Play Dead (11 page)
SIX
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?” I ASKED. “Is this eco stuff for real, or just a smoke screen? If a smoke screen, for what? It’s not making sense.”
I’d hightailed it back to Victor’s house and laid out the whole scene for him and Eli. Victor leaned forward and put his elbows on the polished wood of his giant desk. The desk would have been overwhelming in most rooms, but in Victor’s faux Victorian study it seemed natural.
“On the contrary,” said Eli. “I’m sure it makes perfect sense, only we’re not in possession of enough information. But I’d guess now that there’s more going on here than just a simple theft.”
He was ensconced in one of the big padded armchairs with Maggie on his lap. Lou was curled up on a nearby throw rug. Maggie didn’t like me much, and she despised Lou, who returned the sentiment wholeheartedly. They were the only Ifrits I knew who genuinely didn’t like each other, despite the recent détente. Maybe that animus had something to do with the difficult relationship between Victor and me. But she liked Eli. He stroked her abstractedly with huge hands.
“Maybe it’s time to press Jessie about what was supposedly stolen, and why it’s so important,” I said.
Eli considered it briefly, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so, not yet. Without more information, you’ll have no way of knowing if what she tells you is true or not. And remember, your main focus is to find out what Jessie’s up to, not what Jackie is doing.”
“Disagree,” Victor said. “They’re related; they have to be.” So it was one to one. Big help.
The sound of the front door opening told me Timothy was home. The fact that he and Victor were still together still amazed me. Not only that, they were living together. And ever since Timothy had quit his IT job and was freelancing, he was at the house most of the time, as was Victor. I thought that would surely spell the end of the relationship—it would with me—but so far it seemed to be working out. Relationships for Victor rarely reached the live-together stage, and the only other time I could remember anyone else living there it hadn’t ended well. Which was partly my fault; I’d arrived at Victor’s with a horrible creature hot on my trail and, after seeing that, the guy moved out the next day.
He hadn’t been a practitioner, of course, and neither was Timothy. But unlike most nonpractitioners, Timothy managed to take everything in stride. I think he rather enjoyed it, to be honest—except for the dangerous parts. When he came up the stairs to the study Lou got up to greet him, looking for his usual treat.
“Sorry, Lou,” he said, showing empty hands. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
Lou returned to his rug good-naturedly. He wasn’t that hungry anyway.
“What’s up?” Timothy asked, sprawling out on the couch by the front windows.
I laughed. “That’s the question of the day.”
“Tell you later,” Victor said. “It’s a long story.”
“And speaking of long stories,” I said, “did Sherwood tell you about Cassandra?”
“She did.”
“Any thoughts?”
“Not yet. I did some research, and found out who owns the place, but that was no help. He’s out of the country, and apparently rented it out to a friend, who sublet it to the woman. Who she is, I haven’t a clue, and I doubt she’ll be returning to the houseboat anytime soon for us to find out.”
“She might come back to pick up personal stuff, though,” Eli said.
“I set up an alert system,” I said. “I’ll know if she does.” Victor nodded approvingly.
Eli hauled himself up out of his chair, carefully lifting Maggie off his lap, and stretched. “But we still have no idea who she thought you were or why she attacked you, or why she thought Jessie might have sent you. Until we know that ...”
“Well, just as long as we’re making progress,” I said. I hunched my shoulders in resignation and headed toward the door. “I’ll call if anything new comes up.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Eli.
“I’m not sure. See Jessie, for one. Maybe it’s not a good idea to tell her anything, but if I stir her up a bit, maybe something will shake loose. If it does, Lou can track down Jackie again—only this time I’ll be better prepared. After today she’s bound to think we’ve been thrown off the trail, so her guard will be down.”
“And then what?”
“Play it by ear, I guess.”
Eli looked unconvinced, but he didn’t say anything. After all, he didn’t have any ideas, either. I left Victor’s rather disappointed. I hadn’t expected any brilliant deductions but I’d hoped for at least something.
When I got home, there was a message on the machine. When I hit play I heard Jessie’s voice.
“Mason. Any luck so far? Call me.”
So she wanted to know how the search was going. Or wanted to keep an eye on me. I had nothing to tell her but I couldn’t just ignore her call, not if I wanted to keep working for her.
If I could get hold of Cassandra, it would help. I put the twig from her walkway, the one that was now an alarm system, on the kitchen table and stared at it hopefully. It remained stubbornly twiglike without a sign of magical activity. My mind remained as obstinately blank without a wisp of an idea.
When you’re stuck it’s always better to do something than nothing, though. Jessie wanted to know what was up. But instead of calling her back, I’d show up at her offices downtown and see if stirring would produce anything.
I headed over toward the Twenty-fourth Mission BART station, Lou trotting a few steps ahead of me. It was another beautiful day, and Valencia Street was as crowded as if it were the weekend. We hadn’t gone more than a couple of blocks when Lou stopped, almost tripping me. He stared fixedly down the street, then back at me.
“What’s up?” I asked.
He took several steps forward, stopped again, and looked back over his shoulder. So he was either telling me there was someone he wanted to follow or asking me if I wanted him to follow someone. There was only one logical person.
“Jackie?”
A short bark. Jackie it was. I scanned the street on both sides, but didn’t see her. That didn’t mean she wasn’t around, though. She could be shielding, making herself look like just about anyone, and if she was a block away, there wasn’t any way I’d be able to tell. After the illusion of the dead body, I wasn’t sure I could tell even if she bumped into me. But Lou could.
