Lady of Misrule (Marla Mason Book 8) (10 page)

“We’re beside a freeway,” Marla said. “Somebody will see him soon enough.”

They dropped Crapsey on the sandy earth several feet from the roadway. Marla smacked him lightly on the back of the head, because apparently no indignity was too small for her to visit on him. “No murdering whoever stops to pick you up, understand me? I left half the cash in your wallet and your credit cards and fake ID. You’ll be fine. Where exactly is Nicolette holding court in Felport, anyway?”

This was a horrible situation, but Crapsey had been in horrible situations before. Marla had once left him tied up in the belly of a ship traveling from Hawaii to Oakland, and he probably wouldn’t be bound nearly as long this time. He sighed. Antagonizing her would only prolong his own misery. “I hear she set up shop in Rondeau’s old night club.”

“What? Hamil owns that place now, he bought if from Rondeau when I was exiled.”

“I understand there was a transfer of ownership.” Crapsey grinned. Marla looked genuinely concerned now. She’d been close to Hamil, back before he’d voted to fire her from her job as chief sorcerer and kick her out of the city.

“Did Nicolette kill him? Answer me, Crapsey.”

“If she did, she didn’t tell me about it, and you know how she likes to gloat. He’s probably still alive, though I can’t vouch for his circumstances otherwise.”

Marla nodded. “All right. Let Nicolette know I’ll be there as soon as I can. Maybe in a week or so, ten days tops.”

“You’d better show up, Marla. Don’t keep her waiting too long. Nicolette hates Rondeau a lot. Not as much as I do, but she won’t hesitate to maim the guy just as an expression of frustration.”

“I will be there within ten days, or else the world will be doomed, and it won’t matter anyway. You can tell Nicolette that, too.”

Marla climbed back into the RV, and Bradley squatted down next to Crapsey. “Here, there’s not much silverware in the camper, but I found a butter knife.” He slipped the hilt into Crapsey’s hand. “You can cut your way out eventually. I’d hate to make you depend totally on the kindness of strangers.”

“Thanks, man,” Crapsey said. “When the time comes, I’ll kill you last. Or first. Whichever seems more merciful at the time.”

“That’s all I ask.” Bradley climbed back into the RV.

They drove away, kicking up great plumes of dust into Crapsey’s face, and he began sawing through the ropes behind his back. It didn’t take long, even with the minimal serrations on the butter knife – the ropes were just thin camping lines, used for hanging food in a tree to keep bears away, shit like that. He rolled over, massaged his wrists, and then untied his ankles. His feet were all pins and needles, so he hopped and stomped until the blood started to flow again.

Once he felt halfway human he took the phone from his inside pocket and called Nicolette.

“How’d it go?” Nicolette said.

“Pretty much like we expected. She got the drop on me and tied me up, but you were right, her curiosity got the best of her.”

“That’s Marla all over. Refuses to come when summoned, and refuses to come when she’s threatened, but you can count at her to come yell at you for summoning or calling her. Any sense of her ETA?”

“She’ll be along. She says she has to go save the world or something first, but I’d expect her at the club in a week or so.”

“Saving the world?” Nicolette said. “God, her priorities are so fucking predictable. Come on back to Felport, I guess. If she doesn’t show up soon I’m taking it out on you, though.” She ended the call.

I wonder what it’s like to have a normal job, with vacation time and sick days and shit like that
, Crapsey thought. He started walking, stuck out his thumb, and hoped for a passing motorist stupid enough to stop for him and provide him with a vehicle. Marla’s admonition not to murder anybody weighed on his mind – she was a death god, so she’d probably know if he disobeyed – but she could hardly complain if he followed her example and left someone tied up on the side of the road.

Bradley in Vegas

“You ever been to Las Vegas before?” Marla said from the passenger seat as they went by the Welcome to Las Vegas sign, recognizable from scores of movies about people making terrible choices.

Bradley chuckled. “I was in the movies. Vegas is the place where people like that go when Hollywood starts to feel too authentic and down-to-earth.”

“I never spent a lot of time here, and I admit it’s not my kind of place, but Vegas always struck me as what Rondeau would be like if someone magically transformed him into a city.” She sighed. “Him getting kicked out like that, by his own supernatural offspring... it’s not right.”

