Poison Sleep (17 page)

“Oh? You didn’t seem much like a boss last night.”

“I never said I was
only
your boss. Just that I’m
also
your boss.”

He nodded, conceding the point.

“But I’ve got a couple of hours before the meeting….” She realized everyone in the café was listening to her, and the barista was hovering just a step away from the table with her drink. Marla glanced up at her, and the girl put down the cup and scurried away. “You could come join me for a little mid-morning exercise.”

“Are you asking me as my boss, or as something else?”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose not.” He rose. “We’ll need to-go cups, please,” he said sweetly, and three customers leapt from their seats to bring them cups and lids.

“I’ll go in alone first, if you like,” Joshua said, pausing in the doorway of Rondeau’s club. “I understand if you’d like to maintain the illusion of propriety.”

Marla checked the buttons on her shirt again, half-convinced she’d walk into the meeting partially undressed. “Yeah, might be better. I don’t care if people know we’re involved, but I don’t want that to be the focus of
this
meeting.”

Joshua kissed her cheek and went through the door, giving Marla a moment alone on the street to collect herself. How had her love life gone from vibrator-and-alone-time to midmorning-delight-with-a-lovetalker so quickly? She knew it was partly Joshua’s magic that made her willing to open herself up to him, physically and (at least a little) emotionally. Was she just drawn to his magic, or to the man himself? Marla felt lucky to have Joshua in her life, though. He was fulfilling parts of her she hadn’t realized were wanting. And yet, she considered love spells coercive, and wasn’t Joshua really a walking, talking love spell? How could Marla possibly judge this situation objectively when she was
inside
it? She couldn’t.

This whole thing was something to ponder later. She had more pressing business now. Supposedly the powers of lovetalkers were impossible to resist, but maybe Langford could come up with a countercharm. If so, Marla could examine her feelings for Joshua unclouded by his pheromones or aura manipulation or whatever. She’d ask.

Marla went inside, and found Ted at the foot of the stairs. “Sorry I’m late. I got busy. Is everyone here?”

“Everyone but Rondeau.”

Marla scowled. “Damn it, I told him this was important. Call his cell.”

“I have, several times. It goes straight to voicemail. I’m sorry, Marla.”

She sighed. “It’s all right.”

“There have been phone calls. From, ah, your various other associates. They’re all concerned about what’s happening with the city. The…Genevieve problem, they call it?”

Marla groaned. “That’s part of what I’m here to deal with. Are the others in the conference room?”

“Devouring sandwiches as we speak.”

“Good man.” Marla went to the secret conference room. Ted had installed a new multiline phone in the center of the table and had a little sideboard set up with trays of bread and meat. Langford was standing, shoving rolls of meat and cheese into his mouth, while Hamil focused on the carbohydrates, sitting at the table and chewing his way methodically through a heap of croissants. Joshua had a little plate of grapes before him on the table, and Kardec stood, arms folded, against the far wall, where he could see the door. They were all trying not to stare at Joshua, but only Kardec was doing a halfway decent job. “Thank you all for coming. You there, Husch?”

“Yes,” the voice crackled from the phone.

“Great. I have some separate-but-overlapping stuff to talk about, and it was just easier having all of you here at once. Kardec: I found your boy. He tried to assassinate me last night.”

Kardec whistled. “Did you kill him?” He sounded both worried and hopeful.

“No such luck. I incapacitated him, but he teleported, or something. Disappeared right out of my hands.”

Kardec’s brow furrowed. “That’s a new trick.”

“I kept some of his things, though.” She gestured, and Ted brought over a box with Zealand’s stun gun, pistol, and garrote. “Think you can track him with these, Langford?”

Langford came over, his mouth still full, poked through the objects in the box, then nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Good. When he finds Zealand, Kardec, I’ll let
you
know, if you promise to get him the hell out of my city,
and
if you swear to find out who hired him and let me know. It’s no surprise I’ve got enemies, but it would help if I knew which shoulder I should be looking over, you know?”

Kardec looked annoyed, but said, “Fine.”

Marla sat down at the head of the table. “Yeah? I don’t need to take you out back and throw a circle of binding around us, do I? To make sure you’re telling the truth?”

“I give my word as a slow assassin.”