A bit of a coincidence, though. San Francisco’s not that big a city, but it’s big enough so that you don’t usually run into someone you’ve been looking for by accident. So either she was keeping an eye on me, wondering if the ploy had worked, or she knew Lou would notice her and was leading me on for her own unfriendly purposes. Either way, I was game.
I nodded at Lou and he started up again, moving purposefully, but slowly enough so I didn’t have to hurry to keep up. We passed Clarion Alley, well remembered from a couple of years ago, but Lou trotted past without a look.
We wove through the usual Valencia crowd without incident : twentysomethings with odd hairstyles headed for their favorite cafés, homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk, Hispanic families shopping at discount stores. Then, right before we reached Sixteenth Street, something odd.
A large branch lay across the sidewalk, blown down from God knows where. There weren’t any nearby trees large enough to account for its presence. Lou paused, then hurdled it gracefully at the same time I stepped across. I immediately felt a sticky sensation, as if I’d pushed through some gelatinous barrier. It wasn’t exactly magical, but it wasn’t normal, either. I stopped and looked around, understandably wary. Lou went into a sneezing fit, which he does whenever there’s an overload of magical energy. If Jackie had been setting a trap, I was pretty sure we’d just sprung it.
But there didn’t seem to be anything wrong. People were still walking down the street, chatting. A homeless man was sleeping on the sidewalk, half blocking it. The breeze was warm in my face, laced with the odor of diesel fumes and gasoline.
I stopped at a café and picked up a latte to go. It was terrible, weak yet bitter, like something that might be labeled “coffee-style beverage.” I drank only a few sips before tossing it in a trash can. You assume that anyone can make a decent cup of coffee, especially in San Francisco, but I guess not. That’s one reason we all have our favorite places.
I continued on and fell behind two young men, one tall and blond, the other shorter and Hispanic-looking. We were all walking at the same pace, and I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation. I was close enough to catch the words, and it was standard Mission District conversational fare.
“He said he’d call, but he hasn’t yet,” said the tall one.
“Typical. What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. I thought we made a connection. But now he’s playing it all cool and disinterested.”
“Or maybe he’s just not that into you.”
Lou meanwhile was cutting back and forth across the sidewalk, casting around as if for a scent. At first I thought he was confused, but I’ve learned to read his body language pretty well, almost as well as he reads mine. He wasn’t confused. He was annoyed, but I didn’t understand why.
I refocused on the two guys ahead of us just in time to catch the second one saying, “Or maybe he’s just not that into you.” Either his vocabulary or his thought processes were rather limited. That was what I thought until after some idle chatter, the blond guy said, “He said he’d call, but he hasn’t yet.” And the response came back, “Typical. What did you expect?”
This was bad. It wasn’t a real conversation at all. They were on a conversational loop, providing mere background noise like extras in a film.
I stopped and sat down to think on the stoop of a deserted store with dust-caked boards nailed over the window. The parade of Mission types trooped on by, and the more I watched, the more I realized that was exactly what they were. Types, not individuals. Stereotypes, like a bad Hollywood film.
In fact, now that I paid attention, the street had the air of a movie set. The entire scene had the feel of a staged reenactment, complete with actors. Not bad actors, but actors nonetheless. Nothing rang quite true. When I looked up at the street sign on the corner and saw the word “Valençia” was now spelled with a cedilla, I was only mildly surprised. Not only was the sign different, but modern Spanish doesn’t even use that mark anymore.
I wasn’t in the Mission anymore. I was in a singularity—one of those odd constructs that mirror the real world, but aren’t entirely real themselves. I was no stranger to such things—the last time I’d been in one, there were no people around, but no two are quite alike. I’d managed to escape with the assistance of Lou—and some helpful wolves, my totem animal. The wolves had since abandoned me; why, I don’t know. And the magical talisman that helped call them had also become inert. A shame—I could have used their help from time to time.
I’d also been to several places that weren’t constructs at all—more like alternate dimensions. I’d found some on my own, and some I’d been thrust into. Some of them were as real and complex as our own world; others were a weird amalgam of real and not real. The entire cosmology of such things was far beyond me.
Jackie had set me up for this. She must have seen that her death illusion hadn’t thrown me off the trail after all. She had some real talent, and a surprising facility with constructs—not a common skill. I don’t understand them very well myself, though Eli does. He knows a lot about many things. At least she was just trying to get me out of the way, not do away with me altogether, although stranding me somewhere like this might add up to the same thing.
The only thing I knew for sure about constructs was that Lou is a master at slipping in and out of such places. Left to my own devices, I might never find my way home, but he could, and I could follow.
“Home?” I said. “Can you get us home?”
Lou darted over into a nearby mini park, did a circle around the perimeter, and came back up to me, tail wagging. He looked at me and yawned, his saying,
Of course
, again. He never lacks for confidence, although I could have reminded him about several previous incidents where that confidence turned out to be misplaced.
Of course
, again. He never lacks for confidence, although I could have reminded him about several previous incidents where that confidence turned out to be misplaced.
He jumped to his feet and started down the street, with me a few steps behind. The physical aspects of the singularity were almost perfect—the buildings, the uneven paving of Valencia Street, the trash swirling in little eddies at the corners. Where it broke down was in the depiction of people. Which made sense—after all, people are more complex than streets and buildings.
As we walked along the sidewalk, passersby moved quickly around us, eyes flicking incuriously over us. It made me wonder; just as they weren’t exactly real to me, perhaps we weren’t entirely real to them.
I stopped and motioned Lou over to the middle of the sidewalk.
“Do your sit pretty,” I told him, that cute begging position that always melts hearts and elicits aws. He looked at me with something close to contempt. What—I thought he was a dog, eager to do stupid tricks on demand?
“No, I’m serious. It’s an experiment.”
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