Bradley had filled her in on Rondeau’s conflict with Regina Queen and the subsequent bad luck with the oracle he’d summoned. Bradley had known Rondeau and Pelham were in trouble – he checked in with the home office occasionally, talking to himself in mirrors, and the Over-Bradley had filled him in – but tracking the Outsider had taken precedence, and he hadn’t known Nicolette was going to kidnap them. “I know you want to help Rondeau, but....”

Marla kept staring out the window. “Oh, I know. We’ve got bigger monsters to kill. Regina Queen came to get revenge on
me
, though, so it’s my fault Rondeau’s been exiled from his favorite place. I have some familiarity with how that feels. I’m also trying hard to fix my mistakes these days, instead of just moving on to newer and bigger mistakes.” She scratched absently at the tattoo on her wrist – the words “Do Better,” a message from her goddess-self, etched on her skin. “I’ll put off helping Rondeau until after we’ve dealt with the Outsider, don’t worry. But then I’ll have a chat with this new Pit Boss about his treatment of his creator. I’ll admit I’m tempted to bust this demon’s head right now, since we’re in town, but I can keep my focus – we’ll get my dagger and the rest of my stuff, then head to Santa Cruz.”

Bradley nodded. He’d helped Marla search, and her dagger wasn’t in the RV, and her motorcycle wasn’t hidden under the bed, either. There was about nine thousand dollars in cash wrapped in plastic hidden under the RV’s dashboard, so they could have bought new pants and a much crappier vehicle, but the dagger was irreplaceable, and it was the one weapon they could access with relative ease that would almost certainly hurt the Outsider. Her knife had been forged in Hell, and could cut through anything, including ghosts, iron, and memories.

They arrived near Rondeau’s hotel, a medium-nice place off the Strip – now part-owned by the oracular demon who’d presumably established himself as the city’s new Pit Boss by now. They left the RV illegally parked on a side street, and Bradley waited while Marla drew a simple design on each side to keep cops and thieves from noticing the vehicle, dragging her finger through the Death Valley dust. “I’ve never seen that keep-away spell before,” Bradley said. “It’s not the one you taught me – way simpler and more elegant.”

She grunted, looking over her handiwork. “There’s stuff in my head, now, I’m not always entirely sure how it got there. I’m not supposed to remember any of the stuff about being a goddess when I’m in my mortal form, but sometimes weird stuff bubbles up. Supernatural flotsam.”

“I’m feeling pretty estranged from my cosmic wisdom too,” Bradley said. “For one thing, I forgot what it’s like to be
hungry
. I still eat sometimes, and I can eat anything that exists or
can
exist, which is cool, but it’s just for pleasure, not need. What I’m saying is, I’m starving – can we hit a buffet or something?”

“After we get my motorcycle and my knife and my coat. Should all still be in my storage unit.”

They went around to the back of the hotel, and Marla magicked open a locked service door and led the way down white-tiled corridors. They found a cargo elevator where she pressed some arcane combination of buttons, smiling at Bradley’s raised eyebrow. “There are sub-basements that aren’t obviously accessible. Not even wizard shit, I don’t think, just skullduggery with blueprints and construction. Old-school gangster shit.”

The elevator doors opened on a concrete space broken up by tall metal shelves holding file boxes. They negotiated a few dark corridors until they reached an area filled with steel-doored storage rooms, where Bradley figured long-ago criminals had probably kept cocaine and dead bodies and stolen fur coats. Marla went straight to one door, its ordinary lock supplemented by a heavy padlock that looked like it could stand up to a direct shotgun blast. She hummed over the locks for a minute until the padlock fell open and the doorknob turned in her hand. “There’s a cargo elevator over there that leads up to the parking garage, so we can get out that way. We’ll make a lot better time going to Santa Cruz on the motorcycle.”

“Just don’t
drive
like you’re immortal,” Bradley said. “I’m going to be clinging to your back, and I don’t think my over-mind can spare any extra bodies if this one gets all busted up.”

“There are anti-crash charms. At least, I think so.” She pulled open the storage room door and swore. “Where. The fuck. Is my motorcycle.”

A voice of dust and rattling chains said, “The Pit Boss wants to see yous.”

“Did you just say ‘yous’?” Marla said. “For serious?”