“Ah,” Langford said. “You’re a slow assassin? I’ve always wanted to ask about some of your more exotic poisons—”

“Later,” Marla interrupted. “Okay, Kardec, I’ll take your word. Langford: any luck finding Dr. Husch’s fugitive?”

“She appears intermittently, then disappears.” He unfolded a map of the city with a scattering of red dots drawn all over it. “There is no pattern apparent yet. But…her effects are being noticed.” He nodded toward Hamil. “He can tell you more.”

“Yes,” Hamil said, his voice heavy with gravitas. He always sounded like he was intoning the voice-over for an Academy Award-winning movie. “My spies at street level have been present for several of her appearances. Genevieve Kelley typically lurches out of an alley, or from around a corner, and looks around in fear and bewilderment. Every once in a great while she brushes up against someone, and when she does…they fall down. Unconscious, but only for a little while, a few seconds sometimes, never more than a couple of minutes. The victims wake up and go on about their business, seemingly unaffected…at first.”

“Have you followed any of them after that first contact?”

“Yes.” Hamil sighed. “They disappear. Sometimes within a few minutes, sometimes later. There’s no discernible pattern, which is annoying, but then, her power is linked to dreams, and dreams are notoriously unpredictable. But the victims all vanish, and later they reappear, elsewhere in the city. At least, some of them. Maybe all of them, but we haven’t
seen
all of them reappear.”

“I assume they’re disappearing into Genevieve’s dream world,” Dr. Husch said. “That when she comes into contact with people, she…drags them into her gravity. Or loosens their bonds with consensual reality. I’m not sure.”

“Yeah,” Marla said. “Sounds like what happened to
me,
all right, and it fits in with those people Joshua and I ran into the other night, the ones from the hospital waiting room. Huh. I wonder if Zealand ran into Genevieve, if that’s why he disappeared. He might be dream-poisoned, too, I guess….” She shook off the thought. There was no way to prove or disprove the hypothesis, but she’d keep it in mind. “So, Langford, any conclusions yet? Is it bird flu, or black plague?”

“So far it seems more like bird flu,” he said. “Only the people Genevieve touches are infected, if ‘infection’ is the right word. There’s an initial reaction—passing out—and then a variable incubation period before the full onset, signified by the disappearance from this world. I’ve seen no sign that the infected pass the condition on to others. But from what you told us, people can be swept up by the parts of her dream world that intrude into
our
reality, even without encountering Genevieve directly. Which means it’s impossible to extrapolate the extent of the damage Gevenieve’s presence could do if left unchecked.”

Marla nodded. “We have
got
to get this woman in custody. Assemble a strike team, Hamil. As soon as Langford can zero in on her—or detect a pattern so we can predict where she’ll be—we’ll get her. Somehow. Nets, tranquilizer darts, psychic dominators, anything and anyone we can think of. Get in touch with the other sorcerers, they must know there’s something going on by now, tell them we’re conscripting people to deal with ‘the Genevieve problem.’” She turned back to Langford. “This is priority one, okay? Getting Genevieve. Zealand can wait.”

Langford shrugged. “I can run the searches in parallel. There’s a lot of time spent waiting for data to process anyway.”

“Be gentle with Genevieve,” Dr. Husch said. “Remember, she’s
sick,
she’s not your enemy. Try not to frighten her. Sedate her, and I’ll pick her up and bring her back home. I think the familiar environment will soothe her.”

“Like the doc says,” Marla said. “Okay. I think that’s it for the
pressing
problems.” She glanced at Joshua. “But I still have a city to run. How goes scheduling for the big meeting, Hamil?”

“Two nights from now, at darkest midnight, on neutral ground, in this case the gazebo in Fludd Park. Everyone will have their requests for Susan’s possessions turned in by 6 P.M. tonight, and I will help prioritize them for you. Of course, there will be a certain amount of arguing at the actual meeting. Susan’s holdings were impressive, outshone only by yours and Gregor’s, and everyone wants a piece. There are great opportunities to make alliances here, Marla, and with Joshua there to smooth over any bumps in the negotiations…I wouldn’t worry too much.” He hesitated. “Except. Well. We haven’t heard from Gregor.”

