s been reduced to pieces of herself.” She shook her head. “Shit. Where’s Crapsey? Lupo?”

Rondeau pointed to a prone form. “Crapsey’s down. Arachne dropped him when she arrived. He’s alive, but out of it. Lupo... I don’t know. She – he – stopped attacking me and ran away, but he was starting to blur again, he didn’t look like Dr. Husch any more. I think whatever control Jarrow was exerting over Lupo slipped when her body died.”

“Great,” Marla croaked. “Talk about an invasive species. We’ll have to track Lupo down later. We should do something with Nicolette’s body. And we should get Crapsey locked up I guess. Nobody’s using the bathtub anymore – ”

“We’ll take care of it, Marla,” Rondeau said. “Pelham and me. We’ve got this.”

Marla clutched at his arm. “Good. Can you help me back to the hotel? I need to rest. But later on, I need to talk to you. And Pelly. And Reva too. In the morning...” Marla’s eyes drooped. Being on the point of death and besting a chaos witch was exhausting work. She let herself sink into Rondeau’s arms, and allowed sleep to take her.

WALKING THE EARTH

When Marla woke up, her throat felt better. She drank glass after glass of water, then stepped out onto her balcony and looked down on the dolphin lagoon. The animals were beautiful, leaping from the water to the delight of watching vacationers. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, but surely they’d prefer their freedom? Or maybe she was anthropomorphizing. When the sight of dolphins in a resort hotel starts to seem unbearably poignant, maybe it’s time to change your life.

She went back inside to use the bathroom – all those glasses of water took a toll – and saw a slip of paper someone had slid under her door. Only a couple of lines written by hand. She looked at the clock. After hurriedly using the bathroom, she splashed some water on her face, ran her fingers through her hair, and slipped on some comfortable clothes. In a perfect world, she would look cool and poised and powerful for this rendezvous, but she’d just died yesterday, and there was only so much she could do. She cast a brief stealthy-and-silent spell (fresh cat whiskers, harvested humanely, made all the difference) and slipped out of her room. Her friends would probably be feeling overprotective, and this way they wouldn’t hear her leaving and ask where she was going. The spell might not work on Reva, but she hoped that if he noticed, he’d appreciate that she was
trying
to be private, and leave her alone.

Marla went down the elevator to the ground floor, and strolled to one of the hotel’s little cafes. Now, just past dawn, the place was nearly deserted, except for one man seated at a small round table, his back to a pillar, two cups of coffee before him.

She sat down across from him, and after a moment during which they regarded one another, said, “You’re looking well.” She was alarmed by how raspy her voice still sounded.

“So are you, sis.”

Marla laughed, but it hurt her throat. “You are a good liar, Jason. I look like I’m half-dead – because I am. I notice you didn’t come to our little final party on the beach.”

Jason exhaled. “So there was something final, then? It’s all over?”

She shrugged. “Crapsey is on ice somewhere, but I’m sure we’ll ship him back to the mainland soon, probably tied up with some evidence of a crime in his lap. We’ll see how prison suits him. And Jarrow... well. Someone like her, you can’t really kill. But she’s been neutralized.”

“And the one with the buzzcut?”

“Nicolette... didn’t make it. Not by my hand. Elsie Jarrow killed her.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Jason said. “I’ve met a lot of dangerous people over the years, and some people so far around the bend they didn’t know right from wrong, and didn’t realize
what
they were doing... but that woman knew exactly what she was doing, and did it anyway, just because she liked it.”

“Sounds a lot like you, brother.”

“I never wanted to be part of this. I know you’ve got no reason to believe me, but it’s true. Jarrow press-ganged me. She thought it was funny, having your brother along, making me call you on the phone, shit like that. I got away from her as soon as I could.”

Marla nodded toward her coffee cup. “Is this poisoned?”