Bradley moved up beside her, looking into the space. No motorcycle in evidence. A suitcase lay sprawled open in the corner, with some of Marla’s clothing scattered all over the floor, including a nice long brown leather coat. A figure, who looked like an art student’s junk sculpture of a man constructed from wooden boards and bicycle chains and rusty pipes and small appliances, stood in the center of the room.

“Don’t make no trouble,” the thing said, voice emerging from a mouth that might have started life as a hand-cranked coffee grinder. “The Boss just has a few questions for yous.”

“Let me guess,” Marla said. “He wants to know why there’s a dagger on the shelf over there that nobody can pick up. How about you fuck off and tell him the answer: because it’s
mine
.”

Bradley craned his neck, and there it was, Marla’s familiar dagger, forged in some fiery Hell, blade shining, hilt wrapped in purple and white electrical tape.

“This room belonged to some punk name of Rondeau, and everything that belonged to him belongs to the Pit Boss now. Come on.” The creature took a step toward her, its pipe-and-toaster feet ringing on the concrete.

“Look, Bugsy, I’m on a tight schedule here,” Marla said. “Tell me where my motorcycle is, and I won’t cut you into pieces.”

“Think you’re some kinda tough broad, huh?” For a golem, it had a lot of personality. “The Boss didn’t say you had to walk in on your own two legs. We can do this easy, or we can do this hard.”

“Of, for fuck’s sake,” Marla said. “Who programmed your dialogue?”

She whistled, and the dagger spun from the shelf toward her hand, incidentally passing through the golem’s head along the way, taking a chunk of its colander skull and one light bulb eye with it. The blade glittered in her hand, and she stepped forward, making two deft slashes, and sending the golem’s pipe-and-chain arms clattering to the floor.

“There,” she said. “Did I make my point? I know you don’t have a ton of autonomy, being a walking junkheap, but surely you’ve got some kind of protocol for what to do when you’re hopelessly outmatched?”

The golem rather gamely attempted to kick her to death, and once that was done failing spectacularly, there was a mess of broken machine parts on the floor. Marla picked up her long coat and pulled it on, instantly looking at least fifty percent more badass. She sorted through the clothes on the floor, finding a pair of red cowboy boots embroidered with skulls and scythes. “Shut up,” she muttered, pulling them on. “They’re
comfortable
.”

He grinned. “I’m just impressed you’re showing
any
kind of fashion sense. Never expected that from you. It’s like a chicken that plays piano. You don’t expect the chicken to be good. It’s enough that it plays at all.”

“Ha ha.” She swept the rest of her clothes into the suitcase and thrust it into Rondeau’s hands. “The silver axe is gone. This new Pit Boss might have it, or Squat might have taken it with him when he ran off with Nicolette. She always felt like it belonged to her, just because she was the person who stole it from the guy who
originally
stole it.”

“Craziness. Obviously the proper claim is yours, since you stole it from
her
.”

“Last theft wins,” Marla said. “I guess we’d better go see the Pit Boss after all.”

Bradley sighed. “We got the knife, you know. And your coat, which I can see is bristling with nifty armor magics.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, but I want my motorcycle. It was a gift. I can accept this Pit Boss stealing from Rondeau, or at least back-burner dealing with it, but if he steals from
me
? Don’t worry, it won’t take long.”

Bradley nudged a bit of broken glass with his toe. “If we’re going to see the Pit Boss anyway, why chop this thing into pieces? Why not just go with it in the first place?”

“I don’t go anywhere under duress. Hell, I’ll go to Felport to see Nicolette, assuming we can save the universe first, but I won’t go because Crapsey came and
told
me to. You’ve got to have standards, B. What do you have if you don’t have your principles?”

“There is the small difficulty that we don’t know where this Pit Boss
is
,” Bradley said. “Which the garbage gangster there could have told us.”

“True. It’s a good thing I travel with an immensely powerful psychic with access to arcane wisdom,” Marla said.

Bradley sighed. “Okay. Let’s go upstairs. I’ll look for an oracle.”

•

A simple divination didn’t require big magic, and he knew for a fact that Marla could probably do it herself if she got her hands on some old coins and animal bones, but it was easy enough for him to amble along a couple of alleyways until he felt that psychic tug of a nearby oracle. He closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment, and when he looked again, a severed head with grievous gunshot wounds bobbed before him like the world’s ugliest balloon.