“Okay,” Marla said. “He’s been incommunicado lately. I need to look into that. Maybe he just doesn’t want anything of Susan’s.”

“Perhaps,” Hamil said, but she could tell he was thinking the same thing
she
was: maybe Gregor was the one who’d sicced the assassin on her, and that was why he was laying low. Though, if that was the case, shouldn’t he be trying to act
more
normal, so she wouldn’t suspect him? Maybe he was just deep into some spell that required his full attention. She’d find out. “You up for the big game, Joshua?”

“I serve at your pleasure,” he said, a little cryptically, a lot sexily.

Marla cleared her throat. “Anything else?”

Silence, and then everyone began to leave, Joshua leading the pack. That’s right. He had “an appointment,” whatever that meant. Marla told them all to let her know when they discovered, well,
anything,
and soon she was left alone with Ted.

“Dr. Husch needs to speak to you privately,” he said, gesturing to the phone, and then left.

Marla frowned and picked up the phone. “What is it, Leda?”

“I’ve been investigating Jarrow’s escape attempt. It wasn’t an accidental breach. She had outside help.”

“Say
what
?”

“Jarrow’s cell is wrapped in binding spirals, the walls chiseled with the sorts of orderly symbolic progressions that negate her powers, inlaid in gold. Someone released a bunch of microscopic rock-eating bacteria, programmed to deform the spirals by actually changing the surface of the sigils that surround her cell. By
eating
the metal. They’ve been at it for a long time. I discovered the creatures this morning, when doing a close inspection of Jarrow’s cell. I managed to neutralize the bugs, but…”

“You’re sure they were deliberately introduced?” Marla said.

Husch sighed. “I’m no expert on extreme organisms, but I spoke to Langford—who is—and he said creatures like this live in caves and gold mines, not in
houses,
and they don’t usually behave the way these did. Someone else was controlling them. I have no idea whom, but they wanted Jarrow to escape.”

“What kind of nutcase would let Elsie Jarrow out? She’s like a pissed-off genie—she’d be more likely to kill whoever helped her escape than she would be to reward them.” Jarrow was a living malignancy, a woman who’d transformed herself into the embodiment of chaos and increasing disorder. She was like cancer with a mind.

“I don’t know,” Husch said. “I’m redoubling security on her cell, of course. But I thought you should know,
someone
wants her to go free.”

“Thanks, Leda.” Marla stabbed at buttons until she managed to hang up the phone. This was
great
. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in her apartment with Joshua and a variety of entertaining implements, but it was not to be. At least, not until she cleaned up this whole mess of messes.

And where the
hell
was Rondeau?

“Ted!” she called, and he appeared. “Come on. We’re going out to walk the right of way.”

“Uh…like, walking along railroad tracks?”

“Not exactly. I’m walking
my
right of way. I go out every day, if I can, and walk part of the city. It’s important, keeps me connected. I draw power from the city—in some ways, it’s an extension of me—and in return, I have to give the city my attention. You looked down on Felport with me from on high earlier. Now you’re going to see it from street level. We’re going out to do some good. And you wanted some magic, right?” She went into her office and opened the bottom drawer. Ted had straightened things up, but he hadn’t moved anything, and she found the tiny glass vial with the dried brown spider inside. She handed it to Ted. “Hold on to that. If we run into Genevieve Kelley, or the guy who tried to kill me, I want you to squeeze that thing in your fist and break the glass and crush the spider, okay?”

He stared at the vial like it might be poison. “Won’t the glass cut me?”

“It’s freezing outside, Ted. I figured you’d be wearing gloves. Besides, if it does make you bleed a bit, that’s fine. A little blood won’t hurt the spell. Might even boost the signal.”

“What, exactly, will it
do
?”

She grinned. “It’s better if you see it. Seriously. Way more impressive that way. Come on, let’s see if I can find some gloves for you in Rondeau’s room.”

“W
ant to earn your keep, Zealand?” Nicolette leaned in the doorway, the bib of her white overalls smeared with either blood or food. Zealand turned down the corner of the page he was reading.

“Not particularly.” He reclined in the armchair beside the bed. The room they’d provided him was nicer than the one at the hotel where he’d been staying.

“Come help, or you don’t eat,” she said. “I hate seeing a killer with time on his hands.”